CHAPTER XIV.

CHRISTMAS TIME.

“A merry Christmas, Miss Cossart! Why, you don’t mean to say you are not coming to church! I thought you’d be sure to make a fresh start on Christmas Day!”

“Oh, I’m a regular heathen! I haven’t been to church twice the whole year! I can’t stand stuffy places, and I expect the scent of the flowers will make it twice as bad as usual to-day.”

“Well, you’re coming anyway, Miss Cholmondeley? Shall we start? It’ll be hot walking, and I hate that omnibus, and the carros are so slow. Come along. Miss Cossart will tell them that we’ve started.”

Sheila hung back a moment; she had an instinct that her aunt would be vexed, but she never knew how to refuse Ronald’s suggestions, made in a half masterful, half-pleading way. He took her prayer-book and walked off beside her, whilst Effie looked after them with a rather stormy light in her eyes.

“Does she really never come to church?” asked Ronald, as they took their way along the sunny road together.

“She has only been once or twice since I have known her,” answered Sheila. “She thinks the air might bring on asthma.”

Ronald was silent for a few minutes, swinging his stick. His face was rather graver than its wont.

“Somehow I don’t like to see people staying away from church like that. I know it isn’t fashionable to say such things, but I have a feeling that church is the place to help us to get the better of our infirmities, bodily and spiritual. My brother Guy will struggle out to church when he goes nowhere else, and I’m sure he is never the worse for it. I don’t like to hear a girl call herself a heathen in that flippant way. She must remember she won’t be judged by the standard of the heathens!”

It was so unusual for Ronald to speak seriously that Sheila was quite surprised, yet somehow it seemed to draw them closer together. That was how Oscar sometimes talked, and upon this Christmas morning her thoughts were very much with Oscar. It was the first Christmas they had ever spent apart, and Sheila was a little bit homesick in consequence.

“I should hate not to go to church on Christmas morning,” she said. “It seems to bring us near to everybody all round the world. It is so hard to realise that it is Christmas here. A few days ago when it rained so, and the snow came on the mountains, one could fancy, perhaps, that it might be winter somewhere; but with this glorious sunshine! It seems almost ridiculous!”

“Do you like Christmas out here, Miss Sheila?” asked Ronald, who often called her that, and sometimes “Miss Baby,” “or would you rather be at home?”

Sudden tears came quite unexpectedly into Sheila’s eyes. She looked down that Ronald might not see them.

“I don’t think I have a home exactly—now,” she said.

He looked at her quickly, a flash in his eyes.

“But surely your home is with your uncle and aunt?”

“Yes,” answered Sheila a little unsteadily, “in a way it is, but sometimes it doesn’t seem quite a real home.”

A tear plashed down, but Sheila turned her head away, and then looked back with a brave smile.

“I oughtn’t to say that, perhaps. It sounds ungrateful, but, of course, it can’t be the same as one’s own house, and last Christmas we were so happy, and I never thought of things changing like this!”

Ronald, of course, knew all Sheila’s story by this time. He looked the sympathy he felt.

“I know, I know. It must have been very hard! But you are happy with your relations, are you not?”

“Y—yes,” answered Sheila a little doubtfully, adding after a brief pause; “only sometimes I think my aunt doesn’t much like me now.”

“Oh, don’t think that! Everybody has ups and downs, you know. We all of us have our cross days.”

“You don’t,” answered Sheila, “nor Miss Adene, nor any of you! But Aunt Cossart is sometimes very glum and cross with me.”

There was a little gleam in Ronald’s eyes. It is a known fact that lookers on sometimes see most of the game, and it had not been unnoticed by the Dumaresq party that Sheila was rather out of favour with her aunt. They could see the reason plain enough. The hotel was filling up now, and still Sheila held her place as the favourite, and small notice comparatively was bestowed upon Effie. There was no blinking the matter that Effie bored people. Her sprightliness was not of an engaging kind, it had a contradictious defiance about it that was irritating, and her shallow theories and self-centred way of looking at life made her conversation monotonous and tiresome. When she allowed herself to forget herself, she could be much more agreeable; but generally she could not get away from herself, and the result was disastrous for herself.

