earth being the foretaste of the acceptance of heaven. "Though your sins be as scarlet, they shall be as white as snow; and though they be red like crimson, they shall be as wool." The scarlet fillet was white, and the tired being yielded up its heavy load.

Poor wanderer: poor tired traveller on life's painful road: beaten by the winds of sorrow which blew around your advancing footsteps, yet ordered by eternal justice: your race was run, and you went to meet on the other bank him for whom you had so carefully and anxiously worked through life, the opportunity of your penitence, and the cheerer of your sorrow.

CHAPTER XXXVIII.

THE STRANGER. THE VILLAGE.

THE summer of '55 was spent by many in sorrow. Since the last August, Alma, Balaklava, and Inkermann, the trenches, and the rifle-pits had made many household seats empty: gardens had lost their loveliness since those had died who planted with us their flowers; and village churchyards had an echo of deeper sadness, since those whose kindred dust lay there, slumbered in the soil of a foreign land. Church bells had a sadder tone, and the old walk by twilight through the copse and over the wooden bridge which spanned the reedy brook, where the musing forms of cows stood out in slumbrous calmness against the evening sky, no longer made the joyous response to our breasts which it used to do.

Among all the altered scenes few were more altered than Brandon. It seemed scarcely credible that so short a time could have made so great a change, could have so imperceptibly removed so many chief actors in its once busy scenes. Leonard and Cicely were gone from the Hall, and Jessy's voice was silent in the Parsonage: Mrs. Larken and her son were no longer the objects of curiosity to the poor and interest to the rich: John Dennis walked to work just as ever, but his step was heavier and more measured, and his voice barely heard; and little Jane went to and fro as if she had only one work before her-her errand-not that second one of finding delight and cheerful joy in every sunbeam and hedge-flower: Mr. Randall's housekeeper had shown the old place to twenty sets of visitors, and told its legends twenty times, and had at last settled down in the conviction that Mr. Randall was working in the mines of Siberia, and that she doubted whether the emperor of Russia would allow his will to be proved at Doctor's Commons, in which a legacy had been left to her.

Letters had come from Cicely as the summer wore on; she was at work in the hospitals; her letters were plain, to the point, simple and kind about everywhatever little tinge of romance ever gave its one; tone to Cicely's mind, or to the going to Scutari, was quite gone now she was there. It is wonderful how soon the most intense scenes of romance lose their glow when we reach them; distance and imagination lend so much to them.

"The difficulties, dear papa, are greater than I ex

pected to find: I am quite convinced that nothing but the firmness of a character like Miss Nightingale's could have done this work; it needs so much decision to keep the nurses in order, and to manage the difficult cases which arise from the extreme mental and bodily suffering which takes place, that very few people in the world, to say nothing of women, could have done the work. I am going to Balaklava under the hope of finding some news about poor Leonard's death, and will write to you full particulars of all I discover. I feel to have seen and learnt a great deal more of life than when I left you. I shall be glad to be back at Brandon, and about my old walks and occupations, to be riding with you, dear papa, and going through my parish work: I am very glad I came out here; I am sure it was the line of my duty, and if I find any trace of dear Leonard's death it will be doubly a cause of satisfaction," &c.

"It is very odd," said the governess, "that Miss Loraine should write about coming home and engaging in home pursuits; I should have thought they would have been very insipid and dull after such a life, and with a disposition so romantic and fine; such a splendid opening, too, for energy and self-devotion !"

"I never saw any romance in my daughter," said Mr. Loraine, "and never expected she would find any romance at Scutari. That Miss Loraine liked riding very much I am quite aware, and that she should look forward to her return when she will be able to resume it is very natural: she has simply gone out to the scene of war under a sense of duty, and when Cicely

conceives she has fulfilled her duty she will return; this I never doubted. Alice, my love, ask your brother if the horses are ready; I must ride over to Burgoyne's to-day:" and Mr. Loraine walked to the window and looked out.

"Well, my dear," said Mrs. Loraine, "I must confess it seems an unnatural thing that Cicely should have gone out at all under the circumstances, but now she has gone, it would be still more so for her to come back and go out riding directly. It is the most unnatural age altogether that, I should think, the world ever saw; dear old Mrs. Mulso, I begin to feel, is after all most right, though she may be a little too querulous sometimes. Grace, my love, will you walk with me to Mrs. Cripps?"

"Yes, dear mamma, I will go and get ready."

"Papa, Maxwell has gone down to the Rectory, and he forgot to tell Pocock about the horses being ready."

"Gone to the Rectory! why the boy's always there: forgotten the horses! why what is ailing him? he never used to forget horses, he used to live in the stables; I wish he did now. Cicely is the only one, I think, who has her wits about her."

"Well I cannot wish Maxwell back at the stables, anyhow," said Mrs. Loraine.

"I do, sincerely," said Mr. Loraine. "But, however, boys will be boys."

Such was the state of politics at the Hall.

THE PARSONAGE.

But at the Parsonage there was a still more graphic and touching condition of things-graphic, not because it was striking to the eye, for it was not; what took place there was just the same as it ever was, or with the slightest difference, pale blue a little more like grey, or pensive evening a ray nearer twilight. But there was the beauty of it. And it was touching because it found its way to the heart so easily and naturally, there was no effort made to find its way there; and nothing is so touching as unconscious influence, when those who influence us have no intention of doing so, and yet call out our sympathy and affections.

There they sat together—the same old couple-Mr. Seymour and Jessy, in the study or in Jessy's room as the case might be. He was always cheerful and she was always sad, and that was after all very much what it used to be, only that now his cheerfulness was a little more forced, and her sadness a little more real; for Jessy used as some thought to play at sadness, or rather to like the idea of it and be coy with it: and now the shade she had followed had become a form or substance which followed her whether she would or no, a part of self, mingled in her being and nature, and steeping in the sadder tones of colour each object and circumstance of the passing day.

There was often a third who joined this company, Mrs. Thorburn, whose delight it was to come down when Mrs. Mulso could let her, and share in the simple reality of the actors of the Parsonage.

And Mrs. Thorburn was a comfort to those at the