'Let me stow it away down herethere's plenty of room.'

'Not unless you wish it ground to impalpable powder,' interrupted Esther, glancing as she spoke at the feet of a huge Devonshire farmer who occupied the third place in the seat. I am not in the least inconvenienced. I only got up to look away across the country to the left. It is a favourite view of mine. You can see Lundy on a clear bright day, but the sun is too low and hazy now.'

'You know this part of the country, then?'

I have lived here all my life, sir, until the last six months.'

'At Lynton?'

No, among the Countisbury Hills, about halfway between the valley and Exmoor.'

'Rather a lonely place to live in, is it not?'

'Well, it is my home; and North Devonshire is often thought the most beautiful part of England,' added the girl a little proudly.

'Ah! so I hear,' the stranger answered. 'I have never myself been in this part of the world before.'

'And you are too early to see it in its greatest beauty now. August is the time when the valleys are white with the harvest, and the dwarf furze makes the combes and hillsides golden, and the broad moorlands seem all afire with one grand sweep of ruby purple. If you look straight away over that low hill upon our right you can catch an outlying ridge of Exmoor already. Do you see?'

'No, not exactly,'' replied the young man, whose eyes happened to be fixed at that moment upon Esther's own profile. 'I am rather near-sighted.'

'You will have a better view a mile or two further on. Don't you like travelling outside a coach?'

'Yes, under some circumstances. I have not been on one since I was a schoolboy.'

Which must be a great many years ago,' thought Esther, glancing shyly at his fresh face. I hope you, too, are not going to turn out wearied of everything "blazé," as the Dashwoods call it.'

'You are accustomed to coaches, no doubt,' went on the stranger, who seemed determined not to let the conversation stand still. 'I suppose they are still an acknowledged institution in these primitive regions?'

Our country is too grand for railways, sir. When you sec-I mean,' colouring a little, if you ever see the hills about our house you will say that we can safely defy the best engineers in the world. What a nice cold breeze is coming up from the north! doesn't it seem like another world after that stifling heated air of London? John Hartman,' leaning over, and speaking to the coachman, 'what sort of weather has it been at home this spring?'

'Main fine, Miss Esther,' answered John Hartman, in a great cheery voice, and turning round a red face smooth as a cider-apple; 'dry and open for the sowing, and wet from first o' March up to Easter. The hay 's down to farmer Litson's already, Miss Esther.'

'And more fule he!' remarked the gentleman with the feet, sententiously.

'Why, Mr. Vellicot?' asked Esther, to whom all the red jolly faces on the coach were evidently familiar ones. Why shouldn't Litson cut his hay when he likes?'

'I never said he weren't to cut it, Miss Fleming; I said he were a fule for cutting it.' And Mr. Vellicot pointed, with a significant colossal finger, towards a distant line of intensely blue uplands on the right.

'Ah, there is Exmoor,' said Esther to the stranger; and our seeing it so plainly now is a sign that we shall have rain by to-morrow. Such rain we have here! I don't think drops of the same size fall in any other place in the world. You get wet through in about a minute and a half'

What a charming climate it must be! Bitterly cold, as far as I understand our friend in front, until March; rain for the remainder of the spring; and daily showers that wet you through in a minute and a half in the summer.'

'Oh, but sportsmen don't care for getting wet,' said Esther, laughing.

'And you know the fish always rise best after rain. Is there good sport this season, Mr. Vellicot?"

'Depends on what folk reckon sport,' replied the farmer, laconically.

'Well, are there many fish, I mean?'

'Yes, there be fish, Miss Fleming.' 'And don't they rise?'

They do to them they knows,' said Mr. Vellicot, looking with stolid sarcasm at his young neighbour's bran new and elaborately-scientific London rod. Though there's scores of strangers already a-lashing and afuling about the fish, Master David killed four brace last Monday.'

'He did better than that, end of May, 'fore the visitors come,' begun the coachman; then a sudden recollection of the indelicacy of the remark, or of the possible half-crown he was risking, seemed to overcome him, and he corrected himself; 'before the weather turned off so dry. Mrs. Engleheart be looking spracker than ever this spring, Miss Esther, and Miss Joan the same.'