Some other young girls had come, and Sheila would romp up and down the house with them, leading them into fun and frolic, teaching them the Washington Post up and down corridors or verandah, throwing herself into games of which she was the life and soul, and in which Ronald was always an able assistant, and in a hundred little ways making life merry for herself and others, whilst Effie never seemed able to amalgamate in the merry crowd.

Health might be one cause; but another was a certain quality in herself. She was so used to being the first thought and consideration with those about her, that if she was not that, she did not know how to take any place at all. Her mother would look on anxious and dissatisfied, utterly perplexed to find the answer to the question always forcing itself upon her. At last she reached the conclusion that Sheila was somehow in fault. If Sheila were different and made Effie welcome, things would go differently. Effie ought not to be sitting with a book in the drawing-room whilst the young folks were frolicking outside. It was not right or proper; only if Effie did go out to them, she speedily returned, not finding any fun in what amused them.

So Sheila got into disgrace with her aunt by imperceptible degrees, and upon this Christmas morning her heart was rather heavy within her, though she scarcely knew why.

The service, however, did her good, though she could not always keep back her tears. The building recalled no associations; it was but an ugly little place, something between a round and a square, the authorities refusing to permit a cruciform church to be built. The flowers, too, did not look at all Christmas-like in spite of a few bits of holly here and there; arum lilies were the great feature with roses and poinsettias. But the familiar hymns brought home back, and Sheila choked once or twice, thinking of Oscar, the father who had left them so suddenly, and the dear old home she never expected to see again.

She walked home with Miss Adene, who talked kindly and comfortingly to her. She had seen that the child was in danger of getting in trouble, and had warned Ronald to be careful; for she half-suspected Mrs. Cossart’s ambitions for her daughter. Ronald would never think of such a thing himself, nor would Sheila, who had the mind of a child in all such matters; but Miss Adene had seen a good deal of the world, and her kindly eyes were very keen and quick.

“Don’t be downhearted, little girl,” she said, “life is never all sunshine for any of us. We should not be good for much if it were. We want our east winds and rainy days, as well as the plants and flowers, to make us thrive. We should be dry and arid like a desert if we had nothing but our own way all our lives, and no little crosses to bear.”

“Yes, I suppose so; only it seems hard when people are unjust. Aunt is vexed with me, and she won’t say why. She calls me rude and forward; but I don’t think I am, do you? I like fun, and they all play. Why should I be left out?”

Christmas was a gay day at the New Hotel, and nobody was left out in the general fun. The whole place was decorated with greenery—trailers of giant smilax twenty feet long, making the task of decoration easy. They were wreathed round the balusters of the staircase and festooned overhead in the dining-room, the waiters and maids got “tips,” and were more smiling than ever, whilst guests exchanged greetings and little gifts, and the table reproduced the typical fare of England—turkey, roast beef, and plum puddings all aflame!

There was tennis in the afternoon, and dancing for the young people in the evening; and Effie for the first time went down to the billiard-room, and Miss Adene kindly interested herself in getting partners for her amongst some of the visitors from the houses on the island, who had come to join the fun.

Miss Adene had several acquaintances in Madeira, and many persons had called upon Lady Dumaresq and her husband. Sheila from being much with them had received invitations to go out with them; and at first the girl had accepted, not knowing how to refuse. This had been another cause of offence; and now Miss Adene was good-naturedly seeking to induce their friends to call upon the Cossarts; and Mrs. Cossart had been made happy to-night by an invitation for New Year’s Eve to one of the biggest quintas in the island, where there would be a grand entertainment, culminating in a giant display of fireworks, which display, they heard, would be universal all over the island. For it was the custom in Madeira to welcome in the New Year by a perfect storm of fireworks. Even the poorest of the people spent their little savings in a few squibs or crackers. Every child who had a “bit” to spend laid it out in fireworks. Miss Adene said it was the most curious sight possible—the whole island, as far as the eye could see, alight and ablaze; for as the quintas and smaller houses ran right up into the hills to a considerable height, and extended far on either side, the panorama of coloured lights was something unique.

