we chased them away before they could settle,--shot them on the wing as
they got up.

Then, too, though the immediate scenery around my uncle's was so bleak
and desolate, the country within a few miles was so full of objects of
interest,--of landscapes so poetically grand or lovely; and occasionally
we coaxed my father from the Cardan, and spent whole days by the margin
of some glorious lake.

Amongst these excursions I made one by myself to that house in which my
father had known the bliss and the pangs of that stern first-love which
still left its scars fresh on my own memory. The house, large and
imposing, was shut up,--the Trevanions had not been there for years,--
the pleasure-grounds had been contracted into the smallest possible
space. There was no positive decay or ruin,--that Trevanion would never
have allowed; but there was the dreary look of absenteeship everywhere.
I penetrated into the house with the help of my card and half-a-crown.
I saw that memorable boudoir,--I could fancy the very spot in which my
father had heard the sentence that had changed the current of his life.
And when I returned home, I looked with new tenderness on my father's
placid brow, and blessed anew that tender helpmate who in her patient
love had chased from it every shadow.

I had received one letter from Vivian a few days after our arrival. It
had been re-directed from my father's house, at which I had given him my
address. It was short, but seemed cheerful. He said that he believed
he had at last hit on the right way, and should keep to it; that he and
the world were better friends than they had been; that the only way to
keep friends with the world was to treat it as a tamed tiger, and have
one hand on a crowbar while one fondled the beast with the other. He