yard to pass through, and the farmer's wife to greet ere she came to an old stone gateway, and, passing through it, found herself in front of the house. It was a large, fine old three-gabled house. Over the stone archway she had passed through, a slab was let in with the initials, J. A., and the date, 1667. John Aglionby of that period had built himself this house, but upon the remains of an older and a smaller one, where his fathers had lived before him. Over the doorway was a larger slab, with the same date carved on it, and "IOHN AND IVDITH AGLIONBIE, THEIRE HOVSE," above and below it.

Judith passed several windows, and paused before the door in the porch, before she went in, surveying the prospect. The clouds had lifted a little, and one pale, white gleam of light stole through them, and slipped adown the side of the hill opposite, showing up the bare gray houses and stone roofs of the tiny village called Stalling Busk, and then slid gently on to the lake, and touched it with a silver finger, so that even on this dark afternoon it was veritably "Shennamere."

Raydaleside and the Stake Fell looked black and threatening, and the clouds that were piled above them seemed big with the coming storm. From where Judith stood, a most delightful oldfashioned flower-garden, with no pretentions at all to elegance, and therefore full of the greater charm of sincerity, sloped down almost to the lakeside. There was just a paling, a little strip of green field with a path through it, and then, the margin of the mere, with a small wooden jetty running into it, to which a boat was moored, with the name Delphine painted in white letters on its grassgreen side. Many an hour had the two girls passed in it, floating about the lake, with or without their granduncle. Just now it rocked uneasily; not constantly, but occasionally. The whole surface of the lake seemed to sway restlessly. It all portended a coming storm, and as Judith looked across the water, there came a sound from Raydaleside like some prolonged, weird whisper. Storm-portents, all. She knew it; and as the breath of that whisper struck cold upon her face, she turned to the door, and with a strange, unwonted chill at her heart, lifted the latch and walked in.

CHAPTER X.-"IN THE PLOT." THOUGH large and solidly built, and with some pretensions to elegance outside at least, the house

at Scar Foot was in reality planned more like a large farm-house than anything else. The door by which Judith entered let her straight into a splendid old square kitchen or houseplace, with flagged floor, warmly carpeted over, with massive beams of oak, and corner cupboards and flat cupboards, wainscoting and chair rail of the same material. They were solid-looking old oak chairs, too, black, and polished brilliantly by the friction on their seats and arms, of generations of small clothes, hands, and elbows. This room was furnished comfortably and even handsomely, but it was always used by Mr. Aglionby as a sort of hall or entrance-chamber. Over the way on the right was another spacious, comfortable room, serving as a sort of library, for all the books were kept there. Up-stairs was the large drawing-room or reception-room-" the great parlor" had been its name from time immemorial. The master's own favorite den and sanctum, into which no person dared to penetrate without first knocking and being invited to enter, was a much smaller room than any of those already described, arrived at by passing through the houseplace on the left of the entrance. This little room was paneled throughout with oak.

Not finding her greatuncle in the houseplace, where a roaring fire was burning cheeringly, Judith knocked at the door of the sanctum, and a rough voice from within bade her enter. She found the old man there, puffing at his "churchwarden," with his newspaper beside hím, and his colley dog, Friend, couched at his feet. He looked up as she entered, and she saw with surprise that a black look darkened visibly over his face. He did not speak.

"Good-afternoon, uncle. to see you."

I have walked over

"Vastly obliged, I'm sure, my dear," he replied, with the urbanity of tone which with him portended anything but urbanity of temper.

"We have heard nothing of you since our return," she pursued.

"I was at your house this morning, anyhow," he said snarlingly.

"Were you?" she said in great astonishment. "Then didn't you see mother?"

"Of course I saw her."

"She did not mention your having been. How very extraordinary.

"Humph!" was the only reply.

Judith seated herself, as she usually did, opposite to him, in an oaken elbow-chair, and stooping to take Friend's head between her two hands, and brushing the hair from his eyes, she said: "Perhaps she will tell us about it to-night. She was tired, and went to lie down after dinner, so she doesn't even know that I am here. I came early to save the daylight. Do you know, uncle, there's going to be a storm."

"It is more than probable that your surmise is correct," he rejoined sententiously.

"Shennamere is restless, and the wind comes moaning from off Raydaleside," she went on, keeping to commonplace topics before she approached the important one which lay near her heart, and which, after long and earnest discussion with Delphine, they had decided should be broached to-day. She was sorry to see that her uncle was not in the most auspicious mood for granting favors, but she felt it impossible now to turn back with the favor she desired, unasked, after all her heart-beatings, her doubts and difficulties, and hesitations, and-she took heart of grace-he never had refused any of her rare and few petitions. He might, perhaps, have grimaced over them a little, in his uncanny way, but in the end they had been granted always.

"Ay," her uncle responded to her last remark; "whoever thinks that Shennamere is always ashine, knows naught of the weather in these parts; and whoever lives at Scar Foot should fear neither solitude nor wild weather."

"Well, you have never feared them, have you, uncle ?"