“Isn’t it nice that we have been asked to the big party?” asked Effie that night. “Not that I care so very much about parties, but I like to see all that is characteristic of a place. I suppose you were asked too, Sheila?”

“Why, yes,” answered Sheila gleefully; but Mrs. Cossart, who was in the room, said coldly—

“I am not sure about your going, Sheila.”

“Oh, aunt! Why not?”

“I am not sure that it is suitable; a big party like that, and your father not a year dead. I don’t know if it is seemly.”

Sheila was silent; she had never thought of that, certainly. It seemed a long, long time now since her father’s death; and even in the summer, when her loss was so recent, she had gone about with her cousins to little friendly gatherings at houses where they were intimate. Now here, in this far-away country, where nobody knew them, the objection did sound a little far-fetched; but Sheila did not know how to answer it, though her face fell.

“I know you don’t think about things as other girls would,” said Mrs. Cossart with a little asperity; “you go romping and playing and dancing just as though you had never had a loss of any kind, and I haven’t checked you, because I don’t want a scene every day, and you are so self-willed. But this big party is another affair. Why, you have not even a dress fit for it. I never thought of your going out to regular parties. No, I don’t think it would do at all.”

For a moment Sheila was tempted to rebel. She had heard so much about this New Year’s Eve party and she did so want to see it, and she did like the lights and music and flowers, the little dancing there was likely to be, and the gay greetings when the New Year came in. It did seem hard to be left out! But then the remembrance came over her of the words she had heard spoken in church, of Miss Adene’s kindly talk, of the resolutions she had made for herself. So gulping down her disappointment and sense of injury, she answered meekly—

“Very well, Aunt Cossart. I suppose you know best. I will stay at home.”

For a moment Effie looked as though she would like to speak, but then the impulse passed, and she said nothing. It had flashed into Effie’s head that it would be nice to go out without Sheila. Effie had begun to think a good deal about Ronald Dumaresq. Her mother had unconsciously led her to do this, though not with intention. Effie had been interested once in Cyril, but she had had her faith in him rather shaken, and his image was waxing proportionately faint. Ronald was the leading figure in her little world now, and when the evening came at last, and she was being dressed for the great party, she was more particular than ever in her life before, and Sheila’s clever tasteful fingers were called into requisition again and again before she could be satisfied.

But at last all was done to her satisfaction. She looked as well as it was possible for her to look, and Sheila admired her cordially. She would not let herself be dull; she declared she should sit up and watch the fireworks from the verandah, where a fine view was to be obtained, and as there were many people in the hotel who would be staying, she would not be left alone.

* * * * *

Bang! Bang! Bang! Sheila started from her doze in a snug corner of the verandah, and behold the island was a blaze of coloured lights, whilst the noise was like that of a bombarded city. She started up and ran forward, and then gave a little startled cry, for there was Ronald putting out his hand for hers, whilst he said in merry friendly tones—

“A happy New Year to you, Sheila!”

“Oof, how you startled me! But you are over there!” she cried laughing, and pointing to the quinta up in the hills, where a splendid show of rockets marked the exact spot.

“Am I? I thought I was here, but no matter. Here or there, I meant to be the first to wish you a happy New Year!”

“How nice of you!” cried Sheila, bubbling over with delight at the beautiful sight before her, and the happy feeling of having a friend at her side, “but you did go there surely?”

“Oh, yes, I showed up and did my duty; but somehow it seemed dull and flat. Something was wanting. Then, you know, this is the place of all others for seeing the whole panorama of the illumination. Up there you are too much in the middle of it. So I just made my escape, got a fellow to run me down to the bottom of the hill, and here I am. Are you glad to see me, Sheila?”

