difficulty in answering: 'Is Constance much older than I am, papa?' He gave a sort of furtive smile, as if he had no right to smile in the circumstances. 'I don't wonder at your question. She has seen a great deal more of the world. But if there is a minute or two between you, I don't know which has it. There is no elder or younger in the case. You are twins, though no one would think so.' This gave Frances a further shock, though why, it would be impossible to say. The blood rushed to her face. She must think me-a very poor little thing,' she said in a hurried tone. I never knew I have no friend except Tasieto show me what girls might be.' The thought mortified her in an extraordinary way; it brought a sudden gush of soft tears, tears quite different from those which had welled to her eyes when he told her of her mother. Constance, who was so different, would despise her-Constance, who knew exactly all about it, and that Frances was as old, perhaps a few minutes older than she. It is always difficult to divine what form pride will take. This was the manner in which it affected Frances. The same age; and yet the one an accomplished woman, judging for herself; and the other not much more than a child. 'You do yourself injustice,' said Mr Waring, somewhat rehabilitated by the mortification of Frances. 'Nobody could think you a poor little thing. You have not the same knowledge of the world. Constance has been very differently brought up. I think my training a great deal better than what she has had,' he added quickly, with a mingled desire to cheer and restore selfconfidence to Frances, and to re-assert himself after his humiliation. He felt what he said, and yet, as was natural, he said a little more than he felt. 'I must tell you,' he said in this new impulse, 'that your mother is—a much more important person than I am. She is a great deal richer. The marriage was supposed to be much to my advantage.' bably she would have thought it nice of him' to exonerate his wife from all moral shortcoming. The holy ignorance of the other brought a sensation of shame to Waring, and at the same time a sensation of pride. Nothing could more clearly have proved the superiority of his training. She would have felt no consternation, only relief at this assurance, if she had been all her life in her mother's hands. 'It is a great deal to say, however, though you are too inexperienced to know. The whole thing was incompatibility-incompatibility of temper, and of ideas, and of tastes, and of fortune even. I could not, you may suppose, accept advantages purchased with my predecessor's money, or take the good of his rank through my wife; and she would not come down in the world to my means and to my name. It was an utter mistake altogether. We should have understood each other beforehand. It was impossible that we could get on. But that was all. There was probably more talk about it than if there had been really more to talk about.' Frances rose up with a little start. 'I think, perhaps,' she said, 'I don't want you to tell me any more.' Well-perhaps you are right.' But he was startled by her quick movement. I did not mean to say anything that could shock you. If you were to hear anything at all, the truth is what you must hear. But you must not blame me overmuch, Frances. Your very impatience of what I have been saying will explain to you why I thought that to say nothing-as long as I could help it-was the best.' Her hand trembled a little as she lighted her candle; but she made no comment. Good-night, papa. To-morrow it will all seem different. Everything is strange to-night.' He put his hands upon her shoulders and looked down into the little serious face, the face that had never been so serious before. 'Don't think any worse of me, Frances, than you can help.' Her eyes opened wider with astonishment. Think of you, worse- But, papa, I am not thinking of you at all,' she said simply; 'I am thinking of it.' There was a smile on his face, which Frances, looking up suddenly, warned by a certain change of tone, did not like to see. She kept her eyes upon him instinctively, she could not tell why, with a look which had a certain influence upon him, though he did not well understand it either. Waring had gone through a number of depressIt meant that the unknown woman of whom he ing and humbling experiences during the course spoke was the girl's mother-her mother-one of of the evening; but this was the unkindest of whom no unbefitting word was to be said. It all-and it was so natural. Frances was no critic. checked him in a quite curious unexpected She was not thinking of his conduct, which was way. When he had spoken of her, which he had the first thing in his mind, but of Ir, the reveladone very rarely since they parted, it had been tion which had been made to her. He might with a sense that he was free to characterise her have perceived that, or divined it, if he had not as he thought she deserved. But here he was been occupied by this idea, which did not occupy stopped short. That very evening he had said her at all-the thought of how he personally had things to Constance of her mother which in a come through the business. He gave a little moment he felt that he dared not say to Frances. faltering laugh at himself as he stooped and The sensation was a very strange one. He made kissed her. That's all right,' he said. 