this hard-featured woman must have been pretty once.

"Well, I was deceived; they ran away, Anthony and Dora. They left me, and two days afterward I received this letter.-Yes, you may read it."

Gilbert read. It was as follows, and was dated from Lulworth; a quite simple, girlish, inexperienced letter:

'DEAREST RACHEL: I write to tell you that I have taken the irrevocable step, which you will, I hope, forgive when you understand that it means happiness to me. Perhaps at first you will disapprove, because I ran away; I hope, however, you will soon come round, and receive us with a sisterly affection. We are staying here together in the most delightful and most quiet place in the world. My husband joins with me in asking your forgiveness.

"I remain,

"Always your affectionate sister,
"DORA HAMBLIN."

"May I borrow it of you?" he asked, folding it up again; "you shall have it back."

Miss Nethersole hesitated.

"Tell me," he said; "you have long since forgiven your sister?"

"Long since; I prayed for her morning and night at family devotions. It would have been unchristian not to forgive so great a sinner. I prayed for her unwittingly, even six years after her death. I hope the Papistic superstition of praying for the dead will not be laid to my charge."

"I am sure," said Gilbert, wondering at the remarkable religion of this good lady-"I am sure it will not. At least, I wish I had no greater sins upon my soul than praying for the dead. But as for her husband, can you not forgive him too?"

"I do not know." Truth for the moment

overcame the cant of her party. "I do not know. I hope I can. Only," she added, in justification of herself, "when I learned at Bournemouth the death of my sister, when I found the journal, when I understood his miserable wickedness, when I discovered the six years' forgeries, I felt the old resentment rise in my heart, and then I knew that I was called and chosen-as an Instrument." She sat down wearily. "I expected to be an Instrument for a great and signal

"Tell me first," she said, "what you mean punishment.” by having things to tell me."

"No," Gilbert replied, "I can not tell you yet. May I keep this letter?”

"When my sister went away, when I understood that she was really gone for good," said Miss Nethersole, "I came into this room and I put everything just as it was on the day before she left me-the books on the table, the chairs in their places, the curtains half drawn. I said: 'This room shall remind me of Dora; it shall cry out always against the man who robbed me of her.' I have never used the room since that day. You are the only man who has been in it for twenty years and more, and when I have come into the room it has been to recall the memory of the betrayer of women-Anthony Hamblin."

I

"Give me that letter," Gilbert persisted. "I tell you again that you have much to learn. have a great surprise for you."

"What is it, your great surprise?"

"I can not tell you yet," he replied. "It may be many days before I tell you; but give me that letter. I do not want it to complete my case, but I should like to have it to show one to whom your sister's memory is very dear."

She handed him the letter almost meekly. She could not resist this young man with the soft voice and the pleading eyes.

"Take it," she sighed. "How foolish I am to trust any man after my experience, and you a complete stranger!"

"I see; but you were, perhaps, mistaken ?”

'No, not at all. I was permitted to see him, to point out to him his awful condition, to reason with him as one reasons with unrepentant sinners, to be faithful to him. It was the last word, the last chance. Perhaps it may be—he repented in the night."

Gilbert laid the letter in his pocket-book.

"I will tell you something, Miss Nethersole," he said. "But remember, this is not all I have to tell you, later on. I have here your sister's register of marriage, I have this letter to you, and I have the proof of her death. I have-and that is the most important thing I can tell you to-day I have also the register of the birth of her daughter."

"Of what?" Miss Nethersole sprang from her chair. "Of what?"

"Of a daughter. Did you not know that your sister had a daughter?"

"No, I did not. Dora's child? Her daughter? I heard nothing about any child at Bournemouth."

gers. There were, then, fountains of tears be- have gone to Anthony Hamblin in sorrow, not in hind those hard eyes.

anger; you would have appealed to his love for Alison, to the girl's love for him, to all that was kind and tender in his nature; you would have suffered the past to be forgotten; you would not have written that introduction to this 'Journal of a Deserted Wife'; you would have asked "Tell him for an explanation."

Then Gilbert went on pleading with his deep, ply. "Miss Nethersole" (he took her hand and earnest eyes and his soft, earnest voice:

You did not know of this, else you would aunt."

