ustomed haunts and ways and become
gloomy, silent and self-possessed. Dick was left neglected in the
stables: you no longer heard his rapid clatter along the highway, with
the not over-melodious voice of his master singing "The Men of
Merry, Merry England" or "The Young Chevalier." The long and slender
fishing-rod remained on the pegs in the hall, although you could hear
the flop of the small burn-trout of an evening when the flies were
thick over the stream. The dogs were deprived of their accustomed
runs; the horses had to be taken out for exercise by the groom; and
the various and innumerable animals about the place missed their doses
of alternate petting and teasing, all because Master Harry had chosen
to shut himself up in his study.

The mother of the young man very soon discovered that her son was
not devoting his hours of seclusion in that extraordinary museum of
natural history to making trout-flies, stuffing birds and arranging
pinned butterflies in cases, as was his custom. These were not the
occupations which now kept Master Harry up half the night. When she
went in of a morning, before he was up, she found that he had been
covering whole sheets of paper with careful copying out of passages
taken at random from the volumes beside him. A Latin grammar was
ordinarily on the table--a book which the young gentleman had brought
back from school free from thumb-marks. Occasionally a fencing-foil
lay among these evidences of study, while the small aquaria, the cases
of stuffed animals with fancy backgrounds and the numerous bird-cages
had been thrust aside to give fair elbow-room.

"Perhaps," said Mrs. Trelyon to herself with much
satisfaction--"perhaps, after all, that good little girl has given him
a hint about Parliament, and he is preparing himself."

A few days of this seclusion, however, began to make the mother
anxious; and so one morning she went into his room. He hastily turned
over the sheet of paper on which he had been writing: then he looked
up, not too well pleased.

"Harry, why do you stay in-doors on such a beautiful morning? It is
quite like summer."

"Yes, I know," he said. "I suppose we shall soon have a batch of
parsons here: summer always brings them. They come out with the hot
weather--like butterflies."

Mrs. Trelyon was shocked and disappointed: she thought Wenna Rosewarne
had cured him of his insane dislike to clergymen--indeed, for many a
day gone by he had kept respectfully silent