must have been a mistake, and yet" Evelyn could not reason about the circumstance, but somehow she felt comforted, and she retired to rest with a less heavy heart than she had as yet borne with her to her weary couch.

T length the weary weeks allotted to Evelyn

Manwaring in the home of her fathers drew to their close. It had in all respects been a trying time. It had been the girl's delight to be on friendly terms with all the poor people in the village, and the hearty North-country folks were sore at heart at the bare idea of "the Lily of Arrow Dale" being taken away from them. There was not one of the farmers, there was not one of the labourers whom she did not visit in order to say good-bye, and to almost all she contrived to bring some little present as a remembrance. Wherever she went, she met with the same warm feelings, and the same hearty yet sorrowful farewell; in every house she had God's blessing called down upon her head. The school-children

she had petted, the choir she had taught, and a class of great hobby-de-hoys whom she had done her best to instruct, and whom on Sunday evenings she used to amuse by reading aloud in the snug, wainscotted housekeeper's room-all these were miserable at her departure. "There will be no spring in Arrow Dale, Miss Evelyn," said a burly young farmer from the Yorkshire side, "when its Lily has ceased to bloom;" and "the Lily" (and I) thought that a very pretty compliment.

Evelyn only broke down once. One evening, when her cousin chanced to be absent, she was called out of her sanctum, and there in the entrance hall she found a posse of great country lads, carters, carpenters, shepherds, and the like, all painfully dressed in their best Sunday clothes, and smelling strongly of mottled soap. They bore with them a huge posy of autumnal flowers, and a great Prayer Book, in a grand binding, bought far away over at smoky Preston itself, and of these they begged her acceptance as a remembrance. Jack Woolstanhaugh, the blacksmith's son-a great hulking fellow, with an arm which would have felled an ox-who was deputed formally to present the gift, and to make a little speech in behalf of the rest, could not get beyond his second sentence, though North-country lads are

proud of the gift they have of speaking on sufficient occasions. First he came to a full stop, then he stammered out something quite unintelligible, and then his voice altogether failed him. The next moment the big, honest fellow burst into a great fit of crying, and in that he was joined by the rest of his companions. Such a boohooing was seldom heard. As to Evelyn, she broke down altogether, and with wild looks of sympathy, and great beautiful eyes streaming with tears-sorrow mingled this time. with joy-she could only shake hands with each lad in turn as he shambled sheepishly out of the room. Doubtless those tears were blessed which bound her in sympathy with her poorer brethren!

Depend upon it, spite of what swells, æsthetes, and cynics may allege to the contrary, mankind in general are grateful for benefits received-the poor almost invariably so-and it will probably be found that those who deny this to be the case have never themselves done anything whatsoever to deserve the gratitude of their fellow-creatures.

Little by little, Evelyn's furniture, books, and pictures, to which were added the possessions of poor Wilfred, were packed up and stowed away in a barn which Mr. Elthorne had placed at her disposal until such time as she should have fixed

upon a place of residence, and at last all her arrangements were complete. Her pony, "Mouse," she had given to her friend Lucy Elthorne, but on the last afternoon at Holmcastle she had arranged to take a solitary ride.

It was a warm, but clear day, early in autumn, when Evelyn, mounted upon "Mouse," and attended by "Floss," the beautiful brown and white spaniel which had belonged to Wilfred, took her lonely way up one of the lateral valleys which conducted from the main Dale of the Arrow up upon the Moors. Just as she reached the zone where the last signs of cultivation melted into the wilder range of Nature, she encountered the son of one of the small sheepfarmers of the neighbourhood.

Matthew," cried the young lady, "I do so want, before I leave Holmcastle for ever, once more to get to the top of the Edge to see the sun set; will you come up and hold Mouse, while I scramble up the last part of the way on foot; I shall not keep you long?"

Would he do so? Of course he would; he would have gone to the end of the world if the Lily of Arrow Dale had asked him; so the three or fourfor Floss was of the party-went on together. Up, up they went; now rounding great swelling shoulders of brown moorland, now in a hollow fording a baby