perfect and a well-formed nose, with thick short brown hair and small whiskers which came but half-way down his cheeks—a decidedly handsome man with a florid face, but still, perhaps, with something of the promised roughness of the farmer. But a more good-humoured looking countenance Clara felt at once that she had never beheld.

"And you are the little girl that I remember when I was a boy at Mr. Folliott's?" he said. His voice was clear, and rather loud, but it sounded very pleasantly in that sad old house.

"Yes; I am the little girl," said Clara, smiling.

"Dear, dear! and that's twenty years ago now," said he.

"But you oughtn't to remind me of that, Mr. Belton."

"Oughtn't I? Why not?"

"Because it shows how very old I am."

"Ah, yes;—to be sure. But there's nobody here that signifies. How well I remember this room;—and the old tower out there. It isn't changed a bit!"

"Not to the outward eye, perhaps," said the squire.

"That's what I mean. So they're making hay still. Our hay has been all up these three weeks. I didn't know you ever meadowed the park." Here he trod with dreadful severity upon the corns of Mr. Amedroz, but he did not perceive it. And when the squire muttered something about a tenant, and the inconvenience of keeping land in his own hands, Belton would have gone on with the subject had not Clara changed the conversation. The squire complained bitterly of this to Clara when they were alone, saying that it was very heartless.

She had a little scheme of her own,—a plan arranged for the saying of a few words to her cousin on the earliest opportunity of their being alone together,—and she contrived that this should take place within half an hour after his arrival, as he went through the hall up to his room. "Mr. Belton," she said, "I'm sure you will not take it amiss if I take a cousin's privilege at once and explain to you something of our way of living here. My dear father is not very strong."

"He is much altered since I saw him last."

"Oh, yes. Think of all that he has had to bear! Well, Mr. Belton, the fact is, that we are not so well 

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