"SUSPENSE." 69

could be turned to account in various ways, and could be
trained to prove of considerable use, both as set ters and
retrievers, among the turnips and clover, and in the young
plantations. But the perpetual curate who was master of the
parsonage was an elderly man, and no great sportsman, and
one dog was quite enough for him and his friends.
 Flora was sentenced to death along with her brothers and
sisters, and if it had not been for Master Harry her history
would have been of the briefest. He was not the sole hope of
the house, like De Vaux; neither had he any honours beyond
an honest name to succeed to. But he was the youngest born
of his family. He was growing up in a healthy, hardy, happy
boyhood, after the elder members had gone out into the world,
and were married and settled in households of their own.
Master Harry was the last young bird that kept the parent
nest tenanted by more than the old pair. He was the
Benjamin of their mature years, and therefore it was difficult
to deny him a small request-not that Harry's father and
mother did not strive to do their duty by him, in contradicting
and correcting him, as they had dealt by their elder children,
in order to bring him up in the way he should go. His
mother, who was a tall gaunt woman, as gaunt as Flora
became in later days, and yet as active and managing as if
she had been one of your little boneless, tireless women, and
the apple of whose eye Harry was, especially laboured con-
scientiously to mortify her own inclinations and hold her
youngest son in check. Even in the matter of Flora, though
she yielded to let the dog be reared, it was always under
protest and with reservations-if the dog proved a thoroughly
good dog, and was in every respect well conducted from her