She looked frankly into his eyes, but saw there something that made her suddenly drop her own. With a new sense of shyness she dropped his arm, yet her voice had a happy ring in it as she answered—

“I am very glad to see you. I wish you a happy New Year too.”

“And I mean to get one,” said Ronald, suddenly possessing himself of her hand.

(_To be continued._)

VARIETIES.

GOOD MANNERS.—To be always thinking about your manners is not the way to make them good; the very perfection of manners is not to think about yourself.

BE ALWAYS LEARNING.—Of all treasures, knowledge is the most precious, for it can neither be stolen, given away, nor consumed.

SELFISH PEOPLE.—The more self is indulged the more it demands, and therefore of all girls the selfish are the most discontented.

INSIGHT.

The riddle of the world is understood Only by him who feels that God is good.

_Whittier._

MEANING IN MUSIC.—Mendelssohn felt intensely the meaning of music. Comparing music with words, he said, “Die Worte reichen nicht hinzu”—“Words do not go as far.”

LIVING.—To live is nothing unless to live be to know Him by Whom we live.—_Ruskin._

THE HOME OF THE EARLS POULETT.

It is a bright day in early spring—the ash-buds still look quite black in the front of March—as we mount slowly the steep hill that leads to the quiet village of Hinton St. George. The fresh air breathes out vigour, but still we rest near the top to look back over the lovely browns and purples of the plain below dotted with red-tiled barns and towers of churches—Lopen, Merriott, South Petherton—built of the soft Ham stone of the county.

The road we go by has a rare charm, with tall ash-hedges not yet lopped to the shabby level demanded by the new injunctions. The crescent bending ash saplings with their ebony tips look to be some guard of halberdiers ready to marshal whichever earl eventually wins the day and comes to the old home to claim his heritage.

Primrose buds look out from the hedge-rows, but there is not yet much cheerful colour in the landscape. After the ash saplings come elder-bushes, whose boughs are just breaking in a sad green tinged with purple. The only warm colour that Dame Nature has taken on her brush is the deep blue of the hills that lie beyond Seavington and Shepton Beauchamp.

Busy folk tramping through noisy London streets are much exercised just now about the law-suit that is to be fought over this far-off spot. What a contrast there is between the distant city and this still village so remote that no builder has spoiled the quiet street, the houses with latticed panes and generous bow-windows, the old stone cross with its mutilated figure, and the long low stone farm with green palings sparkling in the sunlight!

Yet it was in the London church of St. Martin’s-in-the-Fields that Queen Mary Stuart’s gaoler, Sir Amyas Poulett, was buried in 1588, and this most remarkable of a long line of Pouletts was not brought to Hinton—perhaps up this very road—till 1728, when no room could be found for him in Gibbs’ new church. This transference seems to form a link between the busy city and the quiet village.

Another bend brings us to the beautiful perpendicular church with its brightly gilded weather-cock dinted by the shots of a past earl, who used to practise shooting at the vane from the adjoining gardens.

Very lovely is the old churchyard, with the great cedars in the garden beyond for a background, and the tall tower, characteristic of the county, softened into the mellowest greyish yellow and flecked with lichens. We linger over the grave-stones, of which many have some link with the Pouletts, and notice the curious Somersetshire name of Tryphena on the tomb of one old servant who had lived in “exemplary servitude” with the family for forty-four years, dying in 1801. On an altar-tomb, with date 1691, is the curious inscription—

“Elizabeth Powlet lies interred here A spotless corpes, a corps from scandal clere. Deny her not the trouble of your eye, She a saint in Heaven free from misery,” etc.

Over the pretty turf crosses, which are a peculiarity of this churchyard, a gay peacock walks, very unconscious that he is the old emblem of that immortality which shall survive “when all that seems shall suffer shock.”

Through the deep porch we pass into the church where the pallid marble monuments of many Pouletts go far to overpower the little building, but are relieved by the warm tones of the pinkish fawn stone roof of the chancel, the tender yellow of the Ham stone columns, and the unassuming white plaster of the walls. A beautiful window by Clayton and Bell sends red and purple lights along the stone floor that rest on the heads of little Elizabethan Pouletts who kneel in prayerful line beneath their placid parents in ruff and doublet, seeking—

“For past transgressions to atone By saying endless prayers in stone.”

