y let fall over us!--A haze through which
all around seemed melting away in delicious intangible sweetness, in
which the very sky above our heads--the shining, world-besprinkled
sky--was a thing felt rather than seen.

"How strange all seems! how unreal!" said John, in a low voice, when he
had walked the length of the garden in silence. "Phineas, how very
strange it seems!"

"What seems?"

"What?--oh, everything." He hesitated a minute. "No, not
everything--but something which to me seems now to fill and be mixed up
with all I do, or think, or feel. Something you do not know--but
to-night Ursula said I might tell you."

Nevertheless he was several minutes before he told me.

"This pear-tree is full of fruit--is it not? How thick they hang and
yet it seems but yesterday that Ursula and I were standing here, trying
to count the blossoms."

He stopped--touching a branch with his hand. His voice sank so I could
hardly hear it.

"Do you know, Phineas, that when this tree is bare--we shall, if with
God's blessing all goes well--we shall have--a little child."

I wrung his hand in silence.

"You cannot imagine how strange it feels. A child--hers and
mine--little feet to go pattering about our house--a little voice to
say--Think, that by Christmas-time I shall be a FATHER."

He sat down on the garden-bench, and did not speak for a long time.

"I wonder," he said at last, "if, when I was born, MY father was as
young as I am: whether he felt as I do now. You cannot think what an
awful joy it is to be looking forward to a child; a little soul of
God's giving, to be made fit for His eternity. How shall we do it! we
that are both so ignorant, so young--she will be only just nineteen
when, please God, her baby is born. Sometimes, of an evening, we sit
for hours on this bench, she and I, talking of what we ought to do, and
how we ought to rear the little thing, until we fall into silence, awed
at the blessing that is coming to us."

"God will help you both, and make you wise."

"We trust He will; and then we are not afraid."

A little while longer I sat by John's side, catching the dim outline of
his face, half uplifted, looking towards those myriad worlds, which we
are taught to believe, and do believe, are not more precious in the
Almighty sight than one living human soul.

But he said no more of the hope that was coming, or of the thoughts
which, in the holy hush of that summer night, had risen out of