hly plucked fruit, laid in the
midst of flowers and vine leaves, and Walter, his face beaming and his
eyes dancing with happiness, was asking and answering a thousand
incessant questions, while yet he managed to enjoy very thoroughly a
large bunch of grapes, and an immense plate of strawberries and cream.

And when tea was over they still sat out in the lovely garden until the
witch elm had ceased to chequer their faces with its rain of flickering
light; and until the lake had paled from pure gold to rose-colour, and
from rose-colour to dull crimson, and from dull crimson to silver grey,
and rippled again from silver grey into a deep black blue, relieved by a
thousand flashing edges of molten silver and quivering gold, under the
crescent moon and the innumerable stars. And the bats had almost ceased
to wheel, and in the moist air of early night the flowers were diffusing
their luscious sweetness, and the nightingale was flooding the grove
with her unimaginable rapture, and the eager talk had hushed itself into
a delicious calm of happy silence, before they moved. It was a
beautiful picture--the father and mother still youthful enough to enjoy
life to the full, happy at heart, and proud of their eldest boy; his two
young brothers looking up to him with such eager hope and love; the
little sisters with their arms twined round his neck, and their fair
hair falling over his shoulders; the noble, mirthful, fearless, thrice
happy boy himself--a family circle unseparated by distance, unshadowed
by sorrow, unbroken by death, seated in this exquisite scene on the lawn
of their own happy English home.

Thrice happy! yes, in spite of sin and sorrow, and retribution and
remorse, there _are_ hours when the cup sparkles in our hands, filled to
the brim; not (as often) with earthly waters; not with the intoxicating
wine that flames in the magic bowl of pleasure; not with the red and
ragged lees of wrath and satiety; but with the crystal rivers of the
water of life itself. There _are_ such hours at any rate for some.
Whether they come to all mankind I know not; whether the squalid Andaman
or the hideous Fuegian ever feel them I know not; nay, I know not
whether they ever come, whether they ever can come, to the wretched
outcasts of earth's abject poverty and fathomless degradation; whether
they ever come, whether they ever can come, to the cruel and the proud,
to the malicious and the mean, to the cynical and discontented; yet, if