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Title: The Quiver, 2/1900

Author: Various

Release date: September 4, 2013 [eBook #43642]

Language: English

Credits: E-text prepared by Delphine Lettau, Julia Neufeld, and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team


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THE QUIVER 2/1900

[Illustration: (_By permission of Messrs. Henry Graves and Co., Pall
Mall, S. W._)

THE LOST PIECE OF MONEY.

(_By the late Sir John E. Millais, P.R.A._)]




PICTORIAL SERMONS.

[Illustration: (_By permission of William Coltart, Esq._)

JOSEPH INTRODUCING JACOB TO PHARAOH.

(_By Sir Edward J. Poynter, P.R.A._)]


With truth and beauty as the objects of his art, the painter,
whatever be the subject he is endeavouring to depict, becomes a
guide and helpmeet to his fellow-men. His art is "twice blessed,"
blessing "him that gives and him that takes." The contemplation
of a beautiful and pure work of art acts as a charm upon the
mind oppressed with care and trouble. A landscape on canvas,
reflecting the sunshine of the countryside, suggesting its freedom
of atmosphere, its "fair quiet and sweet rest," when seen in the
midst of the toil and grime of a great city, is a sedative to the
jaded nerves of the busy worker; it reminds him of the glories of
nature which lie outside the boundaries of the man-made wilderness
of houses, and brings him for the moment into close commune with
Nature herself. A glimpse of blue sea, of clear running stream, or
some sweet pastoral scene, carries with it a breath of fresh air,
invigorating and refreshing, to those who gaze upon its brightness
through the murky atmosphere of the city streets.

The painter, indeed, has a power which competes closely with the
eloquence of the preacher, or the soothing rhythm of the poet; it
raises the man who approaches his work with a receptive heart from
his own petty self, enlarges his sympathies and his hopes, calms
his troubles, and sends him back refreshed and invigorated to his
struggle with the cares and troubles of his daily life.

A great picture is not so much one that displays the technical skill
of the painter as his power to appeal to the emotions of those who
look at it. Truth is at all times simple, and he who would expound
it, either in sermon, poem, or picture, must do so in language which
can be readily understood of the people. This does not make his
task any the lighter, for any straining after effects of simplicity
betrays his own lack of truth; simplicity must be spontaneous--from
the heart.

Judging a picture, then, by this standard of simplicity and truth,
we look first of all for these qualities; we look to see if the
artist is sincere in his representation of the scene he presents
to us. If we find this to be so, then we receive the work as a
contribution to the truth we are seeking. Some painters force
us to recognise their skill as colourists, as draughtsmen, as
archæologists--they have insisted upon their accuracy in these
respects, but oftentimes at the sacrifice of all spirituality; their
pictures are representations of costume, of architecture--what
you will--but the true spirit of art is lacking; they are merely
skilfully painted canvases.

In no direction is this more apparent than in pictures dealing
with religious subjects. In such works we especially want to feel
immediately we look at them, "Here is an honest effort to realise
the true spirit of the subject: here is something which is helpful,
inspiring, _good_." We do not want to be forced to admire the
accessories before we realise this; that should follow in due
course, and will, if the picture has been designed and executed
in the right spirit. As in a spoken sermon we fail to grasp the
teaching as we should if we see the framework upon which the
preacher has built up the fabric of his oration, so in a pictorial
sermon we lose the good that is in it if we are impressed first of
all with the details of technique or composition. The appeal to the
heart should come first--that to the head should be secondary.

[Illustration: (_By permission of the Artist. Copyright reserved._)

"AND THERE WAS A GREAT CRY IN EGYPT."

(_By Arthur Hacker, A.R.A._)]

The helpfulness and interest of Biblical pictures to young and old
is acknowledged by all. The pictorial Bible is a never-ending source
of delight, and its influence is extraordinary in its extent and
power. Our ideas of Scriptural scenes and incidents have often been
formed more by the illustrations than by the Biblical narrative
itself, and we have often been almost pained in after-life on
seeing the attempts of other artists to depict scenes which differ
materially from those for which we acquired a fondness in our
early days, although we recognise the fact then that many of these
favourite pictures are in no wise worthy of their subjects. After
all, pictorial Bibles are, as a rule, unsatisfactory. More's the
pity! The range of subjects is so vast, and the artists employed
have seldom succeeded in impressing their representations with any
degree of the dignity attaching to them. Even the versatile genius
of Gustavo Doré could not respond successfully to the gigantic work,
although of the few artists who have grappled with it, he creates
the greatest amount of interest.

[Illustration: (_From the Fresco in the House of Lords._)

MOSES' DESCENT FROM SINAI.

(_By J. R. Herbert, R.A._)]

An interesting volume has recently been published in which are
gathered together pictures, by modern artists of varied nationality,
which illustrate the Bible story from Genesis to Revelation, and
which affords an excellent opportunity of studying the manner
in which Biblical subjects have impressed artists of different
countries and temperaments.[1] Each has chosen to illustrate
the portion of Scripture which appealed to his own particular
inclination, and the result is a collection of pictures which
cannot fail to interest all who examine it. There are reproductions
of the vast conceptions of John Martin, which so impressed his
contemporaries--"Belshazzar's Feast," "The Fall of Babylon," and
"The Fall of Nineveh"--with their hundreds of figures struggling,
writhing, fighting, and dying amid the gorgeous palaces and the
buildings of those wonderful cities of old. The curiously eccentric
genius of Turner is shown in his "Deluge" and "Destruction of
Sodom"--in the one, the swirling rush of the destroying torrent
sweeping away crowds of doomed humanity; in the other, the glare and
smoke of the burning City of the Plain, the tottering columns of
the buildings, and the wild hurryings of the affrighted citizens.
Now the sensuous dancings and frivolities of "The World before
the Flood," by William Etty, R.A.: and now the grim pictures of
the Biblical tragedies from the brushes of the masters of the
French School. Here the calm, peaceful creations of Burne-Jones
and Rossetti--decoratively beautiful--and then the prettily human
pictures of Dyce and Herbert. The modern German artists who
delight in representing Christ living among and appealing to the
people of our day--the school in which Herr Fritz von Uhde stands
pre-eminent--are represented by "Christ's Call to the Sick and
Weary," by Herr A. Dietrich.

  [1] "Sacred Art: The Bible Story Pictured by Eminent Modern
  Painters." Edited by A. G. Temple, F.S.A. (Cassell & Co., Ltd.)

From this series of pictures we have selected some typical works
with which to illustrate this article, and these will serve to show
the variety and interest of the whole.

The President of the Royal Academy, Sir Edward J. Poynter, delights
in rendering classic scenes and stories on his canvases, and of late
years has turned his attention almost entirely to such; but twenty
or so years ago he painted several religious pictures, and was one
of the artists chosen by Messrs. Dalziel to illustrate their great
edition of the Bible. Egypt seems especially to have fascinated
him, for, in addition to the picture of "Joseph Introducing Jacob
to Pharaoh," he painted another large canvas dealing with the
captivity, in which crowds of Israelites are dragging a great,
clumsy trolley on which is placed an enormous stone lion for the
decoration of a temple. In this picture, as in the one illustrated
on page 387, the artist has exhibited his love for Egyptian
architecture, with its massive pillars covered with mysterious
symbols. But in the latter work Sir Edward Poynter has made the
human element predominant; and the simple, pathetic figure of the
patriarch, leaning heavily on his staff and on the shoulder of his
long-lost son, stands out in contrast with the languorous splendour
of the Pharaoh.

[Illustration: CHRIST IN THE HOUSE OF HIS PARENTS.

(_By the late Sir John E. Millais, P.R.A._)]

Vastly impressive and weird is Mr. Hacker's "And there was a great
cry in Egypt." This artist has on more than one occasion exhibited
works of a religious nature at the Royal Academy; but none better
than the one before us and "The Annunciation," purchased for the
Chantrey Collection, and now in the National Gallery of British Art.
The picture reproduced on page 388 illustrates the passage in Exodus
(xii. 30): "And there was a great cry in Egypt; for there was not
a house where there was not one dead." It is in its suggestiveness
that the picture tells: we see none of the horrors of the last
plague; they are only suggested in the title. The silent, sorrowing
figure of the Angel of Death, sweeping through the city with flaming
sword in hand and trailing robe of black--symbol of the train of
sorrow he leaves behind him--is noble and dignified. Carried along
on swift wings through the deserted streets of the stricken city,
the destroyer touches in each household the doomed "first-born," and
only that weird, heart-breaking cry rising on the night air tells of
the sorrow and misery that mark his track.

The next illustration (page 389) deals with the incident of Moses'
second descent from Sinai, bearing the re-written tables of the law,
and is the work of J. R. Herbert, R.A. It forms one of the series of
frescoes in the House of Lords.

"Ruth and Naomi" (page 393) is one of the best of the Scriptural
subjects treated by the late P. H. Calderon, R.A., and hangs in the
Walker Art Gallery at Liverpool. The passage illustrated is that in
which Ruth makes her impassioned appeal: "Intreat me not to leave
thee, or to return from following after thee: for whither thou
goest, I will go; and where thou lodgest, I will lodge: thy people
shall be my people, and thy God my God"; and the artist has imparted
to the beautiful figure of Ruth all the intensity and passion to
which the words give utterance.

[Illustration:  (_By permission of Miss Armitage._)

FAITH.

(_By the late E. Armitage, R.A._)]

We now pass on to the New Testament--the section most favoured by
artists, for the attraction of its central Figure is as overpowering
for the painter of to-day as it has been to those of the intervening
ages. The picture on page 390 of "Christ in the House of His
Parents," by the late Sir John Millais, is one of the earliest and
most noted of the painter's works. When exhibited at the Royal
Academy in 1850 (Millais was then but twenty years of age), it had
for its inscription, "And one shall say unto him, What are these
wounds in thine hands? Then he shall answer, Those with which I was
wounded in the house of my friends" (Zechariah xiii. 6). The picture
aroused a veritable storm of hostile criticism, scorn and contumely
being poured on painting and painter alike. Charles Dickens, in
his _Household Words_, pronounced it as "mean, odious, revolting,
and repulsive," and other critics found fault with it in equally
strong language. It was then that the title of "The Carpenter's
Shop" was scornfully bestowed upon it, and by which it has since
been generally known: it has, however, long been recognised as one
of the most wonderful contributions to modern British art, quite
apart from any consideration of the age of the artist when he
painted it. The perfect draughtsmanship, the wonderful colouring,
the marvellous skill displayed in the whole composition, were all
overlooked by the contemporary critics; all they considered was
the--to them--execrable taste of the artist in representing Christ
in an ordinary carpenter's shop! The beautiful allegories contained
in the work were all ignored, and abuse for the conception alone
given place.

[Illustration: "ECCE HOMO!"

(_By Professor Ciseri._)]

And yet, when it is examined, what is there to find fault with in
this respect? Absolutely nothing. The artist set himself to paint
from nature; the work appeals directly to the observant eye by its
simple force; even the symbols are not intricate when carefully
considered. The Child, whilst playing with the pincers in His
father's workshop, has injured His hand on a rusty nail protruding
from the wood on the bench. Joseph draws back the fingers to examine
the wound (the symbolism of which is obvious enough), and Mary,
with grief and motherly anxiety portrayed on every line of her
face, seeks to soothe the Boy, and with a piece of linen prepares
to bind up the hand. St. John is coming with a bowl of water with
which to bathe the injury, and St. Anne leans forward to remove the
tool which contributed to the hurt. On the ladder against the wall
rests a dove--the emblem of peace--and through the open doorway can
be seen a flock of sheep huddled close to a fence, emblematical of
the faithful, the Church of Christ. Farther out in the meadow is a
well--the well of Truth.

[Illustration: (_Reproduced by permission from the Original Painting
in the possession of the Liverpool Corporation._)

RUTH AND NAOMI.

(_By P. H. Calderon, R.A._)]

The picture was painted on commission for Mr. Farrar, the well-known
dealer, for the sum of £250--a large sum in those days for a work
by a young man.

This picture will form the subject of one of the fine art plates
offered to readers of THE QUIVER, on conditions which are
stated elsewhere in this number. Lord Leighton's well-known painting
"The Star in the East," and the masterpieces of four other eminent
artists, will also be included; the whole forming a set of sacred
pictures, suitable for framing, of permanent value and interest for
every Christian home as well as every Sunday school and mission hall.

The other picture by Millais, which is reproduced as the
frontispiece to this number, was based upon a drawing which the
artist made for Messrs. Routledge, in 1853, for a series of "The
Parables of our Lord." The painting, however, was not made until
1862, when it was exhibited at the Royal Academy. It was afterwards
totally destroyed in a gas explosion at Baron Marochetti's house.

The picture "Faith," by the late E. Armitage, R.A. (see page 391),
is an excellent illustration of the passage, "For she said within
herself, If I may but touch His garment, I shall be whole."

The tragedy of the betrayal, and the perfidy of Judas, have been
the subjects of innumerable pictures; and that of "Judas," by
Henry Tidey, which we reproduce, is typical of many. The betrayer
is represented here when leaving the house in which is being held
the sacred feast on the night of the betrayal. The pose of the man
reveals the shame which he is feeling; hesitating yet as to whether
his fell purpose shall be accomplished.

[Illustration: (_In the possession of Mrs. Noble._)

JUDAS GOING OUT.

(_By Henry Tidey._)]

The illustration on page 392 shows us the memorable scene when
Pilate exclaims to the multitude surrounding the palace, "Behold
the Man!" The work of a modern Italian artist, this picture is an
admirable rendering of the tragic event, the subdued patience of the
central Figure contrasting strongly with that of the subservient
prefect.

  ARTHUR FISH.




[NEW SERIAL STORY.

[Illustration: FOR THE SAKE OF HER CHILD]

By Scott Graham, Author of "The Link between Them," Etc.




CHAPTER I.

Dependent upon Charity.


It was a radiant June morning, and the fashionable
watering-place--Beachbourne--was looking its best in the brilliant
sunshine. Smart carriages dashed past, well-dressed cyclists
careered gaily along, and the High Street shops were thronged with
fashionable customers.

A tall, refined-looking girl, whose exquisitely fitting garb lent
additional elegance to her graceful figure, came along the pavement,
holding by the hand a pretty, fair-haired child of six, likewise
beautifully dressed. At a confectioner's window the child suddenly
stopped. "Oh, mummy, do buy me one of those dear little chocolate
pigs! I haven't had any sweets for ever so long!"

"Don't tease, Doris. I have no money to buy sweets."

The child opened great eyes of wonder.

"Why, mummy, you've got shillings, sovewins, great heaps of them,
in your purse! I saw them!" she remonstrated. And, indeed, Mrs.
Burnside's dainty, silver-mounted purse was literally bulging with
coin.

"They all belong to auntie, and she wants them to pay her bills."
And she turned resolutely from the enticing window, whereupon Doris,
who was tired with the walk and the heat, burst into loud crying.

As her mortified mother strove to check her, a young man in a
professional frock-coat and tall hat, who was passing, turned to
see the cause of the uproar. Mrs. Burnside's fair face flushed. "My
little girl is very naughty this morning, Dr. Inglis," she said,
answering the inquiry in his grey eyes. They were but slightly
acquainted, occasionally meeting in society.

"I want--a choc'late pig," wailed Doris. "Mummy won't buy me
one--unkind mummy!"

"Hush, Doris," rebuked the young doctor. "A chocolate pig! If that's
all the trouble----" and he fingered the few coins in his vest
pocket. "May she have one, Mrs. Burnside?"

So Doris got her wish; and, once inside the confectioner's, she
fancied so many things that very little remained to Dr. Inglis out
of a shilling; and he needed all his shillings badly. But he loved
children, and already May Burnside's blue eyes had begun to haunt
him, She held out her beautifully gloved hand with a grateful smile;
and he noticed how thoroughbred she looked as she went with the now
happy Doris down the sunny street.

There was a shadow on the young man's face as he sped home to his
scanty luncheon. He was too poor to take a house, so he rented
three rooms in a sedate-looking villa in a side street. Doctors
simply swarmed at Beachbourne, and sometimes Harold Inglis doubted
the wisdom of trying to work up a connection there. The eldest
son of an impoverished country squire, he had to depend upon his
own exertions; and, after a brilliant college career, came to
Beachbourne, hoping to work up a practice, as he was too poor to buy
one. Could he have taken a fine house and kept a carriage, he might
have succeeded; for he was a gentleman to the backbone, and had a
pleasant face and manner. But he remained almost unknown, and, after
a year of heart-breaking disappointments, found himself barely able
to live.

Before sitting down to the bread and cheese awaiting him in the bare
little sitting-room, he thriftily changed his frock-coat for an old
boating blazer. Dress was a terribly heavy item in his expenditure;
the well-cut clothes, the glossy hat, and the snowy linen
prescribed by medical etiquette being only procured at the cost of
semi-starvation. To the hungry labourer or vagrant many people will
give a meal; but, to my mind, the gentleman who has to go hungry
that he may be well-dressed is far more deserving of pity. And many
a professional man _has_ to go hungry in these sad days when "all
the markets overflow."

Meanwhile May and Doris Burnside were bound for Victoria Square,
the most fashionable locality in Beachbourne. Mrs. Burnside resided
with her aunt, Miss Waller, a sprightly spinster of fifty, who
lived at the very top of her handsome income, and was a leader of
local fashion. A smart footman opened the door, and the beautiful
drawing-room they entered was a great contrast to Dr. Inglis's bare
sitting-room.

[Illustration: "I want a choc'late pig," wailed Doris.--_p. 395._]

Miss Waller, a good-looking woman with white hair, and very richly
dressed, turned round from a fine old Chippendale writing-table.
"Oh! there you are." Then, as Doris began some childish babble about
the chocolate pig, she added impatiently, "Ring for Mary to take
that child upstairs. I wish you wouldn't bring her in here!"

Miss Waller had no love for children; and Doris was too well
trained to defy her great-aunt. Still hugging her precious sweets,
she was whisked away; whilst the spinster, producing a gilt-edged
account-book, methodically entered the sums paid by her niece that
morning out of a twenty-pound note. Every halfpenny was accounted
for, and when May closed her purse just one solitary sixpence
remained in it which she could really call her own. Sometimes she
had not even that.

"I've ordered the carriage for three," announced Miss Waller. "We
must call on Lady Lee, and the Amberys, and it's Mrs. Edgell's 'at
home' day. Put on your grey dress and your new hat."

"Yes, aunt," meekly responded May.

"And to-morrow you must unpick my green dinner-dress. I intend to
have it dyed."

"Yes, aunt," repeated Mrs. Burnside, as she went to the door. "Yes,
aunt," was what she was obliged to say all day long; to have said
"No, aunt," would have been a complete reversal of all the Victoria
Square traditions.

       *       *       *       *       *

To do good by stealth is unfashionable nowadays, and when Miss
Waller, to her great disgust, found herself obliged to offer a
home to her widowed niece and her child, she took care that all
Beachbourne should know and extol her generosity.

"How delightful for Mrs. Burnside to have such a luxurious home!"
remarked many people who saw the aunt and niece that afternoon,
gorgeously arrayed; for it was known that, but for Miss Waller, May
would have been obliged to earn a living. Many a tired governess or
poor shop-assistant looked enviously at the pretty girl dashing by
in the smart carriage--the pretty girl who was dressed in silk and
chiffon, but had only sixpence in her pocket!

The daughter of a struggling country doctor, May had fallen in
love at eighteen with a handsome but dissipated assistant of her
father's, who persuaded her into a clandestine marriage. She knew
Arthur Burnside was far from steady, but it seemed noble and heroic
to marry him that she might undertake his reformation. Poor foolish
child! she failed to realise that if a man is too weak to stand
alone, without some woman to prop him up continually, the chances
are that he will bring ruin upon both. May shuddered to recall those
four miserable years of ill-treatment, disgrace, and privation,
which ended in the death of her husband, and left her absolutely
penniless. Her father was dead, his other children were scattered,
and, but for Miss Waller, she and Doris might have starved.

Yet, despite the outward prosperity of her new life, she found the
bread of dependence so bitter that, but for Doris, she would have
tried to earn her living. She was not highly educated, and could
only have hoped for a subordinate post; but it was so galling
never to have a garment to wear or a coin to spend, save through
her aunt's bounty, that she often thought she would be happier
as a nurse or parlourmaid. She mixed as an equal with rich and
fashionable people, and had to talk as if want of money were
absolutely unknown, though she could not even afford to buy her
child a few sweets. She dared not ask her aunt for pocket-money, for
she well knew that, though Miss Waller supplied her with fashionable
clothes, it was only because she could not bear to be disgraced by
shabby relations, and she secretly grudged every penny spent on
her niece. Yet she dared not quarrel with her aunt, who was her
only hope for a good education for her child. May was resolved
that Doris should be so accomplished that, if needful, she could
earn her bread. "Oh, if only I had not been so idle at school! If
I had practised, and talked to Fräulein more!" poor May thought to
herself, with unavailing regret, as the country roads flitted by.

But she had little leisure for these sad thoughts. She had to brace
herself to play her part in three crowded drawing-rooms, as if she
had not a care in the world. Miss Waller was well pleased with the
admiration her graceful niece always excited in society; and, thanks
to May, the spinster received many invitations which might not
otherwise have arrived. Miss Waller had a horror of being classed as
a frump; instead, she prided herself on being exceedingly modern and
up-to-date.

