the soil of a strange land. Is it so?"

"Ay, something of that, sir."

Then Kenelm roused himself to talk of foreign lands, and to map out a
plan of travel that might occupy some months. He was pleased to find
that Tom had already learned enough of French to make himself
understood at least upon commonplace matters, and still more pleased
to discover that he had been not only reading the proper guide-books
or manuals descriptive of the principal places in Europe worth
visiting, but that he had acquired an interest in the places; interest
in the fame attached to them by their history in the past, or by the
treasures of art they contained.

So they talked far into the night; and when Tom retired to his room,
Kenelm let himself out of the house noiselessly, and walked with slow
steps towards the old summer-house in which he had sat with Lily. The
wind had risen, scattering the clouds that had veiled the preceding
day, so that the stars were seen in far chasms of the sky
beyond,--seen for a while in one place, and, when the swift clouds
rolled over them there, shining out elsewhere. Amid the varying
sounds of the trees, through which swept the night gusts, Kenelm
fancied he could distinguish the sigh of the willow on the opposite
lawn of Grasmere.



CHAPTER II.

KENELM despatched a note to Will Somers early the next morning,