into shadow, and again the woods and castle bend forward like an ancient Psyche to behold their unwrinkled beauty in the pool.

This is the park of Arundel and on this turf for a thousand years men have walked and felt the beauty of lengthening shadow and the peep of silver stars. The uproar of Saxon wars has filtered through these trees, but it has been purged of strife and agony. The clamor of Norman William, which pounded once upon the lodge, put here its sword aside in the peaceful magic of the night. The noise of conquering armies found at last this meadow by the lake, and it dropped its spear to linger through dark uncounted hours. On these hills of Arundel the frail beauty of the past wanders forever like a ghost in the gardens of a misty paradise, and the wind among the trees is the rustling of her silken skirt.

In all England I have discovered no spot so beautiful to come upon at evening when the year pauses in the expectant hush of summer. Here if anywhere the heroine of a lovelorn tale might walk with a hound in leash. A hooded falcon might properly sit upon her wrist as in an ancient story. Or perhaps the lady steals from an unguarded casement to seek her mate in the shadows of the grassy bank, and in the metaphor of stars and hill they tell to one another the long duration of their love.

Where are these ladies, the whispered word, the kiss, the moons of yesteryear? The towers of Arundel rise in darkened outline, without the candle of a waiting signal. The spaces of these hills are bare of sandaled

feet. No footfall sounds beneath the trees. No soldier stands in tryst upon the grassy bank. And the wind that knows all tunes of human love and passion roams restless through the dark and sighs with melancholy longing for these nights to come again.

For once Bill was silent, nor did he weave even a silent plot. He created no Pomfret-Dawken here to soil the night, but lay quiet with his head upon his elbow, lost in meditation until the darkness fell upon us.

What quality resides in beauty to stir the heart? At Killarney, also, there is magic in the night. One believes in fairies in this west of Ireland where men are barely tamed to the harness of modern thought. All the air is charged with superstition. The sudden gust that sweeps across the hills blows hard against the reason, and one hears the far-off voice of phantom creatures who live within the pathless woods. This thing that they call the Celtic twilight broods upon these waters of the west, and man's love cannot run its course without the intrusion of ghostly forces.

By Italian lakes, also, romance takes up its lodging, but not in homespun. By the quiet unruffled waters of the south love is dressed in silk. It stands at a casement to be painted by the eternal moon, whose brush is apt to comely pattern through centuries of practice. On its listening ear there falls the sound of forgotten songs, and it wears a satin slipper to be kissed. It is not entirely the south land's starlit waters, its mountains that shield them from the world, that persuade us to romance. In the glistening night the air is filled with the memory of a thousand summers

whose songs have strummed their passion. Laura in a dress of green yielded her prudence to a kiss. Medici and d'Este! And did not Beatrice, once upon a time when the world was new, listen here to Dante's song and by surrender grow immortal? These are the memories that fill the languorous air. If now in our sunken days of prose thought seeks a woman here, the quest is but cousin to that eternal love that prospers in the south.

Experience that is born on land runs quickly from our recollection, but if it be cradled on a lake there in our heart it thrives. And if a man might choose a spot to tell a woman of his love, let it be in such environment. For nature is his ally, and the harsh accents of his voice borrow music from the circumstance of night where quiet waters lie in shadow. Here deepens a sympathy of thought so that each shall know the other in occasion when the portals of the heart are loose. Misty forms arise, too timid for the day; and these two stand on the margin of a world where dreams may prosper in the silence. And even if their love shall drift to an evil end and they spend their lives apart, always in the minds of both a tenderness must linger and the hour be one of softened memory.

I wonder at the flight of meditation that runs upon the blind highways of the dark. A bell that sounds upon the night is a soft alarm to rouse the recollection. Shadows crowd upon my window. They skip upon the clouds and roam the purple avenues of thought, if perchance they find the lodging of a word once spoken whose abandoned echo now grows dim.

Having waxed monstrously sentimental by the darkening shore of Arundel's lake, we hoisted ourselves stiffly from our elbows and went back to the village. Shutters were pulled upon the windows. Lights were out. We beat upon the jeweler's door, took candles from the table of the lower hall and climbed the stairs to bed.

A volume of Mrs. Southworth stuck out from the others as a hint, so I plucked it down, put my candle on a chair and read for a sleepy hour.

In the silly tale there was a good sister with yellow hair that fell about her knees, which is easy enough in novels; and a bad sister who was of raven tress and an evil depth of flashing eye. These two, each in her opposite fashion, loved a gentleman whose name was Marmaduke, and looked as such. And at first he was in disguise on some noble business of the King. The good sister loved him deeply, but with that timid modesty which was once the fashion and takes a bit of time to work its ends. But the bad sister saw through his false mustache and knew him to be a duke of many dirty acres. So she jilted the country yokel who had once been the top of her ambition and tempted Marmaduke to kiss her lips; which in these old stories is almost as good as marriage. It was, of course, a horrid thing to do and was frowned on by Queen Victoria as she read the book reposing on her imperial elbow in one of the beds in the aforesaid towers of Arundel.

But Marmaduke, although he wavered dangerously in this early chapter, discovered presently that the brunette was no better than she should be and that the