man, he."

Slowly and sadly Enoch answer'd her; "His head is low, and no man cares for him.

I think I have not three days more to live; I am the man." At which the woman gave A half-incredulous, half-hysterical cry. "You Arden, you! nay, sure he was

a foot Higher than you be." Enoch said again My God has bow'd me down to what

66

I am; My grief and solitude have broken me; Nevertheless, know you that I am he

been changed

I married her who married Philip Ray. Sit, listen." Then he told her of his

go!

Eh, let me fetch 'em, Arden," and arose Eager to bring them down, for Enoch hung A moment on her words, but then replied.

"Woman, disturb me not now at the last,

But let me hold my purpose till I die. Sit down again; mark me and understand, While I have power to speak. I charge you now,

When you shall see her, tell her that I died

Blessing her, praying for her, loving her; Save for the bar between us, loving her As when she laid her head beside my own. And tell my daughter Annie, whom I saw So like her mother, that my latest breath Was spent in blessing her and praying for her.

And tell my son that I died blessing him. And say to Philip that I blest him too; He never meant us anything but good. But if my children care to see me dead, Who hardly knew me living, let them

vals,

wife, His wife a faded beauty of the Baths, Insipid as the Queen upon a card; Her all of thought and bearing hardly

That Love could bind them closer well

prick'd to death.

or no,

grass,

-prov'n What cared he? what, if other or the same?

He lean'd not on his fathers but himself.
But Leolin, his brother, living oft
With Averill, and a year or two before
Call'd to the bar, but ever call'd away
By one low voice to one dear neighbor-
hood,

Would often, in his walks with Edith, claim

A distant kinship to the gracious blood That shook the heart of Edith hearing him.

Sanguine he was: a but less vivid hue Than of that islet in the chestnut-bloom Flamed in his cheek; and eager eyes, that still

Took joyful note of all things joyful, beam'd,

Beneath a manelike mass of rolling gold, Their best and brightest, when they dwelt on hers,

Edith, whose pensive beauty, perfect else, But subject to the season or the mood, Shone like a mystic star between the less And greater glory varying to and fro, We know not wherefore; bounteously made,

And yet so finely, that a troublous touch Thinn'd, or would seem to thin her in a day,

A joyous to dilate, as toward the light. And these had been together from the first.

Leolin's first nurse was, five years after, hers:

So much the boy foreran; but when his date

Doubled her own, for want of playmates, he

(Since Averill was a decade and a half His elder, and their parents underground) Had tost his ball and flown his kite, and roll'd

His hoop to pleasure Edith, with her dipt Against the rush of the air in the prone swing,

Made blossom-ball or daisy-chain, arranged

Her garden, sow'd her name and kept it green

In living letters, told her fairy-tales,

For Edith and himself: or else he forged,
But that was later, boyish histories
Of battle, bold adventure, dungeon, wreck,
Flights, terrors, sudden rescues, and true
love

Crown'd after trial; sketches rude and faint,

But where a passion yet unborn perhaps
Lay hidden as the music of the moon
Sleeps in the plain eggs of the nightin.
gale.

And thus together, save for college-times
Or Temple-eaten terms, a couple, fair
As ever painter painted, poet sång,
Or Heav'n in lavish bounty moulded,

My lady; and the Baronet yet had laid No bar between them: dull and selfinvolved,

Tall and erect, but bending from his height With half-allowing smiles for all the world,

And mighty courteous in the main -- his pride

Lay deeper than to wear it as his ringHe, like an Aylmer in his Aylmerism, Would care no more for Leolin's walking with her

Than for his old Newfoundland's, when they ran

To loose him at the stables, for he rose Twofooted at the limit of his chain, Roaring to make a third: and how should Love,

met eyes

Flash into fiery life from nothing, follow
Such dear familiarities of dawn?
Seldom, but when he does, Master of all.

So these young hearts not knowing
that they loved,

Not she at least, nor conscious of a bar Between them, nor by plight or broken ring

Bound, but an immemorial intimacy, Wander'd at will, but oft accompanied By Averill: his, a brother's love, that hung

With wings of brooding shelter o'er her

peace,

Rose from the clay it work'd in as she past, Not sowing hedgerow texts and passing by,

Nor dealing goodly counsel from a height
That makes the lowest hate it, but a voice
Of comfort and an open hand of help,
A splendid presence flattering the poor
roofs

Revered as theirs, but kindlier than themselves

To ailing wife or wailing infancy
Or old bedridden palsy, was adored;
He, loved for her and for himself. A grasp
Having the warmth and muscle of the
heart,

by hour

Gather'd the blossom that rebloom'd, and drank

The magic cup that fill'd itself anew.

A whisper half reveal'd her to herself. For out beyond her lodges, where the brook

Vocal, with here and there a silence, ran By sallowy rims, arose the laborers' homes, A frequent haunt of Edith, on low knolls That dimpling died into each other, huts At random scatter'd, each a nest in bloom. Her art, her hand, her counsel all had wrought

About them here was one that, summer-blanch'd,

Was parcel-bearded with the traveller'sjoy

In Autumn, parcel ivy-clad ; and here The warm-blue breathings of a hidden hearth

Broke from a bower of vine and honeysuckle:

One look'd all rosetree, and another wore A close-set robe of jasmine sown with stars: This had a rosy sea of gillyflowers About it; this, a milky-way on earth, Like visions in the Northern dreamer's heavens,

A lily-avenue climbing to the doors;
One, almost to the martin-haunted eaves
A summer burial deep in hollyhocks;
Each, its own charm; and Edith's
everywhere;

And Edith ever visitant with him,
He but less loved than Edith, of her poor:
For she
so lowly-lovely and so loving,

-

Nursing a child, and turning to the warmth

The tender pink five-beaded baby-soles, Heard the good mother softly whisper "Bless,

God bless 'em: marriages are made in Heaven."

A flash of semi-jealousy clear'd it to

her.

My lady's Indian kinsman unannounced With half a score of swarthy faces came. His own, tho' keen and bold and soldierly, Sear'd by the close ecliptic, was not fair; Fairer his talk, a tongue that ruled the hour,

Tho' seeming boastful: so when first he dash'd

Into the chronicle of a deedful day,
Sir Aylmer half forgot his lazy smile
Of patron "Good! my lady's kinsman !
good!"

My lady with her fingers interlock'd,
And rotatory thumbs on silken knees,
Call'd all her vital spirits into each ear
To listen unawares they flitted off,
Busying themselves about the flowerage
That stood from out a stiff brocade in
which,

The meteor of a splendid season, she, Once with this kinsman, ah so long ago, Stept thro' the stately minuet of those

days:

But Edith's eager fancy hurried with him Snatch'd thro' the perilous passes of his life: