One Midsummer Night

by Mary Elizabeth

"Bon jour, Maitre Picard. Can I have a word with you?"

Maitre Pierre Picard, the miller of Montvert—a little, spare dry chip of a man, with a brown, weather-beaten face carved into a myriad of crooked wrinkles, and keen, bird-like black eyes—was stooping to tie up a sack of flour at the foot of the mill steps. On being thus addressed he raised his head, which was decorated with a striped cotton nightcap, and shading his eyes from the glare of the June sunset, looked up at the speaker, a stalwart young Norman of five-and-twenty, fair-haired, fair-bearded, with frank, vivacious blue eyes and handsome, sun-burned features.

"Bon jour, Andre Leblond. A word with me? Certainly—as many as you like. Come indoors," and clapping his hands to rid them of the flour, he led the way across the green which lay between the mill and the house.

As he entered, a shrill voice cried joyfully, "Here's dear father!" And then a little crutch came tapping rapidly across the floor, and two little arms were thrown round his knees.

Maitre Picard's only son was a cripple—a frail, gentle little lad of five years, with wide, solemn dark eyes which seemed several sizes too large for his small, pale face. With a smile of tenderness which transfigured his hard features, the miller bent over his motherless child.

"Yes, here I am, little one," he said, giving the expected kiss; "but I cannot take thee now—I am busy. There—run to Denise. Come in, Monsieur Leblond."

The child obediently limped off to his sister, who sat near the window, peeling vegetables for the supper-soup. She was a tall, slim girl of nineteen, with a clear complexion, which the sun had kissed into warmth, and soft velvety brown eyes—eyes so beautiful that in looking at them one forgot to criticise the other features. She looked up as the visitor entered, and greeted him with a quick bright smile of welcome. A furtive glance of intelligence was exchanged between them, and then the young man uncovered, and saluted her with formal politeness.

"Bon jour, Ma'm'selle Denise. I hope I see you well. You are busy, as usual."

"As usual," repeated Denise, cheerfully. "It is a long time since we saw you at Montvert, Monsieur Andre. Your mother is well?"

"As well as usual, thanks; but the rheumatism gives her little rest, even in summer. Our house is damp, you see, the land being ill-drained."

"But it is good land," asserted the miller, as he sat down on a chair near the hearth, and took out his pipe—"very good land—La Chenaie."

"Not bad," the young man allowed, shrugging one shoulder; "but, as my father used to say, it has never been properly cultivated. It wants capital."

"It wants capital? A-ah!" responded Maitre Picard, lengthening the ejaculation into a sort of snarl, as he stooped over the hearth and lighted his pipe at one of the smouldering brands.

Andre, glancing at Denise, wondered why she frowned at him as if he had made a mistake; but he soon forgot that speculation and everything else in thinking what a pretty picture she made as she sat near the narrow easement a slanting ray of evening sunshine lighting up her brown hair, her high white coif, quaint silver earrings, and skirt of dark blue serge, with a great heap of vegetables at her feet—big round lettuces, carrots, leeks, and beans, all tumbled together in picturesque confusion. The miller glanced over his shoulder at the visitor and frowned, as if something displeased him.

"Denise," he said sharply, "it is Pierre's bedtime."

"Yes, father, I am just going to take him."

She rose as she spoke, shook the peelings from her apron, and threw the prepared vegetables into the great iron soup-kettle hanging over the fire, and then turned to the little lad, who had followed her about, watching her proceedings with a face of grave interest.

"Come then, my bird—it is time to go to roost! The dustman is coming presently to throw dust into the eyes of little folk who ought to be in bed. Kiss father and say good night."

The miller put down his pipe and opened his arms wide to take the child.

"Good-night, my heart, my treasure," he murmured—"angels guard thee!" And taking the little wan face between his brown hands, he looked at it with devouring tenderness, kissed it again and again, and then relinquished little Pierre to his sister.

"Say 'Bon soir, Monsieur Andre,'" prompted Denise; and putting the little hand to her lips, she sent the visitor a kiss by deputy, with another of her brief, bright smiles.

"Bon soir, Mon'sieu Andre," chirped little Pierre.

"Good-night, little one; sleep well!" said the young man pleasantly, returning both the smile and the kiss; and he watched the girl as she crossed the kitchen with the child in her arms and ascended the steep stairs.

Left tete-a-tete with his host, the visitor seemed to find a difficulty in opening the conversation.

"Won't you sit down?" said Maitre Picard drily; and the other, who had forgotten that he was standing, hastily subsided into a chair on the opposite side of the hearth, where he sat turning his hat about in his hands and absently examining the maker's name inside. The miller meanwhile smoked on placidly, looking at the fire. At length, "taking his courage in both hands," Andre plunged into his subject.

"Maitre Picard, I am come to renew the proposal I made two years ago for your daughter's hand."

"Well?" interrogated Maitre Picard, letting the word escape at that corner of his mouth in which his pipe was not.

"You declined it then on the ground that Denise was too young, and that I was too poor; but you gave me leave to hope that, if in two years' time I could raise myself to a better position, you would reconsider your refusal. You remember?"

"Perfectly."

"Well," the young farmer continued, gathering courage as he went on, "I think I may say that I have succeeded. I have been very lucky these last two years; everything seems to have prospered with me. I have bought fresh land, and have put my money in the bank—"

"Very proper—very prudent," interposed his companion, between two puffs.

"And altogether my prospects have never looked so bright. I love Denise fondly and truly, Maitre Picard, as she deserves to be loved; and if you will give her to me, I will do all a man can do to make her happy."

The miller, in a cool, leisurely way, extinguished his pipe, knocked out the ashes against the leg of his chair, and put the pipe in the breast-pocket of his coat; then, looking across at his companion, he said deliberately,

"I thank you for the honor you have done me, Monsieur Andre Leblond; and I beg to decline your proposal."

Andre's face, in its sudden change from cheerful confidence to rueful amazement, was a study.

"You refuse me—again? Well, but—you said—you as good as promised, when we spoke of this before—"

"Listen!" interrupted the miller, tapping his nose with his forefinger by way of emphasis. "This is what I said—'If, in two years' time, you are in a suitable position, and if Denise is still free'—mark that 'if'"—

"Well, she is free! she told me so herself!"

"Ah, indeed! When was that? When did you see her alone?" was the quick question.

Andre colored, and bit his lips.

"We—I—I sometimes walk a little way with her on Sundays, after church."

"Oh, indeed?" said the miller, resolving on the spot that for the future Monsieur le Cure should not have to complain of his non-attendance. "But, you see, I have not yet told Denise of my intentions," he resumed. "She does not know that she is promised, or as good as promised, to my friend and neighbor Simon Moreau."

Andre's chair squeaked on the stone floor, as he pushed it back half a yard in his indignant astonishment.

"Good Heavens, Maitre Picard, you don't mean it? Simon Moreau—a man old enough to be her father—a course, vulgar, uneducated boor, who is—"

"The richest man between here and Fougeres," interposed the miller with a nod.

"And you will sell your daughter to the highest bidder, without even letting her have a voice in the matter? You will—"

"Oh, Denise will not oppose me! She knows her duty too well," he interrupted.

"Then it is the more shame of you to make use of her submission to break her heart," was the quick retort. "You'll forgive me if I speak warmly; but I feel strongly."

"Yes, I make allowance; you are disappointed, naturally," the miller returned, taking a pinch of snuff. " My daughter's dowry would have been useful—hein? The farm 'wants capital.' A-ah; I understand!" And he shut his snuff-box with a snap, smiling sourly as he glanced at his visitor under his floury brows.

The young farmer flushed up to his bronzed temples.

"I am no fortune-hunter, Maitre Picard; I think you know that. I protest against such an accusation," he began hastily.

"Good; when you have done protesting, I will wish you good evening."

"Nay, but listen to me," Andre pleaded, conquering his resentment by an effort. "I am quite willing to take your daughter penniless, if you will give her to me on those terms."

"Good evening," was the only reply.

"Consider what you are doing!" cried the young man, with passionate earnestness. "We have loved each other for years, Denise and I; it will break our hears to divide us. And think what the poor child's life will be, as the wife of such a man as Moreau! Even if you persist in refusing her to me, don't—for heaven's sake, don't give her to him!"

"Good evening," said the miller once more—and this time his finger pointed to the door.

Andre, glancing at the stern set face, saw that all his eloquence was thrown away. With a sigh of despair he took up his hat and rose.

"You refuse me then—unconditionally."

"Exactly; and if you come again on the same errand, I shall shut the door in your face."

"I shall trouble you no more," the young man replied as he passed through the door.

As he was moving slowly and sorrowfully away, a widow high up in the steep roof, above the door, opened noiselessly, and Denise looked out. She called to him softly—

"Wait for me by the bridge."

He nodded and walked away across the yard, and along the unfenced road which wound down the hillside into the valley below.

At the foot of the hill was a stream, crossed by a quaint stone bridge with one wide arch and one narrow one. Beyond the bridge a lonely lane led between high banks and tangled hedgerows to the village of St. Marie-les-Chenes, three miles away.

At length the sound of a quick, light footstep made him look up with a start, and the next moment Denise was at his side. She was out of breath with the haste she had made, and could not protest, even had she been inclined to do so, when her lover, taking her hands in his, drew her to him, and kissed her on both cheeks.

"I dare not stay long, or father will miss me," she said hurriedly. "Have you spoken to him? What did he say? Ah, I see the answer in your face!" she broke off. " He has refused you!"

"Yes, Denise, he has refused me. And do you know what reason he gives? That you are promised to another!"

She started.

"Promised?" she repeated breathlessly. "To whom am I promised?"

"To Simon Moreau." he said.

She drew back, looking at him blankly, the color fading from her face.

"No, it is impossible; father cannot mean it!"

"That is what I said when he told me; but he does mean it, Denise. He refused you to me, and he will give you to that boor, who is not worthy to kiss your shoe! Great Heaven, how shall I bear it?" he exclaimed, with a passionate gesture. "To have worked for you, hoped for you, lived for you, all these years, and now, after all—"

His voice broke and he turned away his head abruptly.

Denise stood at his side with the same blank, stunned look on her face.

"But are you sure there is no hope?" she asked in an eager, tremulous undertone. "Did you remind him of his promise two years ago?"

"You may be sure I did not forget that. I used every argument I could think of; but there—I might as well have talked to a stone."

With a gesture of despair she let her hands fall to her sides.

"If he has made up his mind, nothing will move him. It is all over!"

"But it is not—it shall not be!" her lover exclaimed impetuously. "Do you think I will give you up so lightly, after loving you so long? Not at your father's or any man's bidding! Denise, listen. In less than a year you will be of age, and then, if he still refuses his consent, why—we will do without it! You need not look so shocked," he added impatiently. "It is not a crime that I am proposing."

Denise shook her head.

"If I set him at defiance he would curse me, and that would be terrible," she said. "No blessing would rest on our marriage, for certain."

"And will a blessing rest on the one he has planned for you?" her companion asked. "Will your father's approval make you any happier as Moreau's wife? Just think what your life will be in the long years to come. If you have no pity for me, have pity on yourself, Denise."

She nervously twisted the quaint gold ring on her finger, her eyes full of trouble and perplexity.

"Dear," she said slowly at last, "I must not think of myself in this matter. If I did I should never have courage to say to you what I say now, with a sorrowful heart—we must part." Her voice faltered, and she paused a moment, than went on. "Even if I could bring myself to disobey my father, there would still be an obstacle between us. If I married without his consent, I should come to you penniless, and—"

"What of that," he interrupted, quickly. "Your love is dower enough for me, my sweet."

"Ah, no," Denise returned, shaking her head. "It's not as if you were rich. You have your fortune still to make, and, as your mother said to me the last time I saw her, an imprudent marriage would hamper you for life."

"My mother need not have said that," said Andre, frowning.

"But it is quite true, dear. And knowing. this, can I be so selfish, so cruel as to—"

"Denise, Denise," he interrupted, passionately, "do not break my heart! What is poverty compared to the loss of you? What would riches be to me without you? Ah," he added bitterly, "you do not love me, or you would not talk in that strain."

"Do not I?" she questioned, with tender reproach. "I love you too well to injure you. It is love, as well as duty, that holds me back from you."

"I think you do not know what love means," was his reply. "If you felt for me as I do for you, nothing—nothing—would hold you back from these longing arms and this lonely heart of mine. Ah, no, Denise, you do not care for me! I have been miserably mistaken."

The tears rushed to her eyes and her lips quivered.

"You are mistaken now," she said, in a tone half proud, half sad; but think as you will. You do not understand me, that is all."

Both were silent a moment, Andre staring moodily on the ground, his companion looking sorrowfully away over the sunlit meadows.. At length the. sound of a horse approaching along the lane roused them both.

"I must go now," said the girl, with a sigh, looking at him wistfully as she put out her hand. "If we must part, Andre, let us not part in anger. Forgive me, dear, and—forget me."

He turned and looked at her, then, suddenly, with an inarticulate sound of tenderness, caught both her hands in his, and drew her to his breast.

"Forget you? When I forget there is a heaven above us!" he added, in a passionate undertone, and taking her face in his hands, he kissed her on her eyes, her lips, her brow. "You love me; we will not be parted," he whispered, laying his bearded cheek against her forehead. "I cannot live without you. Listen, dearest. I told your father I should trouble him no more; but I am resolved, now, to make one last appeal to him. If he repeats his refusal, then you will have to choose between him and me. You understand?"

"I understand," Denise replied; but wait a few days before you speak to him again. He—"

She broke off, glancing nervously down the lane.

"Look, Andre, it is Monsieur Moreau," she whispered. "Let me go; he must not see me here."

Andre glanced over his shoulder at the approaching horseman, muttering something that was certainly not a benediction.

"I shall come to Montvert again in a fortnight—on Midsummer Eve—" he said, hurriedly; till then, adieu, dear one."

"Adieu," she echoed, as she waved her hand to him, and hurried away.

Taken by Storm

Author Unknown

Translated by Edmund

Content Warning: #4 (explanation)

Her Rival

Author Unknown

A young lady was sauntering along the quay, by the side of the Seine, pausing at every one of the shelves of old books that lined the parapets, and now and then asking the price of some moth-eaten, battered volume from the equally moth-eaten and battered proprietor, meditating over his pipe, under the budding trees. She was very prettily and very daintily dressed, but her face and carriage showed so much quiet resolution and self-reliance that the boldest idlers of the boulevards would have been deterred from annoying her even in cynical Paris, and on the very boundary of the Latin Quarter. She was deep in a quaint little copy of La Bruyere, some sixty years old, which was offered at half a franc, when she heard a burst of light laughter not far from her ear, so strangely mingled of sweetness and a kind of haunting mockery that she involuntarily raised her eyes.

Approaching her were a young man and a girl, perhaps two or three years older than herself, and as near the perfection of physical beauty as it was possible for a woman to be, Miss De Forest acknowledged to herself with a strange pang. She had a profusion of pale chestnut hair, a skin of lilies and roses, large liquid eyes, a perfectly developed figure, and an undulating grace of motion which did not belong to the streets of Paris. She was perfectly well dressed; but while Miss De Forest, in her own toilet, displayed the happy medium between chic and dignity, characteristic of the demoiselle du meilleur monde of whatever nationality, the girl who suddenly confronted her with an impertinent glance had more the quality of chic than was strictly desirable. "She is not a lady," thought Miss De Forest: "a grisette, probably," and the jealousy pang deepened, for the man accompanying this girl—the man who had raised his hat without looking at her, while a faint color overspread his handsome features and clear skin—was the man of all others to Amy De Forest. She had loved Arthur Duncan for more than a year, had watched the ebb and flow of his genius, had encouraged him to new effort in his desponding hours, and shared with him the pleasure of his success. There had grown up between them a comradeship which, on her side, had ripened into something deeper, and on his had led to the thousand subtle marks of preference that may mean nothing or anything. And what, in other men, meant nothing seemed in Arthur Duncan to mean everything, so much so that Amy De Forest, clever, self-poised girl that she was, had come to believe in the absolute predominance in the scheme of her future life of this one figure. Only yesterday evening they had sat long together in the embrasure of the wide window that looked upon the gardens of the Luxembourg while the lamps sprang into light through the dusk; and when he went away, pleading an engagement in a friend's studio, he had lifted her hands to his lips in the darkness, and called her his better angel.

The girl bit her lips and opened the La Bruyere again—the bitter, healthy draught of the wit's cynicism acted upon her as a tonic, and kept back the starting tears. The lives of her men friends outside her mother's drawing room did not concern her, she thought; but it was hard that Arthur with his talk of aspiration toward an ideal, and the elevation of art above sordid realism, should find his inspiration in the soul of a grisette. And yet she could not blame him; the girl was beautiful—like a white rounded waterlily with dewy petals. Perhaps if she herself was a man—. She closed the book abruptly and paid the old bouquiniste for it, and then turned up a long avenue that leads past the Pantheon to the gardens of the Luxembourg. She liked those gardens better than the stately alleys of the Tuilleries. There was more of the flavor of old Paris of De Musset and Balzac. She liked the thread-bare students with their books, the knots of sewing-girls, the bourgeoise mothers and nurses, with the children playing around them; the old men with red ribbons in the button-holes of their rusty broadcloth coats.

The spring wind swept down the avenues, scented with flower odors from the market of St. Sulpice. Miss De Forest wandered on to where the great fountain stands, half dried, with the water shallow over the rock-work of its basin, and green wet beards dripping about the Tritons and Neptunes, and ivy throwing its arms out from the crevices of their shapes, and overhead, new leafing trees casting a tender twilight upon the quiet place. The voices of children came from the main avenue. Miss De Forest seated herself on the edge of the basin, and looked into the shallow water, yellow with the dead leaves in its bed. The reflection of her own face came back to her framed in the shadow boughs.

There had been times when its bright blue eyes and delicate outlines had seemed to her to fill all requirements of beauty, but now, darkened by the decaying leaves and with the memory of the splendid creature she had just seen rising before her, it seemed quite impossible that any man could ever regard her as beautiful.

"Pure physical beauty is best worth having," she thought with a sigh. And then she thought many things that a girl might think under the circumstances, but that poets set down in allegory—the world old problem of the two women struggling for authority over the soul of the one man, as old as history and legend—Tannhauser bound in the chains of Venus while his chaste Elizabeth awaited his return. All men solve it for themselves, and all women in one way or another bide the issue of it.

Miss De Forest fell to studying her daintily gloved little hands as they lay on her lap, and especially the place where, last night, Arthur Duncan's lips had rested. A shadow came between herself and the sunlight beyond the trees, and, glancing up, she saw before her the man she loved. She looked up at him with a smile slightly touched with the cynicism learned from the small book in her lap.

"What charming weather, is it not? The air is full of spring sounds to-day. I have been walking a long distance."

"Alone, Miss De Forest?"

"Yes; why not? I much prefer walking alone unless I have a very agreeable companion, and you know I am not a demoiselle francaise, to be bound by les convenances."

Were these two people, talking the smallest of some talk, the two who had parted the night before with the look in their meeting eyes that makes speech useless? A shadow had come between them—the shadow of a woman with limpid eyes and a shape like a pictured goddess. There was a moment's silence. A bird sang in the tree overhead, a leaf whirled down into the translucent water, the drops trickled from the green beard of the water-god.

"When will you come and see my picture, as you promised?"

"Whenever mamma will go with me. You know I cannot go to your studio alone."

