And I looked up at him for a moment, as he stood with his one hand on the Great Bear's head, and his face turned up to let him see the clouds from beneath the black shade, and then I knew that the gentle heritage could be kept to the very end.

I stood close to him, squeezing my hands and fighting. And then, I think I had meant to show him how easily I could do it, for I began to laugh a little, but it ended in me crying a little, and so I gave a kind of loud howl.

'Yes, I will do it,' I said; 'yes, I will! I will put the lilies back, and then I will weed Bobby's desert all over, to show how sorry I am for doing another ungentle thing. I don't want to do it, if you would rather I spoke quite truthfully. I don't want at all, but yet I will.'

'Yes, I would,' said Bogy. 'That is what I would try to do, if I were you. For it is to try to keep the gentle heritage.' I hurried through the garden; I ran, for fear of changing my mind, for I did not want to do it at all And I dug the poor lilies up again, and planted them in the old place in Bobby's garden, quickly, before I had had time to think about it, and I went down on my hands and knees, and began to weed the garden.

There were a great many weeds in the desert, a very great many, and my back ached a good deal before I had finished, and I could not always see which was chickweed, and which was groundsel, because of tears in my eyes. But I had finished at last, and I gathered up the weeds in my pinafore, and carried them away.

I think I had expected to feel much happier than I did, when it was finished, for in tales you immediately feel happier after you have conquered yourself. But perhaps I had not conquered myself enough, for even when the weeding was done, I thought how my back did ache, which a quite happy person would not have minded; and whilst I was throwing the weeds away, I cried a little about the lilies, which seems very mean, but it is quite

true.

It rained all afternoon. Mother had taken Patricia and Annis to Abchurch, and Bobby had escaped from nurse and gone out; she would not let me go too, so I could only sit in the window and look at the rain, and feel rather miserable, and as if it did not do much good after all to try to conquer yourself. But still I thought that as I had began, I might as well go on doing something hard, and when the rain stopped before tea-time, and

nurse let me go out for a run, I made up my mind to go and make friends with Bobby again.

I could not find him for a long time, but at last I saw him in the lime-walk, and I went towards him. He did not see me until I was close to him, for he was stooping down; and when he stood up he carried something between two twigs-something that dangled-and he took it across the walk, and laid it carefully on the bed.

'Bobby, what are you doing,' I said.

'I'm he began, and stopped to consider. 'I'm he began again; 'I'm trying to be more a gentle person.'

I don't see how.'

'It's a worm, you know. They are all worms, and I have been moving them for ever so long.'

'But why?'

'Yesterday Bogy said that a person who was truly gentle couldn't be unfair to another person because he disliked him. And so in bed I was considering it. I can't bear worms, and I know I am unfair to them, for I hate to find them in my garden, and wish they would get out of it. So I have been moving them off the walk, because it is not their fault that they are all lying about, and I feel sure that they do not like being trodden on. It takes a long time, because I can't do them with my fingers, like Timothy, and it does rather make the back ache, because there are such lots in this walk after rain.'

'It is very good of you,' I said.

'No, it isn't,' he answered, 'because I still cannot bear them ; and I cannot do them with my fingers yet, which would be politer than sticks; but perhaps as I get more gentle, I shall be able to do it, even the wet ones.'

'You are much more gentle than I am already,' I said.

'No, I'm not,' he said, in his slow, arguing way, 'because you don't know things.'

'That is it,' I said; 'you don't know either. But I wish you would be friends again, at any rate.'

'All right,' said Bobby. 'We might go and look at the gardens now, and see if they look nice after the rain. I said a few nasty things about your rockery. I beg your pardon. This is some houseleek that I have got for you myself from Timothy's pigsty roof. I have rubbed my knees out again, but you need not tell nurse what I was doing. I knew it was no use waiting

for him any longer.'

'Bobby, you are a good thing,' I said, as he offered me the houseleek, screwed up in brown paper, and rather warm with being in his pocket.

'No, I'm not,' he said; 'you don't really know.'

And then we came to the gardens. And the white lilies were planted in the middle of my bed, all clean and shining with the rain.

'You are a good thing, and I knew you were!' I said, almost choking.