"Just fancy that plain little Daisy Edgell being engaged to a
Liverpool man with heaps of money!" she remarked as they rolled
homewards. "We met him at the Hubbards' last year, if you remember."

"I thought him very ugly and commonplace."

"Perhaps--but so rich! I wish _you_ could be as lucky, May. What a
pity there are so few really eligible men at Beachbourne!"

"If there were ever so many, aunt, I couldn't bear to marry again."

"And, pray, why not? You're only twenty-five; surely you are not
going to mourn all your days for that precious husband of yours?"
cried the spinster sharply.

"It is just because my first marriage was so unhappy that I never
wish to marry again. As to marrying for money--I couldn't do it!"

"What nonsense! Isn't it done every day? It's all very fine to
talk, May, but you know my income is only for my life, and I've
hardly saved anything, so that when I die you'll be left without a
home; and then what's to become of you and Doris? You _must_ marry
again--there's nothing else for it."

It was not the first time May had listened to such counsels; and she
was well aware that, should her aunt die prematurely, she herself
would again be homeless. Miss Waller was not the woman to deny
herself in order to save money for her niece. She must have the fine
house and carriage, the handsome dress, and the dinner-parties which
her soul loved; and she found May very useful in arranging flowers,
writing letters, and making not a few articles of personal adornment
for her aunt with her clever fingers.

Their nearest way home lay through the quiet street in which Harold
Inglis lived--or, rather, starved--and, as he chanced to be at the
surgery window mixing a powder, he saw the carriage driving by. The
sinking sun was burnishing May's golden-brown hair; and her profile,
beneath her gauzy hat, looked very fair and sweet. He sighed, as he
went back to his powder, for the contrast between her lot and his
own seemed a little too glaring. He did not know that all the time
she had only sixpence in her purse, while he could actually boast of
half-a-crown!




CHAPTER II.

Two Heavy Hearts.


Doris was never allowed to partake of meals with Miss Waller,
who disliked having to regulate her conversation according to
inquisitive childish ears. The little girl lived in the upper
regions with Mary, who divided the duties of lady's maid and nurse.
After breakfast one morning, May, having done what was required by
Miss Waller, went upstairs to give Doris the lessons which, so far,
formed her sole instruction. She found the child flushed and heated
after a combat with Mary.

"She's that cross, I can't do anything with her," grumbled the
maid, who dutifully imitated her mistress in hating children. "She
wouldn't eat her nice egg at breakfast, and she's pulled all her
dolly's hair off--see."

"I'm afraid she's not well," said the mother gravely, as the child
buried her face in May's skirt, sobbing fretfully. Her little hands
were burning, her cheeks flushed, and red spots showed on the
peach-like skin. "Ask Miss Waller if Jane may go for the doctor,"
May continued, dreading lest she had taken measles.

Miss Waller gave permission to summon the family physician, Dr.
Ellis, who was the most fashionable practitioner in Beachbourne, and
drove his carriage and pair; but Jane returned to say that both the
doctor and his partner were out.

"Then go and fetch the nearest doctor at once!" commanded Miss
Waller. "I must know whether it's infectious or not, so that I may
take precautions. How vexing it will be," she complained to her
niece, "if Doris is laid up for weeks, and the house placed in
quarantine, just as all the gaieties are beginning! There's the
Mowbrays' dinner next week, and Lady Lee's picnic, and the Clares'
musical party--oh, dear!"

Not a word of sympathy for the poor child! May clenched her hands
passionately in her struggle to restrain an angry reply. It was in
moments like this that her shackles seemed absolutely intolerable.

Presently Jane returned, followed by Harold Inglis, the first
disengaged doctor she could find. May was glad not to behold an
absolute stranger, and stood by anxiously until he had examined
the little patient, whose malady he pronounced to be chicken-pox.
He wrote a prescription, gave a few simple directions, and then
followed May downstairs to reassure Miss Waller, who was eager "to
know the worst," as she put it.

She was very gracious at being relieved from anxiety, and remarked
blandly, "It was very kind of you to come so promptly, Dr. Inglis.
Our usual medical attendant is Dr. Ellis, but he was out. As it's
such a trifling matter, don't trouble to see Doris again. If you
will be good enough to send in your account for this visit, I will
settle it at once."

And she bowed him out, as if determined to quench any hope he
might entertain of being privileged to attend in Victoria Square.
Although, of course, medical etiquette forbade his interfering with
Dr. Ellis's patients, he felt somewhat disappointed as he went
away. He was so weary of waiting in his dingy sitting-room for the
patients who never came!

May ventured a word to her aunt when they were alone. "I wish we
could help Dr. Inglis to find a few patients, aunt! He seems so nice
and kind."

"There are far too many doctors in Beachbourne!" pronounced the
spinster. "I shall certainly not leave Dr. Ellis--he gives such
delightful dinner-parties!"

Harold plodded dejectedly home, to learn, as usual, that nobody had
called during his absence; and, after thriftily changing his coat,
he entered his little surgery, to find a packet on the table which
had come by post. It was the manuscript of an article on throat
affections, which he had sent to a medical paper in the hope of
earning a little money. It had entailed great labour and research,
only to be rejected with the curt intimation that the editor had no
opening for such a subject.

"What _can_ I do?" he distractedly asked himself. "I've called on
everybody I can scrape acquaintance with; I've joined the local
clubs; I'm a Volunteer and a Freemason--what more can I do to bring
myself into notice?"

"A note for you, sir," said the maid-of-all-work, appearing at the
door.

He snatched it eagerly, hoping to find a summons; but, alas! it was
only a bill from a jobbing-tailor whom he had employed to renovate
various garments _sub rosa_. He had no money to pay it; although it
went sorely against the grain to keep the poor man from his due.
He paced in distress up and down the narrow room, wishing he dare
start out for a long walk, to distract his thoughts. But he dreaded
to leave, lest in his absence some desirable patient might send for
him. And so, hanging about listlessly, unable to settle to anything,
the dismal morning passed, like too many others; and Ann brought in
his meal of bread and cheese, from which he rose nearly as hungry
as he sat down. He looked at himself in the spotty pier-glass. His
cheeks were falling in, and there were hollows beneath his eyes, due
entirely to insufficient nourishment.

A card stuck in the frame reminded him that Mrs. Ormsby-Paulet was
"at home" that afternoon. "It's a tennis party--shall I go?" he
debated. It seemed a mockery to mingle in a scene of gaiety with
such a leaden weight at his heart; but a prosaic consideration
decided him. "There'll be a good tea, at least, and if I make myself
very agreeable, perhaps they'll ask me to stay to dinner. Besides, I
may get to know some people who'll employ me."

He dressed himself carefully, and sallied forth; informing the
servant of his destination, in case anybody should send for him.
Despite his thin cheeks, there was not a better-looking man at "The
Dene" that afternoon; for he looked a gentleman to the backbone, and
as such, his hostess--who was very short of men--smiled upon him
graciously.

"So glad you were able to come," she cooed. "Miss Waller," to the
spinster, who had just arrived, "may I introduce my friend, Dr.
Inglis?"

"I have already made his acquaintance," was the suave answer; and
then Harold, to his surprise, was greeted by Mrs. Burnside, looking
very fair and sweet in a cool white linen gown. He had not expected
to meet her; he naturally supposed her place to be by the bedside of
her sick child. In truth, she was only present at her aunt's urgent
entreaty.

"I'm afraid she must be rather heartless," thought the young doctor,
feeling oddly disappointed. He had not hitherto attributed want of
feeling to the owner of those pathetic blue eyes. Nevertheless, as
sets were being made up, he asked her to be his partner, she being
famed in Beachbourne as a tennis-player.

She complied; but the set was not a success. He could not have
believed that Mrs. Burnside could play so badly; they were beaten by
six games to two.

"I am so sorry," she said humbly, as they quitted the court. "I know
it was all my fault; but I really couldn't play--I was thinking of
Doris all the time."

Her lips quivered, so that he could no longer imagine her heartless.
"Your little girl will be well in a few days--there is really no
cause for anxiety," he answered gently, angry with himself for
having misjudged her.

"That is what Aunt Caroline says, and she insisted on my coming,"
plaintively returned May; but just then Miss Waller appeared,
resplendent in mauve satin, with a stout, black-haired, middle-aged,
and shrewd-looking man, very carefully dressed, in tow.

"I came to look for you, dear," she began very sweetly to her niece,
merely giving a cold bow to Harold. "I want to introduce Mr. Lang to
you. He knows our friends the Wingates in town."

With that, the excellent spinster turned away; and May, finding no
resource save to accept the basket-chair in the shade proffered by
the stranger--as Harold had prudently effaced himself--prepared for
a _tête-à-tête_ with a man she had never seen before in her life.

[Illustration: "It was very kind of you to come so promptly, Dr.
Inglis."]




CHAPTER III.

"Manners Maketh Man."


"Do you mind my smoking?" began Mr. Lang, after a moment's keen
scrutiny of the graceful figure beside him. Hardly waiting for
permission, he produced a gold case and lighted a cigarette. "Been
playing tennis, haven't you?" he continued in an off-hand way.
"Stupid game, not half so good as golf--you should try golf."

"I have tried it, and I don't like it."

"Beginners seldom do. It's a fine game, for all that. You live with
your aunt, don't you?"

"Yes, in Victoria Square."

"Do you like Beachbourne?"

She hesitated a moment before replying, "Yes."

"I suppose it's like all these provincial towns--heaps of gossip
and scandal, eh? But you should be in London now, Mrs. Burnside.
There hasn't been as gay a season for years. I shouldn't be here
now, I can tell you, but I got a touch of fever last time I was at
Johannesburg, and, as I can't quite shake it off, my doctor ordered
me complete rest for a fortnight. So I came down here to stay with
the Stevensons. I met them last year at Homburg, and ever since
they've been pestering me with invitations to Beachbourne."

[Illustration: The set was not a success.--_p. 399._]

"Oh, have you been out in Africa?" returned May, thinking it best to
ignore his flattering reference to his entertainers.

"Spent nearly twenty years there. I can remember when there wasn't
a gold mine on the Randt. And, though I've come back to England
for good now, I generally run over about twice a year. It's just
a nice little trip to the Cape, and they really do you very well
on the mail steamers," he condescendingly added, as he lighted
another cigarette. "By-the-bye, this case is made of African gold--a
nugget I found myself in the claim which was the beginning of the
Springkloof Mine. You've heard of the Springkloof, of course?"

She shook her head, and he looked at her with evident pity for her
ignorance. "I didn't think there was anybody nowadays who hadn't
heard of the Springkloof!"

"I'm afraid you'll think us rather behind the times at Beachbourne,"
she said, as she rose, hoping to shake off her new acquaintance;
but he rose, too, and kept by her side as she strolled through the
beautiful grounds, speaking first to one friend and then to another.

"Not many pretty girls here, I must say," he observed disparagingly,
as they approached the house, in quest of the tea-room.

"Are you an admirer of beauty?" asked May, with a rather sarcastic
glance at his tubby figure.

"Quite so. I love the best of everything there is. As soon as I
can find a girl pretty enough, I intend to marry," he replied
with perfect gravity. "It's rather lonely all by myself in Palace
Gardens. Do you like the Palace Gardens houses, Mrs. Burnside?"

"I've never been in one, and I don't even know where they are. I
know very little about London, and very few people there--just the
Wingates, and one or two others."

"Are the Wingates any relation?"

"Oh, no, only old friends of my aunt's. I hardly know them."

"Well, it's not much loss. I don't mean any disrespect to your
aunt, but old Mother Wingate isn't a woman I should ever wish to
confide in, myself. She's always trying to catch me for one of her
plain daughters--dear Maggie or dear Amy! By the way, what's your
Christian name, Mrs. Burnside?"

"May."

"And, by Jove, it suits you! So often girls' names don't. You find
Lily as black as a crow, and Rose as sallow as she can be, and
Queenie a little, insignificant dowdy with a turned-up nose!"

He talked in this carping strain while he consumed a fair amount
of refreshments, none of which, however, were good enough for his
critical taste. He evidently thought a great deal about eating and
drinking, for he incidentally mentioned that he gave his _chef_ two
hundred a year.

"What a waste!" was on the tip of May's tongue, as she thought
how useful even a tenth of that sum would be to herself. The tea
was cosily set out on a number of little tables in the spacious,
old-fashioned dining-room. Gay groups were seated at each, and not
far off was Harold Inglis, talking cheerfully with two of his host's
daughters. May glanced from him to her companion, noticing how
common and plebeian Mr. Lang looked when contrasted with him.

As she quitted the table Harold, who had apparently been lying in
wait, crossed over to speak to her. "Would you like to play again,
Mrs. Burnside? I can easily make up a set, if you wish."

But at this moment appeared Miss Waller, apparently from nowhere, to
throw cold water on the proposal. "I think you had better not run
about any more this hot afternoon, love. You really must not tempt
her, Dr. Inglis."

"There's croquet," suggested Harold; "shall we play at that?"

And, though in general she detested croquet, May assented quite
eagerly, only anxious to shake off Mr. Lang. Miss Waller could not
well interfere again, and Mr. Lang did not play croquet, but he
and the spinster sat on a garden seat close by till the game was
finished, rendering it difficult for Harold to say a word which
the watchful pair did not overhear. Divining from her erratic play
that May's mind was still running upon her sick child, he seized
the opportunity, when they were both searching for a ball which had
rolled into the shrubbery, to say kindly: "Don't fret about Doris.
I assure you there's no need. The malady must run its course, and
she'll be all right afterwards. Only you must be careful she doesn't
get a chill."

"I wish she could have you to attend her, instead of Dr. Ellis. She
detests him because he once deceived her about a powder she had to
take. But my aunt likes him----"

"I believe he is a very clever man," hurriedly interposed Harold,
mindful of professional etiquette. "Doris will be quite safe with
him; indeed, she hardly needs a doctor."

"My aunt is always at home on Tuesdays--I hope you will come to see
us," responded May, grateful for his manifest sympathy. She knew he
had few friends in Beachbourne, and resolved to do what she could to
introduce him.

His face lighted up unmistakably. "Thank you so much, Mrs. Burnside!
I shall be delighted to come, and I'll not forget Tuesday."

Miss Waller was in a most complacent frame of mind as they drove
home through the beautiful June evening. "What a fortunate thing I
forbade you to be so foolish as to stay at home to nurse Doris!" she
began. "Mr. Lang is a man worth knowing; he made an enormous fortune
in South Africa--a million at least--and Mrs. Stevenson says his
house in Palace Gardens is simply lovely. I'll ask him to dinner, to
meet some nice people."

May's delicate face flushed. "He's not a gentleman!" she said.

"I daresay he was not of much extraction originally, but what does
that matter nowadays? Money levels all distinctions; and I can see
Mrs. Stevenson would be only too glad to catch him for Edith."

"I thought his manner insufferably rude!"

"My dear, that's because he's so run after in London; it always
spoils a man to have dozens of girls angling for him. But he was
undoubtedly struck by you; and I don't think you were very wise
to go and play croquet with that Dr. Inglis as you did. He has
agreeable manners, but he has not a penny-piece; and I don't believe
he'll ever get a practice here."

"I'm sorry for him, aunt, and--and I thought it only civil to ask
him to call----"

Miss Waller's brow contracted. "I think you might have consulted me
first. At best he is only a detrimental, and there are far too many
here already; but you always _were_ quixotic, May!"




CHAPTER IV.

Lulu.


Whit Sunday--which was late that year--was simply glorious, the heat
being tempered by a delicious sea breeze. A vivacious, dark-eyed
girl, who accompanied Harold Inglis along the parade after morning
service, stopped again and again to gloat over the sapphire sea,
tumbling in, foam-crested. "How jolly for you, Harold, living in
this delicious place!" she exclaimed. "You ought to look better than
you do; you are much thinner than you were."

He evaded the subject, not wishing to sadden his favourite sister,
Lulu, with his shifts and privations. She had come down to
Beachbourne to spend Whitsuntide with her brother, glad to escape
from the stuffy London office in which she had to work hard for a
living.

"Oh, Harold! who are these smart people coming along?"

They had already passed many well-dressed groups of residents,
but none presenting so imposing an appearance collectively as did
stately Miss Waller, in heliotrope, May Burnside, in an exquisite
costume of pale grey silk and chiffon, Doris, a vision of childish
prettiness in white muslin, and two or three equally well-dressed
men, conspicuous amongst whom was Mr. Lang. Harold's colour rose as
he lifted his hat, whilst Lulu eagerly exclaimed, "Oh! who is that
pretty girl in grey? She looks quite fit for the Park!"

He explained, secretly glad that his sister should admire his
divinity; but it was fortunate he could not hear what Miss Waller
was meanwhile saying to her niece: "Who is that common-looking girl
with Dr. Inglis? She is most atrociously dressed."

It must be confessed that poor Lulu, who had little money for dress,
fell far below the Victoria Square standard. "Looks like a little
dressmaker," sneered one of the men.

"A dressmaker would have better clothes," observed Miss Waller.
Her eyes dwelt complacently on her niece's graceful figure, as
she spoke, and she was pleased to see how close Mr. Lang--who had
overtaken them in coming out of church--kept to May's elbow, despite
the black looks of Doris, who disliked him. The child was now quite
well again, some days having elapsed since the garden party.

"What are you going to do this afternoon. Mrs. Burnside? Will you
come for a drive?" presently asked Mr Lang.

But May did not approve of Sunday driving. "I promised to take Doris
to the flower service, thank you."

"Why, you've been to church once already, Doris! You'd much better
persuade your mother to bring you for a drive with me," cajoled he;
but the child burst out, "No, I don't like you, and I don't want to
drive with you!" so resolutely that he could not press it.

Miss Waller frowned angrily. "Really, May, the way you spoil Doris
is beyond all reason. She is the rudest little girl I ever saw!"
And, to soothe the plutocrat's wounded feelings, she insisted upon
his coming home to luncheon with her. He was now a constant visitor
in Victoria Square, for, having terminated his stay with the
Stevensons, he had taken rooms at the principal hotel.

Whilst May, in her costly gown, sat chafing beneath Mr. Lang's
glances of insolent admiration, at her aunt's luxuriously appointed
table, Harold and Lulu Inglis were very merry and happy over the
plainest fare in his bare sitting-room. They had not met for a
long time, and a cheap Whitsuntide excursion was the reason of her
presence now. As soon as they had finished, they started for the
shore. Sitting on a big stone, beneath the shade of the cliffs, they
had a delightful chat, until Lulu suddenly exclaimed: "Oh, Harold!
Here's that pretty girl in grey we saw this morning!"

Doris, who loved the sea, had coaxed her mother to come down on
the shore after the service, and, seeing his companion, May bowed
to Harold, and would have passed on, but he detained her. "May I
introduce my sister, Miss Lucy Inglis, Mrs. Burnside?"

There was something so frank and friendly about Lulu that very
soon, as Doris announced she was tired and wanted to rest, they
were all seated upon the big stone, upon which Miss Inglis insisted
on spreading her jacket, to protect May's dainty dress. Whilst his
sister expatiated on the delights of Beachbourne, and wondered why
her raptures evoked so little response from the young widow, Harold
sat pondering whether he dare invite Mrs. Burnside to come to tea in
his bare and shabby rooms.

To his delight, she instantly accepted the invitation; eager, in
truth, to escape from the hated society of Mr. Lang. Harold then
turned to Doris, gaily asking whether she would come too.

"Yes, I will," she answered with childish bluntness. "I like you,
but I don't like Dr. Ellis--nasty man!--and I hate Mr. Lang."

"You shouldn't hate anybody, Doris," reproved May.

"But Mr. Lang calls me Little Crosspatch, and it's very rude of him
to call me names, mummy."

"Bravo, Doris!" cried Lulu mischievously, as they turned to go.
"Stick up for your rights--you'll be a 'New Woman' when you grow up."

"I hope so," said May, in a low voice, to the amazement of Miss
Inglis, who exclaimed, with a glance at the costly equipment of the
speaker: "I should never have expected _you_ to utter such a wish,
Mrs. Burnside!"

May smiled with quiet bitterness. "I have no wish to see Doris speak
on a platform, or go in for a man's profession; but I do feel, more
and more, that it is better for women to be independent, whether
they marry or not."

"Why, that's just what I always say!" cried Lulu delightedly. "All
women can't marry nowadays--there are not enough men to go round.
Besides, what is more contemptible than to see girls sitting idle,
with their hands folded, waiting for somebody to come along and
marry them? No, every girl ought to be able to earn her own living,
and then she's safe, whatever happens!"

Needless to say, such maxims would have been entirely abhorrent to
Miss Waller, who regarded working-girls with detestation, as May
well knew.




CHAPTER V.

"A Beautiful Anomaly."


Arrived at his rooms, Harold did the honours; not without fears lest
May should miss the luxuries of her home. But she enjoyed the change
of surroundings with all the zest of a schoolgirl, and Doris, being
made much of, was as good as gold. Harold himself had not spent
such a delightful hour since he came to Beachbourne, but his hour
of bliss was all too short; for soon a summons came from a patient,
and, though it was only a greengrocer in the next street, patients
were too precious to be slighted. So he departed, begging Mrs.
Burnside to remain with Lulu until his return.