'And Mr. David?'

'Oh, Master David, he keeps much as usual-much as usual, Miss Esther, thank ye.'

Will he be at the mill to meet me, do you think, John?'

'Not much fear of that,' remarked the farmer. 'He were up to our house last night in the dark, Mr. David were, after a pair of young pigeons for you, Miss Fleming.' And Mr. Vellicot followed up this information with a far-off smothered sound which, when it first left its destination, might possibly have been intended by its originator for a laugh.

Miss Fleming received the intelligence without the faintest symptom of embarrassment; but the young stranger nevertheless conceived an instant dislike towards this unknown David. The male cousins of very pretty girls are always objectionable. David, with his pastoral gallantries of young pigeons and wayside trysts at mills, was, no doubt, some redcheeked rustic fool, to whom this young woman had been engaged since she was seven years old. She was not so very handsome, after all, when you got accustomed to her

face; and her hands were awfully sunburnt, although tolerably well shaped.

Does the coach pass close to your house?' he asked her in a very fine-gentleman and patronizing manner. I suppose we are getting near Lynton now.'

We are still four miles away from Lynton,' answered Esther, utterly indifferent to any change in his manner: and nearly as far from my home, which lies among the Countisbury hills, straight away before us. But I shall get down when we reach the valley that you see yonder;' and she pointed down a steep leafy chasm close beside the road, through which the distant roar of unseen waters could be heard. 'The mill down below is the nearest point to my home, and the rest of the way I shall walk.'

'With cousin David,' thought the stranger promptly. Philomel and Baucis, Chloe and Strephon, among the woods.' And, although he had just decided that Esther possessed very few personal attractions, he remained uncommonly silent during the next quarter of an hour. This travelling outside a coach, after all, was frightfully boring work; particularly when the close neighbourhood of a young and loquacious woman made it imperative on one's own sense of gallantry not to smoke.

'There he is!' cried Esther, in immense excitement, as a sudden turn of the road brought them to the bottom of the hill; and the coachman pulled up close beside a little mouldering foot-plank across the river. There is David, standing on the bridge! Good-bye, Mr. Vellicot; love to Maggie, and tell her to come and see me soon. Good evening, sir,' and she turned with a shy but not ungraceful salutation to the stranger. I hope you will have good sport, and like our country when you come to know it better.".

But the young man's eyes were intently fixed on a most remarkablelooking figure which, too diffident as it seemed to approach nearer, was standing in an attitude ludicrously expressive at once of unbounded delight and utter helplessness upon the little bridge. Cousin David,

then, was no fair-faced handsome lad of twenty; but a man of grotesque exterior, with a loose slovenly gait, with long shambling limbs, with a vacuous childish face: a man of almost idiotic manner, and of middle age. How sweet Miss Fleming's voice broke upon him with its hearty Good evening,' just as he attained to this culminating point of his investigation! What a beautiful frank face it was that turned to him for a moment before she left his side!

'Good evening. I-I perhaps may have the pleasure of inecting you some day while I am in this neighbourhood?' And he actually caught himself-he, a man of the world of two-and-twenty-feeling embarrassed under the girl's steady

eyes.

'It is very likely, I think. I often go out fishing with my cousin.' And then Esther, after making this straightforward reply, blushed rather unnecessarily as the stranger offered his hand to assist her in her descent.

Simple though she was, some fine intuition had, I suppose, instructed her as to the meaning of the young man's altered manner. At all events, her eyes drooped beneath his, and during the half minute that he firmly held her hand the colour on her face deepened into quite a guilty crimson. Then he saw how wonderfully handsome that delicate dark face really was beauty is so much heightened by its consciousness of our own regard: and, I am forced to confess, his hand lingered a moment longer than was strictly necessary on Miss Fleming's while he aided her descent into the extended arms of the great rosy country girl who stood ready to receive her.

Is this yours tu, Miss Fleming?' inquired the coachman, taking out a small black valise from the inside of the coach, where he was struggling after Esther's possessions among the objecta membra of the four outraged inside passengers: 'I can't make more than seven parcels if it isn't.'