'No,' said Bobby again, and he said it quite remorsefully. 'You don't know, you see. I put them in my own bed first, before you could get a chance. And then I thought it seemed so mean, that I came out this afternoon, and put them in your bed. You are to have them for my turn, and then for your own. It is to pay for behaving nastily to you.'

'I won't have them for either turn,' I said. 'Wait until I have told you.'

But when I had told him, he still said, 'It doesn't matter,' and I said, 'It does matter,' so to save an argument, we joined at the gardens again.

'And this time they will have two turns to grow in,' said Bobby; and if they should flower, it will be in your garden, and you will have the honour of it. They may flower this time, you know, even if they are a little late.' . ..

They did not, of course; but that was not Bobby's fault.

(To be continued.)

A VISIT TO THE VARDARELLI.

GENERAL CHURCH, with a picked body of troops, was marching up and down the Provinces of Apulia, sometimes fixing his headquarters in one city, 'sometimes in another. His soldiers were devoted to him, and he writes of them, and of the officers of his Staff, as excellent,' 'thoroughly reliable for the most part,' though the Militia were 'sometimes very bad; the Gendarmerie were fine-looking men, and well appointed, but so many of them belonged to various Secret Societies, that they were not altogether trustworthy.' He had an especial pride in the troop of Hussars, which he had himself formed; also in the body of Greek soldiers who followed him then with the same devotion with which they followed him in after years.

He speaks, too, of 'the good spirit and constant good-humour which characterised all who worked with him, making what might have been a difficult task comparatively easy and agreeable; the want of numbers being made up by intelligence, activity, and good will.' In fact, when the gentry and respectable folk of the country saw clearly what manner of man this new General was, how careless of personal advantage, how singlemindedly determined to do his duty, how earnest in his desire to free their fair Apulia, they rallied round him, received him and his troops with brotherly hospitality, and were willing to stand by him in any way they possibly could. But this was a work of time; and at first he was met, more often than not, with suspicious and sullen looks when he entered the towns and villages.

'What is it about this Englishman that makes you all run after him?' said Ciro Annichiarico, the Chief of the Decisi, on one occasion, to a certain Don Giacomo di Montenegro, to whom he had come for assistance, and had been refused. "You his friend, and why?'

'Well?' answered the old gentleman, thoughtfully. 'Well,

we are old friends. I'll tell you the story. When Joachim Murat was King of Naples, an English frigate came and burnt a French frigate here in our harbour, under our very noses!'

'That's true, for I saw it with my own eyes, and a gallant thing it was,' interrupted Don Ciro.

'Well, I don't know that we liked the Englishmen the worse for doing it. The Captain and a friend of his, an English Colonel, lodged in my house for weeks. Fine fellows they were, and we became great friends. After a time the Colonel went away on some mission to Zante, for his Government, and while he was absent, the Captain and all his crew were drowned, by the upsetting of their boat in a sudden squall. All Brindisi lamented them, and when the Colonel came back, and learnt the fate of his friends, he was like a man distracted; all the more so, because before he could find the bodies and have them honourably buried, an English frigate came and carried him away. Well, he put a sum of money into my hands-not that I wanted money from him-begging me to do for his friends what he was prevented from doing himself, and we parted with many promises of undying friendship. I was glad to be able to let him know that the bodies of the Captain and sailors were found, and buried with military honours, as he would wish, and except for a letter of thanks, I heard no more of him. This was four years ago. When, some months since, I heard that the new General who had been sent into the Province was an Englishman -the English are good people, thought I-I will go to Lecce and pay my respects to this General, for the sake of my old friend! So I went, and to my delight found the General commanding was no other than my old friend himself, and that he had not forgotten me, but welcomed me as if we had parted only yesterday. Besides, he trusts my honour, he comes to my house; judge if I can betray his confidence! No, no, Don Ciro; I would not do it to save my own life, much less to save yours, the evil Genius of Apulia, whom, God knows, we have served not from love, but from fear!'

There are many other incidents of the same kind, showing how the frankness and trustfulness of the man seemed to appeal to the hearts of those with whom he came in contact. Stern he could be, but it was when he met with cruelty, falsehood, or double-dealing. His men were devoted to him, and he to them. He was evidently on the most friendly terms with his officers and with the gentlemen of the Province, who would answer to VOL. 85 (V.-NEW SERIES).

26

NO. 506.