They were just such country ladies as there are by the score in English shires, fond of riding, gardening, walking, and great at tennis. Johu Wright had certainly reason to be proud. His children were good and good-looking. His balance at the bank was a large one. Save for an occasional twinge of gout, he was wonderfully hale and hearty. Then the social standing of the family was all his wildest ambition could have desired. People said that he played his cards well when he had married the utterly destitute daughter of a peer's younger son. Certainly the family was accepted without question by the county families, and viceroyalty occasionally sat at the well-plenished table in John Wright's dining-room. After all, it was a little thing to him and his, that the peasants met him and his sons with scowls instead of obeisauces. If he had ever thought upon the curious circumstance, he had perhaps set it down as another tribute to his many suc

looked well-bred if not handsome. | stones, a line of bent, pathetic figures, like Millet's "Gleaners," extending as far as where the hedge was in shadow. A ghostly yellow radiance from the stormy sunsetting shone in every pool of the wet, brown earth. The fallowfields were purple in the gathering twilight. Now and again a woman left the line to empty her apronful of stones into the large heap by the roadway, and then returned to her picking. There was a man in charge of the pickers, and as I came along the field-path, the farmer drove up in his little trap. He was on his way home from inspecting the work of his wide-reaching farm. The farmer is no ordinary man, as a glance at his face will tell you. It is a strong, open, good face, ruddy with open-air living and perfect health. Under the grizzled eyebrows his eyes are startlingly blue, blue as the eyes of a very young child. The look of innocence they give him is corrected by his firm, handsome mouth and magnificent brow. As I came up he was looking quizzically at the distant line of women. The old fellow leaning on the shaft was telling of his trials in stewarding them. "Ay, indeed," said the farmer sympathetically, "I'd sooner manage a gang of monkeys myself than the same women."

cesses.

The daughters, for all their riding to hounds and tennis playing, were unworldly creatures, taking after their mother in this. The family belonged to the old religion, which made the popular hostility the more inexplicable. John Wright indeed was no voteeni.e., devotee nor did he exact from his boys a very stern adherence to their religious duties once they were away from the mother's apron-string. She and the girls might be as devout as they would, might dress and decorate the church, and be as friendly as they liked with the Sisters of Mercy, who had their novitiate in the heart of this quiet country. When, indeed, one girl after another developed a religious vocation John Wright was not seriously disturbed. It was different with his lads, to whom he looked to found him a family.

I am great friends with the farmer, and was quite welcome to join the confab; so I leant on the other side of the brown pony and discussed the fine weather we were having this side of Christmas. While we talked the dusk thickened, and the women, with sighs of relief, came up to the cart standing near us, which had been collecting the stones all day, and selected each some miscellaneous article of outdoor wear from the heap hanging on its red beams. The farmer had a kindly word for each, and seemed well liked by his work-people.

As we stood there was a muffled I chanced upon a curious manifesta- sound of horses' feet somewhere on the tion of the popular feeling against the sward. The farmer peered sharply Wrights one autumn evening, and at into the dusk. As the sound came the same time had the cause explained nearer he flung the reins to the man to me. I had made my way into a and tumbled out of his pony-car. field where the women were picking When the riders came up out of the

dusk shadowily, he stepped forward | said one, "cock his father's son up wid with a quick movement and caught the riding across honest men's lands !" foremost rider's horse by the bridle.

The farmer wiped out the lining of his head-gear as he mounted to his seat. "There goes an English woman," he said, "calling me in her heart an ignoBut I'll let no blood of a 'stag' gallop at will over my land."

There was a lifting of the clouds in the west, and the watery light fell on the scene. There was a pair of riders -young Wright and a lady. The lat-rant Irish brute. ter was a plump, satin-skinned girl, remarkably well habited, and riding a beautiful bay mare. I must say I felt sorry for the couple when their progress was so sharply interrupted, especially as there was an audible snigger from some of the younger women "stag" had given me a clue, for it is behind. One could see that young the word used in Ireland - perhaps Wright flushed darkly all over his fair, elsewhere, for all I know-to express boyish skin. an informer.

"Turn back, young sir," said the farmer abruptly; "these are private lands, and I will not allow them to be cut up by the hoofs of your horses."

