wonder what he could find to do when the train whirled away, and only the blank of a railway, some sheds, and a distant field or two were left for him to gaze upon.  The hot air danced over the golden stillness of the land, farm after farm was left behind, each reminding Margaret of German Idyls—­of Herman and Dorothea—­of Evangeline.  From this waking dream she was roused.  It was the place to leave the train and take the fly to Helstone.  And now sharper feelings came shooting through her heart, whether pain or pleasure she could hardly tell.  Every mile was redolent of associations, which she would not have missed for the world, but each of which made her cry upon ‘the days that are no more,’ with ineffable longing.  The last time she had passed along this road was when she had left it with her father and mother—­the day, the season, had been gloomy, and she herself hopeless, but they were there with her.  Now she was alone, an orphan, and they, strangely, had gone away from her, and vanished from the face of the earth.  It hurt her to see the Helstone road so flooded in the sun-light, and every turn and every familiar tree so precisely the same in its summer glory as it had been in former years.  Nature felt no change, and was ever young.

Mr. Bell knew something of what would be passing through her mind, and wisely and kindly held his tongue.  They drove up to the Lennard Arms; half farm-house, half-inn, standing a little apart from the road, as much as to say, that the host did not so depend on the custom of travellers, as to have to court it by any obtrusiveness; they, rather, must seek him out.  The house fronted the village green; and right before it stood an immemorial lime-tree benched all round, in some hidden recesses of whose leafy wealth hung the grim escutcheon of the Lennards.  The door of the inn stood wide open, but there was no hospitable hurry to receive the travellers.  When the landlady did appear—­and they might have abstracted many an article first—­she gave them a kind welcome, almost as if they had been invited guests, and apologised for her coming having been so delayed, by saying, that it was hay-time, and the provisions for the men had to be sent a-field, and she had been too busy packing up the baskets to hear the noise of wheels over the road, which, since they had left the highway, ran over soft short turf.

‘Why, bless me!’ exclaimed she, as at the end of her apology, a glint of sunlight showed her Margaret’s face, hitherto unobserved in that shady parlour.  ‘It’s Miss Hale, Jenny,’ said she, running to the door, and calling to her daughter.  ’Come here, come directly, it’s Miss Hale!’ And then she went up to Margaret, and shook her hands with motherly fondness.

’And how are you all?  How’s the Vicar and Miss Dixon?  The Vicar above all!  God bless him!  We’ve never ceased to be sorry that he left.’

Margaret tried to speak and tell her of her father’s death; of her mother’s it was evident that Mrs. Purkis was aware, from her omission of her name.  But she choked in the effort, and could only touch her deep mourning, and say the one word, ‘Papa.’