Left alone, the two girls settled down for a cosy chat; Doris being
quite absorbed in an illustrated book Harold had produced picturing
the wonders of the microscope.

"Dear old Harold!" began his sister. "Don't think me silly, Mrs.
Burnside, but I'm proud of him, knowing how hard he worked for his
degree. Will he ever get a good practice here, do you think?"

"I hope so; but it takes time," answered May, rather embarrassed.
"Have you many brothers and sisters?"

"There are six of us altogether--a formidable number, isn't it? But,
I'm glad to say, we're all doing something, and don't cost dear old
dad a penny. I remind Esther of that--she's my eldest sister--when
she grumbles, and wishes we were back at Mallowfield Hall."

"That was your father's place, wasn't it?"

"Yes, our ancestors lived there centuries ago. This is the house."
And she produced a photograph of an imposing mansion standing in
a spacious park, a residence which even Miss Waller would have
acknowledged to be a magnificent property.

"What a lovely place! And you had to leave it?"

[Illustration: "He's not a gentleman," she said.--_p. 401._]

"Yes, my grandfather was dreadfully extravagant, and since father
came into power the agricultural depression was the finishing
stroke. It was cruelly hard to leave the dear old place, but the
mortgagees foreclosed, and we all had to turn out. Dad and mother
went to live in Cornwall, where she owns a tiny cottage. Harold
passed as a doctor, Jack's at Johannesburg, and Ted's in Australia.
Then Connie, my youngest sister, is companion to an old lady, and
Esther and I share a cupboard of a flat with an old schoolfellow,
Mabel Bryan, whose partner I am in a typewriting office. Esther,
who's awfully clever, as well as handsome, and knows several
languages, is corresponding clerk to a firm of shippers. She gets a
hundred a year, and I manage to make about a pound a week; but I'm
not clever, and have to do the best I can. We work awfully hard, but
I really think we are happier than if we had nothing to do."

"I'm sure you are," sighed May, as her eye fell upon her own dearly
purchased finery. "I must say, I think it very plucky of you to take
it as you do."

Lulu opened her eyes, for she was not accustomed to pity. "I'm
proud to be a working-woman, and even if I were rich like you, Mrs.
Burnside, I couldn't bear to sit with my hands folded."

"Rich like me!" May echoed drearily. "I'm not rich; I owe everything
I possess to my aunt."

"But she's rich, so it must be the same thing," persisted Lulu.

Just then Harold came hurrying in. "I was as quick as I could be,
Mrs. Burnside," he began, manifestly pleased to find May still
there. With an alarmed glance at the clock, she arose to go, and
said cordially--

"I should be so pleased, Dr. Inglis, if you would bring your sister
to see me on Tuesday afternoon."

"Many thanks, Mrs. Burnside, but I must return by the excursion
train on Tuesday morning," returned Lulu; and May dared not urge the
point. To invite the Inglises to any meal but afternoon tea was out
of her power, for Miss Waller disapproved of promiscuous guests at
luncheon and dinner. So, bidding a cordial farewell to Lulu, May set
forth with Doris to Victoria Square, escorted by happy Harold.

"I call her a beautiful anomaly!" Lulu observed later on to her
brother, when he asked what she thought of Mrs. Burnside. "At first,
seeing how she was dressed, I concluded she was only a fashionable
butterfly, caring for nothing but amusement. But from her talk I
could see I had been unjust, and that there's nothing she would like
better than being useful and independent. Poor thing! Her face is
one of the saddest I ever saw."

"I believe she has a very uncomfortable time of it with Miss Waller,
who is a Tartar, from all accounts."

"Then why does she stay with her?"

"What else can she do, with that child?"

An unpleasant quarter of an hour awaited May within her aunt's
door, which she entered with a sinking heart. Doris was instantly
bundled off to bed, after which Miss Waller--in thin, high tones,
very different from her suave society accents--moralised on May's
enormities in absenting herself without notice, whilst Mr. Lang
vainly awaited her return. He had just gone, evidently vexed at her
non-appearance.

"Mr. Lang has no jurisdiction over me!" May was irritated into
retorting at last, whereupon her aunt's frown became portentous.

"Mr. Lang is my friend, and, as such, I insist that you treat him
with respect! Pray, who are you, to set your will against mine? I
paid for the very dress you have on, and every article you possess,
and but for me you and Doris would be in the workhouse!"

May would not trust herself to reply, but went away to her own room,
there to shed some very bitter tears. As she eyed her tall figure in
the glass, arrayed in the beautiful garments for which she had to
pay so dearly, she heartily envied the three happy girls in their
flat, as described by Lulu. How fortunate they were, to be able to
do as they pleased, and indebted to no living soul for anything!
"Oh, to be free!--to be free!" she panted, realising her slavery as
she had never realised it before.




CHAPTER VI.

Bijou's Mistress.


When bright-faced Lulu had returned home, brief though her visit had
been, Harold missed her inexpressibly. To vary the monotony of his
dreary rooms, he paid his promised call in Victoria Square, to find
himself promptly relegated to the background by Miss Waller, who
perfectly understood how to snub people without being unladylike.
May, who made tea, hardly uttered a word; and the lion of the
occasion was Mr. Lang, who expatiated on the riches of South Africa
and his own importance on the Randt.

"You're nowhere unless you've got money nowadays," he confidently
asserted.

"Oh, but"--expostulated a meek little clergyman's wife, looking
rather shocked, "surely culture goes for something--and
descent--and----"

"Culture, descent, my dear madam! We haven't time to bother about
such things at Johannesburg! They'd be no use to a man there!"

"I'm sorry to hear it," Harold was provoked into saying. "My brother
Jack is out there, and I shouldn't like him to come back less of a
gentleman than he went!"

"What's he doing?" disdainfully drawled the plutocrat.

"He is in the office of the Victorina Mine."

"Ah! a good property that--not equal to the Springkloof, though. I
know the Victorina manager; perhaps next time I go out, I may look
your brother up."

"How kind of you, Mr. Lang!" gushed Miss Waller; but Harold never
said a word.

"Well now, Miss Waller," said Mr. Lang, "it's time I was returning
to London, and don't you think you ought to give Mrs. Burnside a
little taste of dissipation before the season closes?"

"I should have taken her to London before, but dear May always says
she doesn't like town," answered the spinster, who always posed as
a most affectionate aunt in public. "I must leave you to try _your_
persuasions." As she spoke, she darted a glance at her niece which
plainly said, "Refuse to go, if you dare!"

"London is so hot now--and Doris----" faltered the girl in manifest
dismay. The clergyman's wife took her departure, but Harold sat
doggedly on, determined to hear the result.

"Doris could be left behind perfectly well," rejoined Mr. Lang, who
disliked the child as much as she disliked him.

"We shall be very pleased to see a little of London under your
auspices, Mr. Lang," interrupted Miss Waller, in a sub-acid tone. "I
know of some nice rooms near Hyde Park, which will be quieter than a
hotel, and I'll write about them to-night."

May said no more; but Harold perceived an expression of absolute
despair flit over her features for a moment, and his heart swelled
with pity for her.

He paced his lonely sitting-room many times that evening, lamenting
his own impotence. A few patients, poor people to whom he was at
home for an hour, mornings and evenings, came to consult him for a
fee of one shilling, medicine included; but even these were few in
number. He had the very deepest sympathy with the poor; but to be
wasting his time here when, in a few days, Mrs. Burnside would be
staying close to that man in Palace Gardens!

[Illustration: "Harold! Here's that pretty girl in grey."--_p. 402._]

There was a ring at the bell, and the landlady entered, announcing,
with a smile, "Miss Geare and Miss Pepper." A little, round-faced,
white-haired lady, with curiously wandering light-blue eyes, then
tripped into the room, carrying something carefully in her arms;
followed by a forbidding, tall, dark-haired female, to whom Harold
took an instant and hearty dislike.

"Oh, doctor!" began the little lady, in a breathless, excited way,
with hardly any stops, "I saw your plate on the door, and I've come
to see if you can cure my darling little Bijon; a great cruel cabman
has just driven over him, and I'm afraid his poor leg's broken. Will
you look?"

Harold could hardly restrain a smile. "I am not a veterinary
surgeon, madam."

[Illustration: Harold perceived an expression of despair flit over
her features.--_p. 405._]

"I told you it was no use coming here," growled Miss Pepper, the
companion, in a voice as unamiable as her face.

"Oh, but poor Bijou is in such pain!"

With that Miss Geare burst into passionate tears and again entreated
Harold's aid. To end the tiresome scene, he examined the dog,
unprofessional though it might be, and, finding one of its legs
was broken, improvised splints and set it carefully. Miss Geare's
gratitude was excessive.

"And you _will_ come and see Bijou, won't you?" implored the old
lady. "He must have attention until he gets well, and I live at
Lyndhurst Lodge, Murray Road."

Harold demurred, as being unprofessional.

"Then come to attend _me_," eagerly responded Miss Geare. "I'm often
rather ailing; and you can give Bijou a look at the same time."

She looked at him so pleadingly that he could not find it in his
heart to say no. She brightened up at his consent, and asked for
a cab, in which to take home her injured darling, and then laid a
sovereign and a shilling on the table.

"I don't think I am entitled to charge for attending the dog," said
Harold, crimsoning. "Certainly, this is far too much."

"Watson, the veterinary surgeon, _never_ would have charged a
guinea," indignantly added Miss Pepper; but Miss Geare was resolute,
and when she had departed, it was certainly pleasant to see the gold
piece on the table, sovereigns being sadly scarce with him, poor
fellow!

He instituted inquiries, and learnt that Miss Geare belonged to a
good family, and was well-off, but somewhat "queer." In early youth
she was engaged to an officer, who was killed at Delhi, and had
become gradually more and more eccentric, until now she only lived
for her dogs and cats. Miss Pepper, it was added, tyrannised over
her shamefully, as though she were the mistress and Miss Geare the
companion.

The old lady was warm-hearted, though rather fickle, and, having
taken a fancy to Harold, contrived to secure him several fresh
and welcome patients. Miss Geare herself was far from strong, and
afforded a legitimate exercise for Harold's skill, which salved his
conscience in the matter of Bijou. But Miss Pepper remained, from
first to last, distinctly hostile.

  [END OF CHAPTER SIX.]




CHILDISH MEMORIES OF LEWIS CARROLL.

By One of his Alices.


So many children will grieve over the sad event--the death that
deprived them of one of the best and kindest friends that children
ever came across--the children who have followed "Alice" through
all the wonderful adventures of "Wonderland" will be saddened by
the thought that the hand which held the pen that gave them such
amusement is now still for ever; and the children now grown up who
knew Lewis Carroll personally will look back into the years agone
and remember his delightful stories, and his never-ceasing kindness
towards them in their youthful days.

[Illustration: LEWIS CARROLL.

(_At the age of 8._)]

To my mind Oxford will never be quite the same again, now that so
many of the dear old friends of one's childhood have "gone over to
the great majority." My poor old father, though always wishing to go
for little excursions back to the old University town where so many
years of his life had been spent, came back to his country rectory
in the Cotswold Hills bemoaning the loss of the "many who had gone
before," and how the familiar forms of his old college friends were,
alas! no more to be seen.

Often, in the twilight, when the flickering firelight danced on the
old wainscoted wall, have we--father and I--chatted over the old
Oxford days and friends, and the merry times we all had together
in Long-Wall Street. I was a nervous, thin, remarkably ugly child,
and, for some years, I might say, I was quite alone in the nursery,
my small, fat baby-brother being much more appreciated than myself.
I was left almost entirely to the kind and gentle mercy of Mary
Pearson, my own particular attendant, and though father, of course,
had commenced his friendship with Mr. Dodgson (Lewis Carroll) long
before, I only remember him first when I was about seven, and from
that time until we went to live in Gloucestershire, he was one of my
most delightful friends.

[Illustration: (_From a Photo by Lewis Carroll._)

THE AUTHOR AND HER FATHER (THE REV. E. A. LITTON).]

I shall never forget when, sitting on a rustic seat with Mr.
Dodgson under a dear old tree in the Botanical Gardens, I heard
for the first time the delightful and ever-entertaining story of
Hans Andersen's "Ugly Duckling." I was devoted to books, and could
read quite well for so small a child, but I cannot explain the
delightful way in which Mr. Dodgson read and told his stories: as
he read, the characters were real flesh and blood--living figures.
This particular story made a great impression on me, and, being
very sensitive about my ugly little self, it greatly interested me.
I remember his impressing upon me that it was better to be good,
truthful, and to try not to think of self, than to be a pretty,
selfish child, spoilt and disagreeable, and he, from that story,
gave me the name of "Ducky," which name clung to me for many years;
in fact, from that day Mary Pearson always called me "Miss Ducky."

[Illustration: (_From a Photo by Lewis Carroll._)

THE ORIGINAL OF "ALICE IN WONDERLAND."]

Many a time has Mr. Dodgson said, "Never mind, little Ducky; perhaps
some day you will turn out a swan."

I always attribute my love for animals to the teaching of Mr.
Dodgson: his stories of animal life, his knowledge of their lives
and histories, his enthusiasm about birds and butterflies, passed
many a tiresome hour away. The monkeys in the Botanical Gardens were
our special pets, and, oh! the nuts and biscuits we used to give
them! He entered into the spirit of the fun as much as "Ducky" did.

Then there were the mornings spent in the Christ Church and Merton
meadows: Mary and I took our daily walks abroad there. Years have
passed since then, and I have travelled in many climes, but I always
think that the recollections of the days of one's childhood never
fade. One's views of life, persons, and things were so fresh, so
different from the judgment of things in later years.

Those meadows were, to me, full of the loveliest
field-flowers--daisies, the beautiful "snake-flower"--so rare, I
understand now--the golden buttercups, the masses of dandelions with
the added, never-failing fun of blowing the downy seeds away.

Nurse Mary always took thread and a needle in her pocket; these
were for the making of daisy-chains, and, oh! the wreaths we strung
as we sat in the soft grass, with the dear old Broad Walk quite
close, and when we raised our eyes the lovely vision of Merton
College, with its covered walls of Virginian creeper! It all comes
back to me so vividly, though it is now far away in the past years.
And how delighted we were to see the well-known figure in his cap
and gown coming, so swiftly, with his kind smile ready to welcome
the "Ugly Duckling" sitting in the grass! I knew, as he sat beside
me, that a fairy-tale book was hidden in his pocket, or that I
should hear something nice--perhaps a new game or a puzzle--and he
would gravely accept a tiny daisy bouquet for his coat with as much
courtesy as if it had been the finest hot-house _boutonnière_. I was
very proud when, between us, we had made a chain of cuckoo-flowers
and daisy heads long enough to twine round my hat.

These meadows and the walk along the wall were remarkable then for
the quantity of snails of all kinds that, on fine days and damp
days, came out to take the air, and to me they were objects of great
dislike and horror. Mr. Dodgson so gently and patiently showed me
how silly I was, how harmless the poor snails were, and told me so
much about the shells they carried on their backs, and showed me how
wonderfully they were made, that I soon got over the fright and made
quite a collection of discarded shells; which collection finally
took up its abode in a little crimson-paper trunk that Mr. Dodgson
found at old Mrs. Green's toyshop and bought for me.

About this time also father had added to my nursery literature
"Ministering Children," "Sandford and Merton," and "Rosamund; or,
The Purple Jar." All these were shown in great glee to my kind
friend, who (as I knew he would) read to me from them.

Two or three times I went fishing with him from the bank, near the
Old Mill opposite Addison's Walk (Oxford), and he entered quite into
my happiness when a small fish came wriggling up on the end of my
crooked pin and line, just ready for the dinner of the little white
kitten, "Lily," he had given me.

In those days Addison's Walk had, in season, its banks covered with
pretty periwinkles--white and blue--and there were strict laws not
to pick them. I, childlike, could not resist the temptation, and
one day, Mary being seated at work near by, "Ducky," left to play
alone, gathered a bunch of the coveted beauties, hid them under her
little spencer (a small coat of those days), and trotted by Mary's
side, half-frightened, to the lodge of the gruff old porter, who
sat reading his paper, glancing always at the passers through his
doorway. Nothing escaped his notice. Mary went through and then I,
half-trembling, with the periwinkles closely clasped to my side.
The street gained, I was safe, but (alas! there is always a "but"),
Mr. Dodgson, going to see a friend in the college, came up to me,
saying, "Why so flushed, little Alice? And what is that hanging
below your jacket?"

The flowers had not gained anything by their hot pressure under my
jacket, and it was a very much ashamed, sad little girl who stood
convicted of flower-theft!

"Ducky, come with me"; and, taking my unwilling hand, he led me back
to the grim old custodian of the cloisters, to whom I had to deliver
up the now faded periwinkles, and promise future goodness and "never
to do so any more." Then Mary took me in hand, and the quiet little
"weep" I indulged in while going home was much enhanced by the sound
of Mary's voice telling me: "Miss Ducky, you are an awful naughty
child; you have quite disgusted Mr. Dodgson, and you shall go to
your bed without supper." This threat she carried out.

On Sunday afternoons father used to take me for a walk to St.
John's College gardens, or, perhaps, New College gardens, and as
they--father and Mr. Dodgson--were great friends, he often joined
us. And how I enjoyed all the bright sunshine and the shade of the
mulberry-trees! And then father, tired from his morning services,
snatched a "forty-winks." I revelled in stories of small men and
maidens, stories so entertaining that I thought I could never read
"line upon line" any more; and then there were the stories of the
other little Alice who bore the same initials as myself, and who
was so pretty and behaved so well; who sat before the wonderful
photographing machine and came out a pretty little beggar girl! I am
afraid I was rather envious of this child and a tiny bit jealous,
but I took the greatest interest in what she did and said. And I
remember all this perfectly.

Before me, as I write, is a likeness of Mr. Dodgson; in fact, two
photographs. These are just as I remember him. It was his sweet
smile and face that endeared him so much to his youthful friends,
his never-failing interest in their childlike joys and sorrows.
Mr. Dodgson was a very quiet, reserved man, and cared little for
society, such as large parties and receptions; but to come and go
as he liked in the homes of those with whom he was intimate, these
visits were some of the pleasures he allowed himself. He also made
very welcome the visits of his child-friends, and it was a great
treat to go to see him in his rooms in Christ Church College.

My dear father (the Rev. E. A. Litton, a very well known man in
the old Oxford days of sixty years ago) was much attached to Mr.
Dodgson, and they used to meet frequently to discuss points that
interested them both. I was always allowed, if I bore a good record
in the nursery, to join father when he went to Christ Church, and I
knew that, sooner or later during the visit, something good would
be for me. The delicious slices of cake and bread-and-butter, the
glass of creamy milk; the soft pile of cushions on the sofa if I
felt tired, and the glittering little glass balls of his wonderful
game of "Solitaire," for me to play with; the lovely picture-books
which I was so careful not to tear or hurt in any way; and then to
be allowed to look at the portraits of other little friends who knew
and visited him as I did!

[Illustration: _THE FIRST EARRING._

(_From a Drawing by Lewis Carroll._)]

Mr. Dodgson was a great admirer of photography and he inspired
father with a like enthusiasm, and I am the happy possessor of a
photograph (reproduced on page 407) that our dear friend took at
Christ Church of father and me. Such a good likeness of father
and me, such a lanky, long-legged, shy child, with very short
petticoats, low shoes, and a huge flap hat! More than forty years
has this been taken--the two dear friends gone for ever and only the
photograph remaining as souvenir of the dear old past--it is almost
as fresh as the day it was taken!

Other likenesses were taken, but, though I have hunted about, I
cannot find them. Also, to my great sorrow, I have lost several
long, illustrated letters written to me with the hope of shaming
me out of several bad habits and faults. One in particular was the
sucking of my thumb, and this Mr. Dodgson always teased me about
very much. One day I received a long letter with funny little
pictures of a small family of birds who would suck their thumbs
(claws). They looked so comical in a row, on a branch, with their
claws in their beaks, and the father- and mother-birds below with
a pot of bitter aloes, a birch-rod, and long muslin bags to tie up
the claws in. The next picture showed the little birds weeping,
with their claws in bags, the father and mother enjoying a good
repast, and the naughty little birds "had none"! And so on all the
way through this most interesting pictorial letter, till the little
birds had no claws left. All sucked away! The story was quite as
interesting as the pictures, and I think it did me good, as Mary
Pearson always read this letter to me whenever I sucked my thumb
more than usual, and protested my thumbs were disappearing as the
birds' claws did, and I was terribly frightened; for Mr. Dodgson
used to say Mary was quite right, and I should be spoken of as "the
little girl without thumbs."

My hair was a great trouble to me as a child, for it would tangle
and Mary was not over and above patient as I twisted and turned
when she wished to dress it. So one day I received a long, blue
envelope addressed to myself (letters are always so delightful to
children--they raise them almost to the ranks of the "grown-ups"),
and there was a story-letter, all full of drawings, from Mr Dodgson.
The first picture was of a little girl--hat off and tumbled hair
very much _en évidence_--asleep on a rustic bench under a big
tree by the side of a river (supposed to be the dear old seat in
the Botanical Gardens), and two birds holding an evidently most
important conversation above in the branches, their heads on one
side, eyeing the sleeping child. The next picture, the two birds,
flying with twigs and straw, preparing to build a nest; the child
still sleeping and the birds chirping and twittering with the
delight of building their nest in the tangled hair of the child.
Next came the awakening. The work complete, the mother-bird on
her nest, the father-bird flying round the frightened child. And
then, lastly, hundreds of birds--the air thick with them; the child
fleeing; small boys with tin trumpets raised to their lips, and
Nurse Mary, with a basket of brushes and combs, bringing up the
rear! All this, with the well-drawn-out story, cured me of this
fault, and Mary, in after-life, told me she "had no more trouble;
just to open the letter and show the unhappy child in the picture,
and I was 'passive as a lamb.'" Sometimes father would say, patting
my head, "Any more nests to-day, Ducky? Birds would not have a
chance now with this smooth little head."

