the drawing-room, and so they crept along the terrace to make sure, and were presently peeping in unnoticed at the door-window that opened to the grour.d.

Tor was on the sofa, looking very pale, yet more like his old self than they had expected to see him so soon, and Phyl was pouring out the tea from the old silver service, in the dainty way that was characteristic of her. Her eyes were full of laughing light, for Tor was absolutely teasing and chaffing his grandmother, just as Hannah said he teased her, and the little boys held their breath to listen, half frightened, yet wholly fascinated.

"Failed-of course I failed. What could you expect of a fellow who had picked up his farming in the school I did?" Tor was saying when the children first began to listen. "I tried to fit your pet theories to everything, Granny, and a lordly mess I made of it. What fellow with any sense in his head would ever have been so deluded as to think a woman understood how to farm?"

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Anyway, I've not failed and you have. Don't talk to me, you impertinent boy."

"Ah! and how much capital have you behind you, to pay up your losses with in a quiet way, so that no one is any the wiser for it?" asked Tor; and then there was a regular battle of words, which the children could not understand, but which proved to

them very clearly that their brother and their grand. mother fully understood one another, and that they were excellent friends. And being satisfied on this point, they crept away again without presenting themselves.

"Oh, isn't it jolly!" cried Curly, ecstatically. "Now we shall all live together ever so long; and perhaps grandmother will give Tor a farm of his own, and he'll let us live with him and help him to take care of it."

CHAPTER V

DING-DONG! ding-dong! ding-dong!

"There is the bell, Curly. Finish your breakfast quick, or we shall be late.”

"I've done, but I want to go and see Tor first." "You'd better not. You'll get talking and be late, and Granny does not like that."

"Oh, I won't be late; but I should like to see Tor first."

"So should I, but I think we ought to go now. I'm going; won't you come too?"

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Presently; I'll not be late," answered Curly, who had less conscientiousness than his elder brother, and was rather fond of asserting his independence at times. So Bunny, seeing it useless to protest farther, ran off to the little chapel alone, and Curly got down from his chair, and ran across the corridors to the door of Tor's bedroom, which was shut but not locked.

He thought his brother might be asleep, and looked cautiously in; but Tor had been awakened from the tardy sleep which had only come to him

in the early morning by the clang of the bell, and as soon as he saw Curly he cried out to him :

"I say, what is that confounded noise about, and how long does it go on?"

"You mustn't call it that," answered Curly. “Granny would be angry if she heard you. That is the chapel bell. It rings every morning for ten minutes, I think. Don't you like it?"

Tor's face expressed his distress better than any words could do. In choosing the situation of his room, nobody had recollected the matin bell. The chapel was near to the oldest and coolest part of the house, and the vibration and clangour might be unpleasant even to heads in a less irritable condition than poor Tor's.

"Chapel bell!" he muttered, between his clenched teeth. "Do you mean there is a private chapel on the place?"

"Oh yes; and Mr. Condover or Mr. Dalrymple comes every day to read the service there, and lots of the people come too. It's tiresome sometimes, but I like it, rather. Granny and Phyl always go. Didn't you know about it, Tor? Didn't they do it when you were a little boy?"

"Not they the days for such tomfoolery hadn't come then."

Curly stood half-aghast, half-delighted at such an indication of independent opinion. He always felt

a deep admiration for his big brother's expressions of criticism on what went on, but he hardly expected that Granny's doings would be treated with the same contempt as those of “the girls.”

"Sha'n't you go-I mean when you are up in time?" he asked with great interest.

Tor was in no mood to weigh his words, or to consider how they would strike a child. The bell was bringing back the raging pain in his head that the few hours' sleep had taken away, and not unnaturally his nerves were too much on edge for him to care greatly what he said or did.

"I go to a parcel of parson's rubbish like that? Not I! I should have thought Granny would have had more sense than to institute such a thing on her property. But women are always ready to let themselves be priest-ridden. Can nothing be done to stop that horrible noise?"

"It will stop directly now of itself," answered Curly, settling himself on the side of Tor's bed. "I sha'n't go this morning. I don't care for tomfoolery myself.”

It was rather a relief to find somebody who countenanced his own vague feeling that the morning service was something of a nuisance. True, Granny had made the little boys quite free to go or stay away as they pleased. She knew that they might very likely feel wearied by something that