Hamilton planting a seed of the sweet pea of her name. With gentle, loving fingers she laid it in her garden's acre, and in the warm brown mould she placed a slip of wood, washed white with lime, on which she wrote—"The Lady Grizel Hamilton."

That vision passed, and then I saw the hand of God stretch forth and take the gentle lady in His grasp. With fingers just as tender, He laid her in a corner of His acre and, whitening a little cross of stone, He wrote—"The Lady Grizel Hamilton."

"Can it be that there is philosophy in the very air of this country?" thought I to myself, and then, before the fancy of it vanished quite away, I said the name again. I must have said it aloud. "The Lady Grizel Hamilton," said I, and looking up, I saw Cruikshank on the other side of the bed smiling at me.

"Picking out the best?" said he. "The Lady Grizel is a wonderful pale mauve."

"Are these little mites of things going to bear a mauve flower?"

"Are they going to bear baskets full of them?" he said. "Baskets and baskets full! Wait till you see them when they're standing as high as my arm can reach."

"You're boasting," said I.

"I'm not, on my oath. I stand six foot, and they come high above my head. In these beds here, with this aspect, I can grow the best sweet peas in the South of Ireland."

"Go on," said I, "I like to hear it. No man's a gardener until he can say his garden is the best. It's the colossal and superb self-satisfaction of the creation all over again. You find it all good. And they would say man was not made in God's image! What color does Lord Nelson wear?"

"A faint blue."

"Good—and Black Knight?"

"Oh, a most wonderful deep black scarlet."

"Out of that little tuft of green!"

I looked up and found his eyes were watching me.

"Why do you ask?" he said. "You're not a gardener."

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