Mildred: An Autumn Romance.

MILDRED : AN AUTUMN ROMANCE .

BY BKO . EMRA HOLMES , Author of "Waiting for Her ; " "The Path of Life : An Allegory ; " " The Lady Muriel , " etc ., etc . CHAPTER I . THE OLD TOWN TS TltE EEXS .

NOT a great way from Peterborough , just off the Great Northern Railway , stands the Old Town in ' the Feus . It is a rambling old place , with queer names to its streets , and queer streets to its names . There is tho Great Why te and a Little Wbyte , the Hollow Lane and the Muckle End , and of course a High Street , which is not at all high , but rather the reverse . There is an old Gothic gateway still standing , and carrying one back in its history

to the times whan there stood hard by a mitred Benedictine Abbey of great wealth and magnificence , founded before the Conquest by Ailwine Duke of the East Angles . Upon the ruins of this abbey is now built a stately Elizabethan mansion , the residence of one of the county members , who is lord of the manor of St . Beuet ' s , and whose ancestors purchased it from the successors of the Cromwells , on whom the property was conferred at the dissolution of the monasteries in the reign of Harry the Eighth . A social place , a very social place ; everybody knew everybody else ' s business , ancl took the same interest in it as eacli did in bis own . Some one described St . Benet ' s as

like a warren—people seemed always running in and out of each other ' s rabbit holes , and apparently were equally happy and contented whether in their own or their neighbours' domicile . Small towns are proverbial for scandal , but I think St . Benet ' s was au exception to the rule . At all events the gossip was of a very harmless character , and there was less backbiting iu the queer old town , with its thatched houses , winding streets , aud tortuous by-ways , than in most other towns of its size and circumstance .

They have an annual fair in July at St . Benet's , where much stock is bought and sold , and the farmers come from the great flat fen farms to do a goodly business . Agricultural implement makers come out in great force , and astonish the natives with wondrous machines for reaping , sowing , thrashing , drilling , and all the varied pursuits which engage the attention of the agricultural labourer , and threaten to improve hhu off the face of the earth . On a vacant space near the old Norman church ( restored unfortunately rather too soon in the dayand still blessed in its ulterior with a hideous

, gallery , and windows filled with choice stained glass suitable to a staircase , or the lookout in a back yard , but hardly worthy of the sacred edifice which they adorn but do not beautify ) stand a row of tents containing all that makes the fair to the juveniles of St . Benet ' s—consisting as they do of al fresco toy shops , confectioners' ditto , menageries and peopshows , portable rifle galleries ancl crockery merchants' stalls , and the inevitable hotographic establishmentwhere all the servant irls ancl farm lads have their portraits

p , g taken . Opposite the embattled tower at the west end of St . Hilda ' s stands a pleasant terrace of neat modern Elizabethan houses in keeping with the surroundings , each faced with a modest bit of garden known as Abbey Buildings . At right angles to them is the great Gothic gateway forming the entrance to St . Benet ' s Abbey , the seat of Major General Mathew-=-Matheu he calls it , not Matthew , as some irreverently pronounce the word .

lhe General is particular as to the pronunciation of bis name , possibly because some of his detractors trace a Hebrew ori gin to it , and say , his great-grandfather , who bought the estate , was a rich Jew grocer in the city of London , in the early clays of George the Third , who got his wealth by sanding bis sugar and putting birch brooms in