less must it seem odd that he should do so in the middle of the night,
and with such a storm flashing and roaring around him, apparently
unheeded. The next morning he got his cousin to talk about her father,
but drew from her nothing to cast light on what he had seen.




CHAPTER IX.

IN THE GARDEN.

Of the garden which had been the pride of many owners of the place, only
a small portion remained. It was strangely antique, haunted with a
beauty both old and wild, the sort of garden for the children of heaven
to play in when men sleep.

In a little arbor constructed by an old man who had seen the garden grow
less and less through successive generations, a tent of honeysuckle in a
cloak of sweet pease, sat George and Alexa, two highly respectable young
people, Scots of Scotland, like Jews of Judaea, well satisfied of their
own worthiness. How they found their talk interesting, I can scarce
think. I should have expected them to be driven by very dullness to
love-making; but the one was too prudent to initiate it, the other too
staid to entice it. Yet, people on the borders of love being on the
borders of poetry, they had got talking about a certain new poem,
concerning which George, having read several notices of it, had an
opinion to give.

"You should tell my father about it, George," said Alexa; "he is the