[Illustration: LEWIS CARROLL.

(_The Rev. C. L. Dodgson._)]

I have grieved greatly that these picture-stories are no more, and,
from several letters which I have seen from other little girls--now
grown up and far away in different parts of the world, their letters
of a like kind have also gone astray and been lost amidst the
movings, changings, and chances of life.

In after years my father often told me another story of Mr. Dodgson,
which I, being so young, had forgotten. In the very early part of
the time in which I knew him, he one day called in Long-Wall Street
to fetch father to go with him to "The Union" to look into some
particular subject together. Mr. Dodgson was anxious I should go as
well, as, perhaps, we might all take a walk, and as I promised to be
most obedient and good, I was told to go and get my hat. I trotted
along, and, "The Union" reached, was put in a comfortable chair to
wait till they were ready to go on the proposed walk. It was hot,
and I was tired, and the crackling of papers turning over and the
hum of voices lulled me to sleep. I slept on, oblivious of all, and,
I suppose, the two friends, talking intently, forgot my existence
and, in earnest conversation, left "The Union"--and me, sleeping
quietly, quite alone.

Mr. Dodgson left father in Long-Wall Street, and then went to his
rooms in Christ Church. Suddenly, so the story goes, he thought, "We
went out three; we came back two; where is three?"

And then it flashed across him that there had been no "three" left
in Long-Wall Street--only his friend--and so "three" must have been
left somewhere on the road. Though it was just the hour of dinner,
this good friend trudged back to "The Union," intent upon finding
the lost lamb, and there I was still asleep, coiled up, as he
expressed it, "like a dormouse." I was taken home tired and a little
cross; it was past my supper-time; I was hungry, and quite ready for
the white sheets and pillows that lead to dreamland. But, always
thoughtful for others, Mr. Dodgson strayed into the ever-famous and
delightful shop of Boffins in "The High," and a sugared Bath-bun and
a glass of jelly revived my drooping spirits and raised my courage
to meet Mary. I was soon given into her care, and my adventures, as
told by Mr. Dodgson, made me quite a heroine, and I felt myself a
person of some importance with a history.

I had a daily governess, a dear old soul, who used to come every
morning to instruct my youthful mind. I disliked particularly the
large-lettered copies in my writing-book, and, as I confided this
to Mr. Dodgson, he came and set me some copies himself. I remember
two were, "Patience and water-gruel cure gout." (I wondered what
"gout" could be.) "Little girls should be seen and not heard." (This
I thought unkind.) These were written many times over, and I had to
present the pages at the end of the week to him without one blot or
smudge.

[Illustration: ALICE AND HUMPTY DUMPTY.

(_From a Photograph._)]

Magdalen College always, to my childish mind, was a most lovely and
beautiful place, and my favourite walking ground in hot weather
because of the splendid trees. I also had a great admiration for the
many and brilliant-flowered balconies of some of the Fellows of the
College, which looked into High Street just before the Bridge of
Magdalen commenced. One particularly was the show window of the set,
flaming with the most varied colours--vivid geraniums, lobelias,
mignonette, and two tiny mirrors, cleverly inserted amongst the
flowers, so that the person inside could see who was passing, either
way, up or down the street, without being seen himself.

I was quite at home in these rooms, as they also belonged to a
friend of my father, a Mr. Saul; he was a Fellow of Magdalen,
and I always admired him so much, and thought he could never be
unhappy living in such charming rooms. I can see him now, with his
cheery laugh and white hair, and his very portly figure, and, oh!
the musical instruments that were here, there, and everywhere! Mr.
Dodgson and father and myself all went one afternoon to pay him a
visit. At that time Mr. Saul was very much interested in the study
of the big drum, and, with books before him and a much heated face,
he was in full practice when we arrived. Nothing would do but
that all the party must join in the concert. Father undertook the
'cello, Mr. Dodgson took a comb and paper, and, amidst much fun and
laughter, the walls echoed with the finished roll, or shake, of the
big drum--a roll that was Mr. Saul's delight. All this went on till
some other Oxford Dons (mutual friends) came in to see "if everybody
had gone suddenly cracked." I meanwhile, perched amongst the flowers
and mirrors, joined in the fun by singing and clapping my hands with
delight at the drum, comb, and 'cello. When all had quieted down, a
large musical-box was wound up for my edification; such a treat it
was for me to listen to the beautiful airs!

[Illustration: THE AGE OF INNOCENCE.

(_From a Drawing by Lewis Carroll._)]

Music is, and always has been, the chief delight of my life, and
father always greatly encouraged this taste in me. Many a time, in
our walks amongst the Cotswolds in the long years after, father
would say, "Ducky, do you remember poor old Saul and his big drum?
And the fun we all had together, and how Dr. Bully thought we had
all gone in for Littlemore Asylum? Oh, the dear old days, child! The
dear old days!" And then we would walk on quite silently, father
wrapped in the past, till we reached the ivy-covered rectory and the
lights, and the daily routine of life was taken up once more.

One more story of my childhood, and then I shall have to write
"Finis" to what to me is so delightful--the shutting of one's eyes
in the twilight and the wandering back into the past with the many
near and dear friends--some now scattered far and wide, others gone
into the "weird unknown." Gone, but ever present in the loving
memories of friends.

Not very far away from Wadham College (in my remembrance) was a road
leading to "The Parks"; this was also a very nice walk, and the
hedges, when I was a small girl, were full of "ragged robin," wild
roses, and other field flowers. Yellow butterflies and, sometimes,
"peacock" butterflies, could also be found there. So, to the mind
of eight years old, it was a "happy hunting ground" for "eyes that
could see and look for things," and my pockets were generally filled
with great treasures on returning--which treasures, alas! Mary
Pearson always dubbed "Miss Ducky's aggravating rubbish."

Now father had a great friend living near Park Crescent, and one of
the bonds of sympathy (and a great one it was) between father, Mr.
Dodgson, and the little old gentleman, was mathematics. This friend,
whose name I have forgotten, lived in one of a row of houses at the
top of Park Crescent, and many were the times we all three took
this particular walk together to see the old scholar. My delight
was resting in the pleasant little parlour of the housekeeper,
into whose charge I was always given. She had very beady black
eyes, a bunch of keys at her waist, and a most wonderful cap with
bouquets of flowers intermixed with lace at each of her ears, and
funny little grey curls and combs (like those of the present day)
to fasten them back. I always was most polite to her and put on my
very best manners. To me she was a most potential personage, and her
coltsfoot wine and old-fashioned rock cakes, with which she always
regaled me with no sparing hand, were so delicious! Nowhere else
did these particular dainties seem to me so good. Perhaps hunger
(which is always the best sauce) had something to do with it; but I
know I munched the cakes and gazed intently at the swaying grasses
and flowers on her head, as she told me that she made all the cakes
herself, and also could sometimes make, when little girls were
"extra good," "almond toffee" of the most appetising description.

[Illustration:

56. THE WALKING STICK OF DESTINY.

Ch. 6.

Hush! The Baron slumbers! Two men with stealthy steps are removing
his strong-box.[2] It is very heavy and their knees tremble, partly
with the weight, partly with fear. He snores and they both start;
the box rattles, not a moment is to be lost; they hasten from the
room. It was very, very hard to get the box out of the window but
they did it at last; though not without making noise enough to
waken ten ordinary sleepers: the Baron, luckily for them, was an
_extra_ordinary sleeper.

  [2] Of it's contents, as afterwards appears were very small. vide
  page 27, note (1).

At a safe distance from the castle, they sat down the box, and
proceeded to force off the lid. Four mortal hours[3] did M^r Millon
Smith and his mysterious companion labor thereat; at sun rise it
flew off with a noise louder than the

  [3] Probably they began at about one o'clock.

A PAGE FROM THE "UMBRELLA BOOK."

(_Written and Drawn by Lewis Carroll._)]

I was always ready to go this walk with father, and I well remember
one occasion on which we went. It must have been about July, for
it was very hot, and the roses and other flowers were all out. Mr.
Dodgson and father enjoyed a chat, while I--with a mind full of rock
cakes, the bright sunshine and all the pretty things of nature in
the hedges, and (oh! happy thought!) perhaps the wonderful toffee at
the walk's end--danced along till the little garden gate was reached
and we all passed through. I always shared my goodies with other
people when I could, and I had promised to save some rock cakes
for father and Mr. Dodgson, for upstairs they were always much too
intent on conversation to think about "refreshments of life," and
these things of which I am writing happened before "afternoon teas"
of four o'clock were ever thought of.

The toffee was there--rather sticky, owing to the hot weather, but
the almonds looked white and cool; and the green plate of cakes and
the jug with a dog's face for a spout--all were there just ready
for the flushed, tired, little girl. I quite remember the cap that
day, for it had bunches of pink May with "Quaker" grass, and the old
lady told me it was her best summer cap and had cost six shillings
at Oliver's in Corn Market Street. I thought she must be a very rich
woman indeed, and told Mr. Dodgson so that afternoon, when we were
once more together. I remember his laugh as he said, "The female
mind is full of vanity." I wondered what a "female mind" meant, and
father said little girls asked too many questions (he often told me
this part of the story afterwards, when I was grown up), and that I
should not know what it was, even if I were told. Mr. Dodgson said,
"Alice, all things come to those who wait; some time, if God spares
you to grow up, you you will learn many things."

[Illustration: LEWIS CARROLL IN HIS STUDY AT CHRIST CHURCH.]

But the pleasant hour spent with the old housekeeper came to an
end, and the bell was rung, which meant that I had to gather myself
together and go home. Two small parcels of toffee and cakes were
given into my willing, open, little hands; a towel was hastily
found to wipe away my general stickiness; and then I went away from
this dear little home into "The Parks" with Mr. Dodgson and father,
homewards.

It was hot, and I was tired: I am sorry to say that father said I
was "very cross." My little blue shoes, fastened with straps and
tiny pearl buttons, would come undone, and all the brightness and
flowery hedges had lost their charm for the now overdone "Ducky."

Mr. Dodgson lagged behind, and I saw him looking intently in the
hedges and all about, as if he were searching for something. This
aroused my curiosity. At length, stooping down, he gathered up
something in his handkerchief. I could not see what he had found,
but I felt very much interested. Holding the tied-up handkerchief
above my head, he said, "This is for my other little Alice; she is a
brave girl, and does not cry like a baby at being a wee bit tired.
Oh! such a curious, lovely little flower is tied up here!"

At this he waved the handkerchief above my head, and I, so anxious
to see what was in it, skipped after him, forgetting the tears and
the tired legs. "Tell me what it is," was my breathless request.

No answer. Mr. Dodgson danced on, and I followed, father laughing
at the two of us. When we were near dear old Wadham College (not a
great distance from Long-Wall Street), Mr. Dodgson said to me, with
much solemnity, "Alice, did you ever hear of a 'Bella perennis,'
most wonderfully and beautifully made?"

I was awestruck, and whispered, "Never. Is that it?"

He nodded, and we went on again till the steps of our house came in
view. By this time I was quiet and wondering, and hoping I should be
allowed to see inside the handkerchief, and look at this wonderful,
mysterious creation.

Inside our hall was an old oaken bench, and there Mr. Dodgson sat
down; I in front of him, in my favourite attitude, with my long,
skinny arms clasped behind my back. I dare not speak as the knots
were very, very slowly untied, and--oh! only a tiny, withered,
half-dead, little daisy appeared to my astonished view! "Where is
the beautiful 'Bella something?'" I cried, with a half-sob rising in
my throat; I was so bitterly disappointed.

"This is the 'Bella perennis,' child. See how beautifully and
carefully it is made: one of God's fairest small field-flowers."

I took it in my hand, and, giving Mr. Dodgson a big hug, I passed
through the baize door, leaving my dear, kind friend with father.

I never forgot that walk! It made a very deep impression on my
childish mind, not easily effaced in the long after-years. If people
only knew what the sympathy of a "real, grown-up friend" is to a
shy child, what courage it gives to the trembling little heart! How
few children would be set down as shy and stupid, and be thoroughly
misunderstood (as some are now), if only there were more like Mr.
Dodgson, who, though one of the cleverest of men, could yet stoop to
win the love and confidence and enter into the joys and sorrows of
his numerous child friends!

Perhaps I have wearied many who may read this, and it is time I
should close these past chapters of my "childish memories," shut up
the book, and lay down the pen; but it has been an inexpressible
pleasure to recall, as far as I can, all Mr. Dodgson's kindness to
me and father. Alas! alas! that life should change--on and on--all
the dear, old, familiar places and faces disappear. "Old Tom" still
chimes his daily hours; but the dear footsteps will never more be
heard turning in at the door of the old staircase leading to his
rooms in Christ Church College. Those cheerful rooms, where so many
delightful hours were spent, will know him no more. All is gone now:
only the memory, and the deep respect and love his child friends
bore him, remain.

Father died on August 27th, 1897, and Mr. Dodgson on January 14th,
1898; and we, who are left behind, can only hope we may meet them
once more in the realms that never change.

                                EDITH ALICE MAITLAND.

[Illustration: THE CHESTNUTS, GUILDFORD.

(_Where Lewis Carroll died on January 14th, 1898._)]




[Illustration: GREAT ANNIVERSARIES
_IN MARCH_.]

By the Rev. A. R. Buckland, M.A., Morning Preacher at the Foundling
Hospital.

[Illustration: THE REV. JOHN WESLEY.

(_From the Portrait by G. Romney._)]


The March calendar is rich in great names; let us take a selection
in pairs, beginning with illustrious divines.

There died at Longleat on March 19th, 1710, Thomas Ken, some-time
Bishop of Bath and Wells. The English-speaking world is not likely
altogether to forget him, so long at least as his Morning and
Evening Hymns are sung. He is one of the uncanonised saints of the
English Church, as well as one of the prelates whose names enter
into English history. For Ken was amongst the seven bishops sent
to the Tower by James II., and one of the Non-jurors deprived
under William of Orange. The goodness of the man in an age of sore
temptation has been felt by every generation since his death. On
March 2nd, 1791, John Wesley died. His life is one of the most
astonishing in the religious history of the English people. In its
contrasts (such, for example, as between his life as a College Don
at Oxford and during his mission to Georgia), in its multitudinous
labours, in its immediate influence upon religion in England, and in
the far-reaching results of his work both in America and in Great
Britain, it is without parallel. He is a figure in the religious
history not so much of our own land as of the whole world, wherever
the Anglo-Saxon race has set its foot.

[Illustration: SIR ISAAC NEWTON.]

From divines let us pass to men of science. Sir Isaac Newton, one
of the most illustrious natural philosophers, and one of those for
whom room must always be found in even the briefest list of the
greatest Englishmen, died on March 20th, 1727. There is no more
distinguished name amongst the sons of Cambridge University. It was
by the choice of the University that he came into touch with the
political life of the nation, for in 1688 he was sent by it to the
Convention Parliament. Newton's name will never seem amiss in such
company as that of Ken and Wesley, for he was a profound believer
in the Christian faith and a diligent student of the Bible. Newton
was Master of the Mint; and this office was also held by Sir John
Herschel, who was born on March 7th, 1792. His fame is not dimmed in
comparison with that of his father, Sir William Herschel. Although
the son's career was not so striking as that of the "Hanoverian
fiddler," his scientific acquirements were of singular breadth.
At Cambridge, as a very young man, he agreed with two other
undergraduates that they would "do their best to leave the world
wiser than they found it." The compact seemed presumptuous, but in
the case of Herschel it was well kept.

[Illustration: DAVID LIVINGSTONE.

(_From the Painting in the possession of the London Missionary
Society._)]

Two illustrious philanthropists belong to this month. Thomas
Clarkson--still another Cambridge man--was born on March 26th, 1760.
Whilst at the University he won the Vice-Chancellor's prize for a
dissertation on the question, "Is it lawful to make slaves of men
against their will?" Working at this essay, he became so impressed
with the duty of fighting the slave-trade that he resolved to give
himself up to the work. He lived to see his ends attained as regards
Great Britain. There is a natural link between Clarkson's work for
the African, and the life-work of David Livingstone (born March
19th, 1813). Livingstone was very far from being merely an explorer,
or an explorer with missionary instincts; he knew that to kill the
slave-trade in Africa the country must be opened up, and he gave his
life to another side of the same work which Clarkson had toiled for.

[Illustration:  ABRAHAM LINCOLN.         JEFFERSON DAVIS.

(_Two Notable Americans._)]

March is a great month in the independent history of the United
States, and in the official lives of its Presidents. It has its sad
memories, too, though memories that no longer appeal to passion. It
was in March, 1861, that Jefferson Davis and Abraham Lincoln found
the North and the South just on the brink of open war. It was in
March also, in the year 1852, that Mrs. Stowe's "Uncle Tom's Cabin"
was first published. That is one of the few literary anniversaries
that will always be connected with political history.

[Illustration: MRS. BEECHER STOWE.

(_At the time she wrote "Uncle Tom's Cabin."_)]

India offers us two memorable names. John Lawrence, Henry's
younger brother, was born on March 24th, 1811. One of the wisest
of Indian administrators, he would have been great had the Mutiny
never occurred. As it is, other achievements are forgotten in the
promptitude and skill which marked his conduct then. He is buried in
Westminster Abbey, and near him lies Sir James Outram, "the Bayard
of India," who died on March 11th, 1863.

[Illustration: BUST OF LORD LAWRENCE IN WESTMINSTER ABBEY.]

So much for men; now for organisations. On March 8th, 1698-99, was
founded the Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge. On March
13th, 1701, the Lower House of Canterbury Convocation appointed
the committee to "inquire into ways and means for promoting the
Christian religion in our foreign plantations," which led to
the founding of the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel.
The British and Foreign Bible Society was founded on March 7th,
1804. On March 4th, 1824, at a meeting held at the London Tavern,
under the presidency of Archbishop Manners-Sutton, "The Royal
National Institution for the Preservation of Life from Ship-wreck"
was launched. Its present title, the Royal National Lifeboat
Institution, was adopted in 1854.

[Illustration: (_Photo: Cassell and Co., Ltd._)

BRITISH AND FOREIGN BIBLE SOCIETY'S PREMISES.]




CHRISTABEL'S REBELLION.

AN EPISODE.

By E. S. Curry, Author of "The Twins," Etc.


Nora was putting on her hat in her own room; Christopher, her little
son, was being dressed in the nursery to accompany her; Christabel,
his twin sister, was in her own pertinacious way arguing with her
mother. The Twins, known as Punch and Judy, had reached the age of
two. Each had a will, and a method of making it known--though in
this respect Judy caused most perplexity to her young parents. She
was now asserting it.

"Me go too, mummie," in a decided tone, for the sixth time.

"No, Judy--not this time. Your turn next," Nora said cheerfully.

She did not like separating the twins, but one was as much as she
could reasonably take to an afternoon tea party. They must learn
some time to be divided, she thought sadly, after reflecting on the
woes of the world.

"Me s'all go, mummie," in beautifully clear accents, with a charming
smile.

"Shall you, dear? Yes, next time," Nora said, bending over the vivid
little face, just the height of her dressing-table.

"If we're not back when father comes in," she went on, suggesting
solace, "will you take care of him, Judy, and love him?"

"Yuv father," murmurously assented the baby, busy with a knot in her
pink pinafore.

"And don't take off your pinafore, Judy," said her mother.

"Goin' out to tea," responded Judy. "Off!" releasing one little
white serge shoulder from the enclosing cotton.

Nora moved about her room for a few more minutes before she went
to the nursery to pick up her little son. Judy, trotting after,
was kissed at the top of the staircase, and, with a sombre fire in
her brilliant eyes, watched the descent of Christopher. His air of
triumph as he stamped his booted feet on every stair was no doubt
aggravating.

It was a cold March day, and, as she noted his gaitered legs, Judy
glanced down at her own bare toes. At the sight of his hat, firmly
set upon the soft fair curls, Judy lifted her chubby hands to her
own bare head--bare but for its clustering brown waves with their
tips of gold. A deep sense of unfair treatment, of unjust neglect,
flitted across the baby's mind. A great determination filled it.

Nurse went through the open nursery door in a busy manner. It was
Jane's afternoon out, and there was a good deal to tidy up. In two
minutes Judy, after a fashion of her own, was at the bottom of the
wide staircase, a lonely little figure, standing for a moment on
the rug before the log fire. Finding the hall door shut and the
drawing-room door open, the baby stepped into the conservatory, and
was soon trotting down the drive. Her shoulders were set sturdily
to a great effort. No one seeing her could possibly mistake their
expression. She was going out to tea.

