were huge attics with great timbered supports, needed to sustain the heavy stone tiling, which had never been converted into living rooms.  There was the hall, which took up a considerable part of one side; out of this, towards the road, opened the little parlour where he had breakfasted, and above it was a library full of books, with its oriel overhanging the road, and two windows looking into the garden.  Then there was the big drawing-room.  Upstairs there were but a half a dozen bedrooms.  The offices and the servants’ bedrooms were in the wing on the road.  There was but little furniture in the house.  Mr. Graves had had a preference for large bare rooms; and such furniture as there was, was all for use and not for ornament, so that there was a refreshing lack of any aesthetic pose about it.  There were but few pictures, but most of the rooms were panelled and needed no other ornament.  There was a refreshing sense of space everywhere, and Howard thought that he had never seen a house he liked so well.  Miss Merry chirped away, retailing little bits of history.  Howard now for the first time learned that Mr. Graves had retired early from business with a considerable fortune, and being fond of books and leisure, and rather delicate in health, had established himself in the house, which had taken his fancy.  There were some fifteen hundred acres of land attached, divided up into several small farms.

Miss Merry was filled with a reverential sort of adoration of Mrs. Graves; “the most wonderful person, I assure you!  I always feel she is rather thrown away in this remote place.”

“But she likes it?” said Howard.

“Yes, she likes everything,” said Miss Merry.  “She makes everyone feel happy:  she says very little, but you feel somehow that all is right if she is there.  It’s a great privilege, Mr. Kennedy, to be with her; I feel that more and more every day.”

This artless praise pleased Howard.  When he was left alone he got out his papers; but he found himself restless in a pleasant way; he strolled through the garden.  It was a singular place, of great extent; the lawn was carefully kept, but behind the screen of shrubs the garden extended far up the valley beside the river in a sort of wilderness; and he could see by the clumps of trees and the grassy mounds that it must have once been a great formal pleasaunce, which had been allowed to follow its own devices; at the far end of it, beside the stream, there was a long flagged terrace, with a stone balustrade looking down upon the stream, and beyond that the woods closed in.  He left the garden and followed the stream up the valley; the downs here drew in and became steeper, till he came at last to one of the most lovely places he thought he had ever set eyes upon.  The stream ended suddenly in a great clear pool, among a clump of old sycamores; the water rose brimming out of the earth, and he could see the sand fountains rising and falling at the bottom of the basin; by the side