The years have come and gone at Beechhurst as elsewhere, but the results
of time and change seem to have almost passed it by. Every way out of
the scattered forest-town is still through beautiful forest-roads--roads
that cleave grand avenues, traverse black barren heaths, ford shallow
rivers, and climb over ferny knolls whence the sea is visible. The
church is unrestored, the parsonage is unimproved, the long low house
opposite is still the residence of Mr. Carnegie, the local doctor, and
looks this splendid summer morning precisely as it looked in the
splendid summer mornings long ago, when Bessie Fairfax was a little
girl, and lived there, and was very happy.

Bessie was not akin to the doctor. Her birth and parentage were on this
wise. Her father was Geoffry, the third and youngest son of Mr. Fairfax
of Abbotsmead in Woldshire. Her mother was Elizabeth, only child of the
Reverend Thomas Bulmer, vicar of Kirkham. Their marriage was a
love-match, concluded when they had something less than the experience
of forty years between them. The gentleman had his university debts
besides to begin life with, the lady had nothing. As the shortest way to
a living he went into the Church, and the birth of their daughter was
contemporary with Geoffry's ordination. His father-in-law gave him a
title for orders, and a lodging under his roof, and Mr. Fairfax
grudgingly allowed his son two hundred a year for a maintenance.

The young couple were lively and handsome. They had done a foolish
thing, but their friends agreed to condone their folly. Before very long
a south-country benefice, the rectory of Beechhurst, was put in
Geoffry's way, and he gayly removed with his wife and child to that
desirable home of their own. They were poor, but they were perfectly