'Gooda distinct pause, and then he said hurriedly: "You night; but don't let Ir interfere with your sleep. must not for a moment suppose that there was To-morrow everything will look different, as you anything wrong; there is no story that you need say.' be afraid of hearing-nothing, neither on her side or mine-nothing to be ashamed of.' All at once Frances grew very pale; her eyes opened wide; she gazed at him with speechless horror. The idea was altogether new to her artless mind. It flashed through his that Constance would not have been at all surprised; that pro Frances turned away with her light in her hand; but before she had reached the door, returned again. I think I ought to tell you, papa, that I am sure the Durants know. They said a number of strange things to me yesterday, which I think I understand now. don't mind, I would rather let them suppose If you that I knew all the time; otherwise, it looks as if you thought you could not trust me.' "I could trust you'-he said with a little fervour, my dear child, my dear little girl, I would trust you with my life.' Was there a faint smile in the little girl's limpid simple eyes? He thought so, and it disconcerted him strangely. She made no response to that protestation, but with a little nod of her head, went away. Waring sat down at the table again and began to think it all over from the beginning. He was sore and aching, like a man who has fallen from a height. He had fallen from the pedestal on which, to Frances, he had stood all these years. She might not be aware of it even, but he was. And he had fallen from those Elysian fields of peace in which he had been dwelling for so long. They had not, perhaps, seemed very Elysian while he was secure of their possession. They had been monotonous in their stillness, and wearied his soul. But now that he looked back upon them, a new cycle having begun, they seemed to him like the very house of peace. He had not done anything to forfeit this tranquillity, and yet it was over, and he stood once more on the edge of an agitated and disturbed life. He was a man who could bear monotony, who liked his own way, yet liked that bondage of habit which is as hard as iron to some souls. He liked to do the same things at the same time day after day, and to be undisturbed in doing them. But now all his quiet was over. Constance would have a thousand requirements such as Frances had never dreamed of; and her brother no doubt would soon turn up, that step-brother whom Waring had never been able to tolerate even when he was a child. She might even come, Herself-who could tell? When this thought crossed his mind, he got up hastily and left the salone, leaving the lamp burning, as Domenico found it next morn, to his consternation-a symbol of Chaos come again -burning in the daylight. Mr Waring almost fled to his room and locked his door in the horror of that suggestion. And this was not only because the prospect of such a visit disturbed him beyond measure, but because he had not yet made a clean breast of it. Frances did not yet know all. Frances for her part went to the blue room, and opened the persianis, and sat looking out upon the moonlight for some time before she went to bed. The room was bare; she missed her pictures, which Constance had taken no notice of the Madonna that had been above her head for so many years, and which had vaguely appeared to her as a symbol of the mother who had never existed in her life. Now there seemed less need for the Madonna. The bare walls had pictures all over them-pictures of a new life. In imagination, no one is shy or nervous or strange. She let the new figures move about her freely, and delighted herself with familiar pictures of them and the changes that must accompany them. She was not like her father, afraid of changes. She thought of the new people, the new combinations, the quickened life, and the thought made her smile. They would come, and she would make the house gay and bright to receive them. Perhaps some time, surrounded by this new family, that belonged to her, she might even be taken 'home.' The thought was delightful, notwithstanding the thrill of excitement in it. But still there was something which Frances did not know. OUTSIDE LONDON. BY RICHARD JEFFERIES, AUTHOR OF THE GAMEKEEPER AT HOME, ETC. THE dismal pits in a disused brickfield, unsightly I could write a whole history of it; the time when the leaves were fresh and green, and the sedge-birds frequented it; the time when the moorhen's young crept after their mother through its recesses; from the singing of the cuckoo by the river, till now the brown and yellow leaves strew the water. They strew, too, the dry brown grass of the land, thick tuffets, and lie even among the rushes, blown hither from the distant trees. The wind works its full will over the exposed waste, and drives through the reed-grass, scattering the stalks aside, and