in all those years. There's a grand pear-tree! lots of rotten fruit
lying under it--and what a fine apple-tree! Is this of the celebrated
'redstreak' variety, I wonder, that Phillips praises so in his poem on
cider."

"A poem on cider!"

"Yes, I tell you, a poem on cider, and as long as 'Paradise Lost.' It
has some very fine passages in it, and has actually been translated into
Italian. I picked up a copy of it at Verona when I was a boy, and
learned a good deal of it by heart, by way of helping myself with the
language. I remember some of it to this day:--

"'Voi, donne, e Cavalier del bel paese
A cui propizio il ciel tanto concesse
Di bene, udite il mio cantare,' &c., &c.

"I wonder, now, whether this is a redstreak."

As their sons talked thus the two fathers approached, and gravely looked
on at this scene of riotous and yet lovely desolation. Nests with eggs
in them adorned every little bush, vines having broken the trellis ran
far along the ground. John, remembering that the place must have painful
thoughts connected with their dead brother for his father and uncle,
continued to talk to Valentine, and did not address either of them: and
whatever they may have felt they did not say a word; but Valentine
presently observed the bed of lilies, and he and John moved on together,
the two fathers following.

They outwalked their fathers, and Valentine, stooping over the bed,