she had taken? He found it impossible to question his wife as to any confidence that might have passed between her and Nanna.

There had been no confidences. Nanna had found Silence's position too genuine to be assailable. Her mysterious deportment failing to pique, she began to strain after forced opportunities of speech.

"You haven't asked me where I 've been and what I 've done this long time," said she one day.

found refuge from the haunting sense of mystery and danger in taking the spoon from his boy's hand and feeding him.

His question was met by a dead silence. He looked up in dismay, fearful that he had touched too roughly on a topic likely to be painful. He found that Nanna's eyelids were cast down, that a shade more color had come into her cheek, and that she mused upon his question with parted, hesitating lips. His eyes moved towards Si

"Thou hast na lost the knack of it, I see," said she cheerily, and accepted the service as a matter of course.

But the butter did not "come" under Nanna's hand, neither was an attempt to tend the bees successful; and both occupations were quickly abandoned. "Tell me about thyself," said she, with a coaxing air.

"But thou can see it all," Silence answered quietly.

Not once did Nanna refer to the old days at the Farm, nor ask disturbing questions concerning her dead mother. Her mind took no deep impressions, nor carried poignant memories. Silence,

on her part, was not tempted to speak. In the end Silver felt justified in making his own inquiry; and did so at meal-time, and when he felt himself secure in the presence of his wife.

"I reckon, Nanna," said he quite abruptly, "thy husband mun be dead. I 'm feart thou 's suffered, lass?"

He spoke gently, yet heartily, as the head of the house should speak, and

far-away look.

"Dunnot say nought an thou 'd rayder not speak," put in Silver hastily.

"My

"But I'd rather speak, Silver," said Nanna in her sweetest of tones. husband is not dead. Yes. I 've suffered. You see, he left me."

From Silence came a long sigh. "Aye, aye," thought she. "A lee 's a lee. It draws ithers efter it. Mine has laid quiet all these years; and now 'tis breeding fast."

Silver's face had crimsoned, and his eyes blazed.

"By God! I could wish I hed him here, to deal with him with my fist," he cried.

Nanna shook her head with a sad, quiet smile.

"Whist! Silver, whist!" sighed Silence from the depth of her distress.

The child, finding that the regular movement of the spoon to his mouth had ceased, whimpered.

After that, Silver thought that he read Nanna and her history; the little episode satisfied him and enhanced her. He drew conclusions which had a grain of truth, and yet erred wide from the mark. Nanna, he supposed, had married into a circle beyond their own, and had fallen from it into dire poverty. Some incredible rascal had possessed her and forsaken her.

Nanna, unconsciously, in the mere exercise of her propensities, had prepared for the part thrust upon her. She dressed with a kind of fastidious plainness, but with shades of difference from Silence. She was clever with her needle, and, not hesitating to appropriate the better parts of the wardrobe her careful mother had left behind, secretly in her bedroom snipped and altered and stitched, until she had produced two or three quiet, well-fitting gowns with just a touch of differencea white tucker, a folded muslin kerchief, a knot of ribbon in her bosom— to set her apart from and a little above Silence. Nor had she lessened, save for those sudden burning glances, the attitude of reserve and retirement, which she had assumed towards Silver.

Her game of intrigue lightly played was skilful to perplex and intoxicate the senses of the man.

With his deep imaginative capacity he became more and more conscious of the primal emotion, unspent, unsatisfied, and very strong within. There was a flash of color and light about him, a warmth in his veins, a thrill, as though he had drunk strong wine from a full beaker. The thought of these things followed him in his hours of labor; and in sleep he did not lose them.

The year advanced and prospered. And every day the poem sang on in his brain. The real Nanna had no reference to the poem of his brain; her face was there, but the rest was dreaming fancy.

One midsummer evening, the hay be. ing down in the field, he was uneasy under the confinement of the house, and after supper took his rake and basket to the flower-beds.

At the end of the garden was a nook retired from the house and bright with roses, pansies, and canterbury bells. The roses, white and red, would take no prize at a flower-show to-day, but

they stood for the sweet homeliness of the bloom as old England saw it. Silver had a natural love for the simple beauties of earth, and would willingly spend his leisure time amidst the innocence of flowers.

The evening was warm and full of dreamy peace; the colors of the petals burned in the rays of the setting sun; he loved the secret, quiet place, and the busy loneliness which lulled and cheated his thoughts.

