Years afterwards, away in Scotland, in one of the great houses rich with beauty two men were talking by an open fire. The wintry sun shone through glittering windows and the room was trimmed with holly, green and gay.

"The lads will be home for Christmas, master?" said the elder man, stooping to push back a heavy burning log and sending showers of sparks up the chimney.

"Ay!" answered the other, who was tall and straight, with a face good to look upon.

"Ay! the lads will be home, Michael. Their mother counteth much on it."

"Thou art a happy man, my Lord, with thy two sons, and all this of life's comfort."

"Happy of course, Michael; and who would not be? What have I missed of the best? Yet old fellow, seemeth it not wonderful that I am staid and sober-minded, and of a steady prosperity? Truly the gods seem to love me, although I die not young.

"But fancies, strange and outside of aught we do from day to day, come to the best and worst of us at times. Hearken, I will tell thee somewhat.

"Last night I dreamed, and it went in this wise: One came to me, shining as the sun and grave of face—an angel perchance, though there be others better able to judge of that than I. Be that as it may, this shining one spoke in marvellous sweet manner and said,

'Don thou thy brown leathern suit and go out into the world, and look through the east and through the west for a flower. Somewhere it groweth for thee to pluck. None other may have it. White it is, and pure, and when thou seest it the earth will hold naught else for thee. In the golden heart of it lieth a potient of love that only thou may'st find.'

"So I went, good Michael, and long I searched. But not in the east, and not in the west was the flower I sought. Then as I grew over-weary of my quest I found it blowing upon the old bridge in London town.

"Of the sweetness of it, I cannot tell thee; but as I would have taken it to my heart there came a wind, strong and terrible, that broke the fragile stem, and drifted the lily away, across into the river-and so out to sea. And so-out to sea."

The man stopped speaking and gave a little laugh, half-bitter, half-sweet; then touched the old servant as he bent over the fire, his head far down, his silvery locks shading the sharp, worn face.

"'Twas but a dream, good Michael," he said gently; "'twas but a dream. And I am waking now. Dost hear the yeomen bringing in the yule-log? Marry! 'tis over-heavy by the noise they make! Haste thee away; they'll need thy wisdom to get it through the snow. Cheer up thine old heart then; cheer up thine old heart; to-morrow 'twill be Christmas."

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EEP in a shady dell, about a mile

DEEP

and a half from that village of Chalfont St. Giles, in which Milton took refuge when the plague was raging in London, stands the Quaker meeting-house of Jordans. Living or dead, no member of the Society of Friends could wish to find himselt in a spot more in harmony with the simple tenets of his creed. As the meetinghouse breaks upon the vision through the stately trees by which it is surrounded, it seems as if one had been vouchsafed a glimpse of New England in Old England; it is just such a building as was common in the New World what time the religious refugees of Britain, late in the seventeenth century, crossed the seas in search of that liberty of conscience denied them in the old home. On such rude wooden benches as still remain under that redtiled roof, no rule of life and faith would be more seemly than that preached by

George Fox; and than the simple God's acre which fronts the meetinghouse there could be no fitter resting place in which to await in quiet confidence that Day which will prove how far that creed was in harmony with absolute truth.

For several miles around, this district is rich in memories of the early Quakers. Near by was the peaceful home of the Penningtons, in which Thomas Ellwood was living as tutor, and from which William Penn was to take his first and most beloved wife. General Fleetwood, too, had his residence in the neighborhood. The reason for this focussing of so many Friends within a small area was probably the same as that which drove the Covenanters of Scotland to seek refuge on the lonely moors; to-day Jordans is sufficiently inaccessible, and two centuries ago it must have been an ideal haven for suspected sectaries.

More than two hundred years have elapsed since Jordans passed into the possession of the Society of Friends. It owes its name probably to a forgotten owner of the property; for it was not from a Jordan, but from one William Russell that, in 1671, Thomas Ellwood and several others acquired the land on behalf of the Society. The

idea of a meeting-house seems to have been an afterthought; it was as a burial place simply that Jordans was originally purchased. But the meeting-house was not long in following, for seventeen years later there is authentic record of its existence. Probably some generations have passed since regular meetings were held in this rude

temple; but twice every year--on the fourth Sunday in May and the first Thursday in June-set gatherings are held to keep alive the continuity of Quaker teaching within these walls.

