and Time is busy at his spinning; but before he has spun a year, I shall be there. I shall walk down streets that I have seen in pictures, sit at vinegrown windows, learn the romances of ancient towns, and the mysteries of decaying palaces. The sketches that I must make cannot glow too warmly. I may revel in colour. This is all true. Why do I not grow eager about it? Perhaps because I can hardly realize it yet.

"I dare say my father will remain abroad, and I shall remain with him. Shall I ever return? Perhaps ten, fifteen, thirty years hence, when my hair is grey and my father dead, and I am Miss Waldron the artist, an elderly lady coming to finish her days in a gloomy house in London. Shall I then make a tour to the west of Ireland? The mountains would look cold and bitter to me, I know, and they would not recognize me, a grey-haired woman, stiff and angular, with a large purse. That does not sound like the description of Ellen who knelt on the heather and promised to come back. I think I had better break my word and keep away."

She closes the window and rings for lights.

During tea her father says,

"Ellen, love, do you recollect the book I spoke of that day when I found you? That book which I said you might illustrate ?"

Ellen recollects it. It lies in one of her trunks upstairs. She has often taken it in her hands, scrutinized the cover, and thrust it away again. It is one of the haunting reproaches that are for ever reminding her of what she was, and what she is. It knows that she had once power and energy and that she has become helpless and idle. It knows that she was once brave, and that she is now a coward.

Latterly she had taken for granted that the work had been done by some one else. She had never read the book. She says now,

"Yes, father, I remember. It is upstairs. Is the illustrated edition out yet?”

"No, dear, they are only setting about it now. I have had a letter to-night from the engravers who have undertaken the woodcuts. They are old friends of mine. I did work for them when I was twenty-five. If you fancy the task you may try it; if not, don't think of it."

"I will read the book and let you know to-morrow."

After her father's early bed-time had arrived, when left a'one, she did not, as usual, remain stitching listlessly at a piece of embroidery under the lamp, or sitting still as a statue out on the dark balcony, with her head and shoulders wrapped in a shawl. To-night she went straight up to her bedroom.

It was a sultry night, and the first thing she did was to fling her windows wide open. She shaded a lamp at a table, and took a vase of flowers from the mantel-piece, and set them She brushed her hair, and threw a shawl over her white dress. Then she produced her book and sat down. She would just read an hour or so to make a beginning.

near.

When she reached the end of the first paragraph (a long one), she raised her eyes with that expression with which a reader so plainly says, "This is good; I am in powerful hands. Let me plunge eagerly into the deeps of this volume." She turned the first page hastily.

She read on. The hours went past, the quarters chiming unheard from the near harbour clock. Ellen was interested. Twelve o'clock swung out seaward, and in through the open window where she sat with her fingers laced across her temples, and her eyes fastened on the open book.

What is there in this novel which enchains her? The last which she attempted to read was flung away in disgust. Perhaps the other was a plain tale, and this is a thrilling sensation story. No. This is a plain tale; only in form a faithful photograph of certain real phases of life. But it is a work built upon one grand idea, which is never for a moment forgotten from the first to the last. It seems almost strange that a writer like this should have chosen a novel as the vehicle of his thoughts; yet the story, as a story, is full of interest amounting to fascination; such as carries the reader out of his own narrow world, and makes him live in the scenes and passions conjured up by the power of the author. It is such a book as might influence one for a long time, making one see everything through the medium of its own peculiar turn of thought. Every page shines with truth. One feels the grandeur of the language beating on one's ear like the music uttered from a strong and most perfect chime of bells. And over and above al the potent good in the book, all the magnificences of the

diction, all the throbbing energy of the inspiration, there is a breath of something in addition which all might not feel, but which rushes on Ellen like a wind, blowing the slumbering fire of her imagination into a blaze. Something rings and rings round her like the sudden summons to action after inertion, something as she reads is throbbing within her, like an urgent finger striking on the key-note of all the music in her nature. The night flies on, the darkness ebbs away like the tide on the near sands, a nimbus of light hovers round the dusky earth, a dewy grayness descends from the opening clouds to refreshen creation. A briny dash quickens the air, coming through the open window; the pallid cliff, the drowsy coastline, and the phantom ships on the horizon, are wearing visible, whilst more and more steadi y defined grows the foamy, shifting boundaryline that parts the earth and ocean. It is clear dawn now,

and Ellen still reads.

Colours come hurrying out of the east, and the sun blazes on the dancing sea. She lifts her face, pale with vigil, and looks outward at the glory, then inward, and glances round the sunny walls of the room; then downward again, and there is no world but the world between those two yellow covers on the table.

