Another step forward, and Lord Mowbray found that a steep stair cut in the rock afforded a dangerous path along its sides; and on following this, about half-way down, they came to a ledge of even ground, on which the Chapel was built. It was in good preservation, and, though small, of beautiful and most curious workmanship of the richest and most elaborate Gothic order. There it stood, like a lovely gem cast on a desert shore. It was a thing of beauty, dropped as it were from Heaven, to lead the soul back from earth and earthly vanities to its divine source.

Not a word was said. Smiling Bill opened the doors, and with reverential awe Lord Mowbray entered. The vault was open which was to receive his kinsman's remains; he paused, and, sitting down on a stone bench near it, listened to the sound of the dashing waves beneath, which were in unison with the scene and with his own feelings.

"One might well choose to be laid at rest here," said Lord Mowbray to Colonel Penning

ton, at length breaking silence; "I never saw so tranquil, and, at the same time, so appropriate a spot for the quiet of a last sleep.”

"What signifies the spot ?" answered Colonel Pennington, in his highest tone, to master the womanish feelings which he felt rising to his eyes—" what signifies the spot? all places are alike good to the good. It is where one is when alive, and above all what one does, that is of consequence. Many of your ancestors lie here, and some of them deserve to be remembered by you, looked up to by you; but whether their bones whiten on the beach below, or crumble in these vaults, it is all one."

"It is so,” replied Lord Mowbray, with a sigh; "and yet there are feelings—"

"Which had better be all put in requisition for active service," interrupted Colonel Pennington, "than be allowed to evaporate in useless sentiment. Come, my good Lord, there are many things to be thought of, believe me, which it imports you to consider. Let us begone:" and Lord Mowbray suffered himself to be conducted back to the Castle.

3

The mournful procession arrived that night, and the next day the clergyman of the parish performed the funeral service, at which Lord Mowbray, Colonel Pennington, the agent of the estate, the steward, and a few domestics, alone attended. All the persons he had seen the day before had vanished, and Lord Mowbray accounted for it, in his own mind, by the sentiment he had heard the old woman express at Abbotsbury. He had generally professed, and perhaps still continued to do so, that he valued not the opinion of the world, and cared not what was said of him; yet the remembrance of that old woman's words often re

curred to him. 'Tis true that

May wound, or heal, a heart that's broken."

And in after life Lord Mowbray could trace the beneficial train of reflection (he even did so now) which a casual hearing of rebuke to his ancestor's memory had given rise to.

In the arrangement of his affairs, which occupied him incessantly during his stay at Mowbray Castle, a wish to conciliate the good opinion of all dependent upon him seemed the prevailing feeling in the orders which he issued ; and many an abuse and encroachment on the part of his tenantry was overlooked, or but slightly noticed, in the accomplishment of this object; while all grievances were instantly redressed, complaints listened to with patience, even when unreasonable in themselves, and promises of reward held out to laudable and proper exertions of industry. The Castle was to be repaired, the roads improved, and the Park and its vicinity brought into better order, so that abundance of employment was marked out to the neighbouring poor. Lord Mowbray felt happy in the idea that he was thus the cause of happiness in others. He might have done what he was then doing, perhaps, without any other impulse than that of self-interest,for what he did was only what another in his situation would have found it advantageous to do; but Lord Mowbray felt an inward con

sciousness that the words which had reached him at hazard, when walking through the lonely village of Abbotsbury, were the true source of his actions on the present occasion; and the being who had so unconsciously awakened him to a sense of duty, he felt, ought not to go unrewarded.

Under this impression, he one morning left the Castle to walk to Abbotsbury and visit the cottage of the old woman, from whose lips he considered he had received so salutary a lesson. It was a bright, blowing, healthful May morning the absence of trees and shrubs prevented that recognition of approaching summer, which in woodland scenes bursts so deliciously on the eye in every swelling bud and every fragrant blossom; yet Nature left not Spring, her loved first-born, unhonoured, even in this treeless, flowerless, barren region. The perfumed spirit of the season met the senses; and the fresh, peculiar odours of the ocean, with its briny plants, came delicately borne upon the gusty breeze. The white, flickering clouds, their edges lightly tinged with a roseate hue,