ly she felt that what all the world might think was of little consequence to her beside what Richard thought.

"Do you think me unkind-capricious?" she asked with less resolve in her voice than before.

"Not at all" he replied, "only inexperienced, and therefore not strong. I can see, even through great pain, that it is best for you to be prudent. There is a love which can overmaster passion as a blazing ship sweeps out the light of a candle, or as the sun puts out the stars; but the heart must be strong and pure, through suffering, in which such love can find a home. To babes and weaklings it is not given to know it."

She resented, the speech a little, though he was as far as possible from intending either a taunt or a sneer.

"If I merit either of these names, I am no mate for you," she said, somewhat coldly.

He took her hand and looked steadily into her eyes:

"Eloise," he said, "when I take your hand in mine again you will merit neither the one nor the other of them. Farewell! With God and the future I leave you."

She cried then from the agony of her spirit: "Oh! Richard, I do love you, if I could but know that it was forever!"

The boat was nearing the wharf, and in the rush of landing any further speech was impossible. Richard found a carriage for her and then returned to the now solitary boat to await its return.

Reaching Philadelphia with the intention of departing immediately for Brockendale, an unexpected incident occurred to him. Upon the street he met an old acquaintance from his native town, who informed him of the serious and probably fatal illness of his mother, and that a letter requesting his immediate attendance had already been despatched to Brockendale. There was just time to reach the evening train, and in half an hour

after receiving the intelligence he was on his way to his old home.

Madame Glendenning's state for the next week was such as to require his constant presence at her bedside; at the end of which time she quietly passed away. He wrote a few lines to Elsie then, but the mails from this small country town were slow and irregular, and the letter was nearly another week in reaching her. Meantime Mrs. Vaughan had returned from Philadelphia in that state of stupefaction and dismay which an unintuitive mind always experiences when events. shape themselves into a tangle which reason cannot resolve. And, as if it had been carried in the air, the report went abroad that Dr. Glendenning had eloped with Miss Vaughan.

Then indeed Miss Zarie was in her element. She had Elsie to comfort and upbraid and stick pins into — all at the same time. She assured her that God would surely visit these wicked people with His chastisement: that is, he would have done so if she had not turned her face toward the Romish church. As it was, she wasn't sure but He had raised up Eloise Vaughan, with her subtle arts and blandishments, on purpose to be a scourge for her sin in rejecting the faith of her fathers. Then, after Elsie, there was all the county to be set right about the mat. ter, and informed that the Vaughans, as a family, were in no wise to blame in the matter; that they had striven with patience and piety to avert the calamity; and, now that it had happened, they would never forgive nor in any way countenance the offenders. felt it her duty also, by way of clearing the Vaughan skirts, to visit upon the Doctor and Eloise all manner of abuse and invective, till, before she had done with them, they had turned, as in a night in the eyes of their neighbors-from decent, respectable, white citizens to moral blackamoors, hereafter to be shunned, contemned, ostracized, in a spirit more uncharitable and deadly than that by which

She

the ancient leper was pursued from the habitations of men.

Mrs. Vaughan also gave countenance to the scandal by keeping her room and refusing to see company. Mr. Vaughan was silent, but looked the sternest denunciations. Elsie wept, and for a time received condolences. Father Dunne alone of all the persons interested kept possession of his wits. Hurried on by the emergencies of the case, he had already assumed the full responsibility of Elsie's spiritual di

rection.

"Have patience," he said to her. "Set you face firmly against this scandal. Nothing is proved; and it is your duty, as wife and mother, to resent to the last this imputation upon your husband's honor. For myself, I do not believe the thing to be true; and if, while doubt remains, you give currency to the rumor, when your husband returns, as I believe he will, you have lost your last hoid upon him. Therefore, courage and patience; put a brave face on the matter for a little while longer. It will be time to give way when there is no longer any chance for denial."

Therefore, when, a day in advance of his letter, the Doctor walked into his own house, with a sad but not a guilty brow, Elsie did not scream or faint, but, though her color did change, said calmly:

"Why, Richard, where have you been? There have been the strangest reports concerning your absence."

Richard paused, and the whole thing occurred to him for the first time in a flash.

"What did they say?" he asked"that I had eloped?"

"Yes," she faltered; " but I did not believe it, Richard. I had faith in you through it all."

"Thank you for that, Elsie. The truth is, as I suppose you are aware, that I went to Philadelphia. I found Eloise just starting for Cape May. I made the journey with her-returning by the same boat to Philadelphia.

There I heard of mother's illness, and went immediately to her. You did not receive my letter, it seems ? "`

"No; I haven't heard a word." "Two days ago we buried mother, and, as soon after the funeral as I could, I came home."

She

"How terrible!" Elsie said. was thinking of the death of her mother-in-law, and also of all the mischief that had been wrought during Richard's absence. In her secret heart, too, she thanked Father Dunne for his cool, wise counsel, and felt that now, if ever, she ought to carry out his further instructions.

"Richard," she said, saddened and subdued by ail the trouble which surrounded her for she was yet his wife, and doomed in some way to bear her share of that which had come upon him-her voice made tremulous, too, by the burden of that which she had to say;

"Richard, I am partly in fault and to be blamed for all this trouble. I am a Catholic now, and my religion teaches me to make amends, so far as may be, for my sin.. It was a sin to waylay and open your letter with an evil intent: it was a greater sin to show it to another. I have gotten the letter from Aunt Vaughan; and there it is. And now having made such poor reparation as was in my power, I ask your forgiveness, and solemnly promise hereafter to do my whole duty far as I know it as your wife. Will you forgive me?"

mise my vision of the one or the other. But as long as you shall need a true and faithful and devoted friend, even unto death, you may count upon me."