There was a distant, haughty ring in her voice that Arthur Duncan had never heard before.

"I am going home," she said, rising. "I am tired—I have walked too far. Will you not come in this evening?"

"Thanks; I am sorry, but I have made an engagement which I can scarcely break."

"Ah!"

"May I take you to your door? The streets are now full of students and all kinds of people."

"Thanks; I have no fear. I do not think any one will trouble me."

Faint Heart and Fair Lady

Author Unknown

Content Warning: #1 (explanation)

Bill Bowker's Triumph

Author Unknown

BLISSFUL END OF A COLLIER'S COURTSHIP. 

William descended to the pump in the back yard, and had a wash in the half-light of 4 o'clock, and Selina got out of bed and took sly peeps at him through her tears. William, his ablutions over, went out for a dreary stroll, past the Hilly piece, and over Stevenson's hills, and down Jacob's ladder, and Dead Man's lane, and on to the brook-side again. There, on June bridge, he stood and watched the eddies circle around the great stones, and found that negative and bewildered comfort which trouble always finds in running water. Meanwhile Selina had gone back to bed and had there renewed her tears, and was finding some comfort in running water also. And at the moment when William stood upon June bridge, Abraham Gough, in a suit of flannels, was making his way to the day-shift in the Strip-and-at-it. Lest you should find yourself too much disturbed by the phrase, let me explain that the Strip-and-at-it was a coal mine, so named, by its inmates, from the cant phrase of some "doggy" or ganger. "Now, lads, strip and at it."

Poor William regretted his holiday and longed for the hour when work should begin again. He beguiled the heavy hours of the day by the composition of woebegone verses, whereof fortune has preserved a fragment, which I here embalm:

The sun that shines so bright above
Knows naught about my wrongful love;
The birds that sing in Wigmore Lane
Bring nothing to my heart but pain.
It is a very dismal thing
That in my ears the birds do sing,
While my Selina has gone off
To walk with Mr. Abraham Gough. 

William's muse was in the right. It is a very dismal thing to the wounded heart, grown egotistic through its pain, that nature should seem out of sympathy with it—that the sun should shine and the birds should sing, just as brightly and as merrily as though Selina were still true and gentle.

William took his humble meal of bread and cheese and his pint or so of beer at a little public-house in the aforesaid lane, and then strolled home again, still very miserable, but a trifle soothed by the verse-making process. He was due at the mine at 6 o clock, and an hour before that time he was upstairs exchanging his Sunday costume for the work-day coaly flannels, when he became conscious of a bustle in the street. Looking through the window, he beheld men running hatless and coatless, and unbonneted, unshawled women scurrying along as fast as their feet could take them. Everybody ran in one direction, and in the crowd he caught a moment's glimpse of Selina and her father. The girl's face was white with some strong excitement, and there was a look of the wildest imaginable fear in her eyes. Both hands were pressed to her heart as she ran. A Black country collier's instinct in a case like this is pretty likely to be true. William threw his window open, and cried to the hurrying crowd:

"Where is it?"

"At the Strip-an'-at-it," some familiar voice called out as the straggling crowd swept by.

"What is it?" he cried again.

"Shaft on fire," cried another voice, in answer; and in a second the street was clear.

William Bowker dashed down stairs and hurled himself along the street.

"Anybody down?" he gasped, as he turned the corner and passed the hindmost figure in the hurrying mass. The woman knew him.

"For God's sake, lend me thy hand Willyyum," she gasped in answer. "My Joe's in."

He caught the shrivelled little figure in his great arms as though the old woman had been a baby, and dashed on again. Ay, the tale was true! There belched and volleyed the rolling smoke! There were hundreds upon hundreds of people already crowded on the pit mound and about the shaft, and from every quarter men and women came streaming in, white-faced and breathless. William set his withered burden down, and pushed through to the edge of the shaft. There was water in the up-cast, and the engines were at work full power. Up came the enormous bucket and splashed its 200 or 300 gallons down the burning shaft, and dropped like a stone down the up-cast, and after a long, long pause came trembling and laboring up again, and vomited its freight again and dropped like a stone for more.

"Yo' might just as well stand in a ring an' spit at it," said Bowker, with his face all pale and his eyes on fire. "Get the stinktors up and let a man or two go down."

"Will yo' mak' one, Bill Bowker ?" said a brawny, coal-smeared man beside him.

"Yis, I wull," was the answer, given in a bulldog's growl.

"I'll mak' another," said the man.

"An' me," "An' me," "An' me," cried a dozen more.

"Rig the bowk, somebody," said the love-lorn verse-maker, taking at once and as by right the place he was born for. "Bill—Joe—Abel—Darkey—come wi' me."

The crowd divided and the five made for the offices, and found there in a row a number of barrel-shaped machines of metal, each having a small hose and a pumping apparatus attached to it. They were a new boon from the generous hand of science—a French contrivance, as the name affixed to each set forth—"L'Extineteur." Each of the men seized one of these and bore it to the edge of the shaft, the crowd once more making way. A bucket, technically called "a bowk," some two feet deep and eighteen inches wide, was affixed to the wire rope which swung above the burning shaft. The self-appointed leader asked for flannel clothing. A dozen garments were flung to him at once. He wrapped himself up like a mummy and bound a cotton handkerchief over his face. Then with the machine strapped securely across his shoulder, he stepped one foot in the bucket and laid a hand upon the rope. A man ran forward with a slender chain, which he passed rapidly round the volunteer's waist, and fixed to the rope which supported the bowk. Another thrust an end of rope into his hand and stood by to reeve out the rest as he descended. Then came the word, "Short, steady." The engine panted, the rope tightened, the clumsy figure, with the machine bound about it, swung into the smoke, and in a death-light stillness, with here and there a smothered gasp, the man went down. His comrade at the edge dribbled the rope through his coal-blackened fingers as delicately as though it had been a silken thread. Then came a sudden tug at it, and the word was flashed to the engine-room, and the creak of the wheel ceased and the gliding wire rope was still. Then, for a space of nigh a minute, not a sound was heard, but every eye was on the rope, and every cheek was pallid with suspense, and every heart was with the hero in the fiery depths below.

Then came another warning tug at the rope, and again the word flashed to the engine-room. The wheel spun round, the rope glided, quivered, stopped, the figure swung up through the smoke again, was seized, lowered, landed. When his comrades laid hands upon him, the flannel garments fell from him in huge blackened flakes, so near to the flames had he been. He cast these garments from him, and they fell, half under, at his feet. Then he drew off the handkerchief which bound his face, and, at the godlike, heroic pallor of his countenance, and the set lips and gleaming eyes, women whispered pantingly, "God bless him!" and the breath of those bold fellows was drawn hard. Then he reeled, and a pair of arms like a bear's were round him in a second. In two minutes more he was outside the crowd, and a bottle of whisky, which came from nobody knew where, was at his lips as he lay upon the ground, and two or three women, ran for water. And while all this was doing, another man, as good as he, was swinging downward in the blinding smoke. So fierce a leap the flames made at this hero, that they caught him fairly for a moment in their arms, and when he was brought to the surface he hung limp and senseless, with great patches of smoldering fire upon his garments, and his hands and face cracked and blackened. But the next man was ready, and when he, in turn, came to the light, he had said good-bye to the light for ever in this world. Not this, nor anything that fear could urge, could stay the rest. There were five-and-thirty men and boys below, and they would have them up or die. With that godlike pallor on their lips and cheeks, with those wide eyes that looked death in the face, and knew him, and defied him—down they went! I saw these things, who tell the story. Man after man defied that fiery hell, and faced its lurid, smoky darkness undismayed, until, at last, their valor won the day.

The love-born William had but little room in his heart for superfluous sentiment as he laid his hand upon the wire rope and set his foot in the bowk again. Yet just a hope was there—that Selina should not grieve too greatly if this second venture failed and he should meet his death. He was not, as a rule, devotionally inclined, but he whispered inwardly, "God be good to her." And there at that second he saw her face before him—so set and fixed that in its agony of fear and prayer it looked like marble. The rope grew taut, he passed the handkerchief about his face again, and with the memory of her eyes upon him, dropped out of sight. The man at the side of the shaft paid out the slender line again and old hands watched it closely. Yard after yard ran out. The great coil at his feet snaked itself, ring by ring, through his coaly fingers.. Still no warning message came from below. The engine stopped at last and they knew that the foot of the shaft was reached. Had the explorer fainted by the way? He might, for all they knew above, be roasting down below that minute. Even then his soul, newly released, might be above them.

Through the dead silence of the crowd the word flashed to the engine-room. The wheel went round and the wire rope glided and quivered up again over it. There was not a man or woman there who did not augur the same thing from the tenser quiver of the rope, and when, at last, through the thinner coils of smoke about the top of the shaft, the rescuer's figure swung with the first of the rescued in his arms, there was heard the sound of infinite pathos—a sigh of relief from 20,000 breasts—and dead silence fell again.

"Alive?" asked one, laying a hand on Bowker's arm. Bill nodded and pushed him by, and made his way toward that marble face, nursing his burden still.

"Seliner," he said quietly, "here's your sweetheart."

"No, no, no, Bill," she answered. "There's only one man i' the world for me, Bill, if ever he forgives me an' my wicked ways."

Cheer and cheer of triumph rang in their ears. The women fought for Bill Bowker, and kissed him and cried over him. Men shook hands with him and with each other. Strangers mingled their tears. The steel rope was gliding up and down at a rare rate now, and the half-suffocated prisoners of the fire were being carried up in hatches. Selina and her lover stood side by side and watched the last skipful to the surface.

"That's the lot," yelled one coal-smeared giant as the skip swung up. Out broke the cheers again, peal on peal. William stood silent, with the tears in those brave eyes. The penitent stole a hand in his.

"Oh, Bill," she whispered, "you didn't think I wanted him?"

