not to read for the establishment of doctrine, and Captain Tubb was enunciating arrant nonsense about the names of the Sundays preceding Lent.
The avenue was composed of ancient oaks. It was reached from the garden, which intervened between the house and it. The avenue was not perfectly in line, because the lay of the land did not admit of its being carried at great length without a curve, following the slope of the hill that rose above it, and fell away below in parkland to the river.
The walk was gravelled with white spar. It commanded an exquisite view down the valley of the Ore, over rich meadow-land and pasture, dotted with clumps of trees, beech, chestnut, and Scotch pine. A line of alders marked the course of the river, to where, by means of a dam, it had been widened into a lake. On the further side of the river, the ground gently rose in grassy sweeps to the wooded hills. To the south-west the river wound away about shoulders of richly-clothed hills, closing in on each other, fold on fold. The avenue was most delightful in the evening, when the setting sun gilded the valley with its slant beams, turned the trunks of the pines scarlet, and cast the shadows of the park trees a purple blue on the illuminated grass.
Oaks do not readily accommodate themselves to form avenues, they are contorted, gnarled, consequently oak avenues are rarely met with. That at Orleigh had the charm of being uncommon.
The evening was still, the sky was full of light, so much so that the stars hardly showed. The light spread as a veil from the north, from behind the Orleigh woods, and reflected itself in the dew that bathed the grass. Arminell was attached to this walk, in great measure because she could at almost all times saunter in it undisturbed.
She had not, however, on this occasion, been in it half
