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52 slightest motion brought down a shower of white blossoms, and the sweet air grew yet sweeter as the brothers approached the more sequestered parts. The deer gazed on them for a moment with their large, tremulous eyes, and then bounded off, gradually slackening their graceful speed when a tree or a growth of fern served as a barrier; while here and there a pair of antlers were tossed up, glancing like ivory in the sun.

"Everything here is the very same as the morning I went away," said Robert Evelyn; "but, good heavens, the change in the country around! The house deserted, the field uncultivated, the peasant starting with a look of fear at the sound of your horse's hoofs, have little in common with the England which I left. But here I feel at home again; I could almost dream that not a flower had faded, and not a leaf fallen these three years."

"Now," returned Francis, "begin to moralise according to your mood. Rob Cowley of some quaint phrase touching the mutability of man, and the immutability of nature. But here, where these old oaks look too respectable to enact the part of eavesdroppers, I shall rather say, Out on the fanatic knaves that brought the country to this pass, with their seeing of visions, and dreaming