We do not linger long over the virtues of the earls of last century, though we are amused at the wire-drawn periods of the epitaph to the Honourable _Anne_ Poulett, fourth son of the first Earl Poulett, to whom Queen Anne was godmother. A suite of rooms was prepared for the Queen in the great house hidden in its cedars, and her bed used to be shown there; but death called her to follow her eighteen dead babies before the visit came to pass. She stood sponsor for the fourth son of the first earl and named him Anne just as she did Lord Anne Hamilton, the third son of the Jacobite duke who was killed by Lord Mohun in the famous Hyde Park duel described by Thackeray in _Esmond_. Lord Anne Poulett’s epitaph tells us that his “sedate fortitude, propriety of judgment, and universal knowledge, could not avert that death which tore him from his afflicted family”!

As we mount some steps into the Earl’s great pew, upholstered in red cloth, we pass a severely simple pulpit which is so in harmony with the church that it seems to melt into it, and leave all to the eloquence of the preacher. The low stone rail, bound with fair worked brass, recalls George Herbert’s words about the reading-desk and pulpit in his church of Layton Ecclesia, “for he would often say Prayer and Preaching, being equally useful, might agree like brethren and have an equal honour and estimation.” The red pew is spoiled by a very ugly window which, happily, is so far back from the main aisle of the church that it does not spoil the general effect. A little door leads us down into a space which was perhaps once the Lady Chapel, and which contains many monuments of great interest.

Much might be written about the early Paulets from Pawlet, near Bridgwater, and their descendant who wedded a Deneband, and so came to Hinton St. George; but in this family the chief interest centres in the early sixteenth century and the age of Elizabeth. In the mailed warriors under the north wall with their dames in curious head-dresses we see probably the warlike Sir Amias, who helped defeat Lambert Simnel at Newark in the days of Henry VII., built much at Hinton, and left his mark on the Middle Temple in London, where chiefly he lived. Beyond lies his son Sir Hugh, who helped Henry VIII. in his French war with Francis I., and is said to have put Wolsey in the stocks when he was a youth at Lymington School. This Sir Hugh perhaps helped to bring misfortune on the house, for he had the ill-fated office laid upon him of being supervisor of all the manors, etc., lately belonging to Richard Whiting, last abbot of Glastonbury.

But by far the most interesting monument in the whole church is that in the west wall of this chapel to the memory of Sir Amyas Poulett, son of Sir Hugh, and gaoler of Mary Queen of Scots during the last two years of her life. It is seldom indeed that so much personal character is expressed in marble as in the curious veins of this pale alabaster. One would think that many a Londoner must have paused, struck by the stern even irritable face, before the monument was removed from St. Martin’s, where it was situate so long under the same roof as Nell Gwynne and many another notable. How strangely it brings us into touch with past times to look at this strong face of the man who had so much to put up with! There he lies motionless in ruff and doublet upon a marble pillow, and yet he moved in the stirring world we know so well from Froude’s vivid pages and Alexandre Dumas’ bustling novels. In 1576 he was sent ambassador by Elizabeth to that frivolous court of Henry III., the king of favourites, who lives again in the pages of _Chicot the Jester_, with his swarms of little spaniels and his effeminate hands smeared with cream, surrounded by the plots and counter-plots of the Guises and the aged queen-mother Catherine of Medici.