"What else did you think I fetched him out for?" queried William, a smile of comedy gleaming through the manly moisture of his eyes.

She dropped her head upon his breast, and put both arms around him, and neither she nor he thought of the crowd in that blissful moment when Mr. Bowker's courtship ended, and soul was assured of soul.

Warragul Guardian and Buln Buln and Narracan Shire Advocate, Thursday 23 December 1880, supplement page 2

Barbara

by Annie Robertson Nixon*

Was there any mail, Eben?"

And leaning over the little wicket gate, dark locks falling about her in pretty, care-less tresses, Barbara looked wistfully down the shady street and then up at the tossing elms, where the busy birds were chattering. And, sad to relate, a frown of discontent crept over Barbara's white brow.

"No, there were no letters for the Leightons," said Eben in a savage mood. "I made special inquiries for you," and Eben's lower lip trembled a little, and his voice softened wonderfully for him. "I suppose you are anxious to get away from the old place, Miss Barbara?"

"Yes, I am," said Miss Leighton sharply, with an imperial air. "I am sick of it all. I should be glad to go anywhere from here."

Eben made no reply. He looked down at the tangled curls, the soft, wistful brown eyes, the dimpled hands clasped over the mesh of honeysuckles—then away over the tops of the snowy balsams toward the great world where Barbara's heart was. He was thinking with one cruel pang which gripped his heart at that moment of what life would be at the farm without Barbara. He had tried of late to live without connecting her in any way with his days and nights, his duties, his hardships and his joys, but he had made sorry work of it. It gave Eben a fright to know how much everything depended on this proud, spoiled beauty, whose dream now was to get away from such as he —the common folks around Larborough.

Barbara at eighteen had a great longing for that gay world of which she had read in summer evenings when sitting under the musky vines in the farm-house porch, or when lying amid the cowslips in the meadow where, under a growing weight of care, Eben toiled with great brown hands in the capacity of help to the Widow Leighton. Eben was as much part and parcel of the place as the crumbling head-stones in the little graveyard on the hill, where all the dead Leightons were lying. No one ever dreamed of his going away, although his merits were acknowledged, and it was admitted that the boy had grown into a strong, handsome man, with shrewd capacities as a financier, and a turn for machinery. A great many of the village had dropped into the habit of addressing him lately as Mr. Hexford, and Eben's muscles commanded respect. He had a little snuggery in the barn he called his workshop, where at odd hours on rainy days he tinkered with lathes and pulleys and edged tools. When his farm work had been tidied up and the cows had been milked and turned into the green woodlands again, Eben shut himself up in his workshop and pottered over his numerous inventions and thought of what great possibilities might have been his if he had been born something better than Mr. Leighton's farm hand. He realised sensibly that there were still possibilities for him out yonder before the dark line of elms and firs which he could see from his study window. But his benefactor had died and left all the tangled threads of his affairs for young Hexford to unravel, and he could not have deserted Mrs Leighton and the girls—Barbara and Theo. It would not have been right or manly. Things were going straight now, however; the farm was in a prosperous condition, and even an indifferent manager could have kept the wheels moving which Eben had fixed in their places. But Eben remained on at the farm while the sea-sons waxed and waned, and the girls were growing into fine, tall young women, with restless yearnings for a busier life than was to be had at Larborough.

He had expected that a girl so pretty as Barbara would be some time leaving so dull a place, but he nevertheless felt a wild, savage pain at his heart when he learned that a letter had been sent to a distant aunt to see if she would not look after Barbara while she enjoyed the advantages of a finishing school for young ladies. The longest summer days would fade into short summer nights, and bye-and-bye, when the first yellow leaves would be dropping into pools and hollows, Barbara would go away—perhaps for ever.

Eben was too much of a man to sigh, and too muscular to do without his supper, but he fell into the habit of taking long walks alone, or of sitting under the honeysuckles on the porch where he could see the moon rise, and where he could hear the young ladies singing rather plaintive songs, accompanied by the cracked strains of the old harpsichord in the best room. He had just plucked the first round full rose of May, and, twirling it thoughtfully in his fingers as he strolled down the garden path to his work-shop, when he heard the breezy flutter of a muslin robe and light footfall behind him on the gravel walk. He turned with a blaze of fire in his black eyes and the rose extended. His hand dropped to his side. It was Theo who came rapidly after him, swinging a white sun-bonnet by one string.

Theo was a saucy, petulant, provoking young person of sixteen, whose pranks and whims had often tried Eben's temper sorely—having him stop the harvesting to saddle Rudolf her pony, or meddle with his tools and upset his newest invention. But Theo's eyes were such lovely blue and her smile so bewitching that Eben had not the heart to scold; besides he had humored her in all her wilfulness himself, and there was the faintest resemblance to Barbara in the brow and dimpled chin which tied him hand and foot.

"Oh, what a lovely thing!" said Theo, coveting the rose and stretching out her plump little hand. "Is it for me?"

"No," said Eben rather gruffly. "I've had an eye on this bud for some time. I noticed that your Lady Isabels are in fine condition. You will have a cluster of them by the day after tomorrow."

"Well, you old stingy, I suppose you don't mind running down to the mail for me; I forgot what Barbara asked me to do, and I shall get a scolding from mamma, who can't have Bab crossed in anything, you know."

"I shall have to go down and see Nanson about the wagon gear anyway to-night, and I can just as well stop at the Post Office. Is it the letter from—from New Haven?" And Eben very thoughtlessly bit off the leaves of the rose and mangled them with his strong white teeth.

Yes, it was the letter from New Haven, and Eben was charged to bring up a new novel, and some pink sewing silk and eighteen celluloid buttons, by Theo, who ran after him to suggest chocolate caramels in case the letter failed.

It was a sort of satisfaction to him that the letter did fail. But it hurt him to see Barbara's disappointment. He had remembered Theo's womanish little errands, and he still held the rose, which he laid now on Barbara's clasped hands. For all she had grown to hate the old place, she loved its old-fashioned, big fluffy roses as fondly as when a child, and Eben had braided a long garland of them for her out of the finest and best.

She caressed the rose, and twisted it in among the curling locks, where it nestled just against her cheek. Eben flushed and paled as he remembered how he had laid his heart in the heart of that rose.

"The letter will be here to-morrow," he said, gently; "I am going down the first thing in the morning. The young ladies around Larborough are not to be without a gallant this season. A handsome young man from New York has come down to stay some weeks in the neighborhood; I met him with Dr. Ormsby in the gig."

Eben was not slow to note this bit of news awakened a faint show of interest in Barbara.

"What was he like?" said Barbara, blushing a little. "I trust he is an acquisition. Did he look like a gentleman?"

Yes, he looked like one, Eben was compelled to admit that he did, and that he wore elegant clothes, and had slender, soft white hands, which Eben had not.

Days after this, Eben, in an agony of jealous anguish, was compelled to accord the stranger a great many other advantages and accomplishments. He rode well, was a good shot, talked fluently, sketched passably, understood women, and was Miss Leighton's most ardent admirer.

Eben foresaw all this, and yet once, when their mingled voices floated out to his little den, he brought down a hammer wrathfully and smashed his thumb-nail. Morning and night he saddled and brought round horses for Barbara and Mr. Ney, and went away to his work in the hot fields, while they were cantering down the shady roads, and Mrs. Leighton and Theo were beating eggs in the buttery, and getting up rare dishes for tea. The letter had come from New Haven, and Barbara had answered briefly that she could not go until some time later. She had never looked so animated and beautiful as now. She rarely saw Eben, sending him her requests by her sister, and Eben went on at his inventions, feeling as if every blow of his chisel drove out a piece of his heart's core. And though he would have scorned the idea, Eben had grown wonderfully haggard and pale, with great dark circles under his eyes, since Dr. Ormsby had introduced Edgar Ney to the Leightons. He took little pride in the knowledge that he was the better man of the two, but he did not know that he could crush New with one hand into a limp, shape-less mass, and he wondered sometimes why he did not. One day he was seized with a fit of trembling. He was pruning a pear tree when he looked up and Barbara stood before him, in her habit, switching at the mottled butterflies that fluttered on the hollyhocks and around Eben's brown hands.

"How pale and ill you look, Eben." It was the least she could say, and it was the truth. Eben's heart beat madly for a moment and then went on slowly.

"I am not one to get ill, Miss Barbara; I am not browned so much as usual, perhaps."

His "Miss Barbara" sounded oddly, and his looks belied his words. She looked down at the ground and said nervously:

"I hope you will not argue with me this morning, Eben, but I have set my heart on riding the colt, 'Tam O'Shanter,' to the falls. I am not in the least afraid."

"But I am," said Eben calmly. "l can-not permit you to risk your life with that vicious colt."

"Mr. Ney will take care of his viciousness," Barbara answered, a trifle insolently.

"Mr. Ney may ride 'O'Shanter,' and welcome, but I cannot consent for you to."

"Then I must do it without your consent. Be so kind as to have the colt around in a quarter of an hour."

Eben finished his pear tree and went into the shop to wash his hands of blood. He had cut himself to the bone. Barbara and Ney sat in the porch reading from the "Princess," when the horses appeared. The colt sherried and reared when Barbara sprang lightly in her saddle. An admirable horsewoman, she held her own finely, and Eben stood as if rooted to the ground until a turn in the road hid them from sight, then, like a deer, he set off down a footway toward where the railway crossed the road, as with horror he remembered that the morning express would come down in ten minutes. The riders had stopped by the way to permit Mr. Nay to dis-mount and gather the first cardinals for Barbara. As they trotted sharply down the road the roar of the train was heard just beyond the curve. Maddened with terror, the wild young horse Barbara rose reared, plunged, and sprang away from the other horse and darted down the cut toward the train. With a hoarse shout to "sit firm," Eben rushed out from the copse and flung himself under his hoofs. He caught the bit in his bands, and then a violent kick made him drop like a log. Some wood-choppers came to the rescue, and as they lifted Barbara off the train thundered by. Eben was picked up for dead, and even Mr. Ney declared he was a brave fellow.