Outside the gates, left open for the exit of a carriage, Judy
paused. Just before her, four roads crossed. Three she knew
well--one led to the village, the other two were the routes of daily
outings. The fourth was forbidden to the nurses because of a big
public-house a quarter of a mile away--a rendezvous of trippers from
London. Along this road the little figure turned.

A bicyclist rang his bell and startled her, whizzing close by her,
as she did not move from the middle of the road. A man in a cart
evaded her, pausing to look down with interest at the bare-headed
little traveller.

"My! she's a little 'un to be about alone," he thought, turning in
his seat to look after the purposeful little figure. He scratched
his head and thought of his own baby, about the same size, and for a
moment was tempted to turn his cart and go after her.

"She hadn't ought to have been let go out by herself," he thought,
indignant with some neglectful guardian. "A little gipsy child,
p'raps--never taught not to run in the middle of the road."

Unwitting of the kindly thought that followed her, Judy ran on--now
and then pausing for a second to glance about her, her bare feet
and uncovered head seeming to reck nothing of the cold spring
wind. A timber waggon, drawn by three huge horses, and guided by a
carter cracking his whip, made her flit in momentary tremor, with
hunched shoulders, to the side of the road, from which security she,
however, surveyed their passage with sparkling eyes. Holding out her
arms in ecstatic approval, she urged shrilly. "Gee-gee--go,  go";
and the carter glanced at her bright face, under its touzled waves
of hair, admiringly.

"She's a spirit of her own," he thought, bestowing a momentary
wonder on her lone condition as he passed.

The dust from the grinding wheels settled, and Judy pursued her way.
Who can tell what thoughts were directing her progress, or whether
she ever wondered where the tea she was in search of was to come
from? She went on.

Presently a wayside inn, withdrawn a little from the road, with its
sign-post shaking and creaking in the wind before it, came into
view. Judy stopped and put her finger in her mouth, considering.
This was a house. Here was tea.

In a doorway stood a man, round and red-faced. He had no coat, and
his waistcoat had seen better days, whilst a battered felt hat was
on his head. He was gazing into space, with little sharp eyes set
under overhanging, beetling brows.

Judy drew nearer. Something in his appearance fascinated her.
Possibly its untidy dishevelment touched a fellow-feeling and
appealed to her reckless mood. At that moment nothing was doing, and
the potman was smoking a dirty pipe when Judy drew near and surveyed
him. For a moment or so the two looked at each other in silence.
Judy spoke first.

"Tea!" she demanded imperiously.

"Tea!" he repeated, amazed. And then he stooped and touched the
velvet of her cheek softly with his hand, and lifted the waves of
her overshadowing hair. "Who are you?" he asked.

"Tea," answered Judy, and a little appeal had crept into her tone
and into the beautiful dark eyes. The potman's resemblance to her
friend the gardener was not so great, on nearer acquaintance, as she
had at first thought.

"You want your tea, missy? Is that it?"

And, receiving a little nod and a charming smile, he lifted himself
and scratched his head.

"There ain't no tea--but there's some milk" (his face suddenly
brightening), "and one of them big buns. It's a bit stale--but if
she's hungry."

He disappeared, and Judy, after a second's pause of indecision,
elected not to follow him. The interior into which he had vanished
was not inviting. There was a little porch to the closed front
door, with wooden seats on either side, and these now caught Judy's
vision. Trotting thither, she essayed to climb.

[Illustration: "My! she's a little 'un to be about alone."]

"Up," she demanded, when the potman returned, carrying a mug of milk
and a very large scone.

Safely seated, with the mug beside her, and the scone held
carefully in both hands, she remarked in cheerful accents--"Out to
tea," looking at him for corroboration.

"Out to tea? Yes, missy--where do you come from?" he answered.
"What's yer mother thinking of to let yer out alone?" he asked.

Judy opened her mouth and fastened her little white teeth into the
big stale bun, condescending no answer to inconvenient questions.
The potman sat down opposite her and proceeded in his attempts.

"What's yer name, missy?" he asked again. "Ain't yer got one?" as
Judy, disregarding him, seemed bent on demolishing the bun. She
nibbled all round it, holding it with both hands, serenely callous
to her companion's beguilements.

"Doody," at last she vouchsafed, in a pause for rest, looking
interestedly at the pattern she had vandyked.

"That's a funny name. Ain't you got another?" he inquired.

A reminiscent smile broke over the vivid face.

"Daddy's Kistabel," she murmured softly, removing her eyes from his
face and considering another bite.

"An' yer daddy might do worse nor kiss you, I reckon," admiringly;
"but it's a rummy one, too."

The flash of the dark eyes opposite was irresistible. It awoke good
thoughts in the potman's mind.

"You've runned away, I reckon?" he observed, bending forward.

Judy looked all over the ugly face thus presented to her immediate
vision. Its corrugated surface fascinated her. Stretching one hand
out, she softly touched the knobbly nose and laughed aloud, hunching
her shoulders in glee.

Her own flower-like face was an equal attraction to the potman.

"Lilies an' roses ain't in it with her," he murmured admiringly.
"An' eyes as big as plums and as dark as--stout."

"Where do yer live?" he next essayed.

"D'ink," said Judy, occupied with the problem of what was to be
done with the bun whilst she drank from the mug beside her. "'Old!"
she commanded, holding out the bun, as she realised that her own
dangling legs made a very unstable, insufficient knee.

"Bless yer, missy, look at my 'ands!" the potman answered.

Judy looked, bending her dainty face with keen interest above the
members, encrusted with dirt and neglect, held out before her.

"Dirty!" she exclaimed delightedly, lifting sympathetic eyes to the
equally dirty face, and she laughed again in keen enjoyment. Dirt
always commanded Judy's suffrages.

"'Old!" she commanded again, undaunted by the sight presented to
her; and with sweet and dainty curvings of her soft fingers she
pressed the nibbled scone upon the greasy palms. Then the potman
handed her the mug and Judy drank.

"Out to tea?" she said again, a little doubtfully, as, her draught
finished, she recovered her scone.

But the rosy mouth paused half-open, and Judy's eyes fixed
themselves observantly on an advancing figure.

"Man," she said, directing the potman's gaze to the road. It was a
policeman passing by, and the potman stood up alertly.

"Here," he called, "here's a little gel." And the two men stood
solemnly regarding Judy. "I 'xpect she's lost," he suggested slowly.

The policeman's eyes fixed themselves on the dainty embroidery of
Judy's little petticoat, visible under her lifted skirt--a contrast
to the bare and dusty ankles it enclosed. The dragged-aside cotton
pinafore, from which one arm was freed, revealed the elaborate
smocking with which nurse was wont to ornament the simple frock.
Lastly, Judy's face came in for careful scrutiny.

"How did you pick her up?" he asked.

"She come."

"Which direction?"

"Along the road, trotting along all by herself."

"Then I'll take her back. Seems to me she is uncommon like one of
a pair I sometimes see--beauties, both of them; though how the
mischief----Come with me, missy," he wheedled, stooping and holding
out his arms.

"Out to tea," said Judy.

"Yes, so you are. You been out to tea, ain't you?" he sympathised.
And Judy, satisfied, holding out her arms, allowed herself to be
annexed.

But she was not carried off without a little scene.

In the policeman's arms a sudden recollection of her "manners"
flashed across her mind.

"Bye, bye," she said, holding out one hand in a dignified fashion to
the potman. With the other she still retained the bun.

"Bye, bye, missy," he responded, much gratified.

"Bye, bye," Judy repeated; and then, her vivid face all dimpling
into smiles, she flung herself forward and clasped her arms round
his neck. What to Judy were dirt and knobbliness? Both were
fascinating, both were associated with the delight of having her
own way. With a fervid embrace and a wet kiss Judy bestowed her
gratitude.

There was weeping and wringing of hands and the rush of petticoats
up and down and in and out, and flying figures darting about, when
the policeman, with Judy in charge, arrived at the gates of Mount
Royal. Judy's father had just come from the train, and was trying to
find out from his agitated household what was the matter, when the
tall, dark figure with the little pink one in his arms appeared.

"Oh, Judy!" reproached nurse, pallid to her lips, snatching her
charge from the policeman's arms and agitatedly examining all her
limbs. "Such a disgrace!" she exclaimed, looking angrily at the
policeman.

"I thought I knew her, miss," he said politely, grinning. Nurse had
haughtily snubbed him once or twice in her walks.

[Illustration: "Bye, bye," she said.]

"Out to tea," Judy said triumphantly, as she was caught up into her
father's embrace.

       *       *       *       *       *

Christopher, breaking away from nurse's attentions, on his return
home, stamped loudly round the nursery floor to attract the envious
attention of Judy.

Judy's attire had been remodelled throughout, as a prelude to the
hour in the drawing-room before bed-time; and she was now sitting on
the window seat in a mood of subdued and passive triumph. "Go agen,"
she had murmured softly two or three times to herself, too much
occupied with the sweets of memory to heed, as she otherwise would
have done, Punch's aggravations.

Stamping round being deprived of its attraction, Punch paused and
approached his sister.

"Poor Doody," he said pityingly.

Judy's eyes flashed in the manner which always made Punch conscious
of wonder that he had felt called upon to speak. He hastened to
appease her.

"Punch's boots a-comin' off," he said.

"Doody don't want no boots," she said shrilly; "never don't want no
boots, Doody don't."

"No," agreed Punch, in the tone of one who humours. "Ain't been out
to tea," he suggested.

"Has!" screamed Judy. "Doody has!"

The blue eyes looked searchingly into the dark ones, and, with a
qualm of disappointment, Punch felt the force of truth.

"Cake?" he asked presently, after silently observing her.

Judy shook her head violently, the violence intended to hide the
mortification of having to confess the absence of the delicacy.

"Punch did," he said. "Cake, an' tea, an'----"

"Bun?" burst in Judy; and then it was Punch's turn to look
disappointed. Buns had not been provided at his entertainment.

"Doody did," went on Judy; "an' milk, an'----"

"Punch had tea," interrupted Christopher.

"An' man," went on Judy, with immense emphasis.

Christopher looked at her solemnly, as he dived into the recesses of
his memory; not a man had graced his tea-party!

"Man?" persisted Judy, searching his eyes with her blazing orbs.

There was a silence.

"Punch are goin' to muvver," the boy then announced cheerfully,
freeing his legs from Judy's petticoats with a vigorous kick.

"Man!" shrieked Judy after his retreating figure, too much taken by
surprise to lift herself so suddenly. Then she, too, got up, shook
herself, and with a dash was through the nursery door.

"Out to tea agen," she sang out, trotting fast along the corridor.

       *       *       *       *       *

But alas! for Judy. All the doors and gates were fast, and for a
week they were kept carefully closed.

[Illustration: "Man!" shrieked Judy.]




[Illustration: COUNTING NOT THE COST

(_Photo: H. S. Mendelssohn, Pembridge Crescent, W._)]

By the Rev. C. Silvester Horne, M.A.

     "When His disciples saw it, they had indignation, saying, To
     what purpose is this waste? For this ointment might have been
     sold for much, and given to the poor."--ST. MATTHEW
     xxvi. 8, 9.


Blessed is the love that counteth not the cost of sacrifice! Thus
I read the meaning of the Master's recognition of this act of
homage--the form in which a devout and eager spirit of reverence
found expression and articulation. This woman, by surrendering
herself to the impulse of adoration and affection, laid herself
open to the criticisms of the self-constituted champions of common
sense, utility, and philanthropy. We shall see, as we look at her
story, how, in the regard of Heaven, what I might venture to call a
genuine and spontaneous extravagance ranks higher than a legal and
mechanical economy.

There is a truth we have not anything like exhausted yet in the
great words of Christ, "He who saves [or hoards] his life shall lose
it." Parsimony, if we knew it, impoverishes as well as extravagance.
If the prodigal had turned miser, he would have remained just as
far from the father's house. We do not accuse the disciples for a
moment of selfishness or greed. If they misconstrued Mary's motive,
let us beware lest we misconstrue theirs. Say they were honest and
genuine, but that they lacked insight and that emancipation from the
commercial spirit which saves men from estimating all precious and
lovely things at their market value.

We need the lesson. No century has needed it more. While love
in self-forgetfulness and holy passion is spending itself in
the tenderest offices that an overflowing heart has suggested,
the disciples are engaged in problems of valuation, working out
calculations in arithmetic--so much ointment at so much per pound.
But that would have been condemned by many who would yet ask
themselves seriously whether their main contention was not right.
Their blunt and rude interruption showed lack of feeling; it was
vulgar and inexcusable. Granted. But if they had quietly sympathised
with the good intention, and yet afterwards had clearly represented
that here love had loved "not wisely but too well," and had done
better if it had selected some more practical method in which to
exhibit its reality, would they not have commanded a very general
assent? Would not nine out of every ten have said that she could
have laid out the money to better advantage, and that it was a
holier thing to clothe and feed the persons of the poor than even to
anoint the person of the Christ?

Now let me say that I do not think we can understand our Saviour's
commendation of this deed of love, and this apparent disregard of
principles of utility and practical philanthropy, unless we take at
once a large and a deep view of life--its purpose and the methods of
its education. The pressure of the material necessities is constant
and urgent, I know; but God does not mean us to believe that the
supreme questions of life are "What shall we eat, and what shall we
drink, and wherewithal shall we be clothed?"

When Christ propounded His query to the multitudes on the mount,
"Is not the life more than meat, and the body than the raiment?"
He demanded in reality their assent to the proposition that the
spiritual life is the supremely important. The fact of the matter
is, God has never treated man as if he were made to eat and drink
because to-morrow he must die. The world is not designed simply to
promote our physical well-being, and conducted on purely utilitarian
principles, as if it were some sort of gigantic store in which all
men were shareholders, and the sole business of which was to produce
certain annual profits. That mode of regarding the universe is
popular, but false.

Have you ever asked yourselves the question, "What do the spring
flowers mean?" I have sometimes tried to fancy men gloomily riding
to the city and sulkily pointing to the wealth of ephemeral beauty
that has glorified the world, and demanding, "To what purpose is
this waste?" There the flowers bloom, so fragile, so delicate, so
short-lived; here to-day, and faded and gone to-morrow: to-day,
a quivering point of beauty and fragrance, to-morrow touched by
the withering finger of decay. And so "they bloom their hour and
fade," and we say in wonder, "To what purpose was this waste?" What
did it all mean? One sudden, genuine gush of sacred feeling; one
burst of almost overpowering glory that shone steadfast for one
brief hour and then faded into nothingness. Why lavish such wealth
of colour and sweetness on fabrics so short-lived as the flowers
of spring? Ah, why, indeed! Long years before man brake the first
poor spikenard vessel of worship and adoring love at the feet of
the Eternal, God poured His precious gifts of bloom and scent in
bewildering profusion and prodigality upon the listless sons of
earth.

I have sometimes wondered whether man might not have gone on
conceiving of the world as no more than so much food, and clothing,
and shelter, if God had not startled him by this annual miracle of
spring to ask the question, "To what purpose is this waste?" Just
so soon as man found himself appealed to in the higher faculties
and senses, did he begin to suspect himself above the brute; did
he begin to discover beneath the form of things a gracious and
bountiful Spirit, whose attitude to him found voice in these tender
and winsome words of Nature's lips.

Flowers "born to blush unseen and waste their sweetness on the
desert air"--to what purpose are they? Surely, surely (as Mary's
offering of sweet spikenard) they are God's approach to man, if only
we would accept them as such. That is the inner meaning of this
sudden gush of sacred feeling; that is the purpose of this "waste."

We are reaching, then, this conclusion, that if love is the soul of
life, you must expect no mere dead level of respect, but occasional
inevitable outbursts of feeling, love's sweet surprises; times when
the ordinary prescribed channels through which habitual affection
flows are inadequate, and when there must be room for the sweet
extravagances of love. The strong, deep love of a father may no
doubt be felt in the steadfast care that provides food and clothing,
and shelter, and all things necessary for his child. But, after all,
home would not be home if there were not room for the rarer gifts,
and the moments of sublime _abandon_, when all the love of the heart
breaks forth in unconstrained demonstration of affection.

Life that is love cannot be reduced to formalities; there must
be a place in it for the spontaneous, the unpremeditated, the
irresistible impulse. Love cannot live and thrive amid conventions
merely. It has an etiquette of its own. It must be allowed to make
its own proprieties. If you cannot appoint to it an object, and
command one mortal to love another, neither can you prescribe the
manner of its operation. You cannot control its whims, and freaks,
and fancies. It has ten thousand devices that are all enigmas to the
uninitiate.

  "Love only knoweth whence they came, and comprehendeth love."

Its sanities are stark madness to the matter-of-fact man of affairs.
He curtly denominates nonsense what to love is inspiration.
He stares in blank incredulity at the simple and magnificent
prodigalities of love, and begins to wonder whether he is himself
quite sane to-day, and to ask in sheer stupor, "To what purpose is
this waste?"

It would not do, perhaps, to make too searching a scrutiny into
private personal histories, or it might transpire that, after all,
behind even the most stolid of demeanours there lay experiences
which memory treasures still, and which are the vindication to
them of Mary's sublime extravagance. Yes, perhaps those you least
suspect--the level-headed men who are feared for their hard thinking
and steely, immovable stolidity, have secret drawers somewhere, with
strangely unintelligible relics of a yesterday that was the greatest
day of their life--and the least defensible day on any rationalistic
view of it! On that day they lost either their head or their heart,
or both, and love and reverence found expression; and the spikenard
that they broke that day is the _one_ precious memory in what people
with unconscious irony are calling a successful career. Yes, the
one thing they are proud to have done, the one thing they sometimes
think may stand them in stead in a world where wealth and fame will
be as nothing, is a thing which none could justify on commercial
principles--which stands in conflict with the great aims and efforts
of their lives--an action that sprang inevitably from a spendthrift
love, and of which the world in which they move might well demand,
"To what purpose is this waste?" I venture to say that by that very
chapter of their history the possibility is proved that, some day,
they may discover a more amazing loveliness and a more overpowering
love; and may offer even nobler offerings of life and treasure at
His feet, and go forth again, not in shame, but in holy pride and
devout thanksgiving that at last they have learned to love with a
love that counteth not the cost of sacrifice.

I have seen this exquisite story quoted as a defence of mere
ritual. The method is obvious. The hardened lover of simplicity is
represented as one of the disciples; and beholding the beauty of
architecture, and the stateliness of the ceremonial, and listening
to the superb eloquence of the liturgy and grandeur of the music, he
asks, "To what purpose is this waste?"

There is a superficial justification for such teaching. But it is
only superficial. For if from this incident it be attempted to
establish a precedent for permanent elaborate ritual of worship,
it must be said this incident goes to prove its impossibility. For
ask yourselves, What gave this deed its peculiar and unrivalled
power and influence? There is only one answer. It lies in its
solitariness. It was spontaneous. It was unique. It could not bear
repetition. To repeat it were to rob it of its bloom.

We repudiate, then, the idea that the form of this deed can become
the basis of Christian worship. But we are now able to consider the
truth that, when love realises itself thus in deeds of worship, it
often receives assurances that it has done more than it knew. God
interprets our poor intentions so liberally, so largely. He reads
into our broken speech such divine meanings. It is ever so. We give
a cup of cold water to a thirsty bairn; and lo! we have done it
_unto Him_! We utter our coarse earthly strains of music; and, one
day, He bids us hearken! Then there falls upon our ears ravishing
heavenly music; and when we could fall down and worship, He tells us
it is our own.

Heaven's great melodies are perhaps no more than earth's poor
ones, composed in pure love and praise of God, redeemed from their
limitations and imperfections in the home of all true worship.
So Mary struck her trembling chord, and waited fearful; broke
her spikenard, and then marvelled at her own daring; and while,
when love had spent itself, a colder mood began to question the
propriety, and to strike fear to her woman's heart, Jesus spake and
said, "In that she hath poured this ointment on Me, she hath done it
for My burial."

Would she ever have dreamed, think you, that she was doing what
He said? Would she ever have dared to entertain the thought that
He would bear to the grave the incense of her adoration, and that
with the final victory of His resurrection her love and worship
would have eternal association? Would she ever have dreamed, here
in Simon's house, where she was esteemed so meanly and treated so
basely--here, amid the splendour of a rich man's entertainment--that
in the days when the world had no feasts for Him, but only a cross
and a tomb, that then the perfume of her love, the fragrance of her
offerings, would surround His form and sweeten His resting-place.
Never; but so it was, for the Divine Love caught up the simple act
of worship, and gave it eternal distinction. Yea, He who had come to
seek the love of men deigned to associate with the time of His own
immortal sacrifice this sacrifice of hers.

It were, perhaps, to require too much of this story to make it
convey the great truth that in Christ's sacrifice all our sacrifices
have a place. Yet, verily, every true sacrifice hath association
with His. Every death to self is an anointing of the Holy One to
His burial. He gathers up the perfume of all simple deeds of lowly
sacrifice; for this is His reward. Only from the great Love does
our love flow. We love because He loved. His sacrifice is the basis
of all sacrifice; and all true sacrifice of ours hath this relation
to His own. We did not think when we did it of anything but that we
must do it unto Him; and in grace He showed us afterwards that we
had indeed anointed Him--we had in our own poor way honoured the
Divine sacrifice.

It would but mar the solemn influence of such a sacred reflection
to deduce the obvious and inevitable lessons. I forbear to treat it
thus. I can only say, let us pray and let us strive to love Him with
the love that counteth not the cost of sacrifice.




