The Chapel on the Hill

IT was a cheerful scene on which my eye rested as I looked out upon it from the Rector’s study, while awaiting my introduction to the Rector himself. Two large bay windows opene...

LIKE his brother at the Manor House hard by, my Rector, Mr. Richardson, was a widower, having lost his wife only six months before my arrival. His family was comprised of four c...

I HAD found lodgings with one Peggy Ransom, whom I soon discovered to be one of the chief characters in the village, as the Rector had reported her. A tiny old lady she was, wit...

Planted against the south-west side of a hill, the ground gently falling away in front of it, it caught the evening sun, which burnished the trees on either side, and called up...

THE following evening, punctually at eight o’clock, I presented myself at the door of the Council Chamber. But the comedy which I had been promised was not forthcoming. To the s...

IT was high time, I felt, to reconsider my position in regard to Eric and Marion. At present the former knew nothing of my residence in the neighbourhood, or of the acquaintance...

I HAD now been some months with Mr. Richardson, and had gained a closer acquaintance with his methods and means of influence. To all sinners and backsliders who admitted their f...

THAT same night the change we had been expecting came on us, and a storm raged furiously till the dawn. Sometimes, but very occasionally, a summer gale will carry as much weight...

There was to be a break and interlude, it seemed, in the monotony of our household arrangements, which, for myself, I was inclined to welcome. Peggy, however, regarded it with e...

IT was Gertie’s birthday at the Rectory, and there was a sound of merry-making in the air, but what form it would take was held a secret from all of us who were not required to...

I HAD won my mistress, but my mind misgave me that I had lost my friend. Not from any signs of disappointment on his part, or any token that the world outside us could have reco...

IN the general chorus of congratulation that welcomed our engagement I must include a letter I received from my erstwhile rival, Reggie. We had found time during his vacations t...

MEANWHILE the wreck still lay in shattered fragments on the beach, and had brought discredit and disaster to at least one family in the village before it disappeared in another...

“’TIS a rare sight this, granfer, for a weddin’. I only wish as how my old mother what’s bedridden upstairs—her’s ninety, come Thursday—could crawl down along and glad her aged...

AND now, during the calm and quiet summer months that followed, my life took its tone from the harmony of Nature, and rested itself for a while in one great calm. Taking its res...

THE Squire was wise enough not to embitter my position by attempting to alter my resolution. He had meant what he said at our former interview, and remembered it too. It was too...

“OF course you’re going to stay with me, old man?” said Eric, when he met me at Waterloo station next day. “You surely didn’t imagine I should let you go to an hotel?”

“I had lost my way in the Abruzzi. All the day long I had wandered in fruitless quest of a subject to complete my series of Italian sketches. And now the twilight had fallen upo...

“Years ago,” he said—“for so I heard the story on my arrival in the parish—a rich Englishman, travelling for pleasure, found his way to our village, and, intending to stay three...

WHEN I returned to Fleetwater, Marion was gone. It was better so, I felt, much as I missed her. Indeed, our last good-bye had been said in the place she had chosen for it,—on th...

IN the days that followed, my life took a dull sad monotone, lightened at intervals by the reflection of past memories, which lay along its path like the sunlit pools left on a...

Your picture is an original Bronzino, worth quite enough to free you from all the difficulties brought about by the bank. Any copyist who could do such work could expend his tim...