scarce giving them time to spring together again, when the following blast a second time divides them. A cruder piece of ground, ruder and more dismal in its unsightly holes, could not be found; and yet, because of the reed-grass, it is made as it were full of thought. I wonder the painters, of whom there are so many nowadays, armies of amateurs, do not sometimes take these scraps of earth and render into them the idea which fills a clod with beauty. In one such dismal pit-not here-I remember there grew a great quantity of bulrushes. Another was surrounded with such masses of swamp-foliage that it reminded those who saw it of the creeks in semi-tropical countries. But somehow they do not seem to see these things, but go on the old mill-round of scenery, exhausted many a year since. They do not see them, perhaps, because most of those who have educated themselves in the technique of painting are city-bred, and can never have the feeling of the country, however fond they may be of it. In those fields of which I was writing the other day, I found an artist at work at his easel; and a pleasant nook he had chosen. His brush did its work with a steady and sure stroke that indicated command of his materials. He could delineate whatever he selected with technical skill at all events. He had pitched his easel where two hedges formed an angle, and one of them was full of oak-trees. The hedge was singularly full of 'bits-bryony, tangles of grasses, berries, boughs half-tinted and boughs green, hung as it were with pictures like the wall of a room. Standing as near as I could without disturbing him, I found that the subject of his canvas was none of these. It was that old stale and dull device of a rustic bridge spanning a shallow stream crossing a lane. Some figure stood on the bridge-the old, old trick. He was filling up the hedge of the lane with trees from the hedge, and they were cleverly executed. But why drag them into this fusty scheme, which has appeared in every child's sketch-book for fifty years? Why not have simply painted the beautiful hedge at hand, purely and simply, a hedge hung with pictures for any one to copy? The field in which he had pitched his easel is full of fine trees and good effects.' But no; we must have the ancient and effete old story. This is not all the artist's fault, because he must in many cases paint what he can sell; and if his public will only buy effete old stories, he cannot help it. Still, I think if a painter did paint that I hedge in its fullness of beauty, just simply as it stands in the mellow autumn light, it would win approval of the best people, and that ultimately, a succession of such work would pay. The clover was dying down, and the plough would soon be among it-the earth was visible in patches. Out in one of these bare patches there was a young mouse, so chilled by the past night that his dull senses did not appear conscious of my presence. He had crept out on the bare earth evidently to feel the warmth of the sun, almost the last hour he would enjoy. He looked about for food, but found none; his short span of life was drawing to a close; even when at last he saw me, he could only run a few inches under cover of a dead clover-plant. Thousands upon thousands of mice perish like this as the winter draws on, born too late in the year to grow strong enough or clever enough to prepare a store. Other kinds of mice perish like leaves at the first blast of cold air. Though but a mouse, to me it was very wretched to see the chilled creature, so benumbed as to have almost lost its sense of danger. There is something so ghastly in birth that immediately leads to death; a sentient creature born only to wither. The earth offered it no help, nor the declining sun; all things organised seem to depend so much on circumstances. Nothing but pity can be felt for thousands upon thousands of such organisms. But thus, too, many a miserable human being has perished in the great Metropolis, dying, chilled and benumbed, of starvation, and finding the hearts of fellow-creatures as bare and cold as the earth of the clover-field. In these fields outside London the flowers are peculiarly rich in colour. The common mallow, whose flower is usually a light mauve, has here a deep, almost purple bloom; the bird'sfoot lotus is a deep orange. The figwort, which is generally two or three feet high, stands in one ditch fully eight feet, and the stem is more than half an inch square. A fertile soil has doubtless something to do with this colour and vigour. The red admiral butterflies, too, seemed in the summer more brilliant than usual. One very fine one, whose broad wings stretched out like fans, looked simply splendid floating round and round the willows which marked the margin of a dry pool. His blue markings were really blue-blue velvet-his red, and the white stroke shone as if sunbeams were in his wings. I wish there were more of these butterflies; in summer, dry summer, when the flowers seem gone and the grass is not so dear to us, and the leaves are dull with heat, a little colour is so pleasant. To me, colour is a sort of food; every spot of colour