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A strong wooden wall, surmounted by a gallery loop-holed for musketry, enclosed three buildings, containing quarters for himself and his men, together with a courtyard, from one side of which rose a tall dove-cot, like a belfry. A moat surrounded the whole, and two or three small cannon were planted on salient platforms towards the river.

Fleur whisked round, threw him a wave of her hand. "Good-bye, Mr. M. M.!" she called, and was gone among the rose-trees. She looked at her wrist-watch and the windows of the house. It struck her as curiously uninhabited. Past six! The pigeons were just gathering to roost, and sunlight slanted on the dove-cot, on their snowy feathers, and beyond in a shower on the top boughs of the woods.

"My Lords, in the presence of you all I vow love, honor, fealty and a wife's devotion to the prince of my choosing to my husband who shall be who now is by Gandharva ceremony; for I went to him of my own free will by night! My Lords, I present to you " There was a pause, while every man present caught his breath, and the women rustled like a dove-cot behind the panel.

Six great wooden beams were fastened to a rock, over which the waves roared twice everyday, and on the top of these a pleasant little marine residence was nailed, as one might nail a dove-cot on the top of a pole! This residence was ultimately fitted up in such a way as to become a comparatively comfortable and commodious abode. It contained four storeys.

It was decorated with Christmas-wreaths in white stucco, and a few miscellaneous ornaments like the gilded tassels one sees upon plush curtains. Overtopping all of this was the dome of a Turkish mosque. Rising out of the dome was something that looked like a dove-cot; and out of this rose the slender white steeple of a Methodist country church. On top of that was a statue of Diana.

Luckily, my great-uncle, Sir Peregrine condescended to interest himself in my welfare; the moment, therefore, that I was fairly convalescent he swooped down on the vicarage, like a hawk upon a dove-cot, and carried me off with him to London, where he treated me to a week's cruise among the sights of the place.

He left the upper chamber of the old dove-cot, made his way down the stairs to the yard beneath, turned the corner of the buildings, and by the aid of some loose timber which lay piled against it, climbed to the top of Joseph Chestermarke's wall. A moment of hesitation, and then he quietly dropped to the other side, noiselessly, on the soft mould of the border.

We must, therefore, abandon Darwin's idea when trying to explain the homing of the Cat as well as of the Mason-bee. The Pigeon transported for hundreds of miles is able to find his way back to his Dove-cot; the Swallow, returning from his winter quarters in Africa, crosses the sea and once more takes possession of the old nest. What guides them on these long journeys? Is it sight?

I can see the garden, with its old dove-cot like a low round tower, its scattered aviaries, its rambling vines that climb the laden fruit-trees, its firs, magnolias, great laurels, its glowing tomatoes and melons, its lettuces and capsicums and scattered flowers, all mingled with that carelessness which is art unconscious of its own grace; its daedalian paths, its statues so quaintly placed in unsuspected corners, its well, the picture is finished, for now begins the effort to recall its details.

The place is one of those hollowings out of a hillside which, revealing how high they lie only by the sky-lines of distant hills, always feel so pleasantly remote. And the peace and austerity of this little valley are heightened by the dove-cot of a farm invisible in the olive-yards, and looking like a hermitage's belfry.