won't give in; no, not even now. Can't be good? Bah! There's no can't about anything. Gideon Skull the Good!-Well, anything for a change. I don't suppose it will be so very hard to be pretty good on Copleston. If Helen Gideon Skull the Good!--For how long?"

Though he was alone, the fancy took the form of a sneer. But it was only the sneer without which he would have as yet found it impossible to own, even to himself, that Goodness is a thing as well as a word. "Good" is a child's word. And Gideon, new to all that was real at over forty years old, used it like a child-and this time it was the sneer that was an empty form.

One sort of will, or another, began to do its work at last; the face before him softened without fading away. Then, with some weary and passive sort of consciousness that some form or fashion of new life was before him after all, he let himself sink, rather than forcibly compelled himself, into that state of trance wherein all his faculties found absolute repose. As when Helen had first heard of Alan's death, his heavy jaw relaxed, and his breath came so quietly and faintly that his chest could not be seen to heave. No wonder that he required absolute freedom from disturbance when he indulged in this form of rest, for any intruder would assuredly have taken him for a dead man.

Helen had slept but little; for she had spent nearly the whole of the night in thinking out some plan whereby she could, in spite of all that passed between her and her husband, crowd her life and his with so much fulfilment of all that duty in its heaviest sense can mean that she, and-if it might be he also, should be able to willingly dispense with every thought of happiness for the rest of their days. She had learned from his latest words, and by her deepening knowledge of him through herself, that he had been crushed and softened; and she had never suspected, till to-night, that he had ever felt for her more than a sort of passion to which she had of set purpose closed her eyes, combined with a very decided passion for Alan's lands. If he had come to need and want her for herself what would that mean? It would make her wifely duty a thousand times more hard, but ten thousand times more needful. To devote herself to Gideon Skull loving her, instead of to Gideon Skull hating her, looked impossibly hard, without greater strength than she could hope to find; but even so it must be. She knew all Victor Waldron had meant now. To think how all these things had sprung from a mother's attempting to be her son's providence, she did not dare. Nor did she look forward with any special anxiety as

to what the morrow might bring. Life was going to consist of too many days to make her especially heedful of any one of them— life was likely to be too long to let her think much of hours that were so near. She would have plenty of time to thrust Victor Waldron from her heart and to give it, though empty of all but honesty, into the hands of Gideon Skull, to whom it belonged as rightfully as did Copleston.

So she had not yet quite lost her old courage after all—unless, indeed, some one had given her some new courage that was not her own.

There was of course nothing for her to notice in Gideon's not having left his uncle's study before she was dressed, since he had chosen to convert that into a bedroom. But she, a little restored to her old self, and therefore, as of old, letting her deeds run before her thoughts by seizing the first possible moment for putting into execution any resolve however immature, herself went into the study to call him, as a better wife might have done.

She had never seen him in one of these trances; and, seeing him thus still, white, without sign of breath or motion, was seized with a strange and new alarm. "Gideon!" she breathed out in a frightened whisper, as she laid her hand on his brow. He neither heard nor moved.

In truth, the man had never had a soul to part from before. It had come to him that night in the form of the bewildered soul of a new-born child, and, having once escaped, had been too frightened to come back again.

Only this remained-that the old Gideon had ceased to live before the new-born Gideon had died.

CHAPTER XXXV.

Boughs that are serest

Will soonest be sheen:

For Spring-time is nearest

When Summer hath been:

When the frost that thou fearest

For closest and dearest

Alone is between

The seeking, forsaking,

The losing and taking,

The sleep and the waking,

The Russet and Green.

HERE, many will fairly enough suppose, this chronicle of Copleston has reached its natural and conclusive end. Mrs. Reid, by

planning everything for the best, had, almost beyond even expectation, done everything for the worst; Gideon Skull, with all the will in the world to do harm, had done more than could have been dreamed of in the direction of straightening what had been twisted beyond all hope of being thoroughly right again. Good had done its worst, bad its best, and there was nothing more to be done. As for Helen and Victor-it is easy enough for any moderately fertile imagination to make out an almost inexhaustible list of what might have been when all else was over and done. She might have felt that it was for him to speak out very plainly to her, if there was to - be anything more than distant and mostly silent friendship between them. He, a poor man whom the temporary ownership of a great estate had thrown terribly back in the world, might have felt invincibly incapable of asking an exceedingly rich widow to marry him. In short, a complete romance might be erected upon the way in which they might go on misunderstanding one another and keeping apart until it became almost, or quite, too late for any understanding to come to them. The only possible objection to such an exercise of fancy would be that it would assume a man and a woman, who had been taught a little sense very sharply, to be an absolutely impossible pair of fools.

In any case-though it may seem little enough to any purpose-it happened one day, as it had often happened before, that the ancient fly belonging to the "George" at Hillswick brought a lady, a gentleman, and their luggage into the inn yard. The gentleman handed out the lady, and led her, leaning on his arm, straight into the coffee-room. He rang the bell and asked if they could have a bedroom. The waiter answered that he would go and see.