is a drop of wine to the spirit. I used to take my folding-stool on those long heated days, which made the late summer so conspicuous among summers, down to the shadow of a row of elms by a common cabbage-field. Their shadow was nearly as hot as the open sunshine; the dry leaves did not absorb the heat that entered them, and the dry hedge and dry earth poured heat up as the sun poured it down. Dry dead leaves-dead with heat, as with frost-strewed the grass, dry, too, and withered at my feet. But among the cabbages, which were very small, there grew thousands of poppies, fifty times more poppies than cabbage, so that the pale green of the cabbage leaves was hidden by the scarlet petals falling wide open to the dry air. There was a broad band of scarlet colour all along the side of the field, and it was this which brought me to the shade of those particular elms. The use of the cabbages was in this way they fetched for me all the white butterflies of the neighbourhood, and they fluttered, hundreds and hundreds of white butterflies, a constant stream and flow of them over the broad band of scarlet. Humble-bees came too; bur-bur-bur; and the buzz, and the flutter of the white wings over those fixed red butterflies the poppies, the flutter and sound and colour pleased me in the dry heat of the day. Sometimes I set my campstool by a humble-bee's nest. I like to see and hear them go in and out, so happy, busy, and wild; the humble-bee is a favourite. This warm summer their nests were very plentiful; but although the heat might have seemed so favourable to them, the flies were not at all numerous, I mean out-of-doors. Wasps, on the contrary, flourished to an extraordinary degree. One willow-tree particularly took their fancy; there was a swarm in the tree for weeks, attracted by some secretion; the boughs and leaves were yellow with wasps. But it seemed curious that flies should not be more numerous than usual; they are dying now fast enough, except a few of the large ones, that still find some sugar in the flowers of the ivy. The finest show of ivy flower is among some yew-trees; the dark ivy has filled the dark yew-tree, and brought out its pale yellow-green flowers in the sombre boughs. Last night, a great fly, the last in the house, buzzed into my candle. I detest flies, but I was Feb. 21, 1885.] sorry for his scorched wings; the fly itself hateful, its wings so beautifully made. I have sometimes picked a feather from the dirt of the road and placed it on the grass. It is contrary to one's feelings to see so beautiful a thing lying in the mud. Towards my window now, as I write, there omes suddenly a shower of yellow leaves, wres ed out by main force from the high elms; th blue sky behind them, they droop slowly, Forne onward, twirling, fluttering towards me-a loud of aut umn butterflies. Apring rises on the summit of a green brow that overlooks the meadows for miles. The spot ot really very high, still it is the highest round in that direction for a long distance, and seems singular to find water on the top of the aill, a thing common enough, but still sufficiently opposed to general impressions to appear remarkable. In this shallow water, says a faint story-far off, faint, and uncertain, like the murmur of a distant cascade-two ladies and some soldiers lost their lives. The brow is defended by thick bramble-bushes, which bore a fine crop of blackberries this autumn, to the delight of the boys; and these bushes partly conceal the sharpness of the short descent. But once your attention is drawn to it, you see that it has all the appearance of having been artificially sloped, like a rampart, or rather a glacis. The grass is green and the sward soft, being moistened by the spring, except in one spot, where the grass is burnt up under the heat of the summer sun, indicating the existence of foundations beneath. the leaves that have fallen from the lofty trees. Though meadow, arable, and hop fields hold now the place of the forest, a goodly remnant remains, for every hedge is full of oak and elm and ash; maple too, and the lesser bushes. At a little distance, so thick are the trees, the whole country appears a wood, and it is easy to see what a forest it must have been centuries ago. The Prince leaving the grim walls of the Tower of London by the Water-gate, and dropping but a short way down with the tide, could mount his horse on the opposite bank, and reach his palace here, in the midst of the thickest woods and wildest country, in half an hour. Thence every morning setting forth upon the chase, he could pass the day in joyous labours, and the evening in feasting, still within call-almost within sound of horn-of the Tower, if any weighty matter demanded his presence. There is a beautiful view from this spot; but leaving that now, and wandering on among the fields, presently you may find a meadow of peculiar shape, extremely long and narrow, half a mile long, perhaps; and this the folk will tell you was the King's Drive, or ride. Stories there are, too, of subterranean passages. There are always such stories in the neighbourhood of ancient buildings. I remember one, said