make your acquaintance, sir," "A little odd, though, that one

must come from Kent to introduce neighbors." "This stone is like the ring the miner gave me," said Miriam.

"What! you were those down there, then?" "Yes. The earth opened and swallowed us up, the other day, Mr. Arundel," she replied.

"I was passing the shaft, to-day, when I saw a maniac-looking fellow lying on the grass in the midst of a group. He had ascended from the mine, they said, not long before; but the world spun the other way for him; he was dying, - raving feebly about a ring, and people, who, I see now, must have been you. You remember him, Sir Rohan, — Dick Roy?"

Sir Rohan replied with such graciousness as he could command, and as St. Denys relinquished the curiosity, took it for closer examination, and then dashed it into the sea where it was swallowed by a hungry wave. It seemed to burn his hand. He found himself more miserable than when alone; for then he had often been strung to the required tension of stoical endurance; but here, every hour gave him de

sire and hope of freedom, only to be blasted in the next by encounters with the Ghost of his youth.

"I never learned till now," said Arundel, bluntly, as he watched him, "that you and my cousin were friends."

"We have been friends a long while," replied the other, absently.

"They can hardly show you a kickshaw like this, at home. Were you ever in Kent, Sir Rohan?"

"Some years ago. A short time."

"Good soil that. Healthy farmers, worth a lease; but they put all their liveliness into their hops. Do you think they could dance a reel, now, St. Denys?"

"A reel or a saraband, if they chose," was the curt reply. Sir Rohan's frigidity was contagious, and Arundel crossed to Miriam.

"You have not wished me good evening," said he.

"Good evening," she returned, abruptly.
"It sounds much more like good by."
"You can take it as you please."

"You are cruel," he said in a lower tone.

"From your kindness in the church, I was led to expect a different demeanor."

"Dear me, Mr. Arundel! One must have a little meter to mark the finer grades of feeling, and accommodate one's manners to your moods!" "Rem acu tetigisti. Precisely, Miriam. And that meter, you cannot fail to know, is-"

Miriam yawned with her hand at her lips. "Isn't it time to go, papa?" she said to St. Denys. "It will be dark before be dark before we reach home."

"See Redruth sitting down there," she added, bending over the path, "as still as-"

"Is he asleep beside those remains of lunch?" asked Arundel.

"The cliff. One might drop a tortoise on his head and crack it," she continued.

"Crack which?" Arundel interpolated.

"But where would Redruth be then, I wonder?"

"Still squeezing his wine-bottle!" said the

quick-eyed interrupter. "He takes less scruples to a dram than an apothecary does." But having finished her sentence regardless of the rejoinders, Miriam seized her bonnet and almost bounded along the path, followed by Sir Rohan who, together with the others, expected momently to see her dashed down the declivity.

They descended more leisurely, and as his unwelcome company was not to be avoided, Arundel soon seated himself beside them in the coach. Sir Rohan, however, was now alive, and quietly ordering Redruth to take a different route from that by which they came, had the satisfaction of dropping Mr. Arundel at his own residence, and rolling homeward at liberty once more.

"Well done, Sir Rohan!" cried Miriam. "Now you've seen the man, tell me, do you affect

him?"

"We are not likely to be friends," said he, dryly.

"And need not therefore be enemies," said St. Denys. "The sight of him warns me, Ro

han. I must hasten."

VIII.

THE FOREHEAD OF THE STORM.

IME passed now more swiftly by them all by

TIME

:

St. Denys, examining the great estate with Redruth, offering suggestions, and relating incredible feats of some machinery he had used on summer fallows; by Miriam and Sir Rohan in rides through the bridle-paths of the forest, where tangled vines impeded progress and occasioned sweet delays, and in rambles over the long swelling moors seemingly grand and boundless as the sea, purple with crackling knee-deep heath in whose fragrance the winds were smothered, and broken only by some white thorn-bush bearing here and there a cluster of last year's scarlet haws, and with eagles screaming far above them. Nor is it to be doubted by whom he passed most pleasantly.

In Miriam's thoughts Sir Rohan had become as