It was a merely formal and customary answer, however, for there were always vacant beds at the "George," except at election time and on yet rarer occasions. But the waiter's object in hurrying out was by no means an empty form. Hotel guests in Hillswick had always been rare, and had for some time past been rarer than ever, since Gideon Skull had ceased to visit his uncle; and it was only natural for the waiter to wish to know if he alone had failed to recognise the new arrivals. It made a considerable difference at the "George" whether guests were Somebodies from round Deepweald, which was the county town, or Nobodies from Everywhere.

Everybody about the place had seen the arrivals, but nobody knew them. Their luggage, though eminently satisfactory in every

other respect, was labelled with neither name nor initials. They were a Lady and a Gentleman, even from the "George" point of view; that was clear. She was something more, too, for she was both young and pretty. She was little, and slight, and fair, with a charmingly delicate complexion, laughing lips, and smiling blue eyes. She was the picture of happy wife, too lately married to have found out yet that marriage means something a great deal nobler than escape from life's troubles. She looked up at her husband with something of the shyness that belongs to the first experience of a great change, but with a smile of love and trust that was touching because of its simple perfection. Nor did he look unworthy to receive her halfproud, half-humble smile. In the first and best place, he looked like a Man. As to lesser things, he was tall, broad, and strong, brownbearded and well bronzed, with a face that was almost too grave, but without sternness, and with truth written in every feature and line. His happiness was doubtless more serious, though it might be very far from being less deep than hers. As for the rest, there was but little to observe. They came without a servant or any signs of whether their purpose in coming to Hillswick was business, pleasure, or chance, and the lady was dressed simply and plainly for travelling.

They dined together in a private room, and with appetites too healthy to gratify the curiosity of the waiter very far during the meal. But when the last dish had been removed,

"I suppose you know all about Hillswick?" said the gentleman to the waiter.

"Well, sir, as much as I've come to hear in a month or so. I'm a Deepweald man myself, and Hillswick is but a poor little bit of a place, after towns like Deepweald or London."

I

"And so one comes to know them sooner. Let me see used to know a little about the place myself, once upon a time. I remember the name of the Rector-I should say of the Curate-inCharge."

"Rector he is, sir. The Rev. William Blane, M.A."

"Blane? I meant Mr. Skull-Mr. Christopher Skull."

"No, sir. I've heard of him. He was here before Mr. Blane. He gave up through old age, and the parishioners gave him a silver tea-caddy for a testimonial for his long and faithful service; and he's gone to live at Deepweald, where I come from myself, with the Misses Skull. He was much respected, I believe, by all that knew him. So I'm told." The waiter lingered; he was evidently on the track of news to carry back to the bar.

"Who keeps the 'George' now?-Mr. Reynolds?"

"Oh no, sir!

He retired long and long ago; almost, as one may say, before you were born. It's Mr. Pool keeps the 'George'Mr. Pool, from Redchester."

"Mr. Bolt, the doctor?-I remember him; I suppose he is still here?"

"I believe there was a medical man of that name, or used to be; but that was before my time. But where he is now, I can't say. Shall I inquire at the bar?"

"And you told me," said the lady-" you told me that Hillswick was the one place where change never came. I thought there couldn't be such a place--and you see!"

"I have made a bad beginning, Lucy, I must own. Well-I suppose that there is such a thing as change even in Hillswick, if one puts long enough intervals between one's observations. But the Parson, the Doctor, and the Landlord, all together-it does shake one's faith a little in the immutability of things. But wait a minute, and you'll see. Of course, old Grimes is still clerk and

sexton here?"

"Why, sir," said the waiter, "you must know Hillswick like a native born, to know the name of the man that was sexton when Mr. Skull was Curate-in-Charge, and Mr. Reynolds kept the 'George'! You never heard how he came into a fortune, then?"

"Old Grimes into a fortune? No!"

"He did, though. People do say it was through finding ancient documents in the church tower, that proved him to be a long-lost heir. I don't mean to say it was thousands, but he gave up Church work, and came to the Bar

"What?"

"To the Bar of this House, sir-every day, taking his glass, and talking about old times. There wasn't a day he didn't come, till he got to be a regular fixture, haunting about the churchyard betweenwhiles, whenever there was a funeral, till he died in harness, as one may say. They missed old Grimes terrible at the George.' They do say he was near on a hundred years old."

"Then I give it up, Lucy," said the stranger, with a smile that was not wholly a smile. "Since old Grimes is dead and buried, I give up Hillswick-it is a different place from what I used to know. I suppose Mr. Waldron is still at Copleston?"

"Well, sir, not exactly, so to say, in residence," said the waiter, who, as a Deepweald man, knew the phrases of a Cathedral city. "But that will soon be, now, after the wedding, if all's true they say.