She was sobbing, with her head upon his knee and his hand upon her hair. He raised her quietly to a seat by his side, and they proceeded to talk over what had occurred during his absence. She told him of the change in her religious views and relations-of the comfort which she had already experienced in them, and the persecution which she was likely to encounter ; and he gave her the assurance of his friendship and support through whatever trials might come to her in her efforts to live what seemed to her a true life. Then they talked of Zarie and her pious zeal in behalf of virtue and the Vaughan family; and at last of his mother's death and his great sorrow. When they separated for the night Elsie felt a peace of conscience and a serenity of spirit which were nobler and sweeter and purer than anything which she had ever known of love. Trouble, even to her, was working out its legitimate and most blessed results.

Miss Zarie's emotions, when she heard of the Doctor's return, would be difficult to picture. It is a little to be feared that she did not greatly rejoice in her own discomfiture, although the victory was surely on the side of virtue. The neighborhood felt, as a neighborhood always does under such circumstances, greatly abused; and instead of visiting the offence on the heads of the Vaughan family, where it certainly belonged, with the usual consistency, reserved all its wrath for the Doctor, and, it would seem, visited him with terrible punishment, because he did not elope.

From the day of his return he was a marked man in the community. He attended strictly to his own business: was the same wise, kind, faithful watcher and healer of the sick; the same good citizen and true friend of the poor that

he always had been. In his family he was faithful, and tender, and true: no woman in all Brockendale found her domestic life more serene, or her every material want more carefully supplied, than Elsie; and, aided by the pious and faithful exhortations of Father Dunne, no woman lived a more discreet and blameless life. The Doctor, moreover, stayed at home, and there was no hint of any further indiscretions, even of an epistolary kind. et two-thirds of his old friends shunned him practice fell off; he was pointed at as a man who held strange doctrines; the clergy called him an infidel; he was denounced in prayer meetings as a scoffer a man of lewd inclinations -a person to be shunned even more than to be prayed for.

his

With the Vaughans he had little intercourse; albeit Elsie had quietly reinstated herself in the favor of her uncle and aunt. Between himself and Miss Zarie there was a well-understood enmity, which, however, so far as the Doctor was concerned, was of a perfectly passive kind.

All this the Doctor bore with such patience as he might. The labors of his profession engrossed a great share of his time; another portion he gave to books and his own meditations thereon, and the remainder to his family. Little Dora, who was growing to be a most sweet and engaging child, was his almost constant companion - his perpetual pride and delight.

No child was ever more tenderly reared or enveloped in a more perpetual atmosphere and sunshine of love. Whatever bitterness might at any time linger in his own heart, no flavor of it was ever permitted to taint the pure cup of her life. Between himself and Elsie there was a confidence on this subject, and both were resolved, in any event, never consciously to mar, but always to cherish and perpetuate, that sweet filial devotion which she manifested toward them both.

But the Doctor grew old

very fast.

His face was seamed with furrows; his hair was rapidly turning gray. He had laid a great offering upon the altar of love, and as yet God seemed to have forgotten the answering blessing.

Again and again, in his solitary night-rides and his lonely hours of watching by sick-beds, he had gone over in his own mind the course he had pursued, and always with the same result. Not only the teaching of his social, but also of his professional life, went to show him the fearful penalties with which God visits any infraction of that primal law of human life on which rests the union of the sexes. He saw vice and immorality, disease and death, springing everywhere from marriages unblest by love. If abstinence were abused as contrary to the laws of health, he knew how much more suffering is visited upon the world as the penalty of unholy indulgence Moreover, abstinence can injure but one; but from a single act of license may spring a stream of corruption and impurity

which shall not expend its force for many generations.

Having seen the truth, he prayed daily for strength to abide by it; and to his torn and bleeding heart strength was borne upon invisible wings. Oh! if all eyes could be opened to the fountains of heavenly love and wisdom ordained from the beginning of the world for the succor of all those who, tried and tempted and trampled upon in the cause of Truth, look upward to the God of Truth for support and comfort, how many faint hearts wou'd grow strong!-how would the world's heroes be encouraged and multiplied!

Through the clouds which compassed the Doctor about, there came at times celestial shinings. The harmonies of heaven were wafted downward to his ear, and, however his heart might sink in its solitary and unloved way, that great principle of LOVE for which he suffered, winged with divine and celestial glory, descended and filled his soul with its serene, enraptured peace. And so he waited.

C. F. CORBIN.

THE Quarterly meeting has confirmed the action of the Monthly meeting in the case of John J. Merritt. We hope to obtain a full account of the matter for publication.

THE third number of The Cretan is on our table. It presents the usual variety of able and interesting articles. Among others is an account of the recent Cretan fair in Boston, the net proceeds of which were nearly $21,000. We congratulate the managers on the success of their arduous undertaking. We hope this fair may be followed by others in the principal cities, if the success of this is any guarantee for future ones.

THE opponents of Dr. Colenso have no idea of giving up the fight. At the close of last month a deputation from the English Church Union waited upon the Archbishop of Canterbury and presented a declaration signed by upwards of twenty thousand communicants of the Church of England. The document set forth

certain statements described as the "errors of Dr. Colenso," and avowed that its signataries solemnly renounced all Christian communion with him until he repented of having propounded the doctrines complained of. Earl Nelson assured the Primate that those who had signed the document did not presume to judge Dr. Colenso, but they took this step because they had heard of his having been deposed by a legal court of the church and excommunicated. The Archbishop, in the course of a brief reply, said he had repeatedly expressed his belief that Dr. Colenso was in grievous error, and he thought he had been spiritually deposed from his functions. A report from a committee of the Upper House of Convocation would be before the public in a few days, and, in the cpinion of the Archbishop, it will give more satisfaction to the public than anything which has yet been done.