The freshness of the morning passes with her spirit into the atmosphere of that world. The brilliancy of crimson and gold falls across the pages, gilding rare passages with fit illumination. Crimson for passion, and gold to crown heroism, and a fresh breeze to flutter the pages with joy, when in a blaze of morning radiance, the last touch is put to the picture, the last leaf is unfolded from the rose, the last heaven-piercing point is placed on the pinnacle, and there are no more words for eager eyes to read. So Ellen finished the book, whilst the birds were singing and the sun was growing hot up in the blue, and the boatmen were shouting to one another on the bay.

She shut it reverently, pushed it from her, and stood suddenly up, throwing back her hair, and passing her hands over her face, as if trying to dispel glamour and distinguish reality. She knew that a great change had come upon her. There would be no more listlessness to yield to, or contend with. It was time to wake now, and she had been summoned. She put on her hat and went out, taking the way to the

cliffs. She wanted the sea, and the sunshine, and the morning air to know that she had tasted new life and grown strong again. She walked along quickly, with her face to the waves. Her thoughts were meanwhile busy shaping snatches of thanksgiving, because that on the earth there was a man with a soul so pure, a faith so large, and a brain so grandly creative as was the writer of that yellow book; and also that his purity was as a cleansing wind, that his faith enkindled fire, that his pictures were realities to make the blood burn or the tears fall, or, if he willed it, to make the very soul run over with excessive joy. She thanked God for all this, standing on a rock out by the tide, with her face turned sunward, and the purpose of that book blazing in her eyes with a glamour more dazzling than that of the morning east.

"You look bright this morning, my love," her father said when she met him; "I think you are getting well."

"Yes," Ellen said, "I believe that nothing but idleness has been the matter with me. I have got something to do now. I was never born to be a fine lady."

CHAPTER XLII

FELICIA'S BALL

RETURNED to London, Ellen's life entered a new phase. She dusted up the old studio, and arranged it after her own fancy. Here, pencil in hand, she spent long hours, scribbling on a block wi h h yellow book open at some favourite scene before her. The difficulties which she had to deal with in making her illustrations kept her blood flowing, and carried her busily on from day to day. She entered into this work as if it were the one effort of her life. She put all her heart and soul into it. Sometimes it was sweet and quick, her pencil flowed with a facile power, and she went about the house with a serene brow and eyes full of a curious spiritual joy. Her feet on those days seemed to tread on air. Spells of distrust in herself would come when all her con eptions seemed common-place and conventional, and her execution full of feminine feebleness. Obstacles would arise in scenes hard to translate into pictures, when, soaring with the author, seeing with his vision,

and growing strong with his power, she yet seemed to feel blindly for forms grand enough, and subtleties of aspect fresh enough, in which to give to his words a visible shape. At these times she would leave pencil and book, and pace up and down the gallery; and rallying every power within her, she would meet and wrestle with her difficulties, till by dint of concentration she compelled them to give way, sometimes by slow degrees, sometimes at the bursting forth of a sudden light. "I have got it at last," she would say, and hasten down to the studio, and make her sketch. My pencil is free again. Ah, here is a true face. How is it that I have drawn anything so real ? I shall love that countenance always. I hope the engraver will not alter a single stroke or curve.

"I think my hero's attitude will do now. The turn of his head satisfies me. It is manly. How I did worry over that yesterday, and now it comes right enough. Where have I got this bit of landscape? Where was I standing by those old trees, and one ray of light coming through them and eddying down, down amongst the sagons crowding together in that still pool, and down, down into its black water? I have been there, but whether in the flesh or in a dream, one of my old real-like dreams, I cannot remember. I like this drawing; I do like it!"

"There, Ellen Waldron, you would remain for hours g'oating over your two or three jewels you have dug out of the soil of your own brain, fretting about their cracks and flaws, and altering their sittings, as if you expected ever to produce a perfect gem! Your father will need you by the time you have assumed your nice dress, in which you enjoy to feel yourself so much the lady, and have fetched your work-basket, and set the first stitch in your embroidery."

The engraver was

The blocks were all ready at last. satisfied, and in due course of time the illustrated edition of the bok called Sunward, was published.

Summer had worn away by that time, and it was the autumn. The time of Ellen's departure with her father and Maud was coming near. The Drummond boys had left the Largie for school. Maud would be in London before a great many weeks. Meanwhile a startling event suspended all the arrangements. Mr. Waldron was stricken by paralysis, and lay for weeks hover