In an agony of grief and remorse, Barbara hung near him all those tedious days, when Eben's mind wandered, and he muttered troubled, incoherent sentences, in which, poor fellow, he told all his hopes and fears. He was now indeed haggard and ghostly pale, with an ugly scar in his left temple, his eye badly hurt, and his hands lay weak and nerveless on the coverlet. The first moment of sanity and consciousness which came made him sigh and wish that he had remained oblivious to life and its miseries. It was Barbara who leaned on him with her great brown eyes filled with tears.

"Oh, Eben, how can you bear to look at me? You can never forgive me!"

"You would not say that if you knew what is in my heart."

"Cannot you tell me, Eben? I am so wretched."

"I am sorry for that; I must not tell you, Barbara. I cannot suffer more than I have."

"Then, shall I tell you something?" and she hid her face in the pillow. He put out his hand and touched her head caressingly.

"I have been very wilful and very unhappy, Eben. I would have given my life to save yours, as you gave yours for me."

"But, Barbara, oh Barbara, my darling, I gave mine because I loved you better than life, than Heaven. I would rather have died than live to lose you for ever."

"But you will not lose me." Her arms stole tenderly around him, and she laid her cheek against his. "I owe my life to you, and it is yours."

"Barbara, think what you are saying. I shall be mad enough to think that you care for me!"

"Eben, my love, you are all the world to me. Cannot you see that this is so?"

"My own!"

With one great effort, and a spasm of his old strength, Eben pressed her to his heart.

"And you never meant to marry Ney?"

"I am afraid I only meant to make you jealous," said Barbara, with her old sauciness.

"I shall mend now, fast enough, but not until you have promised to abide by what I say, my darling."

"I promise solemnly."

"Then, we shall be married to-morrow."

Warragul Guardian and Buln Buln and Narracan Shire Advocate, Thursday 9 December 1880, supplement page 2

* Authorship given as such in another newspaper. 

A Rose of Sharon

Author Unknown

It was in a large and handsome green-house that two young people stood, admiring a magnificent plant, on the beauty of which the owner, Doctor Doran, was expatiating.

"But what is this?" the young lady said—"this odd, dingy little plant, in the shadow of those superb blossoms? Was it placed here by way of contrast, I wonder?"

The plant to which she alluded was of a dull green color, and floated in a saucer of water, on the surface of which it lay with stiff leaves, flatly diverging from the centre.

"That," said the doctor, "is more interesting than it looks. It was sent me from Palestine, where it is vulgarly known as the Rose of Sharon, though its botanical name is—"

Some one of a group at the other end of the green-house suddenly called to him, and he was compelled to hasten away, without having explained the properties of the "odd and dingy" little plant.

The two young people stood where he had left them, screened by a group of myrtles and roses—fit surroundings for lovers.

It was one of those delicious moments of seclusion and silent communion accidentally snatched from the society of others, which are so sweet and precious to the hearts of all lovers.

A deep look into each other's eyes, a pressure of the hand, a low, whispered word, and then the clasping fingers separated, and the girl's eyes were downcast as a step came near.

"Miss Carrie, I have availed myself of the good doctor's permission, and chosen for you the prettiest flowers that I could find. Will you have them? And will you wear them to-night?"

The elegant and rather confident-looking young man held out a superb camellia of vivid scarlet, flaming against its glossy, waxen leaves.

"Oh, how beautiful!" the girl exclaimed. "Too beautiful to droop and fade in the atmosphere of a ball-room."

"I thought you preferred white," her companion remarked, quietly, yet with apparently some chagrin.

"It was you who expressed a preference for white flowers," she answered, laughingly. "White is too insipid for my taste—I like rich colors. Yes, thank you, Mr. Farley, I will wear your flowers."

Farley stroked his delicate moustache to hide a smile of triumph and amusement. The other saw it, and turned haughtily away.

"His highness is evidently not pleased," remarked Farley, with a shrug.

"His highness is welcome to be otherwise," the girl answered, lightly. "What a superb color!" and she held up the camellia admiringly.

"May I venture to ask yet another favor? Will you give me the first waltz?"

"You know I don't waltz, now!"

"You did until recently," he said, significantly. Her color rose.

"Well, I may perhaps give you one waltz. I won't promise positively, though."

"Thank you; I will live on the hope until nine o'clock, when—"

"When you will take something more substantial—oysters and turkey-salad," she said, archly.

And with a graceful "Au revoir!" not quite devoid of an air of innocent coquetry, she turned again to her companion, who had been pretending interest in the Rose of Sharon.

He now met her bright glance with a grave countenance.

"Carrie, I am sorry that you promised to wear those flowers. You must have known I had promised myself the pleasure of choosing some for you. And I doubly regret that you should have consented to waltz with Farley. Excuse me, but under the circumstances I did not expect it of you."

"I may be allowed to judge of the propriety of my own actions," she returned, with assumed dignity.

"To be engaged to one man, and to wear the flowers presented by another—"

"The engagement is not known except to ourselves," she interrupted. "And I really do not see, Mr. Rutherford, that you have a right to demand that your wishes should be my law."

"Carrie!"

He would have taken her hand, but she turned away abruptly.

In the motion, the saucer containing the plant which the doctor had called the Rose of Sharon fell to the ground and was shattered.

"There! see the mischief you have done!" he said, stepping back.

"It is you who are doing the mischief. You are crushing the plant beneath your foot."

He picked it up, and stood holding it in his hand. Neither of them spoke a word. Both felt vexed and wounded, and the heart of each accused the other of unkindness.

"You are killing that poor plant," said Caroline, at length, a little sharply. "See how its leaves are fading and curling up!"

True, the unfortunate plant was assuming a dull, brownish hue, and its leaves were already withering and crumpling into a dead looking ball. They observed it curiously.

"How quickly it has withered! and for want of water, of which you have deprived it."

"It is because you crushed it."

Light words, and yet something in the look and tone of each which sent a chill and blight to the heart of the other.

"I will get fresh water," said Rutherford.

"It is useless; it is past resuscitating," said Caroline, with something hard in her tone."

"Then let it die!" he returned, recklessly; and he tossed the little brown ball upon the shelf. "A thing which will die so quickly is not worth having "

Irate words, thoughtless words, on the part of both, the result of a moment's vexation, and yet to be repented of and mourned over, in sorrow and bitterness, for many a long year after.

They met, that evening, at the party, with a certain coldness and restraint on the part of both. Each waited for some sign of yielding from the other. Each was too proud to make it.

Caroline thought that her lover had been unreasonably jealous and exacting, and that it was, in any case, the part of the man, and not of the woman, to make advances to a reconciliation.

Rutherford, as he saw the scarlet camellia glowing in the dark tresses of his betrothed, considered himself aggrieved; and this feeling was aggravated by observing the assiduity of his former rival, Farley, who, encouraged by the apparent estrangement of the lovers, was renewing attentions which had been recently discontinued from a perception of their hopelessness.

Caroline smiled, chatted, flirted, and made herself generally charming, and no one, not even Rutherford, suspected the troubled heart beneath.

Despite his great love for her he felt disappointed in witnessing her conduct, so different from herself in general, and this feeling amounted to positive displeasure on beholding her in Farley's arms, whirling in the voluptuous mazes of a waltz.

She knew he detested waltzing, and that he especially objected to her waltzing with Farley.

He turned from the sight, with a feeling nearly approaching disgust, and devoted himself to a modest, pretty young girl, a stranger in the place.

Later in the evening he approached Caroline, and addressed her, but coldly. She replied haughtily, and, turning to Farley, complained of the heat, and the two passed out upon the piazza. In displeasure, Rutherford did not again approach her.

He did not call on her the following day. When he did call, she excused herself from seeing him, and that evening he met her promenading with Farley. It was enough. The brief dream of happiness of these two foolish young lovers was over. Rutherford went to join a brother of his in the Far West, and Caroline made herself the reigning belle that winter.

* * *

A Story of Social Silence

by Benet Saucy

INTENDED TO SHOW THAT LANGUAGE IS A MERE CONVENIENCE. 

[From the French of Benet Saucy.] 

One needs to be told at the beginning that this story concerns a man and a woman—a pair of lovers, and lovers in France.

Otherwise one might imagine that I intend to write about two men. One will say there may be unsocial silence between a man and a woman, but social silence—never. Yet it has happened, or will have happened when I have told my story.

It was a man who said, "Silence is golden, speech is silver-plated." It was a woman who said, "Let me do the talking, and I don't care what woman in front of me gets her back up." (Fait le gros dos)

Social silence between men—one knows what that is. They smoke; they sip their wine. When they hare something to say, they empty the glass; the cigar goes out. They resume silence—if silence can be resumed; the glasses are refilled; they strike a match.

What is it, then, between a man and a woman? Two pairs of eyes, a fan, a round waist, a strong arm—a kiss. Perhaps they also strike a match. This is the story I have to tell.

Eugene De Merveille had known Rosalie Lebrun for a long time, as time goes in this fast world, and yet the two had exchanged hardly a dozen words. A hasty thinker might imagine this latter circumstance was due to the fact that Rosalie's papa and mamma were always present at the meeting of the young people. One of the ideas which they had appreciated from the first was that they loved each other. Monsieur and Madame Lebrun abhorred De Merville. He never flattered madame; he never asked advice of monsieur. For the rest he was well enough, but he was no match for their Rosalie. He never talked, and Rosalie needed a husband who would draw her out, because she never talked.

Monsieur and madame did not know the difference between talking and conversation.