But it is because of its graves, and not on account of its meeting-house, that Jordans attracts so many pilgrims year by year. For a century and a half there was nothing to distinguish one mouldering heap from another. Here, for example, is the account which Mr. William Hepworth Dixon, one of Penn's most competent bicgraphers, wrote of his visit to the place in 1851 :

"Nothing could be less imposing than the graveyard at Jordans; the meeting-house is like an old barn in appearance, and the field in which the illustrious dead repose is not even decently smoothed. There are no gravel walks, no monuments, no mournful yews, no cheerful flowers; there is not even a stone to mark a spot or to record a name. When I visited it with my friend, Granville Penn, Esq., greatgrandson of the State-Founder, on the 11th of January this year, we had some difficulty in determining the heap under which the great man's ashes lie. Mistakes have occurred before now; and for many years pilgrims were shown the wrong grave.

With the laudable desire of helping pilgrims to pay their devotions at the right shrine, Mr. Dixon prepared a simple ground plan of the graveyard, and the position of the small headstones which mark the graves to-day correspond with that plan to a large extent. But there is one important exception.

It will be seen from one of the pictures given with this article that the stone nearest to the fence in the second row bears the name of "John Penn," whereas in Mr. Dixon's plan that position marks the grave of "John Pennington." It is not easy to throw any light on this mistake. For instance, it is difficult to see what John Penn could be buried under the date given, 1746; certainly not the grandson who occupied Stoke Park and was responsible, in 1799, for that ponder

ous cenotaph to the memory of Gray. The grave is undoubtedly more likely to be that of a Pennington, a member of that family to which William Penn's first wife belonged. The mystery about this particular grave makes all the more unmeaning the recent attempt to desecrate it.

It lends a pathetic interest to this lonely graveyard to visit it fresh from a perusal of Thomas Ellwood's simple autobiography. All those who sleep so quietly under these modest headstones figure more or less in his pages; they become known to us in all their quaint Quaker habits and beliefs, and appeal to us with the tender sentiment of a bygone age. Penn had two wives and eleven children, of whom both wives and seven of the children keep him company here. Next to Penn himself, the memory which most dominates this burial place is that of Guli Penn, his first wife. Ellwood knew her in London as a child; became her playfellow; used to "ride with her in her little coach, drawn by her footman about Lincoln's Inn Fields." She was

the daughter of Sir William Springett, who fell in Cromwell's army, and her mother afterwards became the wife of

Isaac Pennington. Other children were born to Isaac Pennington and Lady Springett, and as tutor to those children Ellwood was for many years in daily converse with Guli Springett. He had ample opportunity, then, to win her for his own; and he was not "so stupid nor so divested of all humanity as not to be sensible of the real and innate worth and virtue which adorned that excellent dame." Outsiders talked, of course. Ellwood had not joined the Quakers for nothing; his motive was the conquest of Guli and the annexation of her fortune; it he could not get her by fair means, why then, of course, he would run away with her and marry her. Such pleasant gossip reached the ears of the Penningtons and their tutor; but the former did not lose confidence and the latter did not pluck up courage to make the gossip true. For Guli Springett was worth winning. "In all respects,"

says the meek Ellwood, "a very desirable woman-whether regard was had to her outward person, which wanted nothing to render her completely comely; or to the endowments of her mind, which were every way extraordinary and highly obliging; or to her outward fortune, which was fair." Ellwood's subsequent wooing showed that he did not deserve such a prize. Guli did not lack for suitors; but towards them all, "till he at length came for whom she was reserved, she carried herself with so much evenness of temper, such courteous freedom guarded with the strictest modesty, that, as it gave encouragement or ground of hopes to none, so neither

did it administer any matter of ofence or just cause of complaint to any."

The "he" for whom she was "reserved" was William Penn. Happening to visit Ellwood at the Penningtons, he saw, was enslaved, and then conquered. Twenty-two years of wedded happiness were