war as wholesale murder, and Lord Wellington as a
"hired butcher."

Her auditress listened with exceeding edification. Jessie had something
of the genius of humour in her nature. It was inexpressibly comic to
hear her repeating her sire's denunciations in his nervous northern
Doric; as hearty a little Jacobin as ever pent a free mutinous spirit in
a muslin frock and sash. Not malignant by nature, her language was not
so bitter as it was racy, and the expressive little face gave a piquancy
to every phrase which held a beholder's interest captive.

Caroline chid her when she abused Lord Wellington; but she listened
delighted to a subsequent tirade against the Prince Regent. Jessie
quickly read, in the sparkle of her hearer's eye and the laughter
hovering round her lips, that at last she had hit on a topic that
pleased. Many a time had she heard the fat "Adonis of fifty" discussed
at her father's breakfast-table, and she now gave Mr. Yorke's comments
on the theme--genuine as uttered by his Yorkshire lips.

But, Jessie, I will write about you no more. This is an autumn evening,
wet and wild. There is only one cloud in the sky, but it curtains it
from pole to pole. The wind cannot rest; it hurries sobbing over hills
of sullen outline, colourless with twilight and mist. Rain has beat all
day on that church tower. It rises dark from the stony enclosure of its
graveyard. The nettles, the long grass, and the tombs all drip with wet.
This evening reminds me too forcibly of another evening some years
ago--a howling, rainy autumn evening too--when certain who had that day
performed a pilgrimage to a grave new-made in a heretic cemetery sat
near a wood fire on the hearth of a foreign dwelling. They were merry
and social, but they each knew that a gap, never to be filled, had been
made in their circle. They knew they had lost something whose absence
could never be quite atoned for so long as they lived; and they knew
that heavy falling rain was soaking into the wet earth which covered
their lost darling, and that the sad, sighing gale was mourning above
her buried head. The fire warmed them; life and friendship yet blessed
them; but Jessie lay cold, coffined, solitary--only the sod screening
her from the storm.

* * * * *

Mrs. Yorke folded up her knitting, cut short the music lesson and the
lecture on politics, and concluded her visit to the cottage, at an hour
early enough to ensure her return t