ST. GEORGE AND ST. MICHAEL.

CHAPTER I.

DOROTHY AND RICHARD.





It was the middle of autumn, and had rained all day. Through the
lozenge-panes of the wide oriel window the world appeared in the
slowly gathering dusk not a little dismal. The drops that clung
trickling to the dim glass added rain and gloom to the landscape
beyond, whither the eye passed, as if vaguely seeking that help in
the distance, which the dripping hollyhocks and sodden sunflowers
bordering the little lawn, or the honeysuckle covering the wide
porch, from which the slow rain dropped ceaselessly upon the
pebble-paving below, could not give--steepy slopes, hedge-divided
into small fields, some green and dotted with red cattle, others
crowded with shocks of bedraggled and drooping corn, which looked
suffering and patient.

The room to which the window having this prospect belonged was large
and low, with a dark floor of uncarpeted oak. It opened immediately
upon the porch, and although a good fire of logs blazed on the
hearth, was chilly to the sense of the old man, who, with his feet
on the skin of a fallow-deer, sat gazing sadly into the flames,
which shone rosy through the thin hands spread out before them. At
the opposite corner of the great low-arched chimney sat a lady past