[Illustration: THE GREEN FOLK]

A Complete Story. By Ethel F. Heddle.




CHAPTER I.

ISHBEL.


One is pretty safe to address a man in Skye as Macdonald! If that
fails, then try MacLeod, and if this produces no result, then there
is still Nicolson to fall back on. An error in all three is next
door to an impossibility! But Ishbel had not any of these three
names, though she lived with her maternal grandfather, who was a
MacLeod.

Ishbel was a changeling. Anyone would tell you so in Skye--if,
perhaps, one or two smiled in the telling. Her grandmother, Catriona
MacLeod, said so, and Catriona had the second sight, and saw more
than most people. She was held in Skye to see, indeed, beyond that
veil which mercifully hides the future. Catriona had early said
the girl was a changeling. Her daughter, poor Kirstie, died at the
baby's birth, her father Roderick McNeill, was drowned--tragedy and
sorrow surrounded the baby, and then the little green folk stole it,
and Ishbel was the changeling popularly supposed to be left in its
place.

She was always an odd child, Catriona said, with ruddy tawny
locks, and sloe-eyes, elfish and silent, doing queer, uncanny,
unaccountable things, with moods of sadness and moods of mirth. She
grew up in Skye, and would never leave it, though she had her chance
to do so.

Ishbel lived with Catriona till she was nineteen, and helped her
with her spinning and knitting; she also milked the cows, and worked
about the house. The girl's head was full of her grandmother's
teaching; she believed in the fairies, though she rarely spoke of
them. Her cousin Duncan often found her seated in the fairy-ring on
the knowe, above the sheiling, picking the green grass absently, and
gazing "frae her."

Some day, she thought, she would hear the tap of fairy feet in their
revels, hear a tiny voice which would beckon her to an entrancing
world, very different even from lovely Skye. Very often she thought
she had been on the brink of meeting the little green folk, and then
someone had come and interrupted her. There was that night coming
home over the muir from Portree--the stream, richly brown with the
peat over which it gurgled, the air heather-scented, the mountains
fading into the lovely purple of the night's embrace--everything
hushed, save her own footfall. Ishbel had seemed to hear a voice
calling her then, and had wandered up amongst the heather, her face
eager and expectant. And there above her on the heather knoll, "the
wee folks' knowe," seeming to float between the grey lichen-covered
boulders--surely these were tiny white figures, beckoning to her?

She almost ran, in her eagerness, but, just as she approached,
Duncan's voice hailed her from the high road. What was she doing
there? And was that the way home?

Ishbel almost wept as she descended. For she could see nothing near
the boulders then but waving cotton-grass amongst the bog and
heather. It was lovely September now, and the hill-sides were a
glory of tawny colouring, the fading heather and bracken, purple and
brown, and orange, and gold, and dusky indescribable grey. Sunset
came early, and tinged and stained the loch, the Cuchillans stood
out sharply in their lovely serrated outline, against a background
of pure gold--they were almost friendly and neighbourly, and
approachable; it was in winter that they lowered and sulked in the
mist, or frowned blackly from amongst the lashing swirls of rain.

Ishbel had gone to fetch fodder for the cows, and the fodder was
a great pile of pale yellow bracken, which she bound together
and fastened on her back. Carrying this, she passed up the road,
pausing now and then to lean her load on one of the rough dykes
which bordered the muir. It was nearing evening, and shadows were
creeping over the heather--the burn, amber-coloured under the
sun, looked dark and sullen-brown now, and had begun its hoarse
night-song, for it only sings in the dark. The deer hear and love
this song as they creep down cautiously, light-footedly, turning
startled graceful heads from side to side, and they pause a moment,
poised with listening ear, before they bury thirsty soft noses into
the cool rushing water. The deer did not mind Ishbel! But it was
scarcely dark enough for the deer to come yet. There was still a
chance of the passing tourist from Sligachan, coming from Coruisk,
the far-famed. Ishbel, pausing to rest the high load of bracken
on the dyke--the crushed yellow fern making a lovely setting to
her tawny locks and black sloe-eyes--suddenly perceived two men
approaching, and waited for their coming with something of the
deer's startled look. One was Duncan MacLeod, her cousin, short,
swarthy, black-browed, with a twinkle of cunning in his grey eyes,
and a Highland sing-song voice; and the other? Yes, yes, she had
seen the other at the Portree games, and he had tossed the caber
further than even Colin MacNeil, and his name was Rory MacPhee!
Ishbel remembered him very well, and a little smile melted over her
red lips, and lurked in the depths of her lovely eyes as Duncan made
him known to her. Rory had rented the small farm next to Catriona's,
and he was coming to supper. It was time she, Ishbel, was home.

Duncan did not offer to take the fodder from her, though he thought
he was in love with Ishbel, and meant to marry her. Women were used
to burdens in Skye. But Rory MacPhee, saying nothing, began to untie
the rope at the girl's waist, and he swung the mass lightly over his
own shoulders.

"Och! that is not needful," Duncan said. And what he thought was
"_Amadan!_" (stupid!)

"It is too heavy for a lass."

That was all; but Rory and Ishbel did not meet each other's eyes,
and they walked home silent through the creeping dusk.

By the red peat-glow in the cottage she looked lovelier than
ever; MacPhee ate little, and his mind was in a curious turmoil.
Catriona's remarks, and Duncan's slow efforts at conversation--for
the Highlander is desperately cautious at making friends, and Rory
came from as far away as above Portree, seven miles off--fell on
strangely dull ears.

What had come to him?

Rory asked himself the question all next day, for, amidst even the
sordid duties of examining the new byres and out-houses, there
floated before his mind only one picture--a girl's slim figure in a
short faded green skirt, leaning against a dyke, with her small head
crushed against a background of faded fern, and the shy lovely eyes
looking into his face.

Ishbel! They said she was a changeling.

Well, changeling and all, he loved her!




CHAPTER II.

ISHBEL'S PROMISE.


"It is no use at all to go against the lass. I hef said so before
now. And there are many lasses in Skye, as good as she, and with,
maybe, a cow or two, or a few pounds to bring with her. There is
Sheila Macdonald--Sheila will hef as much as three hundred pounds!"

"As if I would look at a squinting woman"--and Duncan threw down the
fishing-rod he held, furiously--"I will hef none but Ishbel, and if
she will not hef me, I will do someone an injury!"

His mother went on peeling potatoes, deliberately.

"Rory MacPhee is stronger and bigger than you," she remarked. "And
he has the eye of a hawk, and his fist is like iron. You will never
take Ishbel from him by force. But perhaps, now, there might be a
little plan--chust a little plan."

He picked up the rod. His cunning eyes grew intent. Catriona
resumed, in her high-pitched voice, speaking without a pause in her
occupation: "The best thing would be that they would quarrel. And
I will tell you a way. He does not like to hear that they are all
saying she is a changeling; and he does not like her to talk of the
good folk. When she told him the story of the kelpie that followed
Ross MacRae over the muir, and drowned him at last in the Rowan
Pool, he was angry, and called it all nonsense, and said that she
should not repeat such folly. And Ishbel did not like that. She was
asking me about the Cave of Gold only yesterday, and when it was
that anyone might see the fairies dancing, and if the tide would
suit to go. So I told her it was on Midsummer's Night at twelve
o'clock, and she is just mad to go! Chust as mad! But Rory was
there, too, and I was listening at the door, after, and I heard him
say that it was all just talk and folly, and that he would not have
her go; that it was too late, and that squalls came on, and our boat
was not good at all. She begged and prayed that he would take her,
and he said, 'No'! Chust always, 'No'!"

"Very well, then," Duncan cried impatiently, as she paused, "I
suppose she is so mad with love that she gave it up."

"She is pretty mad with the love," his mother agreed, "and so she
gave in. 'And I am going to Portree, Ishbel,' I heard him say, 'to
see what Mr. Campbell, the agent, is wishing to say to me, and you
will promise not to go when I am away?--for it is not good for a
lass like you to be out so late. And you will promise me?' And she
promised. He said he would bring her a new brooch--like a claymore,
that the man at Oban is making with the Iona pebbles--and they
kissed, and he is gone."

"Very well, what then?" Duncan cried irately. "I hear they are to be
married when he comes back. What else, mother?"

Catriona had dropped her potatoes into the pot, and she swung it
over the open peats, glowing redly in the dark little cottage.

"Well, if I were you, Duncan, I would get out the boat, and I would
offer to take her to the cave. And I will be telling her more
stories to-night, when we are spinning. The lass is a changeling,
sure enough, and she will go. When Rory comes back, he will hear,
and he will be mad with her, and they will quarrel. You can go over
to Uig that day" ("Discretion being the better part of valour,"
evidently, in Catriona's eyes). "They will quarrel, and will break
it off, and she will come to you, in time."

Duncan considered the plan slowly. Yes, it suited him excellently
well. He wanted no noisy quarrel, no measuring of strength. He, too,
remembered Rory's muscles at the Portree games. But this secret
working in the dark, in MacPhee's absence, was quite to his taste.

He made up his mind now that his mother was a woman of much wisdom.
He graciously told her he approved, and she should have a little
present on his next trip to Portree. Her stories to Ishbel of the
cave were to be many and enticing!




CHAPTER III.

IN THE CAVE OF GOLD.


"Duncan, Duncan, but I hef promised!" It was the next night, and
Ishbel stood before the cottage in her dark wincey skirt and green
cotton jacket, her face turned up to her cousin's. All last night,
all through the day, old Catriona's stories had haunted her. The
old woman had gone cunningly to work. She began, in a rambling way,
once they were both seated at the spinning-wheel, by remarking
that to-morrow would be Midsummer's Night, and the fairies would
be holding high frolic in the Cave of Gold. She herself was old,
and frail, and feeble, else how gladly would she have gone! She had
the second sight--she would perhaps see what no other could! For,
with a branch of rowan--and she had a branch of dry rowan in her
kist, ready for her burial--or a naked dagger--Duncan's big knife
would do--there was no danger! To see the little green folk dancing!
And--here her voice fell, and she glanced into all the dark shadows
of the kitchen, and up by the oak settle near the window--perhaps to
hear the faint and far-off skirl of Angus Macdonald's pipes! They
said that sound was heard still. At first Ishbel had risen uneasily,
saying she would go and see if there were enough oat-cakes for
supper--or was that anyone in the barn?

But Catriona bade her be seated, sharply--the girl should not escape
her thus--and then she asked if she (Catriona) had ever told Ishbel
the story of Angus Macdonald and the Cave of Gold? No, Ishbel
answered unwillingly, and sat down again, the wheel idle, the soft
grey carded wool lying in her lap. Catriona, spinning fast--with
the low dirl of the wheel acting as a sort of accompaniment to her
voice--told the story. She spoke in Gaelic, of course, and it is
difficult to put in English the creeping, insidious fear and mystery
of the tale.

How the piper, Angus Macdonald, loved a MacLeod of Dunvegen, a
follower of the great MacLeod, and how this lady-love's father would
have none of him, but set him some of those foolish and impossible
tasks so dear to the story-teller of all ages and climes and
nationalities.

One task bade him enter the Cave of Gold at midnight, on Midsummer's
Night, and play "MacLeod of Dunvegen," passing through the little
dancing folk, and penetrating far into the mystery of the cave's
windings, where no Skye man had ever been. Macdonald, of course,
took up the challenge, and with his tartan ribbands waving wildly
from the pipes, and the mouth-piece at his lips, he was seen
standing at the shingly edge of the cave, his kilt tossing against
his brown knees in the sudden gust of wind. The men who rowed him
up saw this, and heard the first wild pealing notes. Thus, playing
proudly and happily, he entered the cave with his dog at his heels.
They waited and watched, and listened, and at last heard one awful
cry! Then there was silence. He had passed the fairies, but--

  "Never home came he!"

Then, changing her tone, Catriona told of the only woman who had
ever caught sight of the wee green folk, and how, ever after, riches
and wealth were hers, and she had never a wish unsatisfied! It was
the going on into the inner caves that had undone the piper! The
lass who had seen the fairies was a certain Eilidh Macdonald, and
she married a chief, and went to live far away in Oban, and all her
days she was clad in green silk. Yes, all her days!

"How did she go?" Ishbel cried.

"In a boat, with a man. It is easy, if the man is strong, and you
hef the rowan with you. Last of all, Eilidh died, and she wished to
be buried beside Flora Macdonald's granite cross at Kilmuir, and
they granted her even that! She lies near the great Flora, who saved
the Prince. And all through seeing the wee green folk in the Cave of
Gold!"

"Grandmother, would you lend me the rowan branch if--if I were to
go?" Ishbel whispered in the dusk. "Would you, grandmother?"

Her own voice seemed to terrify her then, and Rory's face rose up
before her; but the old woman got up without a word, and, going to
her kist, took something, rolled in a fine kerchief, from it, with
the smell of bog-myrtle in its folds, and she laid the brown faded
leaves and the red, dry berries on Ishbel's lap.

"There it is! But you will give it me back safe?--or else ill will
befall us all!"

"I will give it you back," Ishbel whispered.

She had the rowan in her pocket as she stood with Duncan, tampering
with her conscience and her promise now.

"It was a very foolish thing to promise," he said craftily.
"Besides, Rory was afraid of the squalls, that is all--and there
will be no squalls at all! You can come with me, and see if there is
anything, and if my mother's stories are true. If not, there is no
harm done. It is a lovely cave whateffer."

Ishbel yielded, as Catriona knew she would yield. Would she see
anything? Would the wee folk be there?

[Illustration: "I will hef none but Ishbel."--_p. 127._]

She found herself in the little boat, and rowing towards the cave
before she knew she had consented. The night seemed only a paler
day. They rowed close into the shore, till they discovered a place
where the rock-face was cleft, and showed a pale light within.
There was just space for the boat to float in, passing through a
low, overhanging archway. Ishbel drew her breath sharply and clasped
her hands, as Duncan paused, watching her face, once they were
through it.

[Illustration: "It is a pretty boat to take a lass out in."]

They were in a deep circular basin, the water, a lovely pale green,
darker in the shadows. The rocky sides were cut, here and there,
into long narrow openings, into one of which Catriona's piper must
have wandered; here Ishbel saw the water lying dark and mysterious,
shadow-haunted.

Bending over the edge of the boat, she could see the yellow sand
far below; in bright sunshine her own fair face would have been
reflected. Tiny jelly-fish edged with lilac spots, and with long
white fringe, floated beside the seaweed, like strange jewels, and
far above them they could see the pale opalescence of the summer
sky, soft, exquisite, pearly. Fringing the opening were ferns and
heather, and tall fox-gloves, but the fairy bells did not stir in
the breathless air. Were the wee folk, the good folk, the green
folk, lurking within? If she watched, would she see a tiny face peep
out? She waited--watched--and waited--and the time passed.

"Duncan, I do not see anything!" Ishbel spoke at last, breathlessly,
eagerly. She had forgotten Rory, she had forgotten everything but
her desire. "Row me further in, Duncan."

He pushed the boat forward, and Ishbel sat with her dark blue
eyes--they seemed black in the shadow--strained eagerly forward,
listening, waiting. Nothing moved, except that now and then little
waves would break with a plashing ripple against the boat. Far up on
the rocks, a passing breath of wind now and then swayed the flowers
and the grasses; but no fairy face peeped anywhere, there was no tap
of dancing feet, no note of elfin music.

"Duncan, Duncan, there is nothing, nothing at all!"

The note of bitter disappointment in her voice roused Duncan. Once
or twice he had essayed to speak, having no desire for a silent
adventure, but Ishbel had raised her little brown hand sharply. He
might disturb the fairies. At last the silence had chilled even
her. It was all of no use. She could see and hear nothing.

"We will chust be going home then," he said practically, caring
not at all for her disappointment, for, of course, it was all
"foolishness." "Maybe they are not dancing to-night; we will better
chust go home."

"She said I would be sure to see them."

There was a sob in her voice; as he pushed the boat out, she crushed
the rowans bitterly in her lap, and they fell into the bottom of
the boat. She remembered Rory suddenly, as, once outside, she
noticed that the weather had changed during her long waiting, that
the light seemed obscured, that there were white horses leaping in
the distance, and that the wind swept sharply in their faces as
they looked seaward. It would be dangerous now to keep quite close
to the rocks, for a heavy groundswell had risen. Duncan, glancing
round, expended some forcible Gaelic, for he knew he would need all
his muscles to row the clumsy boat, if they were to be safe, and he
hated trouble. He would have to keep out to sea to avoid the rocks.

During the long pull home, through the now angry waters, Ishbel sat
quite silent. When Duncan bade her "Bale!" almost furiously, the
boat having an ugly leak, she did so almost mechanically.

Nothing seemed to matter. There were no fairies, and she would have
to tell Rory she had broken her word!

They found a sandy, sheltered bay at last where they could land.
Duncan alone knew how hard had been the struggle against wind and
tide in the clumsy and leaky craft; but Ishbel did not see a tall
waiting figure on the shore, till she was preparing to leap from the
boat.

Then a strong hand took hers, and she glanced, with a startled cry,
to see Rory himself, grim, grave, silent, with something new in his
face which chilled her through and through. How was he there?

He helped Duncan to pull up the boat, almost disdainfully, looking
at it when it lay out of the water with a kind of scornful rage.

"It is a pretty boat," he said then in Gaelic, "a pretty boat to
take a lass out in, I will be saying that, Duncan MacLeod."

MacLeod called to Ishbel sharply, making no reply, and all three
walked up to the cottage in heavy silence. The night, grown gusty
and wet, seemed to have changed as suddenly and mysteriously as
Ishbel's life.

At the door she paused and faced her lover; his silence galled and
tormented her.

"Well!" she said, "well!"

If she had pleaded with him--been penitent, sorrowful! Alas! it was
no penitent face which met his, and jealousy and wrath broke forth
fiercely, sweeping love aside.

"Are you asking what I am thinking, Ishbel?" he cried, "of the lass
who promised me, and who broke her word, and went out with Duncan
MacLeod? Well, I am thinking chust nothing at all of her! I hef
warned her that the boat was not safe, and of the squalls, and that
it was not the thing for a lass like her to go so late; and she
had promised, and yet she went! And this was the claymore brooch
made of Iona pebbles I hef bought for you; and it can go there!" He
flung the little packet remorselessly into the heather. "And as for
yourself, I think nothing of you at all, and everything is over. And
I am sailing for New Zealand with Mr. Campbell to-morrow. He asked
me, and I said 'No,' but I will go now, and will walk into Portree
this very night! _Beannachd leibh_ (good-bye)."

He had turned away then, furiously. It had all passed as suddenly,
swept up as unexpectedly as had the squall outside the Cave of
Gold. Ishbel stood as if dazed, staring straight before her. A
Highlander's rage is like a Highland storm; one bends before it
instinctively. Ishbel did so now.

Rory did not look back. Duncan, in the doorway, saw him stride on to
the road, through the little patch of oats before the door. He set
his face towards the high road for Portree. In a very few moments
the sound of his footsteps died away and the night swallowed him.
That was all right, Duncan thought. New Zealand! Capital!




CHAPTER IV.

    "There follows a mist, and a weeping rain,
    And life is never the same again!"


Ishbel might have thought of these words, if she had known them,
on the morrow and on many morrows that followed. For Rory MacPhee
was not the man to come back, or to speak lightly. He sailed with
the agent to Glasgow--was believed to have started for New Zealand
within the week. There, as far as his Skye friends were concerned,
he vanished. They were the days of rare and slow communication, and
Rory never wrote.

But Ishbel did not marry her cousin, as everyone expected, including
MacLeod. She answered him "No," listlessly, but quite doggedly, and
nothing that he could say, or that Catriona could threaten, served
to change her. Once the old woman muttered vengefully that she would
never see the fairies, for she had lost her luck, and Ishbel turned
on her almost fiercely.

"It is all false," she cried in Gaelic, "for there are no green folk
at all, and I do not care!"

The mystery and the charm had fled; she no longer dreamed on the
green grass circle, no longer wondered at the night-song of the
burn, no longer watched for the kelpies under the boulders in the
burns or in the Rowan Pool. Belief in the fairies had faded on the
night in which Rory left her. Except in the little bald, white kirk
on the hill-side, Ishbel never sang. Song dies on the lips when care
and sorrow lie heavy on the heart.

It was five years now since that fatal visit to the Gave of
Gold--Ishbel never mentioned it--and she was returning, in the
soft, golden haze of a September evening, from the castle. Catriona
was growing feeble, and Ishbel did everything; the old woman only
spinning a little, and wandering out to gather sticks and twigs for
the fire. The girl had been taking up carded wool to the castle, and
giving the great London ladies there a spinning lesson.

Before the cottage came in view, with its surrounding field of poor
and thinly growing oats and yellow daisies (there being, indeed, a
far more plentiful crop of the latter), she paused to look up the
fairy knoll. There, on the top was the fairy ring. Something made
Ishbel suddenly turn and mount the little hill.

The sea-loch lay beneath her, tinged with red; the sky was a wonder
and a glory, but Ishbel was not looking at the sky, or at the loch.
She was thinking how strange it was that she should go on living,
and living much as usual, when all that was best and fairest in life
was gone.

