eee THE PANELLED HOUSE. 73 I can assure you that you are quite mistaken. What would you wish me to do ?” “Let me go away somewhere to a tutor,” said Escott sullenly. “Do you think I could trzst you out of my sight, Escott ?” said his father sadly. Escott was too proud to answer; but the ques- tion rankled in his mind more than his father knew. Colonel Armyn went on. “If I could see any sign of improvement—any hope that you were trying to do right and conquer your faults—I should be happier. As it is, I am afraid it is doubtful whether you have sufficient self-command to be fit for Oxford in the summer.” Escott made an impatient movement. “My dear boy, if you only knew as much of the world as I do, you would know too well that it is nothing imaginary that I am trying to guard you from,” said his father sitting down near him. “You will meet with real evil when you go out into the world: not only the temptation of idleness or temper, but what may ruin you altogether. You have the strong passions of the Escotts and you know—or rather you do not know—how your grandfather and your two uncles were wrecked by them. That gambling propensity, for instance. I don’t mean to say: that having won eighteen- pence is a crime, but I have seen its consequences too plainly not to warn you. Going to the devil is not a fig&re of speech merely.” But Escott refused any response. When his temper was once roused he could be obdurate: and his father had said words to the same effect too often for these to impress him now. The Colonel’s gentleness irritated him: he would rather have had a sharp passionate rebuke, which he might have met, than his father’s disheartened remonstrance. He did not know that his father had carefully schooled himself to this gentleness, under the impression that he had sometimes been too abrupt and dictatorial to his wife. Perhaps, however, the very abruptness which Bella Armyn had resented might have been the best way of dealing with an unruly boy. As the snowy January afternoon closed in, Colonel Armyn paced his room, heedless that the fire had gone out. He was a reader of the ‘Christian Year,” and three lines from it would occur to his mind again and again,— The heart that scorn’d a father’s care, How shall it bend in filial prayer, How an all-seeing Guardian bear ? “Poor Escott!” he thought to himself ; “there will be much trouble in store for him, I fear, if his fieree temper is ever to be softened. I hope I don’t show him the irritation he gives me: J endeayour to be firm and gentle, but I’d sooner have a regiment of mutinous sepoys to deal with than one mutinous boy! I did not feel responsible for their after-life as I do for his. And yet there must be something wrong with me, or my boy and girl would not be as they are, after all these years of unremitting care and attention. Why is not Flora gentle and sweet-tempered and innocent natured, like that girl of poor Cordelia’s ?” ' And Colonel Armyn’s thoughts flew away to old times, when Cordelia Rivers had been the guiding star of his boyish love: before the “ cares of this life” had clouded the happy young heart, or disappointment and weariness of life blanched his hair before the time. That had been the poetry of life to him: the rest bad been prose: for even the heroic deeds which had made little Nest worship him as a hero, had been done by him as simple matters of duty, about which there was no choice, and the close Indian prison, and the burning jungle, had not been matters of romance to him when he had to undergo them, though he had borne their terrors like a brave man, “heart within and God oerhead.” ‘The only remains of that poetry which had once overshone life lay to him in the innocent thoughtful face of Nest Williams, in whom he sometimes traced a likeness in look or tone to her mother, which recalled the past as vividly as long-forgotten scent revives associations apparently blotted from the mind. IX. RED COVE. The sky was sunny, and blue the air, When out we started on our way. We said, “ To-morrow shall be as fair, And fairer than to-day.” The sky was stormy, the sea was wan, As home we sail’d in the waning light : ’Ware of the gale that driveth on! Praise not the day ere night! THAT spring passed away without much incident. Flora was extremely incensed when there was a ball at Erconbury, at Easter, and her father refused to take her there, saying that he preferred her making her first appearance in public under Miss Rivers’ chaperonage, when Nest came out the following winter. Nest might have gone to the ball had she wished it, but she had made up her mind to wait for Winny, for half the pleasure was lost to her if she could not watch her pretty little sister, and rejoice in the admiration she inspired. She did not look forward much to the ball herself, and with girlish intolerance, she rather despised Flora for taking her deprivation so much to heart, and was not disposed to put herself out of the way to oblige her. Girls like Nest who have lived a very quiet life in a remote village, are often liable to this kind of selfishness, veiled as it is with a plausible excuse in the family affection which they