"What do you know about it?" he returned surlily.

Judith, looking out through the window, saw the storm-clouds gathering more thickly. She must broach her errand. With her heart in her throat, at first, not from fear, to which sensation she was a stranger, but from the tremendous effort of not only overcoming her own innate reserve, but of laying siege to his also, she said: "Uncle, I came to see you this afternoon, with a purpose."

He looked sharply up, on the alert instantly his eyes gleaming, his face expressive of attention. She went on :

"You have been very good to us girls, especially to Delphine and me, and most especially to me, all our lives."

"Humph!"

"And I am sure we have returned your goodness with the only thing we had to give-affection, that is."

A peculiar sound, between a sneer and a snort, was the answer.

"I am more than twenty-one years old now, nearly twenty-two, indeed."

"Thrilling news, I must say !"'

"I am not a very clever person, and I am a very ignorant one."

"Some grains of truth appear to have penetrated your mind; though they have taken a long time to get there, if you have only found that out now."

"But I don't think I am more stupid than most people, and when one is young, one can always learn."

"Do you desire a master for Italian and the guitar?"

"Not at present," she replied composedly, but her heart grew heavier as she saw no sign of responsiveness, or of sympathy on his face; only a hard, stolid fixity of expression, worse almost than laughter.

"I don't think I should ever care to perform on the guitar," she proceeded, "though I should like to know Italian well enough. But I did not come to you with any such absurd request. It was a much more serious business that brought me here. Uncle, mamma has often told me that you are rich."

"The devil she has !" broke discordantly from him.

"And if she had never said so, we have heard it from numbers of other people. And mamma has often said that when you died- She hesitated, faltered.

He removed his pipe from his mouth, and, with gleaming eyes, and lips that had grown ominously thin, relieved her from the necessity of finishing the sentence.

"You lasses would have my money to cut capers with, eh ?"

"Oh, no, no! But that, as you had no one else to leave it to-we-you, uncle, you know what I mean; and do listen to me. You quite misunderstand me. I hope you will live for years and years-for twenty years to come. Why not? And I do not want your money. I hate to think that people point us out as being your heiresses;

and when mamma talks about it, it makes me feel fit to sink into the earth with shame. But, uncle, you know-for you cannot help knowing-that mamma has not enough money for us to live upon. We can starve and pinch, and economize upon her income, but we can't have any comfort upon it, and it is terrible. We cannot speak about it to strangers-we don't wish to; but it is none the less misery that we live in. And I am so tired of being idle, and so is Delphine: we should like to work sixteen hours a day, if we could keep ourselves by doing so. And if you would give me a hundred pounds now, uncle, you should never need to think of spending another penny upon me as long as we both live, nor of leaving me any money when you die; nor to Delphine, either. We have a proper plan. We want to work, not to waste the money. Oh, uncle, dear, you know what it has cost me to ask this. Surely you won't refuse !"

The pleading in her voice amounted to passion. She laid her hand upon his arm in the urgency of her appeal, and looked with an intensity of eagerness into his face.

Mr. Aglionby put down his pipe and rose from his chair, his face white with anger; his lips and hands trembling.

"What! you are in the plot, too, shameless girl!" he said, in a fury which, if not loud, was none the less dreadful.

am not a driveling idiot yet, and so you may tell your respected mother on your return. And

"My mother knows nothing about this," Judith said, or rather, she tried to say it. She was stunned, bewildered by the torrent of anger she had drawn upon herself, and utterly at a loss to comprehend his repeated references to some "plot," some "scheme," of which he seemed to accuse her of being cognizant.

"Bah!" he vociferated, returning to his raging anger, which appeared to have overmastered him completely. And as he spoke he hissed out his words in a way which irresistibly reminded her in the midst of her dismay of the streaming out of boiling water. And they fell, too, upon her head with the same scalding effect. She stood still, while he raged on with wild words and wilder accusations; nothing being clear in them, save that she and all belonging to her had played a part to cheat and fleece him, and to "oust the poor lad from his rights," all of which accusations were as mysterious to her as they were outrageous to her dignity. She had forgotten by now the errand on which she had come, while her mind, in painful bewilderment, sought to assign some reason for this fit of frantic anger. The accusations and the epithets he used at last roused her indignation beyond control. Raising her head, she fixed her clear eyes unblenchingly upon his

"Your precious mother has bequeated her impudence and her slipperiness to you, too, eh? A bad lot, those Arkendales, every one of them. You thought to come and wheedle something solid out of me before it was too late. I know you. I know what it is to be an old man with a lot of female vultures sitting round him, waiting for him to die that they may pick him clean. seems some of them can't even let the breath leave his body before beginning their work. But," his voice changed suddenly from raving in a broad Yorkshire dialect to the treacherously smooth tones of polite conventionality, "though I am past seventy-two years of age, my dear, I

It

louder, clearer voice:

"Uncle, listen to—"

"Begone!" he almost shouted, with a stamp of his foot, and turning upon her with eyes that scintillated with fury; "and may you never darken my doors again."