She sighed, looking down at the burn, plashing and leaping over
the grey boulders. There was that story about the kelpies; her
grandmother rarely spoke of them now. Were there really no
kelpies--no brownies? And yet----

A step behind her made her start violently, and she gave a sharp
cry. A man's tall figure was there, not ten yards off, and there
flashed across Ishbel suddenly the thought that perhaps, after all,
it was all true, for this was a ghost! And if there were ghosts, why
not wee folk and kelpies?

"I believe it is Ishbel, herself. Do you not know me, Ishbel?"

He spoke in a new voice. The fluent Gaelic was gone, and the stiff,
translated English; he spoke easily, with a strange accent. And yet,
ah! she knew him at once! It was Rory! Rory, well-dressed, handsome,
upright, with a different and more independent carriage, but Rory
all the same!

Ishbel rose and stood quite wordless for a moment. And then--"You
are a great stranger," she said. "It is a very long time, I believe,
since you hef been in Skye."

He almost smiled. He was looking down at her earnestly, intently.
Was it possible that she should be so little changed? Had the five
years been a dream? Just as he remembered her--with the pale, clear
skin, the deep sloe-eyes, the ruddy crisp hair, the little droop
of the head! Ishbel! The girl he had turned his back on, and been
furious with, and quite forgotten--oh, yes! quite forgotten, though
he had come back to the Winged Island--well, just to see how all the
old folks were!

"It is five years," he said deliberately, "five years! Are you--are
you married, Ishbel?"

The girl raised her eyes and looked at him. It was getting dark,
and the burn was beginning its night-song. Ishbel noticed that, and
remembered just how the water used to sing, quite suddenly. The
lovely, indescribable breath of the muir wind swept in their faces.
How sweet it was--how entrancing! And oh! me, the velvety deeps of
her eyes, the little half-sad, half-humorous mouth!

Was she married? Was she?

He repeated the question, but with a new and eager ring in his
voice, and Ishbel shook her head.

"Though there will have been a good many marriages since you left.
There was Mari MacLean and Dougal Nicolson, and there was Colin----"

"What about MacLeod, your cousin?"

"He is to be married this year," she said, "to an English lass."

"So you did not marry him, after all, Ishbel?"

"Who said that I would?" she cried, as if stung. "You knew better
than that! Who said that I would?"

"He did; and that you would go with him that night, if he asked you.
And you did, Ishbel! It was very cruel, but----" Rory paused then,
and suddenly spoke in Gaelic, as if it all came back to him. "But I
am beginning to think that I was cruel, too. Was I?"

He waited, watching her.

Ishbel nodded gently. She also spoke in Gaelic, as if they had
parted only yesterday.

"Yes, you were cruel, Rory, and you were very hasty. It is true that
I was a foolish lass, but you might have given me another chance.
I believed in my grandmother's stories. I wanted to see the good
folk." She looked away, and sadness and disillusion crept over her
face. "But I do not believe in them any more, not any more."

"Poor little Ishbel. Poor wee lassie!"

It could not be five years. It could not! They had only parted
yesterday!

"But it does not matter," Ishbel said, rousing, "and now perhaps you
will call and see my grandmother? Are you on your way to Uig?"

He did not answer that.

"Ishbel," he said, "I was very cruel, and I was just as angry as a
man could be, and for five years I have been mad and sore; but deep
down, deep down, I never forgot you. I hated him, but I loved you. I
will come and see your grandmother; but--first--first, will you give
me a kiss, Ishbel, for the sake of the old days?"

Would she? Perhaps, after all, he did not wait for her consent. He
had her in his arms, and they closed round her, and Isabel's head
fell on his shoulder with a little sob that was an epitome of all
the five years' sorrow and heartache.

[Illustration: Catriona heard his story in silence.]

"_Muirnean_ (darling)," Rory whispered, "I love you; and when I
leave Skye, you will come too, or I will be staying on here with
you. You shall choose Ishbel--you shall choose; and to-morrow I will
buy you something better than the claymore brooch that I was cruel
enough to throw away!"

They walked down to the cottage, and Catriona, who was never
surprised at anything, shook hands sourly with him; she heard his
story in silence, and nodded consent when he told her that he and
Ishbel were to be married, after all. He could look after the croft,
she said, or buy Colin MacDougal's farm, just above, if he had money
enough. Would he have money enough? For Duncan kept her very close
now. Rory laid a packet smilingly in her lap, and said he thought he
had money enough.

Next forenoon Catriona saw him coming up the road; Ishbel ran to
meet him, and together they wandered off to the burn-side. They came
back by-and-by, and Ishbel stood smiling in the cottage door, her
arms full of rowan branches; Rory had a spray in his coat, and the
red berries nestled under her chin.

"I have brought you back luck," the girl cried happily. "We found
the rowans down by the pool. And Rory says that there are maybe good
folk in the world, after all! Who knows, grandmother?"

Catriona's peat-brown old face was bent over her wheel. She allowed
there might be one or two, with a half-grunt of satisfaction.




_THE REAL EAST LONDON._

By the Lord Bishop of Stepney.

[Illustration: (_Photo: H. V. Hornville, Gawber Street, E._)

THE "MOTHERS'" GARDEN PARTY GROUP.

(_Showing the Bishop in the Background._)]


East London is a very different place from what many people expect
it to be. There are not a few who still think that they will have
their throats cut if they venture into it, and I remember one
visitor who turned up very late for dinner one night at Oxford
House, and gave as the reason for his lateness that his landlord had
got one side of him and his landlady on the other, and had held him
by his coat-tails to prevent him coming to be murdered in Bethnal
Green.

[Illustration: Old "Oxford House"]

As a matter of fact, East London is probably, by daylight or
by night, one of the safest parts of London, except in a very
few selected streets, well known to the police; and one of my
predecessors, the much-lamented Bishop Billing, was quite right when
he used to say to the West-End mother, anxious about her daughter's
safety, if she came to work in East London, "See her as far as
Temple Bar, and then she will be all right."

What strikes one at first is the extreme brightness and cheerfulness
of the people, often under very adverse circumstances. I remember
giving a series of garden-parties when I was Rector of Bethnal
Green, in the little garden attached to the rectory. There was not
much room for anything, and the only amusements were skittles and
races, whilst tea and cake and bread-and-butter were the simple
refreshments; but not only--as you will see by the photograph--were
the visitors very content with themselves, but one of them, from one
of the poorest streets, met me the day after a "party" and said:

"Rector, we did enjoy ourselves yesterday."

"I am very glad of it," I replied.

[Illustration: (_Photo: Cassell and Co., Ltd._)

"OXFORD HOUSE"--THE PRESENT BUILDING.]

"But we very nearly didn't come."

"Why not?" I asked.

"Oh! You see, a man down our street, 'e said, 'Don't go--the
Rector only wants to show you a few old gravestones.' But we tell
'im now we couldn't have enjoyed ourselves better if we'd been at
Marlborough 'Ouse."

Then the children of East London are truly delightful. Poor little
bairns! they often get pale enough spending the year in those
crowded courts and alleys--and few things are doing better work in
London than the Children's Country Holiday Fund, which sends about
thirty-one thousand each year for a fortnight into the country--but
still nothing daunts their spirits or dims their affection. Often
have I been cheered through an afternoon's visiting by a group of
children who would spend their half-holiday afternoon in waiting
quite quietly outside a sick-room in order to knock at the door of
the next sick case to which they were quite 'cute enough to know
that I was going, and so on right down the street. Many of the
clergy organise Band of Hope entertainments, and teach the children
to act little plays of their own, and there are no quicker and apter
pupils than the children of East London, as the prizes carried off
yearly at the Crystal Palace will show.

The East-End boy, again, is quite a character; we had four hundred
at Oxford House in one club, besides some hundreds of others in
brigades. When you told an East-End mother that fact, she would
generally say, "My word, I find _one_ quite enough!" And certainly,
on a Whit Monday, when one had at least a hundred and fifty to
convoy to London Bridge and get safely down to some friend's house
and back again, they were a fine handful.

[Illustration: (_Photo: Cassell and Co., Ltd._)

THE PEOPLE'S PALACE.]

One day I noticed the express stopping pretty often, and wondered
why, as it was not advertised to stop anywhere. At last the guard
came to see me at a wayside station, with a very red face, and said
he would hold me responsible for what my boys were doing; he said
that they had pulled the danger connecting-rod three times. I went
round to see what was happening, and asked whether any of them had
done it. "Oh, yes," said a little chap at once; "it was me; _I was
only 'anging my 'at up on it!_"

Few things abash the East-End boy. At the end of the journey, my
friend, who lived near a very magnificent house, was showing us
through the rooms, and I heard a little boy say confidentially to
his neighbour, without meaning to be overheard, "_'Em! just like our
little back parlour at home!_" The good result of all the trouble
which such expeditions involved, was shown by the contempt they
displayed--as they marched back crowned with flowers, with horses
curveting round them, and cabs charging through them, in consequence
of the inspiriting notes of the band--for the groups of drunken men
and women we used to meet, who had spent their Bank Holiday in quite
another way. Once implant in a boy the love of a "better way" of
spending a holiday, and you have got a long way on the road to make
him love "a better way" of spending his life altogether. Satan finds
some mischief still for idle hands to do, but if those hands are
employed in handling a musket, or playing a flute, or clinging on to
a horizontal bar--they have ceased to be idle at all.

But space will soon fail me if I go through all the component parts
of the population in detail. The young girls, with their limbs
aching for active recreation after long confinement in factories or
workshops, have been graphically depicted by Sir Walter Besant, and
few people are doing more good in the district than those ladies
who, at great trouble, often with real self-sacrifice, are running
girls' clubs every evening for the girls after their work.

As, of course, is well known, it was one great object of the
People's Palace to provide this sort of innocent recreation for the
people, and though it has thrown its strength lately rather into
its excellent technical classes, it has not left out of sight its
original mission.

The gymnastic instructor at the People's Palace told me a year or
two ago that he had no better and more spirited class than a large
factory girls' class; and I have seen the magnificent Queen's Hall
filled to overflowing for a nigger entertainment on a Saturday
night, and more than half-full for a sacred concert on Sunday
afternoon.

When one is asked, then, what is the matter with East London, and
what lies behind those great thoroughfares, which look so broad and
inviting on a fine summer's afternoon, one can only reply by taking
one's questioner away from the broad thoroughfares into the crowded
streets and alleys which lie behind them and between. Here is a
photograph of a crowded back street, which gives an idea of what is
going on, say, of a Sunday morning during the Bird Fair in Slater
Street, or the Dog Fair at the top of Bethnal Green Road, or the old
clothes sale down by Petticoat Lane. We are too thick on the ground,
that is what it is; the census does not rise, because it _can't_
rise: we are crammed so full that we can take no more.

I remember once a young ladies' school used to send roses once a
week from a pretty suburb of London; they used to bring them to
school in the morning from their gardens, make them at twelve into
bouquets, send them up by three, and they were in East London homes
by five. As I used to take the bouquets of beautiful flowers round
on trays--followed, I may say, by a mob of children yelling for
a flower, for old and young have a touching love for flowers in
East London--I always found that I required four bouquets for each
house, for each house contained at least four families. This is a
fact which escapes the notice of the casual visitor, who sees a
harmless-looking house outside, but does not know what is inside.

We are overcrowded, and what overcrowding means from the point of
view of health and morality only those who reside in the district
and the local medical officer really know. I used to have sent me
by the excellent Medical Officer for Bethnal Green--Dr. Bate--the
death-rate each month compared with the death-rate for the whole
of London, and there is no reason that I know of to account for
the 22-27 per 1,000 registered for Bethnal Green compared with the
18 per 1,000 of the rest of London, except the overcrowded and
sometimes insanitary conditions in which the people live.

[Illustration: (_Photo: Cassell and Co., Ltd._)

A CROWD IN PETTICOAT LANE.]

Things, however, are much better than they used to be. The London
County Council has done a good deal in pulling down rookeries
and rehousing large areas--as, for instance, the famous Boundary
Street area between Shoreditch and Bethnal Green. The Mansion
House Council for the Dwellings of the Poor has done much through
its local committees to stimulate local effort; and the district
authorities are far more active than they were, and alive to the
responsibilities which fall upon them.

Many an afternoon have I spent with the Sanitary Committee of the
Vestry of Bethnal Green, condemning insanitary property, and many
are the sad sights which I have seen when I have been round with
them.

I remember vividly one or two large houses abutting on a little
court. As we went with difficulty through the narrow passages and
looked into the different rooms, we found women sitting silent and
patient, too busy to say much to us, pasting match-boxes together,
for which they were to get twopence-farthing a gross. Needless to
say that these houses had to be condemned; but the difficulty is
by no means over when such dwellings are condemned. As a man said
caustically and truly at a meeting held on the subject, "A rat in
a hole is better than a rat out, any day"; and great consideration
has to be shown in not turning out too quickly those who have found
these poor tenements their home before provision has been made
elsewhere for them.

If those in the West-End and other places who have property in the
slums would only look after it themselves, and not be content with
taking the rents without seeing that the places for which they take
their money are fit to house men and women, and not mere animals,
great progress would be made. We should be happy to show them the
best models on which to rebuild their houses, or they may see for
themselves by observing the pretty two-storeyed houses now built,
which constitute Hart's Lane, abutting on the Bethnal Green Road,
and which, being always in demand, pay, we hope, the intelligent
landlord who built them.

But it is not merely that we are too thick on the ground; for a long
time we were too much left to ourselves. Those that ate jam lived in
one place and those that made it lived in another, and naturally
therefore the "city of the poor," left to itself, generated
standards, habits, and traditions of its own, some of which are the
reverse of edifying.

Take, for instance, the prevalence of drink and gambling. A young
man came to me one night in East London with a face as pale as
death. I had known him as a boy, but he had dropped out of our club
system on growing too old for the boys' club, and had got drawn into
a drinking set. "Save me!" he cried, as he fell upon his knees and
took my hand. He had, he said, been led in the public-house to put
his money on horses of which he knew nothing, and had finally spent
nine pounds belonging to a shop club, of which he was treasurer.
He had to meet his mates next morning; he was only twenty-one, of
respectable parents, and engaged to a respectable girl, and with
only three months to run out of his apprenticeship. "If you don't
help me, sir, I am ruined for life!"

I did lend him the money, to be repaid by instalments, but the
story will show the dangers to our young population, and the need
of strong and definite work among them from their earliest years.
With a public-house at every corner, and a bookmaker's clerk waiting
for them during dinner hour, what chance have the poor lads and
girls unless someone will go down and live among them and teach them
better things? I remember running-in a man who had the insolence
to stand outside Oxford House and take money from boys and girls,
as well as men and women, during dinner hour, and though he was
fined five pounds at once, he had more than twenty pounds on him
in coppers and small silver. The fine ought to be raised, as the
present maximum--five pounds--is easily paid, and they think nothing
of it, and go on again just the same next day.

[Illustration: (_Photo: Cassell and Co., Ltd._)

THE GREAT HALL AT THE PEOPLE'S PALACE.]

It was no doubt the growing necessity of bringing a higher standard
of life into the "city of the poor" and bridging over the gulf
between rich and poor, establishing counter-attractions to the
public-house and the gambling-hell, which led Canon Barnett, some
fifteen years ago, to suggest the formation of settlements among the
poor. His visit to Oxford in 1884, backed up by Bishop Walsham How
and Miss Octavia Hill, led to the establishment of Toynbee Hall
in Whitechapel, and later on in the same year of Oxford House in
Bethnal Green. Of the former excellent institution, which still owes
so much to its founder and present Warden, Canon Barnett, much has
been written in past years, and, as space is limited even in THE
QUIVER, I have only room to say a few words more about Oxford
House. It was founded on a definite Church basis, and its workers
were and are members of the Church of England, but it threw open its
clubs and its doors to men of all creeds and all kinds.

When I was myself called to be Head of the House in 1880, it was
situated in a back street in Bethnal Green, and consisted of a
disused Church school knocked into rooms. As residents increased,
we found so small a house quite inadequate, and the present Oxford
House was built on a disused site in the next street, and opened
by the Duke of Connaught five or six years ago. It has had a full
complement of twenty men ever since, and the acquisition of the
rectory of Bethnal Green when I became Rector of Bethnal Green in
1895, enabled us for some time to have thirty workers--all laymen
with the exception of myself.

[Illustration: (_Photo: Cassell and Co., Ltd._)

A VIEW OF BETHNAL GREEN MUSEUM.]

The residents do whatever work is entrusted to them by the Head, in
the daytime working at the Charity Organisation offices, Children's
Country Holiday Fund, Sanitary Aid Committee; in the evening running
boys' clubs and men's clubs and Church Lads' Brigades, visiting in
the London Hospital on Mondays, visiting the sick and others in the
parish of St. Matthew's, now specially connected with the House, and
doing innumerable odd jobs for the parish clergy round, with whom
they are all on the most friendly footing.

And that brings me lastly to the definitely religious work of East
London. It is here that the result of leaving for so long one
million people to themselves shows itself in the most disastrous
form. The habit of church-going or chapel-going has been almost
entirely lost, and it is only after the most patient efforts on the
part of the clergy and others that it can be brought again into the
district. After sampling on several occasions eighty men (invited to
the garden parties spoken of above) out of different streets taken
in turn, I discovered that only about one in eighty went either to
church or chapel, and out of a thousand boys of the age of fourteen
or fifteen who were questioned on entering one of our large boys'
clubs, nine hundred were found to have "g.n." written after their
names, which means "goes nowhere." Now, to the readers of THE
QUIVER I know that this will seem a very appalling thing, and
will show that we have what is practically, from a religious point
of view, a pagan population at our very doors.

On whom, then, does the great stress and strain of converting
this pagan population fall? Let us give all credit to the good
work done by Nonconformists in the district, with whom we are on
excellent terms: let us acknowledge the wonderful gatherings in Mr.
Charrington's Hall: and in the Pavilion, under the preaching of Mr.
George Nokes; the good work by Dr. Stephenson in his Children's
Homes; and by Dr. Barnardo in his boys' work at Stepney Causeway;
and by other workers scattered up and down the district; but I think
all would admit that the great strain and stress of the work falls
upon those who actually live in the very midst of the people, each
of them with their seven thousand to ten thousand, and sometimes
twenty thousand, souls to look after.

It is they whose door-bell rings continuously; it is they to whom
everyone comes in the hour of distress, whether they attend the
church or not; and it is they and the band of workers they have
gathered round them who are laying deep the foundations of the
future City of God, and who are working, with a few exceptions, day
and night to bring wanderers into the fold.

The people are not irreligious, only non-religious, and all they
need is patient and loving work in their midst. To attend a parish
gathering is like going to a happy family party, on such excellent
terms are the clergy and their workers with the people, and when in
some churches you find five hundred East-End communicants in the
early morning on Easter Day, no one can question the self-sacrifice
and earnestness of those who have once been thoroughly converted.

The great need, of course, is more workers and it is to supply more
workers that the East London Church Fund exists. It is spent wholly
on workers, not on buildings at all; and it is my earnest desire,
with the help of the Bishop of Islington, who is an experienced
East-End worker himself, and who has now taken over the North London
district, to raise that fund to £20,000 this year to meet the urgent
appeals for more workers which come to us from the poorer parts of
East and North London. The Fund covers an area of 1,800,000 people,
most of whom are poor.

[Illustration: (_Photo: C. E. Fry and Son, Gloucester Terrace, S.W._)

CANON BARNETT.

(_Warden of Toynbee Hall._)]

Such, then, so far as it can be described in a short article, is
East London, with all its virtues and its vices, its aspirations,
its hopes, its possibilities, and its failings. It is a land flowing
with milk and honey, with the milk of human kindness and the honey
of human love; but, like the old Canaan, it is not yet fully
occupied by the host of God. When Christianity is, however, fully
"in possession," we shall see a great deepening and ripening of all
the good that lies there, and the East London Church of the future
will have a character of its own, and will shed a new glory on the
Christianity which has slowly converted the world.




PLEDGED

[Illustration: PLEDGED]

By Katharine Tynan, Author of "A Daughter of Erin," Etc.




CHAPTER XIII.

"ANTHONY MUST KNOW."


"And you liked her, Kitty?" said Anthony Trevithick.

It was the morning after his return, and Lady Jane had left them
alone.

"I liked her amazingly," said Lady Kitty; "and, what is more
surprising, she liked me."

"It would be surprising if she didn't, Kitty"--looking at her with
brotherly fondness. "Do you know, Kitty, I used to like you because
you were pretty, and couldn't help being charming?"

Lady Kitty made a mocking bow.

"But still there is some change in you of late. What is it? You have
given up being smart and cynical and all that. You are ever so much
lovelier now than I remember you."

Lady Kitty laughed, but her eyes softened.

"I'm glad you think I'm lovelier, Anthony."

He looked at her sharply.

"What is it, Kitty?"

"Something that must not be told yet, Anthony."

"Oh, it is _that_!"

His voice had an incredulous relief in it.

"It is really _that_, Kitty?"

Lady Kitty laughed up at him out of her chair, and her glance was at
once shy and proud.

"Yes, it is that, Anthony."

"Do I know him, Kitty?"

"Very well, Anthony. But no one knows yet--only he and I."

"Who, Kitty?"

"Ask Mr. Leslie, Anthony."

"It isn't Jack, Kitty? You don't mean to say it is Jack! Why--you
deceitful little person!--Jack was just the one man you never tried
to make captive to your bow and spear; at least, so far as I could
see."

