the limit of papa's last drive, the farm house in the winding valley
beyond, with its sloping orchard and home field, the last building in
the parish. They drove through the little market town, slowly wound up
the heights beyond, looked down into the broad, beautiful space where
the river Exe winds its blue course amid wood, field, and castled hill,
descended, losing sight of the last of the Torrs, glanced at Exeter and
its Cathedral, arrived at the station, and there, while waiting hand in
hand on the platform, gazing at the carriage, and starting at each puff,
snort, cough, and shriek of the engines, Marian and Gerald did indeed
feel themselves severed from the home of their childhood.

It was not till the afternoon that they left the railroad, and then they
had a two hours' drive through a country which Marian found very unlike
her own: the bleak, bare downs of Wiltshire, low green hills rising
endlessly one after the other, the white road visible far away before
them, the chalk pits white and cold, a few whitey brown ponds now and
then, and at long intervals a farm house, looking as if it had been set
down there by mistake, and did not like it, carts full of chalk, and
flocks of sheep the chief moving objects they met, and not many of them.

Marian sighed, yawned, and looked at Gerald many a time before they at
length came to a small, very neat-looking town, where the houses stood
far back from the street, and had broad clean pavement in front of them.
"This is Oakworthy," said Mr. Lyddell, and Marian looked with interest.
The church was just outside the town, white, and clean looking, like
everything else, and with a spire. That was all she could see, for they
drove on by the side of a long park wall, enclosing a fir plantation.
The gate of a pretty lodge was thrown back, and they entered upon a
gravelled carriage-road, which, after some windings, led to a large
house, built of white brick, regular and substantial. They stopped under