to be three miles long; it led to an abbey. The lane leads on, bordered with high hawthorn hedges, and occa sionally a stout hawthorn tree, hardy and twisted by the strong hands of the passing years; thick now with red haws, and the haunt of the redwings, whose 'chuck-chuck' is heard every minute; but the birds themselves always perch on the outer side of the hedge. They are not far ahead, but they always keep on the safe side, flying on twenty yards or so, but never coming to my side. The little pond, which in summer was green with weed, is now yellow with the fallen haw In our time, the great city has widened out, and comes at this day down to within three miles of the hunting-palace. There still intervenes a narrow space between the last house of London and the ancient Forest Hall, a space of corn-field and meadow; the last house, for although not nominally London, there is no break of continuity in the bricks and mortar thence to London Bridge. London is within a stone'sthrow, as it were, and yet, to this day the forest lingers, and it is country. The very atmosphere is different. That smoky thickness characteristic of the suburbs ceases as you ascend the gradual rise, and leave the outpost of bricks and mortar behind. The air becomes clear and strong, till on the brow by the spring on a windy day it is almost like sea-air. It comes over the trees, over the hills, and is sweet with the touch of grass and leaf. There is no gas, no sulphurous acid in that. As the Edwards and Henries breathed it centuries since, so it can be inhaled now. sun that shone on the red deer is as bright now as then; the berries are thick on the bushes; there is colour in the leaf. The forest is gone; but the Spirit of Nature stays, and can be found by those who search for it. Dearly as I love the open air, I cannot regret the medieval days. I do not wish them back again; I would sooner fight in the foremost ranks of Time. Nor do we need them, for the spirit of nature stays, and will always be here, no matter to how high a pinnacle of thought the human mind may attain; still the sweet air, and the hills, and the sea, and the sun, will always be with us. OUR POULTRY AND EGGS. The thorn leaves; the pond is choked with them. The looking through lane has been slowly descending; and now, on Ir may surprise our readers to be told that the a gateway, an ancient building total head of domestic poultry in Great Britain stands up on the hill, sharply defined against the and Ireland is at the present time nearly thirty old. It is the banqueting hall of a palace of millions, two-thirds of the number being common old times, in which kings and princes, once sat domestic fowls, the remainder turkeys, geese, of their meat after the chase. This is the centre and ducks! This interesting fact has never been of those dim stories which float like haze over authoritatively made known till last year, during the meadows around. Many a wild red stag has which a careful enumeration was taken of the been carried thither after the hunt, and many a poultry-stock of Great Britain. Ireland, the egg and poultry supply of that dropping now as they dropped country has been statistically known since the wild boar slain in the glades of the forest. The acorns are As regards five centuries since, in the days when the wild year 1876, when the fowls began to be counted upon them; the oaks are once a year. It is wonderfully extensive, and boars fed so greedily broadly touched with brown; the bramble thickets contributes liberally to the national commissariat. in which the boars hid, green, but strewn with Twelve months ago, the poultry-stock of all kinds because most of those who have educated themselves in the technique of painting are city-bred, and can never have the feeling of the country, however fond they may be of it. In those fields of which I was writing the other day, I found an artist at work at his easel; and a pleasant nook he had chosen. His brush did its work with a steady and sure stroke that indicated command of his materials. He could delineate whatever he selected with technical skill at all events. He had pitched his easel where two hedges formed an angle, and one of them was full of oak-trees. The hedge was singularly full of 'bits-bryony, tangles of grasses, berries, boughs half-tinted and boughs green, hung as it were with pictures like the wall of a room. Standing as near as I could without disturbing him, I found that the subject of his canvas was none of these. It was that old stale and dull device of a rustic bridge spanning a shallow stream crossing a lane. Some figure stood on the bridge-the old, old trick. He was filling up the hedge of the lane with trees from the hedge, and they were cleverly executed. But why drag them into this fusty scheme, which has appeared in every child's sketch-book for fifty years? Why not have simply painted the beautiful hedge at hand, purely and simply, a hedge hung with pictures for any one to copy? The field in which he had pitched his easel is full of fine trees and good effects.' But no; we must have the ancient and effete old story. This is not all the