The poor lady was quite broken down by this this with an obvious effort. "I will give them to last touch of human kindness.

"I have been working," he said, "to restore to Alison her own good name, which has been threatened. I have had to establish the fact that her mother was married."

you-for Alison's sake, when I have made the acquaintance of my niece. Meantime, you may take the photographic copies. And now, sir, God requite you as you and yours deal with her." She choked and sat down, with her handker

"Why, who could have doubted that?" asked chief to her eyes. Miss Nethersole.

"It is a long story. However, so far, that is established. The poor girl will not have to blush for her mother, at least; whether she will have to be ashamed of her father depends upon you, my dear lady."

Give me a few days, my dear lady," said Gilbert "yet a few days, and I will ask you to make her acquaintance, and to hear the explanation of what at present you do not understand. My Alison shall thank you. Miss Nethersole, you have this day exercised the highest of Chris

"On me? You mean about those forger- tian virtues. You have forgiven and forgotten. ies ?"

The young life, the newly born love, has drawn out the old death, the old hatred."

Gilbert returned to London that same even-
ing, his task completed, his work done.
Was it well done? What would be the end?
What would Alison think?

One thing alone remained.

Early next morning he paid a visit to the bank where the receipts had been exchanged for cash. He had an interview with one of the managers. There were references to old books, and examination of certain senior clerks. The sequel appeared to be satisfactory, for when Gilbert left the bank his face was more than usually sunny.

Finally, he sought the office of Anthony Hamblin and Company, and set forth in detail the whole of his discoveries.

And then there was a discussion long and serious.

G

TEACHING GRANDMOTHER.

RANDMOTHER dear, you do not know; you have lived the old-world life,
Under the twittering eves of home, sheltered from storm and strife;

Rocking cradles, and covering jams, knitting socks for baby feet,

Or piecing together lavender bags for keeping the linen sweet :

Daughter, wife, and mother in turn, and each with a blameless breast,

Then saying your prayers when the nightfall came, and quietly dropping to rest.

You must not think, Granny, I speak in scorn, for yours have been well-spent days,
And none ever paced with more faithful feet the dutiful ancient ways.
Grandfather's gone, but while he lived you clung to him close and true,
And mother's heart, like her eyes, I know, came to her straight from you.

If the good old times, at the good old pace, in the good old grooves would run,
One could not do better, I'm sure of that, than do as you all have done.

But the world has wondrously changed, Granny, since the days when you were young;
It thinks quite different thoughts from then, and speaks with a different tongue.

The fences are broken, the cords are snapped, that tethered man's heart to home;
He ranges free as the wind or the wave, and changes his shore like the foam.
He drives his furrows through fallow seas, he reaps what the breakers sow,
And the flash of his iron flail is seen mid the barns of the barren snow.

He has lassoed the lightning and led it home, he has yoked it unto his need,
And made it answer the rein, and trudge as straight as the steer or steed.
He has bridled the torrents and made them tame, he has bitted the champing tide;
It toils as his drudge and turns the wheels that spin for his use and pride.
He handles the planets and weighs their dust, he mounts on the comet's car,
And he lifts the veil of the sun and stares in the eyes of the uttermost star.

'Tis not the same world you knew, Granny; its fetters have fallen off;
The lowliest now may rise and rule where the proud used to sit and scoff.
No need to boast of a scutcheoned stock, claim rights from an ancient wrong;
All are born with a silver spoon in their mouths whose gums are sound and strong.
And I mean to be rich and great, Granny; I mean it with heart and soul:

At my feet is the ball-I will roll it on, till it spins through the golden goal.

Out on the thought that my copious life should trickle in trivial days,
Myself but a lonelier sort of beast, watching the cattle graze,
Scanning the year's monotonous change, or gaping at wind and rain,
And hanging with meek, solicitous eyes on the whims of a creaking vane;
Wretched if ewes drop single lambs, blest so is oil-cake cheap,

And growing old in a tedious round of worry, surfeit, and sleep!

You dear old Granny, how sweet your smile, and how soft your silvery hair!
But all has moved on while you sat still in your cap and easy-chair.
The torch of knowledge is lit for all, it flashes from hand to hand;
The alien tongues of the earth converse, and whisper from strand to strand.
The very churches are changed and boast new hymns, new rites, new truth;
Men worship a wiser and greater God than the half-known God of your youth.

