"Ah!" said the clergyman, taking his wife's
hand very tenderly in his; "thereby hangs a
tale. Tell it to our good friends, my dear."
"I can address it, Owen," said his wife,
hesitating, " to nobody but you." "Address it, then,
to me, my darling," said he, "and Mrs. Lirriper
and the Major will be none the worse listeners."
So she went on as follows, with her hand resting
in his all the time. Signed, J. JACKMAN.]

The first time I saw you again, after the
years long and many which had passed over us
since our childhood, I was watching for you on
the peak of the hill, from whence I could see
furthest down the steep and shady lane along
which you were coming up to our hamlet from
the plain below me. All day I had been anxious
that when you arrived, our hills, which you
must have forgotten, should put on their most
gorgeous beauty; but now the sunset was come
which would leave us the bare and grey outlines
of the rocks only, and, from the kindling sky
there fell bars of golden sunshine, with darker
rays underlying them, slanting down the slopes
of the mountain, and touching every rounded
knoll and little dimpling dell with such a glory,
that even the crimson and purple tints of the
budding bilberry wires far away towards the
level table-land where the summits blended,
glowed, and burned under the farewell light.
Just then there came a shout of welcome, like
the shout of harvest home, ringing up through
the quiet air, and, straining my shaded eyes to
catch the first glimpse, I saw you walking in the
midst of a band of our sturdy, sunburnt villagers,
with the same slight and delicate-looking frame,
and pale, grave pleasant face, and shy and timid
manner that were yours when we were boy and
girl together.

Our little hamlet had gathered itself from
time to time, without any special plan or
purpose, upon one of the lower terraces of our
cluster of mountains, separated from the nearest
villages by a wide tract of land, only to be
crossed by steep, stony, deep-rutted lanes,
overhung with wild hedgerows, and almost impassable
in the winter. During the summer, when the
faint tones of the bells of our parish church were
borne up to us on the calm air, a little procession
of us, the girls and children riding on rough
hill-ponies, were wont to wind down the lanes to
the Sunday morning service; but in winter no
one thought of the pilgrimage, unless some of
the young men had sweethearts in the village
whom they hoped to meet at church. Mr.
Vernon, the rector, being an archdeacon, hardly
less than a bishop in dignity and importance,
was deeply distressed at the heathenish darkness
of his mountain district; and he and my father,
who owned the great hill-farm, which gave
employment to the people of our hamlet, at last
built the little red-brick church, with no tower,
and smaller than our barn, which stands upon the
point of the mountain terrace, overlooking the
great plain that stretches away from our feet up
to the very far horizon.

There might have been a difficulty in finding
a curate who would live up at Katlinghope,

with no other social intercourse than could be
obtained by a long march into the peopled plain
below us; but I knew afterwards that the
church, so far as my father's share in it was
concerned, had been built for you. You were just
taking orders, and you had a pleasant remembrance
of the large old rambling half-timber
house where you had spent some months of your
childhood; so when we wrote to you that your
dwelling would be in our own house, your study
being the blue parlour which looked down the
green sheltered dell where the young lambs were
folded, you answered that you would gladly take
the charge, and live with us again on the sweet,
free heathery uplands, where you had breathed
in health and strength in your early boyhood.

You were grave and studious, and withal so
simple-hearted, that the seclusion and the primitive
manners of our hamlet made it a very Eden
to you. You had never forgotten our old haunts,
and we revisited them together, for in the first
moment of our greeting you had fallen into your
habit of dependence upon me, and of demanding
my companionship, as when you were a delicate
boy of six years, and I a strong, healthy, mountain
girl three years older. To me only, could you
utter your thoughts freely, for your natural
shyness closed your lips to strangers; and all
were strangers to you, even those who had
known you for a lifetime, if they did not possess
the touch of sympathy which your spirit
needed before it would open its treasures. Up
on the hill-side, when the steady noontide seemed
as unchangeable as the everlasting rocks about
us, or when the tremulous dusk stole with silent
shadows over the fading headlands, you and I
sat together, while I listened to the unreserved
outpourings of your thoughts and fancies, boyish
sometimes, for you were young still, but in my
heart there was an ever-growing tenderness and
care for you, which could find no flaw, and feel
no weariness. You were apt to be unmindful of
the hours, and it was I who made it my duty to
watch their flight for you, and see to it that the
prayer-bell, the single bell that hung under a
little pent-roof against the church, should be
tolled at the due time; for Mr. Vernon, in
consideration of our heathenish condition, made it
a point that the evening service should be read
three times a week. And as it was needful that
our household should set a pattern to the rest
of the villagers, and it interfered with my father's
evening pipe, and my mother could not be
troubled to change her afternoon cap for her
church bonnet, it always fell to my lot to walk
with you—do you remember?—only a few
hundred yards or so along the brow of the hill,
to the little church.

I was about to say that it was the happiest
time of my life; but all true life is gain; and
the sorrows that befal us are none other than
solemn massive foundation-stones laid low in
unfathomable gloom, that a measureless
content may be built upon them. You remember
the first burial-service you had to read, when
you besought me to stand beside you at the
open grave, because never before had the
mournful words been uttered by your lips. It