One day at dinner Monsieur Lebrun happened to remark that De Merveille was a blockhead. If he were not, why did he not talk? But no, he only sat and stared at the wall or floor. Rosalie smiled aloud, and said to herself, "Then I am a blockhead, for I do not talk." Two blockheads may produce a series of blockheads. Then no harm is done. But a blockhead who says nothing and a wise person who says too much, their union would result in monsters. Vice Eugene.

Subtle logic of the feminine mind of Rosalie does not jump at a conclusion. She reached out and snatched it bald-headed. (Le saisant a tete chance.)

On the same day Eugene was casting up accounts—he was an accountant, but that is no matter—and in footing up a column he came to "naught and naught are naught." Eugene paused in his occupation. "It never occurred to me before," he thought, "that one can add two figures together without getting any result. One adds two naughts together, and one gets a third naught. I must think about this."

As Eugene stood vacantly meditating and rubbing the feather of his quill pen against his cheek, his thoughts instinctively turned upon Rosalie herself. The ciphers were forgotten.

That evening Eugene called upon Rosalie, although it was an off night (une nuit estea). Rosalie was sitting alone in the salon. Of course Monsieur and Madame had not expected him, for they were not present. It cannot be said whether Rosalie expected him or not, for she never said anything. As Eugene entered the saloon, Rosalie simply smiled and drew the skirts of her robe closer to her. Eugene accepted the invitation, and, placing a chair near Rosalie, seated himself.

One should by no means accept the theory of many philosophers that an idea cannot be comprehended without the use or knowledge of language. Some hold that when one thinks one is sensible of speech, which is silent yet audible to one's self. Nothing can be more untrue. The faculty of speech resides in the brain, not in the throat. If it were otherwise, how could deaf mutes think before acquiring the deaf language? One can appreciate impressions and ideas without mentally converting them into language. That is an afterthought.

Thus it was with Rosalie and Eugene, as they sat side by side, speechless yet eloquent. The scene was almost like that described by Mr. Coventry Patmuch, the English poet, in "The Angel in the House":—

"For hours the clock upon the shelf
Had all talking to itself." 

As Eugene gazed at the clock in the salon, and watched the minute hand slowly moving past the figures on the dial, he thought or his pen moving along the column of figures and stopping at the ciphers. Then the train of thoughts carried him to the feather of his pen, its soft touch upon his cheek, the softness of Rosalie's cheek, Rosalie herself sitting by his side, and then, by a jump backward, to his first meeting with the young girl.

Rosalie also stared at the clock. She saw the ornament on its upper part—a female figure reclining against a marble block, on which was sculptured a head. Then the thought of her father's remark, that Eugene was a blockhead, of her own inward defence of him, and then by a leap backward, she recalled her first meeting with Eugene.

The lovers had arrived at the same point, at the same moment, by different routes. Eugene smiled, Rosalie blushed.

A panorama unfolded itself before their minds' eye.

There is a stretch of sea-beach with the surf rolling in. Many people and a young girl are bathing. Suddenly something happens. The young girl throws up her hands and shrieks. The bathers pay no attention to her. They think her back hair has come down, and that raising her hands to put it up she has discovered that it has floated away. Such things are common in the surf.

A young man is strolling along the beach in a linen duster and a crush hat. He hears the cry. He puts his hat in the pocket of his duster, throws that garment onto the ground. Then he plunges boldly into the surf and brings the young lady to the shore. She is insensible. He turns her on her face pinches her nose with his fingers, opens her mouth, and the water that has entered her lungs runs out. She recovers as her friends arrive, and they carry her away. The young man resumes his duster, his hat, his stroll.

In the evening the young man is sitting on the hotel verandah. A middle-aged gentleman approaches him. "I believe you saved my daughter's life," he says to the young man, who answers that he did. "My name is Lebrun," continues the middle-aged gentleman. "And mine De Merveille," answers the young man.

"Let's go and take a drink," suggests Monsieur Lebrun, "and then I will introduce you." Rosalie, who is sitting with her mother on the piazza, sees them depart with a feeling of pain. In a moment, however, they return, chewing a clove and twisting their moustaches. "Madame Lebrun, Monsieur de Merveille," says Monsieur Lebrun; "daughter Rosalie." Eugene bows to the mother and says, awkwardly, to Rosalie "I think we have met before." "Why, didn't you know me with all my clothes on?" asks Miss Innocence.

The clock on the mantel strikes the hour. Rosalie and Eugene start and look at each other. Rosalie pulls at the feathers of her fan, and Eugene places his arm on the back of her chair.

The panorama moved on more rapidly in the hurry of events. There was an afternoon walk, when Rosalie stumbled over a stone, and Eugene instinctively caught her. There was a morning in the hotel when Rosalie dropped her crocheting cotton, and her head and Eugene's came together as they stooped to pick it up. There was an evening when he turned the music for Rosalie, and a crimson ribbon in Rosalie's hair blew against his face. He caught it and kissed it, wishing it had been Rosalie's crimson lips.

The clock on the mantel strikes the half-hour. The lovers start. Rosalie is lying on Eugene's breast, his arm is around her waist, their lips have just parted.

Eugene announces to Monsieur Lebrun the next morning, in half a dozen words, his engagement to Rosalie. Monsieur Lebrun is angry. "But, then, what is the use of talking to a blockhead? says he.

It is too early yet to determine if Eugene and Rosalie's boy will be a blockhead. He is of an affectionate disposition, and is a deaf-mute.

Warragul Guardian and Buln Buln and Narracan Shire Advocate, Thursday 9 December 1880, supplement page 1

"Per C."

Author Unknown

"Mr. Bronson? Oh yes, you will find him in his private office, up three flights; turn to the right, No. 6."

"Thanks," and the compactly built, stalwart man in brown linen ulster, thread gloves, and Panama hat, ran, satchel and umbrella in hand, up three flights of black, dusty stairs, up, up through the gloomy halls of the great business house, turning to the right down a narrow space lined with offices, with open doors to get the circulation from the stairways and paused at "No. 5." A slight, graceful, pale-faced little woman glanced up from a pile of letters.

"Mr. Bronson? Oh, yes, sir. Walk in, please. Mr. Bronson, a gentleman."

Just a commonplace, everyday meeting between two large-hearted men who had maintained business relations for years, entertaining the very highest regard for each other meanwhile, without having once met face to face.

"Mr. Sturtevant? Is it possible? I am glad to see you, sir." And the two sat down and fell into a chat, which settled the Western man in his half-formed opinion that the genuine, substantial, out-and-out New Yorker is the representative man of America, and made the city man say to himself, "What a hearty frankness your real Western man brings into everything. Nothing dwarfed or contracted about him. His heart and his opinions are as broad and as breezy as his own rich prairies."

"Where do you stop?" as the visitor and long-time customer arose. "Don't know? Allow me to suggest that you go to the St. Nicholas with me, then. I'm there for a little, while my folks are out of town and the house is being brushed out. I will go with you. I was just going, in fact. Miss Clark, I will leave this last account for you to balance Oh, I want you to see Miss Clark—This is Mr. Sturtevant, from Chicago."

"Your name and your handwriting are entirely familiar, Mr. Sturtevant," said the pale-faced young woman with whom the visitor had first spoken, leaving the desk by which she was standing and coming forward toward the inner office, which was formed by heavy jet green curtains, looped back across a windowed niche, making a pleasing delusion of seclusion and of shade.

"We learn to feel acquainted with people from their handwriting," remarked Mr. Bronson pleasantly, as he drew on his gloves. "On that principle, you two must know each other quite well by this time."

"And you are 'Per C.'?" queried Mr. Sturtevant, looking critically down into the young woman's delicate, finely cut face. "Now I have a habit of conjuring people up from their handwriting, and the 'Per C.' I have kept in my mind all this time was a methodical, clear-headed, old grey-beard, whom all the sharpers in Gotham couldn't get around, and I find the real 'Per C.' to be but a mere thistledown or frost flower! Well, well!"

"You were not very far astray in your character estimate, however," smiled Mr. Bronson, tipping his light hat down over his dusky black eyes.

"'Per C.' is the most efficient helper that a perplexed merchant was ever blessed with. The firm would have been bankrupt had it not been for her. Fact, sir. At my father's death things were in bad shape. The head book-keeper, who was also a partner, had been making false entries, and the accounts were in the most inextricable tangle. They baffled me, and I employed an expert to straighten them, but he gave them up in despair. Miss Clark, who was then in the lower office, volunteered her assistance. She went through them all at odd hours, and brought everything out straight. To prevent exposure the partner refunded what he had embezzled. I bought in all the stock, and kept on with the business."

Mr. Sturtevant looked at the quiet little woman with more admiration than if he had just heard that she had painted a picture, written a book, or awakened a slumbering goddess from a block of marble.

"It was not much to do," she said, in deprecatory tones. "I had had experience with my father's books—only, unhappily—and the partner had not the embezzled funds in reserve, and the house went down."

"Good afternoon, Miss Clark," and the handsome, healthy gentleman started, full of life and spirits, to run down the stairs.

Mr. Bronson returned almost immediately to say: "Never mind about those last bills. I shall be early in the morning," and finding the little grey-dressed woman sitting at his desk in the shadow of the deep green curtains in a dejected attitude, looking so like a crashed, wilted flower that he could but wonder what had so quickly changed the bright, pleasant face that had just smiled back at him from the doorway.

"This hot wave is something fearful," said Mr. Sturtevant, as his companion regained his side. "I don't see how you can stand it here, week after week."

"Oh, I run up the Hudson, where my mother and sisters are, whenever the whim seizes me, knowing the books will not get behindhand in my absence."

"So you are not a married man?"

"No. I have never had time nor inclination to think of matrimony; and I am very well off in my present home."

"Yet it is all wrong," replied the Western man, in a fatherly way he was apt to fall into toward any one to whom he took a fancy. "A man of your age ought to be settled in a home of his own. The mother will go to heaven some day, and the sisters will take unto themselves husbands, and then, my man, you will be left adrift."