The young fellow answered, half sulkily: "We are keeping to the path, and can do your fields no harm.”

"Excuse me, sir," said the farmer, "you were about to ride through the next field, where there is a flock of my ewes. Your father's son doesn't need to be told that the tramping of horses, even without your dog which I see is following you will not be for their benefit. You had better return the

way you came."

The lady leant forward, turning on the farmer the beauty of limpid eyes, and said in a pretty English accent "I am sure we are sorry, sir; we would not have been here if we knew the ground was forbidden to us. But will you not let us pass on this time to the road yonder, which I see is only a field away?"

The farmer lifted his hat courteously. "I am sorry," he said, "to appear disobliging to a lady, but you and Mr. Wright must return the way you came here."

The English lady frowned as she turned her horse sharply, and as for young Wright, poor lad, he looked as small as his handsome young manhood would let him. They cantered back into the dusk, and the farmer turned to his work-people, who had thoroughly enjoyed the scene. "Quite right, sir,"

I got a lift in the farmer's trap and asked him to explain to me the little scene and the odium which seemed to follow the Wrights. The epithet

"You've heard of Michael Kelly, of Oldglass?" he said. "God rest his soul! I dare say you've heard the people's songs about him and how he died for Ireland in '98. Well, Wright's grandfather, that lad's great-grandfather, was the man that sold him. Do you see Burlass there, beyond where the furze fire is blazing? Well, Michael Kelly was hid there in a cave that few knew the secret of. It wound far back into the cliff. It was in the days when the Rebellion was being stamped out drowned out in blood. There was a price on Michael Kelly's head, but there wasn't a man, woman, or child in the country wouldn't have died for him. He could have escaped, but the wife was expecting her first baby, and was a delicate bit of a thing, let alone the trouble of the time preying on her. I've been told he used to steal down sometimes of a moonless night to be with her a bit, and safe enough, too, for he was guarded by men sworn to die before a hair of his head should be hurt. The government thought he had escaped, so there wasn't much of a watch in this part of the country, and except for a party, now and again, of marauding Yeomen, mad for blood and plunder, things were quiet enough.

"Robert Wright was a United Irishman, too, my curse on him! Some said he was tempted by the big reward, others that Michael Kelly had married the woman he had set his black heart But if the last was the truth

,"on.

Michael Kelly knew nothing of it, for he trusted him—ay, loved him like a brother. Well, anyhow, Wright, his damned face covered with a mask, led the Yeos one night into that cave in the heart of Burlass. As they bound Michael Kelly after a fierce fight for there were two or three of the boys with him- he wrenched himself free long enough to tear the mask from the face of the traitor that stood by looking at his work. 'You!' he said; You! O good God!' and then he was dragged to the mouth of the cave. But one there escaped to tell the story.

he

had so cowed the people that thought he might be safe among them. What brought him back here? Well, you see, part of his reward was Michael Kelly's house and acres. It's where the family lives now, though I suppose it's much changed, and no doubt the young people are brought up in ignorance of the stain on them. Robert Wright didn't die in his bed anyhow. They said it was an agrarian murder. It was rather fashionable to die that way in those days. But people knew better."

66

"A strange story!" I said. The "They brought Michael Kelly to his farmer replied after a pause. Ay, own house and strung him up to a tree indeed, but a true one. And if John in front of his hall door. The poor Wright had any sense in that big head wife was taken with premature labor, of his he'd take himself and his seed, and died half delirious, before morn- breed, and generation out of this ing; the child never lived. Robert country. He needn't think then 'tis Wright disappeared for a while, and going to be ever forgotten to them." came back when horror and famine KATHARINE HINKSON.

Above her dreamful face so dazzling fair,
Whereon such sweet serenity did brood,
There shone the golden nimbus of her hair, My soul shall find its dream, that now is

And stainless lilies gleamed amid the On some diviner shore, where Love is All.

THE SEA AS AN INVADER. The flat marshes of Pevensey have gained half a Like fires of sunset when they flush the mile since the days of Edward II., when

But lo! e'en as our eager hands were insecurity of rock defences where the sea twining,

is the invader occurs at Filey, on the York

Those eyes, like splendid stars, withdrew shire coast. Only twenty years ago there

Fading and fading . . . and behold! 'twas Another twenty years may see the church

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