ar, now his customary companion, had followed him,
and he couched across his feet.

"Old boy!" said Louis, pulling his tawny ear, or rather the mutilated
remains of that organ, torn and chewed in a hundred battles, "the autumn
sun shines as pleasantly on us as on the fairest and richest. This
garden is none of ours, but we enjoy its greenness and perfume, don't
we?"

He sat silent, still caressing Tartar, who slobbered with exceeding
affection. A faint twittering commenced among the trees round. Something
fluttered down as light as leaves. They were little birds, which,
lighting on the sward at shy distance, hopped as if expectant.

"The small brown elves actually remember that I fed them the other day,"
again soliloquized Louis. "They want some more biscuit. To-day I forgot
to save a fragment. Eager little sprites, I have not a crumb for you."

He put his hand in his pocket and drew it out empty.

"A want easily supplied," whispered the listening Miss Keeldar.

She took from her reticule a morsel of sweet-cake; for that repository
was never destitute of something available to throw to the chickens,
young ducks, or sparrows. She crumbled it, and bending over his
shoulder, put the crumbs into his hand.

"There," said she--"there is a providence for the improvident."

"This September afternoon is pleasant," observed Louis Moore, as, not at
all discomposed, he calmly cast the crumbs on to the grass.

"Even for you?"

"As pleasant for me as for any monarch."

"You take a sort of harsh, solitary triumph in drawing pleasure out of
the elements and the inanimate and lower animate creation."

"Solitary, but not harsh. With animals I feel I am Adam's son, the heir
of him to whom dominion was given over 'every living thing that moveth
upon the earth.' Your dog likes and follows me. When I go into that
yard, the pigeons from your dovecot flutter at my feet. Your mare in the
stable knows me as well as it knows you, and obeys me better."

"And my roses smell sweet to you, and my trees give you shade."

"And," continued Louis, "no caprice can withdraw these pleasures from
me; they are _mine_."

He walked off. Tartar followed him, as if in duty and affection bound,
and Shirley remained standing on the summer-house step. Caroline saw her
face as she looked after the rude tutor. It was pale, as if her pride
bled inwardly.

"You see," remarked Caroline apologetically, "his feelings are so often
hurt it makes him morose