a novice, he a practised courtier in the guise of a mountaineer. To make a clean breast of it, I even suspect that his self-gratulatory whisper is still ringing in my ear, for I find that Mademoiselle and I are rivals in our devotion to Michel.

And Ann Harris, of Honeybourne, widow, portress of the ancient village-church, surrounded by villagers' graves, approached by four foot-paths over four stiles, perfect model of all the churches in all the novels of English literature,—was it partiality for me, ancient matron, or an eye to a silver sixpence, which made you, and makes you still, the heroine of my day of romance? At any rate, I shall never cease to invoke a blessing on that immaculate railway-company which decoyed me from London into the heart of England, and, with a coolness unexampled in the new districts of Iowa, dropped me at the sweetest nook under the sun, there to wait three hours for the train which should have taken me at once to Stratford,—three golden hours, in which I might bask like a bee in a Honeybourne beyond my hopes.

Not that my Honeybourne was precisely the spot where the railway-train left me standing deserted and alone,—alone save for a Stratford furniture-dealer, who, unceremoniously set down in the midst of his new stock of tables and chairs, and with nothing else in sight but a platform, a shed, and me, looked at the last-mentioned object for sympathy, while he cursed the departing train and swore the usual oath of vengeance, namely, that he would never travel that road again.

He got red with passion and cursed the road; I stared round me and kept cool. Was I more philosophical than he? No, but there was this difference: he was bent on business, I on pleasure; he was in a hurry, I could afford to wait.

Three hours,—and only a platform, a shed, and an infuriated furniture-dealer to keep me company! This was the Honeybourne station, but not Honeybourne. I found a railway-official hard by, had my baggage stowed in the shed, crossed the platform, looked at my watch to make sure of the time, then struck out into the open country. Through shady lanes, over stiles, across the fields, on I went, in the direction pointed out to me by two laborers whom I met at starting. The sweet white may smiled at me from the hedges; the great sober eyes of the cattle at pasture reflected my sense of contentment; the nonchalant English sheep showed no signs of disturbance at my approach (unlike the American species, which invariably take to their heels); the children set to watch them lifted their heads from the long grass and looked lazily after me, never doubting my right to tread the well-worn foot-path with which every green field beguiled me on. I came out in the vegetable-garden of a rustic cottage, one of some dozen thatched-roofed dwellings, which, with the church and simple parsonage, constituted sweet Honeybourne. "Oh that it were the bourne from which no traveller returns!" was the thought of my heart, as, with a dreamy sense of longings fulfilled, I wandered through the miniature village, across it, around it, beyond it, and back to it again, as a bee saturated with sweets floats round the hive.

And now to my queen-bee, Ann Harris, aforesaid!

"All the way from Lunnon! Alone, and such a distance! Bless my heart!" cried the primitive Ann, with hands and eyes uplifted. "Come in and rest you, and have something to eat! I have bread and butter, sweet and good, and will boil the kettle and make you a cup of tea, if you say so."

I had already made the circuit of the church, strolled among the ancient gravestones, crossed the moss-covered bridge, threaded the paths beneath the hawthorn, had a vision of boundless beauty, drunk in the silence, and dreamed out my dream of solitude, independence, and the joy of being no one but myself knew where. Could I do better than accept this invitation to enter the humble cottage, with the prospect of an admittance also to an old woman's heart? Did I win the latter? or did I only fancy it? Did the motherly creature believe me lost? or was her astonishment only feigned? Was she really, despite her poverty, ready to share her last crust with a stranger? or was the benignant glance which gave me in my loneliness the sense of adoption merely an eye to self-interest?

Dear old soul! One of us, at least, was simple-hearted and true,—either she in her innocent professions, or I in my silly credulity. I have faith that it was she. At all events, I do so cherish the memory of her kindness, that, so far from treasuring the notion of the silver sixpence, I hereby pledge myself, that, if ever the reminiscence I am penning should be worth half as much to me in gold as it is in memory, I will send Ann Harris at least one shining guinea, as a token how willingly I would go shares with her in something.

And the guinea would not come amiss, for Ann was poor; her clay-floored cottage boasted only its exquisite neatness, her furniture was of the humblest, her dress the cheapest. She was too old for hard work; her duties at the little church were light,—the profits, I fear, were lighter; for that visitors to the remote sanctuary were rare her reception of me was sufficient proof. As she guided me through the church, I asked her if it was well attended. She shook her head sadly, and, pointing in the direction of a neighboring village, answered,—

"Most of 'em go to chapel, yonder,—the more's the pity."

She told me that she had no provision for the coming winter, and feared she must go to the Union. (It was not our own, then prosperous and unbroken, Union, to which she dreaded emigrating.) She merely meant the work-house; and as she spoke, her face wore a shadow that still clouds my recollections of Honeybourne. I do not know if her fears were realized,—if her cottage is forsaken,—if she dwells among paupers, or sleeps in the village church-yard; but I cannot think of her as lonely or poor or dead. Her saintly face told of blessed communion; I know that she was rich in faith and hope; and were I assured that her spirit had left the flesh, I should only picture her to myself standing erect at heaven's doorway, welcoming strangers with the same serenity with which she said to me at parting,—"I shall meet you there."

She offered me a farewell gift of flowers from her garden. It was a beautiful cottage-garden, and many of the flowers were brilliant and even rare, giving proof of careful, if not scientific culture. Still I hesitated. My hands were full of sweet may, red campion, and other native field-blossoms, which had introduced themselves to me anonymously. They were the children of the green sod which I had been treading so lightly on my way to the village; and, in the quiet of my ramble, they had seemed to me like whispers from Him who made them, and with whom I had never felt so utterly alone. I could not bear to see them displaced by Ann's garden-belles, tempting as the latter would have been at any other moment. She saw my indifference to her offer. I knew she saw it working in my face. I attempted to apologize for my preference, but she did not understand me; so I blurted out my thought, awkwardly enough, saying,—

"Yours are beautiful; but God made these, you know,—and—and—I like them best."

She looked down upon me gravely, pityingly, smiling, too, with a tenderness which was neither grave nor pitying. I have seen long-visioned people look with just that expression at the eyes of the short-sighted, on the latter's confessing their inability to detect an object at no great distance.

"He made them all," she said; and her words were an ascription of praise.

They come to me often now. They bid me look farther and see more. They tell me how mine and thine have no place in this world of His. False distinctions shrink away from the light of the old woman's clearer faith; I see how the ablest workers are but instruments in higher hands,—how science, culture, inspiration itself, are but gifts to be laid on His altar.

I need