Behind the bed ran a gravel path where was an old wooden seat; beyond the path, a row of sunflowers and hollyhocks was planted; and then came the thick hedge which separated both garden and orchard from the road.

As he raked and loosened the soil the smell of the earth rose up between the fragrance of the flowers. Tranquilly

he worked with spade and rake at this quiet business of the evening. Then his eye caught sight of some faded blooms upon the bush of red roses, and he threw his rake aside and approached to remove them. But when he came near, the face of Nanna, rosily tinted and very exquisite in beauty, lifted itself from behind the red mass of the flowers. About her hair the evening light was folded, and her eyes, with their unfathomable look, were fixed upon him, pouring their influence into his very soul.

And into her eyes he read all the poem of his brain. For him, this was the Garden of Eden where he stood, and there the face of the first woman, primeval, mysterious, irresistible: he who beheld her was no more than Adam, the primitive man. He paused

not a second; a mournful gravity settled on his features; he stepped forward, and gathering her into his arms with a low, stifled murmur of tenderness, sank upon the bench and strained her to his breast. He was conscious, through his heart and brain on fire, that the woman he held yielded

And then broke up this brief heaven into things inconceivable.

She slipped from his arms and-lightly boxed his ears! He could hear the soft rippling malice of her laugh as she ran away.

CHAPTER XXVI.

Silver was left in the garden alone. His head fell and his breast was torn by sighs. His emotion was still strong, but in his brain opened for a moment the eye of the seer. The universe was changed, and what his place within it he did not know. Neither did he know whether a snake had stung him or he had kissed the sweetest lips on earth.

He rose from the bench and left the scene of the bright flowers from which the peace had been stolen, and shame and vexed uncertainty been left behind. Out of habit, he picked up the rake and carried it to the tool-shed, and then returned to the house. But at the kitchen window he paused.

She was not there. Silence sat on a rocking-chair with the baby in her arms; the child had been fractious, and she soothed it with a lullaby, singing very low as she rocked. The boy leaned against her knee and, with engrossed face and busy fingers, examined a little wooden boat with a rag sail.

Silver turned from the window; he felt remote from these things. The box on the ears which Nanna had given him tormented his memory. Following it had leapt to his mind, with instant directness, the picture of a common and ugly scene.

of savagery, of gross uncivilization, would occur at times, accompanied by orgies of drunkenness. In degrees more permanent though less unpleasantly striking, vice and roguish practices indicated the presence of a vitiated under-rabble. Nasshiter did not stand alone; he could find something of his own level in the human nature around.

Silver was aware of these things. On market days, when the business at Kendal was over, on the homeward journey there would be coarse scenes in the lanes. He was familiar with the signs of light behavior. In particular, at the season of the Wakes, he had seen the "fellies" kiss the girls, and the girls box their ears and run away-and linger to be caught again.

Such was the common picture which, after Nanna's act, ill-matched indeed to the desolating disturbance, the heights and depths of his gloomy and poetic passion, most miserably obtruded itself upon his mind. The act had followed on the great disastrous moment of his life when, for love of her, he broke with a fine and creditable past.

He faltered over the thought, reperusing the memory with laborious stumbling effort, as though it were some hard sentence in a language imperfectly understood.

It was a poignant wretchedness, and obsessed his brain.

Next day he rose early to his work and pursued the normal course. All morning he was in the fields, working at the hay harvest with the smell of the dry grass in his nostrils and the sun on his cheek. But there was no wholesome gladness in his heart because the earth had yielded her fruit; he was trembling at the thought of the midday meal, and meeting the woman's eyes. Since his act, a change, vast

She was not at table when he went to the house, and he asked no question of Silence, but tasted a little relief.

When evening came he wondered what he should find: the universe was changed for him, and he looked for some reflection of the change, in things around him. There was none. Silence kept the same harmonious note of quietude; and the children knew nothing but fatherhood, motherhood, home, and peace. Nanna was the same. That perplexed him. His heart had rocked when she entered the kitchen. She took no notice of his presence, did not glance his way. Her dress was scrupulously plain, her very hair demure; as before, in her habit was just the little touch that differentiated her from Silence. She went about helping Silence, doing this more diligently, he fancied, than she was wont; her easy ordinary behavior made him ask himself if he had dreamed.