'No; that is mine,' cried the young stranger; but, I imagine, without deceitful emphasis; for Miss Fleming's eyes were at that moment

engaged in reading the name upon the label; perhaps this is the missing parcel.' And he handed down Esther's travelling plaid, which in her hurry of saying good-bye she had left beside him on the seat.

She thanked him with a sinile in which, naturally, there was a whole world more of acquaintanceship now that she had learnt his name, and in another minute John Hartinan was on the box, and the' coach had started towards Lynton.

CHAPTER III.

A MUSCULAR HEROINE.

THE sinking sun was shining, warm and golden, upon the farm at Countisbury when Esther and her cousin first caught sight of it from the valley.

It was an irregular low-built stone house, entirely hemmed in by desolate hills save on the west, where the landscape opened by a wild and precipitous ravine into the wooded valley of the Lynn: its only approach a rugged moorland track, never traversed save by the carts of peat-cutters or herds of cattle on their way down from the moors: its only neighbours the weird and giant forms of the overhanging barren cliffs. The first question that an indweller of towns would involuntarily ask himself on seeing it was, how any human being could build a habitation in such a spot? the second, how any other human being could choose the habitation, when built, to live in? And yet, as Esther caught the first glimpse of its low gray walls this summer evening it came upon her strongly that she had seen nothing half so charming as her own home during the six months she had been away from it. The rosy white of the blossoming thorn before the door; the lichened pointed roof glowing orange in the sunset; the masses of delicate gray stone upon the neighbouring hillside; the fading purple of the moorlands far above-all smote her with so much of the pathetic clearness of familiar faces, for a time grown unfamiliar, that, somewhat to her companion's embarrassment, she leaned

heavily on his arm just when they reached the wicket of the garden; and without volunteering any explanation whatever of her reasons for doing so, began to cry.

'Don't, if you please, Esther,' whispered David Engleheart, softly. 'There is Joan coming out of the house to meet us. She is quite sure to see you have been crying, and you know her objection to tears.'

'I can't help it, David, dear,' said Esther; it is only out of joy to be back again with you. Joan herself couldn't mind that.'

However, she turned aside before entering the garden gate; and under pretence of addressing Patty, who, weighed down by the portmanteau and all other parcels, was walking cheerily beside them, managed to wipe away every trace of obnoxious and foolish emotion before Joan Engleheart came up.

'Here you are,' cried a voice, not so much loud as persistently strong and unmodulated in its tones. Half an hour behind your time, at least. Patty, girl, don't carry the portmanteau by the handles; it drags 'em to pieces. Esther, how do you do? you look pale.'

And Miss Joan bestowed what she doubtless would herself have termed a kiss upon her young relation's forehead. It felt more like the push from a stick or other hard material, than the contact of frail flesh-and-blood lips; however, since Esther had been accustomed to it at intervals from her infancy, she took it in its mystical or figurative meaning.

'How is Aunt Engleheart, Joan? I saw Mr. Vellicot on the coach, and he and John Hartman told me she was looking better than ever this summer. What do you think?

'My mother is perfectly well,' replied Miss Joan. It was a way of hers always to answer questions by making an independent statement of general facts. 'Yes' or 'no' might be very well for persons who allowed themselves to be led by others in conversation: Miss Joan was not going to be led by others in anything. My mother is well, and able to exert herself as much as ever. What other affair of

ours did Mr. Vellicot take the trouble to express his opinion about?'

Nothing at all, Joan, except

and the girl turned round with a smile to David; 'except your kindness in getting me the pigeons, cousin. I have so often wished for like

some nice white pigeons Maggie's.'

David blushed in a manner ludicrously conscious for a man of his age and appearance: Miss Joan gave a single and by no means pleasantsounding laugh. 'Pigeons!' she repeated, with an emphatic irony that seemed to redouble David's confusion. 'Pigeons! I think I see them, picking the mortar out of the chimneys, and eating my early peas! However, I needn't alarm myself None but a fool, or David Engleheart, would think of full-fledged pigeons stopping in a new cot, a mile away from where they were bred. There's only one way to keep them.'

