“No, he was almost shattered to pieces; but Sir Stephen sent him up the hills to be nursed by Lady Temple and her mother, and he was sent home as soon as he could be moved.  I was astonished to see how entirely he had recovered.”

“Then you went through all that Indian war?”

“Yes; with Sir Stephen.”

“You must show me all your medals!  How much you have to tell me!  And then—?”

“Just when the regiment was coming home, my dear old chief was appointed to the command in Australia, and insisted on my coming with him as military secretary.  He had come to depend on me so much that I could not well leave him; and in five years there was the way to promotion and to claiming you at once.  We were just settled there, when what I heard made me long to have decided otherwise, but I could not break with him then.  I wrote to Edward, but had my letter returned to me.”

“No wonder; Edward was abroad, all connexion broken.”

“I wrote to Beauchamp, and he knew nothing, and I could only wait till my chief’s time should be up.  You know how it was cut short, and how the care of the poor little widow detained me till she was fit for the voyage.  I came and sought you in vain in town.  I went home, and found my brother lonely and dispirited.  He has lost his son, his daughters are married, and he and I are all the brothers left out of the six!  He was urgent that I should come and live with him and marry.  I told him I would, with all my heart, when I had found you, and he saw I was too much in earnest to be opposed.  Then I went to Beauchamp, but Harry knew nothing about any one.  I tried to find out your sister and Dr. Long, but heard they were gone to Belfast.”

“Yes, they lost a good deal in the crash, and did not like retrenching among their neighbours, so they went to Ireland, and there they have a flourishing practice.”

“I thought myself on my way there,” he said, smiling; “only I had first to settle Lady Temple, little guessing who was her treasure of a governess!  Last night I had nearly opened, on another false scent; I fell in with a description that I could have sworn was yours, of the heather behind the parsonage.  I made a note of the publisher in case all else had failed.”

“I’m glad you knew the scent of the thyme!”

“Then it was no false scent?”

“One must live, and I was thankful to do anything to lighten Ailie’s burthen.  I wrote down that description that I might live in the place in fancy; and one day, when the contribution was wanted and I was hard up for ideas, I sent it, though I was loth to lay open that bit of home and heart.”

“Well it might give me the sense of meeting you!  And in other papers of the series I traced your old self more ripened.”

“The editor was a friend of Edward’s, and in our London days he asked me to write letters on things in general, and when I said I saw the world through a key-hole, he answered that a circumscribed view gained in distinctness.  Most kind and helpful he has been, and what began between sport and need to say out one’s mind has come to be a resource for which we are very thankful.  He sends us books for reviewal, and that is pleasant and improving, not to say profitable.”