But suddenly he saw there was a difference-one secret to himself and her. In the white kerchief, nestling near her wonderful white, rounded throat, was a red rose from the bush at the end of the garden; there it glowed and twinkled, and as she came and went, threw out rich warm odors. Once more the atmosphere was in a flame. His eye fell on Silence. He thought he would rise and leave the kitchen. Thus carried, was not the flower an offence to her? His chin dropped to his breast; he could not follow Silence with his glance as he was wont; he sat staring at the ground, undecided what he should do. And Nanna came and went with light, busy steps, shaking the smell from the rose with every movement.

Then a strange thing happened. In a corner of the kitchen near the bureau sat his son at a small table, on a little wooden chair. He had his porringer and spoon before him, and Silence brought him porridge and a little sweet stuff for his childish palate.

"O0-00-00!" said he, rounding his ruddy lips for his cry of joy; and took up the spoon with a shout.

Silence had the baby girl on her arm as she ministered to the boy; she smiled cheerily as he shouted, and left him to his happy work.

Then with a sudden light impulse, Nanna darted forward and knelt by the boy's side, enveloping him with her arms and figure, bending her bright head close to his, and the glow of her cheek, and the rose in her kerchief. She lifted the spoon and began to feed the child.

All this was in the eye of Silver, who sat directly opposite, staring heavily at her. And in a moment, a kind of turmoil ensued. Silence sprang towards him. threw the baby into his arms, then ran to the corner where were Nanna and the boy. Without a word, but with strange resolution, she swept up the porringer and the spoon in one hand, and with the other roughly drew the child away, and bore him, kicking and resisting, into the back kitchen, and closed the door. Never in his life before had he seen such fire and decision in the movements of his wife.

A deep silence ensued in the kitchen. Silver lifted up the baby and buried his face in the folds of the little frock; she cooed responsively and snatched at his hair.

From Nanna's corner came a faint disconcerted giggle.

Emma Brooke.

In all the mass of literature that has been given to the world on Shakespeare and on his works, the poet's connection with Warwickshire has, comparatively speaking, been hardly noticed-that deep-rooted connection, that savor of the soil, which actually molds a man's speech and ways of thought, which is almost as much a part of his being as the tendencies he inherits with the blood that runs in his veins. And, bearing this in mind with regard to Shakespeare, we too may find a cipher-far more simple, yet of far deeper interest and import than any discovered by the upholders of that singular bit of folly known as the Baconian theory. It is a cipher that may be traced in all his plays and poems, telling us that Shakespeare was a Warwickshire man, using Warwickshire words, speaking of Warwickshire ways, often writing of the very men and women he had known from his baby hood on the outskirts of the Forest of Arden.

Thousands of pilgrims, English and American, foreign and colonial, find their way every year to the sleepy little market town among the peaceful Avon meadows, and pour through the kitchen and the house-place of the old half-timbered house in Henley Street, where, in the oak-floored upper room, England's greatest poet was born on the 23rd of April 1564. Thousands visit the old sandstone church among the lime and elm trees beside the silvery Avon, where, on the 26th of April, 1564, the baby was baptized by the name of William, and duly inscribed in the register book with clasps and corners of embossed brass-the church where, on the 26th of April 1616, "William Shakespeare, gentleman," was buried. But how few ever dream of really exploring the country Shakes

peare loved so well and observéd so closely-that quiet, placid, old-world Warwickshire where his youth and his prime were spent. If we would add a fresh delight to our study of Shakespeare's works, we must go out into the villages round about his native place; villages that he knew so well, with ancient, half-timbered houses that his eyes have looked upon. We must notice the names on the wagons that pass us on the shady roads-Hacket and Visor, Perkes and Jakes-whose owners still live in cosy red-brick or gray-stone farms, or sunny manor houses. We must listen to the speech which he spoke; for the very words which sometimes puzzle the student are still in use among the country folk. And when next we read our great master, we shall find we know more of Shakespeare than endless commentaries can teach us.

Without indulging in the vulgar and morbid curiosity which is always demanding "personal details," it is but natural that we should crave to know something of the elusive personality of William Shakespeare to know what manner of man this supreme genius was, how he lived, and what he did. And in spite of the oft-repeated assertion that nothing is known and that nothing can be known of Shakespeare the man, I venture to maintain that we may obtain a very sufficient knowledge of our great poet's life in Warwickshire from three sources. First, there are the established facts that no one can dispute. Secondly, there are the traditions that have been handed down through three centuries. Thirdly, there are the evidences in his writings of his intimate connection with Warwickshire as apart from the rest of England, its customs, its traditions, its people, its speech.