Mr. Sturtevant flitted in and out of "No. 5, third floor," every day for a week, assiduously cultivating the acquaintance of Mr. Bronson and "Per C.," as he persisted in calling the fragile little accountant, in the intervals of business, of sightseeing, and of writing to his wife—this last being his favorite way of filling in odd moments.

While driving, with Mr. Bronson late one sultry July afternoon in Central Park, he broke out abruptly, yet with a tone of peculiar earnestness, which the younger man had leaned to understand covered some deep feeling.

"Your eyes need opening, friend Bronson. Oh, not at all in regard to your horsemanship: you hold the reins like an expert. I beg your pardon, but I want to speak to you about your confidential clerk. You look surprised. I suppose I shall surprise you still more, my dear fellow, when I tell you that she is dying by inches there in that stifling office, before your very eyes, and you are so accustomed to her clear, white rose of a face anti her gentle ways that you can't understand that anythings is wrong with her. Why, man! even I, with my broad chest and perfect health, almost lose my breath every time I run up those stairs. She has faded and wilted and lost vitality perceptibly in the week that I have been here. Her lovely face grows more and more transparent every day. Now Oliver Walker, my confidential clerk, is wild to come to New York. He's a cute, sharp fellow, conscientious and industrious, and being so well acquainted with my business he would work into yours with little difficulty. Now I want to propose to you that we change confidential clerks. The fresh Western air will brace that little woman right up. I know enough of womankind to see that it is a matter of life and death with her. The change, the journey, the meeting with new people will renew her personality; she won't know herself in a month's time. This great city broadens the lives of those who are in constant attrition with their kind, but is more contracting than the most isolated country life can be to a soul moving in a daily rut. I know she is valuable to you, but when the flower wilts utterly and falls to the ground you will be obliged to take some one to fill her place."

"I can't dispute your argument," replied the young man thoughtfully, bringing his high-stepping horses down to a walk. "I have no doubt she needs rest and change. The place is a responsible one, and there is a great deal put upon her, as there is apt to be upon a person so efficient and obliging. I never saw her out of temper, and never heard her complain of weariness. She has no relatives, and never seems to care about taking a vacation. She could never be persuaded to leave us," he continued, presently, with a confidential smile, curling his tawny moustache. "We will, however, for the sake of justice, submit the proposition to her. I have no right to dismiss the subject until she has been consulted. I think you are needlessly alarmed in regard to her health, however. She has wonderful powers of endurance, although it is true she has looked as fragile as that lily yonder all the ten years she has been with us."

"Ten years ?"

"Ten years last autumn."

Mr. Sturtevant went back to his airy room at the St. Nicholas, and wrote a long letter to his wife, although he had already sent her a postal card and a telegram that day. He used to say that his pent-up enthusiasm would explode had he had not the safety-valve of writing to Eliza always at hand.

The next morning Mr. Sturtevant appeared at the Bronson office just as the old black porter was taking down the shutters. He had not long to wait, however, and disclosed his plan to Miss Clark while she was removing her simple wrap and plain straw hat.

"You say Mr. Bronson is willing to make the exchange?" she inquired with a faltering voice, seating herself at her desk, and mechanically breaking the seal of the topmost letter of that morning's mail.

"Yes, for your good, remember."

"I will go."

That was all. Mr. Sturtevant, with a rare knowledge of woman gained from his own felicitous union with Eliza, went over to a window and sat down to look at the morning papers, while she busied herself with the mail as usual; but with a faint glow on her cheeks, warning of an inward fire, like the reflection on the snowy petals of the gleam in the chalice or a cactus cup. An hour passed thus, and her employer entered, genial and gentlemanly as usual.

Mr. Sturtevant threw aside his paper, and said breezily:

"It is all settled, my dear Bronson. This is Saturday. We shall start for Chicago on Monday, on the S.A.M. express. I shall telegraph for Oliver to meet us at Niagara, where we will stop over a train, and have a looked at the Falls. He is one of those live, up and coming chaps that wouldn't ask for more than half an hour's notice to start on a voyage around the world."

Mr. Bronson gave his accountant a questionable look. She nodded. "Very well," he said, coldly yet with an effort to speak in his usual way. "You will need all the time there is, of course." He sat down in the shadow of the rich green curtains and wrote an order on the cashier. She put on her grey hat and gloves again, took the paper in her trembling fingers, and went down the dusty stairs without trusting herself to speak. I don't know as it occurred to either of them at the time, or for hours afterwards, that their parting, after their years of intimate business relationship, was a very strange one, or that it would have been very strange for two men under the same circumstances.

"Women have not the hearts of men, although it is the fashion of the time to put them and keep them in places requiring a man's strength, judgement, and impertubability. I must put that in my next letter to Eliza," said Sturtevant to himself as he ran after the little accountant, overtook her on the second landing, made some necessary arrangements, stood by when the cashier handed her her money and left her on the crowded sidewalk.

She did not go home at once, or rather to the boarding-house which she called home. Instead, she walked across to Broadway and took a Central Park omnibus.

"I can be alone in the park for a little while," she said to herself.

I don't know that she thought at all as the omnibus thundered and rattled and banged up Broadway; she was only realising the fact that she was going away from him.

She strolled about the gravel walks of the park, sat in the rustic arbours, lingering beside the fountain, ponds, and flowerbeds, but she saw nothing of the beauties that were delighting thousands of souls famishing for a breath of country summer; she was only almost overpowered by a dragging pain at being torn away from the associations of years.

Alone in her own little room, packing her scanty possessions, she burst out bitterly to herself:

"Oh, the wretchedness and wrong of shutting a young girl up in an office day after day for years with a young man no way her superior except in the matter of money, and expecting her to look upon him as indifferently as upon the improved typewriter at his elbow. Oh, the cruelty and the pity of it. I have had my dream. I will not call foolish dreams; it was only the rose bush reaching toward the trellis. Every girl has dreams, and it is right that she should have. It makes no difference whether she is filling the position of a man or that of a woman—her heart is not changed by the work that her mind and body are engaged in.

"My beautiful visions have faded into air as I have faded from a plump, pretty girl to a thin, wan, colourless old maid, and all the time he has been growing manly and strong and handsome year by year. Yet he has been kind to me, in a way, and although constantly in society, with elegant ladies he has remained single, and my woman's heart has dared to hope that it might be for my sake. For the sake of me, his book-keeper! How his proud mother and sisters would spurn the idea.

"I had better have been a kitchen girl in some good family, or a cook, or a farmer's wife with rosy children in my arms and about my knees, than to be what I am—a recluse, with no friends or associates. A disappointed woman, with her heart eaten out for love of a man who looks upon her only as a calculating machine!"

That night she arose from her bed, and, throwing a shawl around her, looked out upon the tireless moon and stars and upon the sleepless streets of the great city whose life is so abundant that it must go on by night as by day, but this thought did not occur to her now; she was saying:

"Had I been his wife he would not have allowed me to serve him as I have served him. To think of the nights that I have sat up over those books! I saved him from bankruptcy, and in his gratitude he promoted me to be his confidential clerk! He was grateful, and am I to blame for having thought that my life might grow fresh and beautiful with love, like the lives we read of in books? What hours I have spent, which should have been passed in sleep, in reading, and study, that I might keep abreast with him in mental culture. He must remember me as one who has been a help to him. It is impossible that he should forget me. There is a modicum of comfort in the fact that a young man is to take my place. I could not bear to think of him smiling over the top of his desk into the eyes of some other woman. If he marries, I hope I shall never know it.

"It is the nature of single women to love the unmarried men who treat then pleasantly and kindly, and with whom they are constantly associated. I wish it was in my power to put an end to every such unnatural relation. The people who are constantly crowding women into the places which should be filled by men wilfully misunderstand this matter. Every woman who fills a man's position is keeping some man out of a place of employment—keeping him from marrying, and so lessening, her, own chances of matrimony and of being mistress of a home. When will this problem be set right? I have been guilty, and must suffer; and yet should I dare to speak these sentiments in public how should I be ridiculed by the so-called reformers; and should I weave what I know of these shop and office flirtations into a readable newspaper article, there is no editor who would give it a place, because it would treat of an unpopular side of the subject, and because women can be hired for less money than men."

The next morning she went early to church. There had been a funeral of one of the members, and they were bearing the coffin out as she entered.

"I wish it were me," she thought, looking at the mourners, headed by the stricken husband, walking, sorrowing with bowed head, to the carriage.

As she sat in her accustomed seat that idea had such complete possession of her that she took no notice of the opening services—in fact, comprehended nothing only that she wished her life might go out then and there, as a candle is blown out by the wind.

Then she heard the minister read. "For it is not a vain thing for you, because it is your life; and through this thing you shall prolong your days in the land."

The sermon which followed was practical as well as spiritual, growing out of some circumstances in the life just ended, and Miss Clark left the church, saying:

"God has a right to my life, and therefore to serve Him I must do my best with what He has given. I have never looked at it in just that way before. I have seen my duty; I am glad I came. If, through this change which has been wrought for me, I can prolong my days in the land I will go away cheerfully. And since I have no right to trouble others with my trouble, I will take up my burden bravely, for I can never hope to leave it, and hide it away in my heart; and I will even call up a hope to take with me as I start out upon this new chapter of my history."

She told no one that she was going away. Indeed, there was no one to tell, for, aside from the minister, not more than half a dozen people had addressed a word to her in all the years that she had regularly attended the church, and now they were all away on vacations, or summer journeys, a stranger to her filling the pulpit even.

She doubled her weekly offering to a poor old woman who always stood while the congregation was dispersing at the opening of a little alleyway a short distance from the church, and said "Good-bye," as she put the scrip in the withered hand. She smiled rather bitterly as the thought asserted itself, "All my going to that church has formed that single easily-severed tie!" Then she cast about in her mind, trying to remember what had decided her to fix on that particular church, and blushed when she had to confess that it was because he attended the church just below, and that she often caught a sight of him going in or out, and sometimes he gave her a smile or a nod of recognition.

