XXXIV. VALENTINE AND LAURA
XXXV. A VISIT TO MELCOMBE
XXVI. A PRIVATE CONSULTATION
XXXVII. HIS VISITOR




CHAPTER I.

A WATCHER OF LILIES.


"Unto whom all hearts be open, all desires known, and from whom no
secrets are hid."--_Collect, English Communion Service._

In one of the south-western counties of England, some years ago, and in
a deep, well-wooded valley where men made perry and cider, wandered
little and read less, there was a hamlet with neither farm nor cottage
in it, that had not stood two hundred and fifty years, and just beyond
there was a church nearly double that age, and there were the mighty
wrecks of two great oak-trees, said to be more ancient still.

Between them, winding like a long red rut, went the narrow road, and was
so deeply cut into the soil that a horseman passing down it could see
nothing of its bordering fields; but about fifty yards from the first
great oak the land suddenly dipped, and showed on the left a steep
cup-like glen, choked with trees, and only divided from the road by a
few dilapidated stakes and palings, and a wooden gate, orange with the
rust of lichens, and held together with ropes and bands.