of Christ Church guards the heaped-up dust of thirty generations, and the river runs. swiftly below; but not here, not among the weeping girls and sad-faced boys. Let them all rise together, at the end, this army of young martyrs, with never an old man among them, to find with joyful eyes a fuller life than that from which they were so soon snatched away.

Thither Gilbert brought Alison. He said nothing, for, in truth, his own heart was filled with the sadness and beauty of the place. He led her up the slope to the most retired part of the churchyard, where the graves, those of twenty years back, were not so close together, and where each had its generous space with amplitude of breadth, such as is accorded to abbots and bishops in cathedrals. Quite at the farthest boundary, where the pines are the thickest, surrounded, too, by silver beeches, stripling oaks, and rhododendrons, stood the cross they came to see; and

behind it were the flowers of summer, tended and cared for as if the poor young mother had never been forgotten by her child. There were only the initials D. H.,' with the date of her death and her age.

Alison sank at the foot of the grave, and Gilbert left her there.

It was a solemn moment, the most solemn in her life. To kneel beside that grave was in itself an act of thanksgiving and gratitude. For in it lay not only her

mother, but the honour of her father.

She

thought of him, more than of the mother whom she had never seen. Her tears fell for him, more than for the young life cut off so early. Was there ever a father so kind, so thoughtful, so untiring in generous and self-denying actions? Was there ever one so entirely to be loved by a daughter? And for four months she had been bearing about with her the bitter thought that perhaps this man-this good,

religious, and Christian man-was what she never dared to put to herself in words.

'But that was all over now,' she said. 'No one henceforth would dare to whisper a word against his sacred memory.'

And then she sat and tried to realise that, like other girls, she could now speak and think of her own mother lying dead at her feet.

Presently she returned to the hotel, and they passed a quiet, silent evening, walking on the sea-shore,, or the pier, while the summer sun went down in splendour, and in the opal breadths of twilight sky they saw the silver curve of the new moon.

It was no time for love. Alison talked in whispers of her mother; what she was like; why her father had kept silence about her. Gilbert listened. The place was very quiet; in June most of the people have left Bournemouth; they were alone

on the pier; there was a weight upon both their hearts, and yet the heart of one, at least, was full of gratitude and joy. But needs must that he who stays in the City of Death feels the solemn presence of Azrael.

CHAPTER III.

HOW GILBERT READ THE MANUSCRIPT.

WHEN Alison left him, Gilbert, after the fashion of his generation, began to soothe his soul with tobacco on the road which runs along the cliff down to the beach. So far, all promised well here was the grave of the mother, but where was the proof of her marriage? Perhaps, after all, his difficulties were only beginning.

Gilbert was in love. He would have been just as much in love had Alison been penniless; but it must be owned that to a briefless young barrister, fully alive to the advantages possessed by him who pos46

VOL. III.