'A little salt,' suggested David, feebly. I have heard if a little salt is sprinkled under their new cot, it will make them-'

'Rubbish!' remarked Joan; 'rubbish! Put 'em in a pie and eat 'em ; that's the only thing to prevent them flying away. Go in by the window, Esther. At David's wish, and in spite of my mother's rheumatism, we have had the tea set in the house-place to-night.'

The house-place was a large stoneflagged room in the centre of the building. In winter it was horribly cold, and made all the rest of the house cold from its northerly aspect and ill-fitting doors; but for three months of the year it got an hour or two of warmth and light at sunset, and from the time when Esther was a little child it had always been an especial jubilee for her when Miss Joan would allow the supper to be placed there on a summer evening. The small comfortable sitting-room to the south, which the elder members of the family had the good sense to prefer, possessed no charms for her like the grotesque corners and closets, the huge old-fashioned fire-place, the low rafted ceiling, the many-paned lozenged windows of the house-place: and she felt duly

sensible of poor David's. kindness and crafty generalship in having tea ready for her there on this first evening of her return. Miss Joan, herself, had no taste whatever for the picturesque; and it took a good deal of argument to bring her into changing any of the routine arrangements of the household. And no one knew better than Esther what it was to argue with Miss Engleheart.

At the present moment, however, with the rich rays of the level sun streaming through the open window-transmuting its odorous frame of roses into gold, and lighting up the old oak-panneled walls into ruddiest orange-brown-even Miss Joan herself could not accuse the house-place of looking chill or gloomy. To Esther, following upon the horrible gentility of her Kensington school-room, the hearty, homely look of the old house was like going back to the familiar enchantment of a fairy story, after the chilling, although improving, atmosphere of Mangnall's Questions. She could scarcely believe that she had been enjoying the first advantages of Kensington Gravel-pits for six long months. Miss Bates, and all belonging to her, seemed a bad dream. The old house-place in the setting sun, David's kind face, Miss Joan herself, were the pleasant home realities to which she was awakening.

A reality of a very forcible nature Joan Engleheart undoubtedly was. If muscular heroines happen to come into fashion during the present generation, her form would, I am sure, serve as a perfect model for any novelist bent upon pleasing the popular taste to draw from. Strong, sharp, and spare, there was not an ounce of superfluous flesh on her body. Muscles, bones, a tough outside covering of dark skin, indomitable eyes, and a general stoniness of feature, were her leading and characteristic charms. She looked like a woman, who having found life unpleasant, had every intention of making other people share her own opinion: and such was, in truth, the key-note of her character. Human creatures, as a general rule, are not

hard and angular merely that they may make amusing studies for other human creatures to speak or write about, but because untoward accidents have, at one time or another, beaten and crushed them into their angularity. Doubtless, when she was a baby, Miss Joan had the roundness of soul and body which it is normal for the young of our species to possess during the first two years of existence; doubtless, as a child, she had enjoyed mischief and sweet food like other children: as a young girl-no, a young girl she never was! Before she was sixteen, Joan Engleheart knew that her lot had fallen upon hard and barren places; that she was plain, ungraceful, reputed sullen, and, worse than all-poor. From that time until the present-how many gray, cold, bitter years that period embraced, she, herself, only knew! Joan Engleheart, soul and body, had been progressing in the process of ossification. When Esther was little, she used to beg to be whipt with a rod instead of Miss Joan's fingers; they stung so.' And this peculiar stinging property belonged quite as much to her heart and tongue as to her fingers. 'Life is too short to attend to such fiddlefaddles,' she used to say, when any one writhed, visibly, under her bitter home-truths. 'Delicate discrimination, fine sensibilities! does any one get on better in the world for possessing such a mighty thin skin, I should like to know? Certainly not. Then, why should I lose my time in trying to avoid pricking it? No one ever tried to avoid hurting me, and, I am thankful to say, no one could hurt me if they wished. Life is a battle: let every one make use of their own arms in fighting it. Mine are not flowers of speech and flattery.'

Certainly they were not. If the opinion be true, that to be utterly disagreeable is to be a fine character -Joan Engleheart's was a noble

one.

She was wonderfully disagreeable. She did everything against which human nature, ordinarily, revolts. She rose at unearthly hours in the depth of winter. She could sit without winking through