His simple breakfast was finished, and he went to the window to look at the roses that pushed their pretty pink faces up to the sun through a lattice-work of green leaves.

There was a small yard outside, roughly paved with cobbles, but clean, and bordered here and there with bright clusters of flowers, and in one particularly sunny corner where the warmth from the skies had made the cobbles quite hot, a tiny white kitten rolled on its back, making the most absurd efforts to catch its own tail between its forepaws,--and a promising brood of fowls were clucking contentedly round some scattered grain lately flung out from the window of the "Trusty Man's" wash-house for their delectation.

There was nothing in the scene at all of a character to excite envy in the most morbid and dissatisfied mind;--it was full of the tamest domesticity, and yet--it was a picture such as some thoughtful Dutch artist would have liked to paint as a suggestion of rural simplicity and peace.
"But if one only knew the ins and outs of the life here, it might not prove so inviting," he thought.

"I daresay all the little towns and villages in this neighbourhood are full of petty discords, jealousies, envyings and spites,--even Prue's mother, Mrs.Clodder, may have, and probably has, a neighbour whom she hates, and wishes to get the better of, in some way or other, for there is really no such thing as actual peace anywhere except--in the grave! And who knows whether we shall even find it there! Nothing dies which does not immediately begin to live--in another fashion.

And every community, whether of insects, birds, wild animals, or men and women, is bound to fight for existence,--therefore those who cry: 'Peace, peace!' only clamour for a vain thing.