The thought that she might see him in this way to-day, for a last look, had been a comfort all the morning; but now, when it came up to her again, like the last lingering ray of sunshine in a clouded sky, she resolutely put it away, and turned down another street.

At that very hour the object of that poor soul's conflict with self was swinging in a hammock suspended from the spreading branches of a giant oak, on the Highlands, above the Hudson. There were four of these swaying crimson and yellow cradles hanging in the balmy air from the huge limbs of this massive tree; and it was characteristic of these luxury-loving Bronsons that they had lounged here, looking up into its vast emerald dome, through the shining leaves of which filtered an occasional shower of sunshine, while the clear-voiced bell, only a few rods away, was summoning other people in carriages and on foot for miles from farm and hill and meadow.

The mother and the three sisters, four stylish society women, were all beaming now upon this black-whiskered Adonis, who was their idol.

"What should you have said," he asked, indifferently, after lying for a long time with his eyes closed and his white hands clasped beneath his shapely head, "if I had married my accountant, the woman who had been so long in our office, you know?"

There was a little rustle of drapery and flutter of fans, then Marie, the youngest sister, began an indignant protest, which her brother checked by saying:

"Don't excite yourself, Marie; the idea merely occurred to me as I was about to announce to you that she has been called away."

"Is it possible!" exclaimed his mother, settling her grey frizzes and finger-puffs, which the fresh breeze had slightly disarranged. "What was her name? I never saw her, but remember hearing her spoken of in the matter of settling your poor father's estate as a faithful creature—"

"I should think so," interrupted the young man; "'she saved the estate from bankruptcy, and your daughters from going out into the world in some capacity to earn their own living, as she did when her father died insolvent, leaving her without relatives."

Mrs. Bronson ignored the point, and went on in exactly the same key as before. "It is very unfortunate. What will you do, my son?"

"I have already hired a young man to fill the vacancy."

"Ten years?" said Adelaide, the oldest sister. "She has fairly grown grey in our service."

"Do you mean that white-faced girl in No. 5?" asked Sarah, and Marie, who was swinging in the same airy couch as the second sister, added, "I never noticed anything about her."

"I thought you looked worn out," said his mother; "and I heard you up in the night walking about your room. When did it happen?"

"Yesterday."

"Suddenly?"

"Very." And the young man dismissed the subject by turning upon his side, crossing his elbow under one ear, and reaching his long, slim fingers around the back of his head, and covering the other ear with the tips of them—an old, boyish habit of his when he wished to shut out the tiresome chat of his mother and sisters. They exchanged glances and smiles, and let him alone while he was thinking, "I didn't say what had called her away, or where she is gone. Am I to blame that they think she is dead?"

Mr. Bronson took it upon himself all through the late summer and early autumn to open the mail. As usual, there were plenty of business letters from Sturtevant and Co., but none "Per C." After a time hie ventured an inquiry, in a postscript, and received, in reply: "Per C. is recruiting."

After that the morning mail was left for the new clerk, who, happily was all that was represented. Yet Mr. Bronson found an unwonted wearisomeness about the business that seemed to him would wear his very life out. Night after night he lay in his luxurious rooms at the St. Nicholas, for he had entirely given up going up the Hudson now, and dreamed that he climbed the long, hard stairs up to No. 5 with a light, hopeful step, and, sitting down by his desk, looked over the bisected back to meet the soft, blue, faithful eyes that had never failed him; and then the fair face and smooth brown hair turned into a white lily, or rose, or a forest flower, or snow wreath, and faded away.

"Always into some emblem of purity, and fitly, too," he cried one night, when these dream pictures continually haunted and deluded him, leaving him in an agony of remorseful sorrow. "What am I to do? The old time can never return."

Ripe summer wore into autumn, and as the golden days grew grey and chill, Mrs. Bronson and her daughters returned to the thoroughly-renovated family mansion on Murray Hill. The four women were all shocked at the pale face and languid air of the son and brother.

"He must have a change. He most go on a journey. Either one or all of the sisters would accompany and take care of him." But he refused to entertain their offer, and would "look out for himself," he said, should he decide upon any place to go.

Passing through No. 5 the next morning to his place in his own curtained niche, he chanced to glance over Mr. Walker's shoulder, and caught sight of an order from Sturtevant and Co. in per C.'s well-known, clear-cut characters.

He took the bill and studied it, from the "Chicago, 18th October," to the "Per C." in the lower right hand corner.

The blood danced through his veins, his heart throbbed with an exultant joy, his very fingers tingled. He was stimulated out of his languor, as he had sometimes been by the freshening breeze when sailing down the harbor on a sultry morning, or by finding himself in a cool, woodland dell, surrounded by the romantic fragrance of wild azaleas, after a brisk, warm walk.

"I have decided to start on the 8 p.m. express for Chicago," he announced, to the surprise of the household, after he had already surprised them by appearing at lunch, which they were enjoying with two or three lady friends.

After a rapid journey for a person in pursuit of rest and enjoyment, he found himself on a clear, crisp October morning in the vestibule of the business quarters of Sturtevant and Co.

"Mr. Sturtevant? One flight, No. 1, to the left."

The young New Yorker's heart beat as it had never before beaten at anticipation in any form. He thought, "I shall see her in her plain grey dress, with her smooth brown hair, white cheeks, and her thin, pliant hands busy over the morning mail. How her shy, blue eyes will light up at sight of me. I don't know what I shall say. Of course I shall go through all the proper conventionalities. Ah me!"

He reached the door. His hand trembled on the knob. Just then it was turned from within, and he stood face to face with Mr. Sturtevant.

"Why, Bronson! my man; glad to see you. Been ill? You look like the ghost of your former self." But his quick eye did not lose his visitor's rapid glance around the office, nor the change of countenance when the accountant's desk was seen to be vacant; but he made him say, after a little commonplace talk, making an effort to speak naturally:

"Miss Clark is not with you?"

"No, her place is at the house. My wife was an Eastern woman, and had relations by the name of Clark. They have hunted up some kind of relationship, and have struck up a great friendship over it. Kitty, as my wife calls her—'Per C.' she will always be to me—fits right into our household as if she belonged there. Wife needed a companion. The children needed a governess, and I needed someone at the house to straighten my books for me, and to write orders when I am in a hurry. I have never had a woman in my office, nor a Chinaman in my kitchen. I don't take kindly to the new order of things."

"'Per C.' and Eliza, my wife, are taking singing lessons and brushing up their German, and I don't know what all; but I do know that she more than earns her wages by the additional light and life and interest she brings to our home. She's a rare woman, and there are plenty of people in Chicago who are finding it out. You must go home to dinner with me this evening, and get acquainted with Eliza and the children, and see what the West has done for 'Per C.'"

He had planned to surprise her, but of course he could not make that admission, and had to accept the invitation to dinner like any other gentleman, and went abroad all that day with an undefined pain in his heart, lest, just as he approached her, she would fade away like the flower maiden of his dreams.

Mrs. Sturtevent was never surprised to see a messenger coming with a little billet from her husband. The one this morning, however, was of unusual interest.

"He's come!" it said, "I knew he would, and he looks is if he had been through a siege. You must tell her, for we won't allow her to he surprised. You ought to have seen the man, with his heart in his eyes, when I opened the door upon him just now, and the blank look that succeeded when he found me to be the only occupant of the office. I shall bring him up to dinner. Have the children down; we will receive him like a family friend. I want him to see that a man's best riches are in his home. And mind you, Eliza, we won't leave them alone for a moment. If he wants favors he must ask for them."

I think Miss Clark cried a little for joy as she knelt beside the low white bed in her pretty room, and instead of uttering any spoken prayer, saying simply, in prayerful spirit, "I shall see him again!" But experience had taught her better than to admit one stray gleam of hope into her yearning heart.

She was in the back parlor, telling the children a story, when Mr. Bronson entered the high, handsome rooms with his jolly, bustling host. Too much the man of society to fail of saying just the right thing when he was presented to Mrs. Sturtevant, he was still looking for the quiet maiden whom he had almost begun to think of as a creature of fancy.

He had never seen her surrounded by children before, and thought at first, "She has caught a gleam of youth from them," and then the thought asserted itself, "Had I known my mind we might have been married these seven or eight years," and still approaching her through the long rooms, at the further end of which she had risen and remained standing in the centre of the pretty group, he thought:

"This plump, girlish figure in blue silk and white laces and frizzes, is not she at all."

But Miss Clark smiled and blushed, and held out the small, white hand, which he took in his own for the first time in all those years of acquaintance, and as he held it fast said bravely before them all:

"I can't do without you, and have come to ask you to return with me as my wife."

"Ha, ha," laughed Mrs. Sturtevant, "I wrote to Eliza the first day I was in your office, 'Bronson is in love with his confidential clerk, but he will never know it until something happens to remove her from her position.' Thank me for opening your eyes, young man."

"Per C." became Mrs. Bronson, but the wedding did not come off until the following spring. It was well that Oliver Walker was such a treasure of a bookkeeper, as business matters kept his employer in Chicago a great deal during the winter.

The mother and sisters of Bronson admired the wife of the head of the family exceedingly. They liked "Western women," they said, and they were glad to have Clarence married and settled in a home of his own.

One day not long ago, at a family dinner in the grand Murray Hill mansion, the

oldest sister said: "It has always puzzled me who Kate resembled; now I know. It is Miss —; I have forgotten her name—your old accountant, brother."

"Perhaps," replied the young man, smiling across the table at his wife: "yes, I can see the likeness myself, although it is a long time since she was 'called away.'

Warragul Guardian and Buln Buln and Narracan Shire Advocate, Thursday 18 November 1880, supplement page 2