What! marry Connie and set up house, and dwell where my fathers dwelt,
Giving the homely feasts they gave, and kneeling where they knelt ?
She is pretty, and good, and void I am sure of vanity, greed, or guile;
But she has not traveled nor seen the world, and is lacking in air and style.
Women now are as wise and strong as men, and vie with men in renown;
The wife that will help to build my fame was not bred near a country town.

What a notion! to figure at parish boards, and wrangle o'er cess and rate,
I, who mean to sit for the county yet, and vote on an empire's fate;
To take the chair at the farmers' feasts, and tickle their bumpkin ears,
Who must shake a senate before I die, and waken a people's cheers!
In the olden days was no choice, so sons to the roof of their fathers clave:
But now! 'twere to perish before one's time, and to sleep in a living grave.

I see that you do not understand. How should you? Your memory clings
To the simple music of silenced days and the skirts of vanishing things.
Your fancy wanders round ruined haunts, and dwells upon oft-told tales;
Your eyes discern not the widening dawn, nor your ears catch the rising gales.
But live on, Granny, till I come back, and then perhaps you will own
The dear old Past is an empty nest, and the Present the brood that is flown.

GRANDMOTHER'S TEACHING.

AND so, my dear, you're come back at last? I always fancied you would.
Well, you see the old home of your childhood's days is standing where it stood.
The roses still clamber from porch to roof, the elder is white at the gate,
And over the long, smooth gravel-path the peacock still struts in state.

On the gabled lodge, as of old, in the sun, the pigeons sit and coo,

And our hearts, my dear, are no whit more changed, but have kept still warm for you.

You'll find little altered, unless it be me, and that since my last attack;
But so that you only give me time, I can walk to the church and back.
You bade me not die till you returned, and so you see I lived on:
I'm glad that I did, now you've really come, but it's almost time I was gone.
I suppose that there isn't room for us all, and the old should depart the first.
That's but as it should be. What is sad, is to bury the dead you've nursed.

Won't you take something at once, my dear? Not even a glass of whey?
The dappled Alderney calved last week, and the baking is fresh to-day.
Have you lost your appetite too in town, or is it you've grown over-nice ?
If you'd rather have biscuits and cowslip wine, they'll bring them up in a trice.
But what am I saying? Your coming down has set me all in a maze :

I forgot that you traveled down by train; I was thinking of coaching days.

There, sit you down, and give me your hand, and tell me about it all,
From the day that you left us, keen to go, to the pride that had a fall.
And all went well at the first? So it does, when we're young and puffed with hope;
But the foot of the hill is quicker reached the easier seems the slope.

And men thronged round you, and women too? Yes, that I can understand.
When there's gold in the palm, the greedy world is eager to grasp the hand.

I heard them tell of your smart town house, but I always shook my head.
One doesn't grow rich in a year and a day, in the time of my youth 'twas said.
Men do not reap in the spring, my dear, nor are granaries filled in May,
Save it be with the harvest of former years, stored up for a rainy day.
The seasons will keep their own true time, you can hurry nor furrow nor sod:
It's honest labor and steadfast thrift that alone are blest by God.

You say you were honest. I trust you were, nor do I judge you, my dear:

I have old-fashioned ways, and it's quite enough to keep one's own conscience clear.
But still the commandment, Thou shalt not steal," though a simple and ancient rule,

66

Was not made for complex cunning to balk, nor for any new age to befool;

And if my growing rich unto others brought but penury, chill, and grief,

I should feel, though I never had filched with my hands, I was only a craftier thief.

That isn't the way they look at it there? All worshiped the rising sun?
Most of all the fine lady, in pride of purse you fancied your heart had won.
I don't want to hear of her beauty or birth: I reckon her foul and low;
Far better a steadfast cottage wench than grand loves that come and go.
To cleave to their husbands through weal, through woe, is all women have to do:
In growing as clever as men they seem to have matched them in fickleness too.

But there's one in whose heart has your image still dwelt through many an absent day,
As the scent of a flower will haunt a closed room, though the flower be taken away.