artist's fault, because he must in many cases paint what he can sell; and if his public will only buy effete old stories, he cannot help it. Still, I think if a painter did paint that hedge in its fullness of beauty, just simply as it stands in the mellow autumn light, it would win approval of the best people, and that ultimately, a succession of such work would pay. The clover was dying down, and the plough would soon be among it-the earth was visible in patches. Out in one of these bare patches there was a young mouse, so chilled by the past night that his dull senses did not appear conscious of my presence. He had crept out on the bare earth evidently to feel the warmth of the sun, almost the last hour he would enjoy. He looked about for food, but found none; his short span of life was drawing to a close; even when at last he saw me, he could only run a few inches under cover of a dead clover-plant. Thousands upon thousands of mice perish like this as the winter draws on, born too late in the year to grow strong enough or clever enough to prepare a store. Other kinds of mice perish like leaves at the first blast of cold air. Though but a mouse, to me it was very wretched to see the chilled creature, so benumbed as to have almost lost its sense of danger. There is something so ghastly in birth that immediately leads to death; a sentient creature born only to wither. The earth offered it no help, nor the declining sun; all things organised seem to depend so much on circumstances. Nothing but pity can be felt for thousands upon thousands of such organisms. But thus, too, many a miserable human being has perished in the great Metropolis, dying, chilled and benumbed, of starvation, and finding the hearts of fellow-creatures as bare and cold as the earth of the clover-field. In these fields outside London the flowers are peculiarly rich in colour. The common mallow, whose flower is usually a light mauve, has here a deep, almost purple bloom; the bird'sfoot lotus is a deep orange. The figwort, which is generally two or three feet high, stands in one ditch fully eight feet, and the stem is more than half an inch square. A fertile soil has doubtless something to do with this colour and vigour. The red admiral butterflies, too, seemed in the summer more brilliant than usual. One very fine one, whose broad wings stretched out like fans, looked simply splendid floating round and round the willows which marked the margin of a dry pool. His blue markings were really blue--blue velvet-his red, and the white stroke shone as if sunbeams were in his wings. I wish there were more of these butterflies; in summer, dry summer, when the flowers seem gone and the grass is not so dear to us, and the leaves are dull with heat, a little colour is so pleasant. To me, colour is a sort of food; every spot of colour is a drop of wine to the spirit. I used to take my folding-stool on those long heated days, which made the late summer so conspicuous among summers, down to the shadow of a row of elms by a common cabbage-field. Their shadow was nearly as hot as the open sunshine; the dry leaves did not absorb the heat that entered them, and the dry hedge and dry earth poured heat up as the sun poured it down. Dry dead leaves-dead with heat, as with frost-strewed the grass, dry, too, and withered at my feet. But among the cabbages, which were very small, there grew thousands of poppies, fifty times more poppies than cabbage, so that the pale green of the cabbage leaves was hidden by the scarlet petals falling wide open to the dry air. There was a broad band of scarlet colour all along the side of the field, and it was this which brought me to the shade of those particular elms. The use of the cabbages was in this way: they fetched for me all the white butterflies of the neighbourhood, and they fluttered, hundreds and hundreds of white butterflies, a constant stream and flow of them over the broad band of scarlet. Humble-bees came too; bur-bur-bur; and the buzz, and the flutter of the white wings over those fixed red butterflies the poppies, the flutter and sound and colour pleased me in the dry heat of the day. Sometimes I set my campstool by a humble-bee's nest. I like to see and hear them go in and out, so happy, busy, and wild; the humble-bee is a favourite. This warm summer their nests were very plentiful; but although the heat might have seemed so favourable to them, the flies were not at all numerous, I mean out-of-doors. Wasps, on the contrary, flourished to an extraordinary degree. One willow-tree particularly took their fancy; there was a swarm in the tree for weeks, attracted by some secretion; the boughs and leaves were yellow with wasps. But it seemed curious that flies should not be more numerous than usual; they are dying now fast enough, except a few of the large ones, that still find some sugar in the flowers of the ivy. The finest show of ivy flower is among some yew-trees; the dark ivy has filled the dark yew-tree, and brought out its pale yellow-green flowers in the sombre boughs. Last night, a great fly, the last in the house, buzzed into my candle. I detest flies, but I was |