Hundreds we knew have gone down.  The fatal bullet, the ravaging fever, the roaring torrent, and the sad sea waves; the slow, sure grip of consumption, the fall at polo, and the iron hoofs of the favourite hunter;—­all claimed their victims.

Perhaps this is why we love to linger in the woods watching the rays of golden light reflected upon the warm, red earth, listening to the heavenly voices of the birds and the hopeful babbling of the brook.  Those purple hills and distant bars of gold in the western sky at the soft twilight hour are rendered ever so much more beautiful when we dimly view them through a mist of tears.

And now your thoughts are taken back five short years; you are once more staying with your old Eton friend and Oxford comrade in his beautiful home in far-off Wales.  All is joy and happiness in that lovely, romantic home, for in six weeks’ time the young squire, the best and most popular fellow in the world, is to be married to the fair daughter of a neighbouring house.  Is it possible that aught can happen in that short time to mar the heavenly happiness of those two twin souls?  Alas for the gallant, chivalrous nature I Well might he have cried with his knightly ancestor of the “Round Table,” “Me forethinketh this shall betide, but God may well foredoe destiny.”  He had gone down to the lake in the most beautiful and romantic part of his lovely home, taking with him, as was his wont, his fishing-rod and his gun.  One shot was heard, and one only, on that ill-fated afternoon, and then all, save for the songs of the birds and the rippling of the deep waters of the lake, was wrapped in silence.  Then followed the report—­whispered through the party assembled to do honour to the future bride and bridegroom—­that “Bill” was missing.  Then came the agonising suspense and the eight hours’ search throughout the long summer evening.

Late that night the father found the fair young form of his boy in a thick and tangled copse,—­there it lay under the silent stars, the face upturned in its last appeal to heaven; and close by lay the deadly twelve-bore which had been the cause of all the misery and grief that followed.

     “Solemn before us
      Veiled the dark portal—­
      Goal of all mortal. 
      Stars silent rest o’er us;
      Graves under us silent.”

He had evidently pursued game or vermin of some sort into the dense undergrowth of the wood, and in his haste had slipped and fallen over his gun, for the shot had just grazed his heart

Who that knew him will ever forget Bill Llewelyn, prince of good fellows, “truest of men in everything”?  In all relations of life, as in the hunting field, he went as straight as a die.