Whilst Sir Amyas was in Paris, the negotiations were afoot for marrying Queen Elizabeth, a woman of forty-six, to the French King Henry’s brother Alençon, Duke of Anjou, a lad of twenty-three, “a small brown creature, deeply pock-marked, with a large head, a knobbed nose, and a hoarse croaking voice.” When he came to visit her in 1579, Elizabeth pretended to like him and called him her “grenouille,” her frog-prince, but the English nation had not forgotten the massacre of St. Bartholomew seven short years ago, and would have none of him. Sir Philip Sidney wrote out his indignation in an honest memorial to the Queen, and then retired for some time from Court to Wilton, where he wrote the _Arcadia_. On Stubbs, a Puritan pamphleteer, who opposed the match, the Queen vented her spleen by having his hand chopped off by the common hangman. “Long live Queen Elizabeth!” cried the loyal Englishman as he waved his hat with his left hand. Feeling such as this proved to the Queen that her Englishmen would have none of the Italianated foreigner, but with her usual intricate diplomacy she kept up the negotiations for years, and Sir Amyas Poulett had to bear the brunt of Parisian indignation. “I have been baited here for a month or more as a bear at a stake, and had nothing to say,” he writes, “but stood still at my defence for fear to take hurt.”

We can fancy that the knowledge which Sir Amyas gained of French stratagems and spoils made him a suitable warder for the resourceful Scottish queen whom he watched over at Tutbury, Chartley and Fotheringay with a surly fidelity, for the last two out of her eighteen years’ captivity. His restless desire to force his own particular tenets upon her must have added to the trials of her last moments, though his honest refusal to let her be murdered by any secret assassin made the last sad pageant of execution possible, in which her unwavering fortitude won for her the sympathy of posterity. Sir Amyas liked plain dealing, and seems to have fretted much at the tortuous policy of Walsingham and Burghley. He discovered a priest in disguise in the Queen’s household at gloomy Tutbury, but knew not what to do with him, because Elizabeth, as he said, “so dandled the Catholics.” Sir Amyas yielded to Walsingham so far as to give in, perhaps perforce, to the shameful plot which entrapped Mary into a treasonable correspondence carried on by means of a water-tight box at the bottom of the ale-casks supplied to her at Chartley by a brewer from Burton, and then shamelessly copied for Walsingham. This double-dealing must have been grievous to the old man, and the terrible responsibility laid upon him, added to the pangs of the gout, shortened his own life. Poor Queen Mary was so unconscious of the toils she was in that hope improved her health, her swollen legs healed, and she was able to ride hunting with the hounds and kill a deer with her cross-bow.

Stand with me in fancy in the little chapel at Hinton, and recall some of the strange scenes beheld by that marble face.

Think of the sunny August morning in 1586, when Sir Amyas persuaded the unconscious queen to ride out nine miles to Tixall and kill a buck in Sir Walter Aston’s park. Mary is in high spirits, perhaps her many plots have seared her conscience, and if she does know of the purposed assassination of Elizabeth, it seems to her no high price to pay for her liberty. Sir Amyas on the other hand knows that Babington’s conspiracy is discovered, that he has had to flee from the forest of St. John’s Wood, and that in a few moments Queen Mary will be arrested for high treason. Deeply as he detests her Popish wiles, a little sympathy must surely cross his harsh features when the armed men whom she hails as her deliverers arrest her as a traitor in the Queen’s name.

Again. The fortnight of neglect and hardship at Tixall is over, and the queen returns to Chartley with her doom upon her to find her treasures and secrets all torn open, and her favourite attendant Barbara Curle stricken by terror to a bed of sickness with the new-born baby unchristened at her side. You can fancy the furrowed forehead of Sir Amyas as he harshly refuses to christen the poor babe by the traitor’s name of Mary, and the queen, ever with an instinct for the drama of history, as she promptly lays the infant on her lap and baptises it Mary in the Name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost.

The weeks fly past. Elizabeth will not sign the death-warrant, but has a letter written to Poulett in which she roundly complains of his want of love and zeal for not having found some way to shorten the life of the Scottish Queen. The letter reaches Sir Amyas at five in the evening, and before an hour has passed he has written the letter, which you may see to this day, to say in hot haste, “God forbid that I should make so fowle a shipwracke of my conscience or leave so great a blot to my poor posteritie to shed blood without law or warrant.” Sir Amyas had to put up with Elizabeth’s angry pacings to and fro, and her words that he was “a dainty and precise fellow who would promise much and perform nothing,” but her later letters to him suggest that in the end she was not sorry that the rough honest man had stood like a rock.