She paused a moment, for her mind refused altogether to comprehend his words. Then as some understanding of what he had said began to dawn upon her, she turned to the door, saying, in an almost toneless voice:

"Good-bye, uncle. You are not yourself. You are making a dreadful mistake. Some day you will repent it."

(To be continued.)

FIFTH MOVEMENT.-OVER THE HILL-TOPS.

HOMEWARD as farmer Laroix through the island was driving, In the sweet air of the morning that followed the rainstorm,

Suddenly rose, like a vision, the years of his daughter : Eighteen bright, beautiful summers-and this was the nineteenth!

Thus with the tip of his finger he counted them over, Measured them out in the midst of his horny palm's hollow; Stopped in amaze, when he came to the limit of girlhood, Holding the years in suspension, with finger uplifted!

come.

'Will you not tarry ?" he asked, coming out to the roadside. 'Nay," said the farmer; "I needs must get home before noonday.

Lora will stay at the tavern, perhaps, for a fortnight.
When I return for my daughter, I'll pay you a visit,
Though 'twill be short, for I like not this chasing from
duty."

Thus as he spoke, the old man gave the rein to his horses, Nodding good-bye, as though fain he would flee from persuasion.

"Stay!" cried the landowner, blushing from temple to temple;

“I will bring Lora home gladly, when two weeks are ended, And it will save you a journey from south-isle to north-isle; Also the farm and the toll-gate will not be neglected."

"Thanks for your offer," the farmer, with gratitude, answered.

"Tell, then, the maid that you come in the place of her father;

And if she will not return, when the two weeks are finished,
Carry her off, like a child that is stubborn and willful !"
Straightway the honest old man swung his lash and departed,
Leaving the lover of Lora surprised and rejoicing
At the broad mantle of influence fallen upon him!

Slender and proud was the gelding that waited his pleasure.
Even the buckles were spotless that shone on the harness.
So he rode off, with the bright morning sunlight upon him;
Thousands of spokes in the wheels seemed revolving and
flashing!

Laughing, the hostler returned to his post in the stable;
For not as usual Oliver Bascom was riding,
Sturdily straight in the midst of the seat, but reclining
Low in the cushioned right corner, and leaving beside him,
Even on his heart's side, plenteous room for another!

Mid-morning high, robed in glory, the day-king was riding. Hushed were the birds, but the insects kept piping and droning.

On a bleak hill-top, that hung o'er the roof of the tavern, Stood, for a moment, a steed like the steeds of Apollo. Broadly his mane, like the beams of the sunrise, was streaming,

And his proud neck was as free as the breath of the morning.

Lora beheld, from her window, the glorious picture;
Quick were her hazel eyes shielded with fingers of nut-brown,
And her lips parted, in murmurous wonder and longing.
"Oh, if my lover might come to me over the hill-tops,
Splendidly drawn in a carriage with beautiful horses,
Bear me away, like a fluttering bird in his bosom,
Show me a fathomless future, as deep as the sky is!"
Meanwhile the spirited gelding of Oliver Bascom
Bent his proud neck, and descended the hill-side with
caution;

Soon underneath a green covert the carriage was hidden.

Lora forgot her love-dream, and bethought her of dinner; For 'twas the first of September, the season of shooting, When the good hostess was wont to prepare for the sports

men,

As was established by custom, the "open-day dinner."

"Lora," she begged, with a sigh, and a glance at the dial, "I have forgotten the flowers for the platter of woodcock.

It is not the purpose of this paper to give a history of the art of book-binding; to attempt it even would be beyond the limits of a magazine

ANCIENT MANUSCRIPT ROLL.

article, and intensely interesting as it is to the bibliophile, it may not to the general reader be a matter of equal concern; but rather is it the intention to speak very briefly of some of the rich old bindings which a few hundred years ago were so numerous, and of some of the binders themselves and their patrons.

We may fairly assert that the first written manuscript gave birth to binding, or some device for preserving the precious writing. The ancients. wrote on papyrus more than a thousand years before Christ, and these papyrus rolls or scrolls were generally bound with a broad kind of tape or strap which served the double purpose of ornamenting and preserving; in the British Museum is a papyrus roll of this description thought to be over three thousand years old.

In Cæsar's time binding had become more of an art, and it is probable that about this time square books were substituted for scrolls; this first

kind of square binding was of the rudest form. The covers were wooden boards very possibly decorated or strengthened with metal, between which the manuscript was laid. Books were invariably kept on the side, the upper cover always the heaviest, thus keeping the manuscript of vellum, which was at this period most used, smooth and flat. We read that Cicero took much pleasure in his own books and those of two or three literary friends, and in a letter to his friend Atticus he asks that two slaves, clever binders, may be sent him. If slaves were taught how to bind, it must certainly lead us to believe that books were more common at that time than is usually supposed.

The most ancient binding in the British Museum in boards (which we may truly consider binding) is a copy of St. Cuthbert's gospels, written by a monk in the eighth century, who spent over