Suddenly she dropped on her knees and with violent sobbing called upon God to help her. He lifted her up, and when she was calmer she told him everything. They went on their way in silence. Now comes the remarkable part of the story. It was he who would have been the tempter and she had saved him. When they reached the Park he found his aunt ill,and in a fortnight she was dead. In less than two years nephew and maid were married. His strict evangelicalism relaxed a little, but they were both faithful to their Friend. Lovers also they were to the last, and they died in the same month after each of them had passed seventy-five years. I fancy I read a long while ago somewhere in \Vesley’s faurnal that an attempt was made to ruin him or one of his friends with a woman, but I think she was a bad woman. If there is anything of the kind in the journal it shows that Lady B.’s plot is not incredible. JULY IT is a cool day in July, and the shaded sunlight slowly steals and disappears over the landscape. There are none of those sudden flashes which come when the clouds are more sharply defined and the blue is more intense. I have wandered from the uplands down to the river. The fields are cleared of the hay, and the bright green of the newly mown grass increases the darkness of the massive foliage of the bordering elms. The cows are feeding in the rich level meadows and now and then come to the river to drink. It is overhung with alders, and two or three stand on separate little islands held together by roots. The winter floods biting into the banks have cut miniature cliffs, and at their base grow the forget-me-not, the willow-herb, and flowering rush. A brightly-plumaged bird, too swift to be recognised—could it be a kingfisher?--darts along the margin of the stream and disappears in its black Shadows. The wind blows gently from the west: it is just strong enough to show the silver sides of the willow leaves. The sound of the weir, although so soft, is able to exclude the clacking of the mill and all intermittent, casual noises. For two hours it has filled my ears and brought a deeper repose than that of mere Silence. It is not uniform, for the voices of innumerable descending threads Of water with varying impulses can be distinguished, but it is a unity. Myriads of bubbles rise from the leaping foam at the bottom, float away for a few yards and then break. It is the very summit of the year, the brief poise of perfection. In two or three weeks the days will be noticeably shorter, the harvest will begin, and we shall be on our way downwards to autumn, to dying leaves and to winter. A SUNDAY MORNING IN TIIE walk from the high moorland to the large pond or lake lies through a narrow grassy lane. About half-way down it turns sharply to the left; in front are the bluishgreen pine woods. Across the corner of them, confronting me, slants a birch with its white bark and delicate foliage, lightgreen and yellow in relief against the sombre background. Fifty yards before I reach the wood its music is perceptible, something like the tones of an organ heard outside a cathedral. In another minute the lane enters: it is dark, but the ruddy stems catch the sun, and in open patches are small beeches responding to it with intense golden-brown. Along the edge of the path. springing from the mossy bank they grow to a greater height. A pine has pushed itselfbetween the branches of one of them as if on purpose to show off the splendour of its sister’s beauty. It is stiller than it was outside; the murmur descends from aloft. There was a frost last night and the leaves will soon fall. A beech leaf detaches itself now and then and flutters peacefully and waywardly to the ground, careless whether it finds its grave in the bracken or on the road where it will be trodden underfoot. The bramble is beginning to turn to blood. It is strange that leaves should show such character. Here is a corner on which there are not two of the same tint, but they spring from the same root, and the circumstances of light and shade under which they have developed are almost exactly similar. It is eleven o’clock, and with the mounting sun the silence has become complete save when it is broken by the heavy, quick flap of the wood-pigeon or the remonstrance of a surprised magpie. Service is just beginning all over England in churches and the chapels belonging to a hundred sects. In the village two miles away the Salvation Army drum is beating, but it cannot penetrate these recesses. Stay! a faint vibration from it comes over the hill, but now it has |