It must have shaken most men’s fortitude to witness the terrible scene when Queen Mary knelt in the hall at Fotheringay and recited the penitential psalms in Latin and English in deep tones that sounded above the Puritan prayers of the men who refused her the last sacraments of her church and met to see her die. When the last moment came, she knelt calmly by the block among her black-robed executioners, herself clothed in blood-red from head to foot, and never flinched when the blow swerved and fell a second time.

In any case Sir Amyas only lived eighteen months after the Queen’s execution, and died soon after his return from the negotiations at Ostend for peace with Spain. Perhaps he endured hardships in that devastated Netherland country, where partridges were plentiful because the tilled land had become a wilderness. In any case the negotiations did not avert the Spanish Armada, and Sir Amyas died in September, 1588, a month after it had perished. He must have breathed more freely when the waves closed over the Spanish galleons, for in Queen Mary’s last letter to the Spanish ambassador, Mendoza, she had bidden him tell King Philip not to forget how she had been used by certain men, and among their names was that of Sir Amyas Poulett.

Beneath the recumbent figure there is a curious French epitaph to this quondam Governor of Jersey, in which are some touching lines—

“Non, non, je ne croy pas qu’un si petit de Terre Couvre tant de Virtus, ait esteint tant d’Honneur, Que ce preux Chavalier, ce renommé Seigneur, Avoit acquis en Paix, avoit acquis en Guerre.”

His widow Margaret contributed a loving Latin epitaph, which may have been composed by herself in this age when Latin was no uncommon accomplishment for a lady. Queen Elizabeth puts her royal initials above a verse on the right hand of the figure—

“Never shall cease to spread wise Poulet’s fame, These will speak and men will blush for shame; Without offence to speak what I do know, Great is the debt England to him doth owe.”

There are other inscriptions playing upon the characteristic words of his motto, _Garde la Foy_, and the three swords of his crest; but it is time for us to leave the stone precincts and mount the old tower, from which we get an exquisite view of the surrounding country and the rambling old house.

The most ancient part of the present building was the work of Sir Amyas’ grandfather. The present front was built by the first Earl Poulett, Queen Anne’s minister. We cannot help regretting the “right goodly manor place of free stone with two goodly towers embattled in the inner court,” which old Leland saw in Henry VIII.’s days; but we may rejoice that the pretty wings remain in which “the slabs of the sandstone of the country forming the outer walls are cut in the shape of the rounded stones of the sea-shore.” When gay flowers again relieve the long line of stone, and a touch of green is added to the rows of white jalousies, perhaps a look of home will return to the old mansion.

The quiet park where deer haunt the glades must have looked gay indeed when the grandson of Elizabeth’s Sir Amyas entertained Mary of Scotland’s grandson, Charles I., at Hinton in 1644, with a loyalty that was ready to face much and pay heavily for his allegiance to the King. It was only fifty-five years from the day of Queen Mary’s execution when the two grandsons met at Hinton. Five short years were to pass, and the head of Charles I. fell from the block with a fortitude not unlike that of his grandmother, Mary Queen of Scots.

A few years more, and Hinton is holding high festival again, and feasting the Duke of Monmouth with junketing in the park. Almost directly after, the Duke was fleeing from Sedgemoor to be captured in the Hampshire fields, and travel to London and the headsman’s axe on Tower Hill.

As we walk back past the closed windows and fancy the treasures inside of portraits and statues, and frames by Grinling Gibbons, we find a poor dead thrush, called a “home-screech” in these parts, because its note is not so tuneful as that of its brother thrushes. The bird and its empty nest expresses the want we feel about this lovely spot with its sad memories. The nest is too good and fair to be left untenanted.

CLOTILDA MARSON.

LESSONS FROM NATURE.

BY JEAN A. OWEN, Author of “Forest, Field and Fell,” etc.