"My poor Anthony, you never saw very far where I was concerned."

"No, then, Kitty, I didn't."

His face was a little rueful as he said it.

"But I am glad beyond measure," he went on. "There is, perhaps, only
one thing could make me happier."

He stooped and touched Lady Kitty's soft cheek with his lips.

"You can tell Jack, Kitty," he said. "We are like sister and
brother, aren't we?"

"I am very fond of you, Anthony. Next to your mother--excluding
Jack, of course--I think I'm as fond of you as anyone."

"I'm glad you're fond of my mother, Kitty. She doesn't care for many
people."

"I've been trying to get up courage to tell her, Anthony. I hate to
keep her in the dark."

"It will be a blow to her, Kitty."

They both laughed and blushed a little consciously.

"Yes, I'm afraid it will."

"But Pamela, Kitty--tell me about Pamela. Did she ever talk about
me?"

"I can't say that she did, Anthony."

"I suppose she wouldn't," said the lover, a little disappointed,
nevertheless.

"You're fond of her, Anthony?" said Lady Kitty, looking up at him
with eyes of alarm. "Really fond of her?"

"I love her and she loves me. As soon as I have established Uncle
Wilton comfortably with Knowles to look after him, I shall go to
claim her."

"She _knows_ you love her, Anthony?"

"Oh, yes, she knows."

The young fellow laughed happily, and there was no shadow of doubt
or of apprehension in his eyes. He had begun to walk up and down the
room now, impatiently, as if he wanted to be off.

"Why didn't you claim her before you went off to nurse your uncle,
Anthony? Uncertainty of that kind is hard on a girl."

"I did write. Not, indeed, to her, but to her father, and gave him a
broad hint of the state of the case. I have often wondered he never
sent me a word: he was such a good sort."

"He has been very ill, Anthony."

"Ill? My mother never told me."

"He was at death's door, but is out of danger; he must be getting
strong again by this time."

"My poor little Pam--and all of them! They adore their father, and
they had no one to help or comfort them!"

"Why didn't you write to Pamela herself?"

"My mother asked me not to till I came back. But now all that is
over. I am going to her at once."

"You say you wrote to her father, Anthony? Do you know I have a kind
of idea she said you had not written?"

"I wrote, Kitty, all right, and put it in the letter-box in the hall
the night before I left. You must have mistaken what she said. Of
course, her father's illness explains his not having written. And
now there is no use in writing. I can be there almost as soon as a
letter."

Lady Kitty's face was troubled as she looked at him.

"You're quite sure you posted the letter, Anthony? Perhaps they
didn't get it. Letters sometimes go wrong, don't they?"

"Not one out of a million. What are you thinking of, Kitty?"

Lady Kitty jumped up out of her chair and went to him.

"My poor old Anthony," she said, "there's something horribly wrong.
I wish I hadn't to tell you. Pamela's engaged to a Lord Glengall."

[Illustration: "My poor old Anthony, there's something horribly
wrong."]

Trevithick looked at her as if he could not take in what he heard.

"You are mad, Kitty," he said slowly. "She is engaged to me."

"I have her word for it, Anthony. There is something wrong, I am
sure. She has just written it to me."

"Show me the letter, Kitty."

She went to an escritoire in the corner of the room, found the
letter, and brought it to him. He read it with staring eyes.

"She won't marry him," he said when he had finished.

"My poor Anthony!"

"An engagement is nothing. She was engaged to me. She let me kiss
her. He is a man with money--I remember now. Do women sell their
souls for money, Kitty?"

"Some women might, Anthony, but I don't think Pamela would. There is
something wrong, Anthony, I am sure of it."

"I am going to find out, Kitty."

[Illustration: Something in the attitude smote her.--_p. 446._]

He turned his angry, miserable young face upon her, and her heart
was wrung for him.

"I am going over there to-night, Kitty."

"You will do nothing rash, Anthony?"

"If I find that anything but her own will has come between us, I
will do my best to win her back from him. I have the right, Kitty. I
was the first, and she let me kiss her."

"You say she was engaged to you, Anthony? Do you mean formally?"

"Everything _but_ formally. Ah! I wish I had settled it then--put a
ring on her before them all. It was my mother. She made me promise
to do nothing till I came back."

"Oh! she knew, then?"

"I told her, Kitty, and she was bitterly angry. And I, mad that I
was, I yielded to her will. Afterwards, when I heard she had found
them out, and got Pam over here, I thought her heart had softened
to me after all those years, and that she was helping me towards my
happiness."

"Why did she make you promise that?"

"I am ashamed to say it, Kitty--because she persuaded me you cared
for me, and ought not to be told suddenly. I beg your pardon, Kitty;
I was not ass enough to think it of myself!"

"Ah!" said Lady Kitty again, and her eyes were thoughtful, "and poor
little Pam was miserable. I don't believe they ever had that letter,
Anthony."

"If she was miserable for me"--and the lover's face lightened--"she
loves me still, and she must give up the other man for me. If she
loves me, he has no right to her. I am going to find out, Kitty."

"Where are you going now, Anthony?"

"There are twenty things to be done. I have to see Uncle Wilton and
tell him I am going. Knowles understands what to do for him, and to
call Dr. Berners if he were ill."

He took up her hand and kissed it.

"You've been a good little girl to me, Kitty," he said. "Afterwards
I am going to fight for my love."

As the door closed behind him Lady Kitty went thoughtfully upstairs
and knocked at Lady Jane's boudoir door.

"May I come in, Auntie Jane?" she said; "are you very busy?"

Lady Jane looked up from her books with an air of expectation, as
if there might be something pleasant to hear; but her expression
changed immediately.

"What is the matter, Kitty?" she asked.

"A good deal. Anthony has been telling me that he is in love with
Pamela Graydon."

"My darling----"

Kitty lifted her hand.

"It only affects me in so far as it affects Anthony. Pamela is
engaged to Lord Glengall."'

"I remember him. I saw him when I was there. He looked like a
ploughman, and I thought he was one. I suppose she marries him for
the title."

"She marries him--if she does--because she is in love with Anthony,
and thinks he has played her false."

"You are too romantic, Kitty."

"It is the first time I have been called so. Forgive me for
something I must ask you. Are you at the root of the mischief?"

"What do you mean, Kitty?"

"I begin to have a glimmering of why you brought her here."

"Kitty, tell me first. Do you not mind at all about Anthony?"

"Not in the way you mean. He never cared for me, not in that way. It
is no use trying to bring these things about."

"It has been my dream, Kitty, since you were quite a little girl.
I never loved Anthony; but if you were his wife, I think I should
begin to love him. I thought you cared for him always."

"I should not have let you think that. Some of all this trouble is
my fault. It is better to be open all the way through. I kept it
from you because I feared the sharp disappointment it would be to
you."

"That you did not love Anthony?"

"More than that, Auntie Janie, I loved someone else. I couldn't help
it. I would have pleased you, if I could, but it did not seem to be
in my hands. There is a fatality about such things. We might have
cared for each other if we had not always known you wanted us to."

Lady Jane looked about her with a bewildered air, as though her
world were crumbling.

"I have thought of it for so many years," she said at last, "that I
cannot realise how, between you, you have destroyed the one solid
hope of my life."

"I love you so much, Auntie Janie, that I think I would have married
Anthony, without love, to please you, if there had not been someone
else."

Lady Jane turned and looked at her, and her face was tragical.

"I would not have wished that, Kitty. A marriage without love! You
don't know what it is, child, especially if there has been--or might
have been--someone else. I only wanted you to have the wish of your
heart, and to bind you closer to me at the same time."

"Nothing can ever undo our love, Auntie Janie--nothing, nothing."

"Wait till your husband intervenes, Kitty. Who is it, by the way? I
have seen no sign of such an one in our circle."

"It is Mr. Leslie," said Lady Kitty with bent head.

"Anthony's friend? Yes, I know you liked him, but I thought it was
for Anthony's sake."

"I am so sorry," Lady Kitty said again. Then she went on, with a
timidity foreign to her: "Anthony is very unhappy, Auntie Janie. Can
nothing be done?"

Lady Jane turned away her head.

"What do you expect me to do, Kitty?"

"He is your own son, and he loves Pamela Graydon. She loves him too.
Why, it was written on her face, if only I had had eyes to see. Yet
she has engaged herself to another man! What is the meaning of it?"

"I am bad at riddles, Kitty."

"Anthony will unravel it--unless you will. Forgive me, Auntie Janie,
but he had better know--that his letter to Mr. Graydon remained
unposted. I do not know if there is anything else, but there is
that."

"How do you know that, Kitty?"

"I couldn't help knowing it. A few days after Anthony had gone you
sent me to the little inner drawer of your desk to find Madame
Lefevre's address. Anthony's letter to Mr. Graydon lay on the top
with the address uppermost. I never thought of it again till to-day."

"What do you want me to do, Kitty? It is quite true that I
abstracted the letter from the hall-box before it was emptied for
the night-post. If you go to my desk again you will find the letter
there with its seal unbroken. I guessed what it might contain.
Curiously enough, the habits of a lifetime kept me from opening the
letter, though I had stolen it."

Lady Kitty made a deprecating gesture, but the elder woman went on
coldly:

"I wrote myself to Mr. Graydon--a merely formal letter
explaining Anthony's absence. Afterwards I made an excuse of the
Verschoyles--people I had almost forgotten--to go myself and see
for myself. They lived in a barbarous way, as I thought they would;
and I mistook Miss Graydon's _fiancé_ for an elderly mountain
farmer. Then I asked the girl over here with the design--which you
frustrated to some extent--of making her detest us. I also told her
that you and Anthony were to be married, and that you had always
been lovers."

"Auntie Janie!"

"Yes, Kitty; you may as well know the full extent of my wickedness."

"But how could you do it? I have always known you as a proud and
honourable woman."

"I did it first of all for your sake, Kitty. I did think you cared
for Anthony; and I thought that if this entanglement were out of the
way he would care for you. I was mistaken all round."

"I ought to have spoken, Auntie Janie. Ah! I see now how much
trouble can come from even a little deceit."

"What do you want me to do, Kitty?"

"Anthony must know."

"You have no thought but for Anthony."

"The wrong must be undone--if it is possible now."

"He will turn his back on me for ever."

"He will remember that you are his mother."

"I have given him no motherhood. All I had I gave to you--and I have
lost you, too."

"You have not lost me. Whatever you did we should be the same."

"You think that now. But we can never be the same. However, about
Anthony. I daresay I can live without Anthony. What do you want me
to do?"

"He must be told. Shall I tell him, Auntie Janie?"

"No, I will tell him myself. You had better keep out of it. I shall
tell him as soon as he comes here. Where is he?"

"He went to let his uncle know he was called away. He will soon be
back."

"Send him here when he comes in. And now, Kitty, go. I have business
to do."

Lady Kitty went to the door slowly, and, as she turned the handle,
looked back at the tall figure standing in the middle of the room.
Something in the attitude smote her. She went back impulsively, and
flung her arms round Lady Jane.

"If you love me at all as you loved me yesterday, be comforted," she
cried. "I know it all came through your love for me, and my wretched
deceit, and I shall always love you, always."

She could not say if there was an answering caress.

"Things will come right," she whispered, "and Anthony will forget
his anger. We have all need of forgiveness."

"I shall never ask Anthony's," said Lady Jane. "And I do not pretend
to repent. But he will marry that man's daughter in spite of me, and
I shall be punished. Go now, Kitty. If Anthony has come in, send him
to me."

Lady Kitty went. As the door closed behind her, after a last glimpse
of the erect figure, she had an odd fancy about a picture she
remembered to have seen of a ship going down at sea with all its
flags flying.




CHAPTER XIV.

"IT IS TOO LATE."


But as the days passed the happiness which Pamela had expected did
not come. Perhaps at first the atmosphere of approval in which she
lived made a species of false happiness; but in a very short space
of time things became workaday, and the future, with a husband old
enough to be her father, showed itself naked of glamour.

Her soul was loyal to her betrothed, though her heart betrayed
her. She kept perpetually within her sight his unselfishness, his
patience, his simple-mindedness, his devotion. And yet, if her
bridegroom were to be no paladin at all, but a certain ordinary
young gentleman of ordinary good looks and good qualities, instead
of Lord Glengall, how wildly happy she could have been! It was
something she dared not think upon--what might have been, instead of
what was going to be.

It was another hot summer, and Pamela's step grew languid, and her
eyes had heavy rings about them. Her white cheeks, that were so firm
and full of health, lost something of their glow.

She spurred herself up to be brisk and cheerful, and apologised for
her flagging energy with accusations against the weather. And all
the time Lord Glengall watched her with the anxiety of a loving dog
in his eyes.

They were to be married at the beginning of September, to have a
month's honeymoon at Killarney, and then to take Mr. Graydon abroad,
that so he might escape the damp of the Irish winter.

In August, Pamela was to go to Dublin to see about her frocks. They
were not to be very many nor very magnificent. Afterwards, said her
bridegroom, there would be a visit to Paris, and plenty of shopping.

Pamela loved pretty things as well as any girl, and none the less
because they had never been within her reach. But now her interest
in such matters seemed feeble. The times when she derived a certain
quiet happiness from her engagement were when she talked with Lord
Glengall about what was to be done for the others.

"Is there nothing for yourself, Pam?" he asked once; "you never ask
for anything for yourself."

And then he stroked the soft pale cheek with a loving finger, and
the concern in his eyes grew deeper.

Once he said to Pamela that he wished it were all done, and that
he was free to take care of her; but as he said it, putting a
protecting arm about her, he felt a quick shudder run through her.

"What is it, Pam?" he asked anxiously.

"Someone walking on my grave," said Pamela lightly.

"Don't talk about such things, child," he implored. "You have all
your life, the life that I am going to endeavour to make so happy,
before you. What have you to do with graves?"

And yet another time he said to her that he could almost wish that
he might give her his love and his care and his fortune without
marriage.

"I suppose I couldn't adopt you, Pam?" he said lightly, yet his mood
was a serious one.

"Ah! don't talk about such things," said Pam, in her turn, and her
heart was sore lest she had grieved him. "No girl could have a
happier fate than to be your wife."

And since she felt what she said for the moment she contrived to set
his fears at rest.

It was the most humdrum betrothal from the point of view of young
and romantic persons. Lord Glengall was no ardent wooer. His manner
was more the manner of a father than of a lover, and his moments
of greatest contentment were only marked by a deeper quiet. While
Pam and he were much together, their talk, unlike the talk of
young lovers, was of everything but themselves. Lord Glengall had
plans for the disposal of the great wealth he had brought from the
gold-fields; but they were plans in which personal ambition had no
share.

Mr. Graydon was still languid after his illness, and during those
summer days a great quietness seemed to have descended upon
Carrickmoyle.

"Sorra's in it!" said Bridget, complaining. "'Tis as if there wasn't
a bit of young life about the place. 'Tis more like as if there was
goin' to be a funeral thin a weddin'."

"I'll tell you what, Miss Sylvia," she protested to her prime
favourite; "there's one-legged Grady the gardener, above at his
Lordship's, an' his mouth is dry axin' me. I declare I'll take him,
if only to make a bit av a stir. They say he used to bate the first
wife wid the wooden leg, but he'll not look crooked at me, never
fear."

Sylvia, too, shared in the depressing quiet, and even the dogs lay
and blinked all day in the hot sun, and were too lazy to go out on
the bog for a dip in the icy-cold water.

Sylvia had her troubles. Her friend Miss Spencer, to whom she was
oddly attached, was failing. No illness of a violent kind, but
simply a wasting away and decline had seized upon the poor little
spinster; and it was a case in which doctor's prescriptions were of
no use. Miss Spencer's time had come.

Sylvia visited her friend indefatigably, sitting with her long hours
daily, within doors if the weather were bad, by her wheeled sofa on
the lawn during the fine hot days. She took her grief with a certain
bitterness of wrath against that man of long ago who had wronged the
poor little lady so irreparably. It made her curt of speech, and
little disposed to notice what was happening where other folk were
concerned, and her engrossment made Pamela's lot more lonely.

Sylvia's court had in no way diminished its loyalty or its numbers,
but just for the present the young men were put on one side, and
accepted their position. They were able to sympathise with one
another, for their lady had never bestowed a mark of preference
on any one over the others, that jealousy could be excited. But
their absence from Carrickmoyle, while it sensibly brightened other
houses, made that more lonesome.

Pamela had not seen Miss Spencer for some time, when one day Sylvia
announced to her that the old lady wished to see her.

"You must go, of course," she said, with the brusqueness of grief.
"I shall come afterwards and relieve you, so that you will be at
home in time for Glengall."

Pamela went over after lunch, and found Miss Spencer on the sofa
on the open lawn of Dovercourt, with its delightful views of the
distant hills.

"It is a fine world to be leaving," said the old lady, nodding at
the distances, when she had made Pamela take the low chair beside
her.

Pamela had noticed at once an indefinable change in Miss Spencer.
The old, half-crazy, brooding look had disappeared, and though the
face seemed vanishing and melting away in its wasting and fragility,
the eyes were clear, as if a film had rolled off from them.

Pamela said nothing. The change in Miss Spencer, even since she had
last seen her, shocked her.

"There, there, child!" said the little woman, patting her hand.
"Why talk about gloomy things on such a day as this, and with your
great day approaching? But what is the matter?"--scrutinising her
closely--"you don't look very bride-like."

"It is the heat," said Pamela languidly; "I haven't felt very lively
since it set in so hot."

"I remember the time I would have danced at my wedding in the crater
of Vesuvius. Things are not the same nowadays. There, child," she
went on kindly, "you will have some tea? I shall have more made for
Minx, when she comes. She told you I wanted to see you?"

"Yes," said Pamela, "and I shall like the tea, Miss Spencer. It was
hot crossing the bog. I shall go home through the woods."

The tea was brought, and when Pamela had had hers, Miss Spencer,
who had been watching her with kind intentness all the time, said
suddenly--

"I made my will yesterday, Pam."

Pamela looked up in surprise.

"I have provided for Minx. I have left her this place, and a good
deal of money. She will look after my poor for me."

Pamela nodded her head.

"I've left you nothing, Pam. But I've given Mary what will start her
in housekeeping. _You_ are going to marry a rich man."

"You are good to think of Mary."

"It is easier to do now than if I had lived longer. Between my
legacy and what Glengall will do she need not want."

"She deserves to be happy."

"But what is the matter with you, Pam? Why aren't _you_ happy?"

"I am happy."

"With that face, child! There was a woman once--perhaps you know
her--whose lover went away and never came back. Perhaps he was dead;
perhaps he had forgotten. You look as if your lover had never come
back."

Pamela covered her face with her hands.

"There, child! I don't want to distress you, but I am in trouble
about you. What if he came back, after all?"

"He never will."

"He looked as if he would. Anyhow, if he never did, it would be
better to be like that woman--a little cracked, perhaps, and always
expecting her lover, till she woke up one day dying, and in her
right mind--it would be better to be like her than to marry without
love."

Pamela trembled, but her face was hidden.

"Tell me, Pam. You won't mind confiding in an old woman who has
only a few days more to live. What did you do it for? It wasn't the
money, and all it could bring, attracted you?"

[Illustration: "Tell me, Pam. You won't mind confiding in an old
woman."]

"No, oh, no!"

"I thought not. What was it?"

"You don't know how good he is."

"That's not enough, Pam, though it might serve if your heart were
free. What is that to make you give up your life, your freedom to
think, to hope, to pray? It will be one long struggle, Pamela. You
will be like a creature in prison, for whom the free world were
paradise enough."

"I know Glengall is good," she went on. "Another girl might come to
love him, in spite of his grey hairs, but not you, Pam. One sees
clearer when one is going to leave all this. Why did you do it, Pam?"

"It is too late to ask."

"Why, Pam?"

"Partly because my father must winter abroad and we had no money.
Partly, too, because I was angry with--with someone I loved, and I
thought I would get rid of the anger and the thought of him if I
were married."

"Minx would have taken care of your father. It was a useless
sacrifice, Pamela."

She looked at her a minute hesitatingly.

"My people, those of them who survive, are rich. I could take care
of you, too, Pam."

"It is too late to make any difference."

"It is not too late while you are yet free."

"You don't know how good he is. And he has ordered his future life
so that I shall always be the centre of it. I can't break his heart."

"If Lord Glengall knew, he would be the first to set you free."

"He would, because he is all unselfishness. But he will never know."

"How will you keep it from him?"

"I shall learn to love him."

"My poor Pam!"

"Ah!" cried Pamela sobbing. "Don't try to turn me back. Because I am
unhappy, and a burden to myself, would you forbid me making another
person happy, and he one worthy of all happiness?"

"It is not too late, Pam."

"It is too late. And here is Sylvia. See how punctual she is. She
grudges me this half-hour alone with you."

Sylvia looked curiously at her sister's haggard and tear-stained
eyes, but made no comment. She had little sympathy with Pamela's
languid looks this summer. She was one who had never felt a wound,
and so had scant comprehension of the troubles of her sister, whose
lot, indeed, she considered a highly desirable one.

After a few minutes Pamela stood up and took her leave.

She went by the shady paths through the woods, and Pat, who had
accompanied her, scurried hither and thither in pursuit of many
a pair of bright eyes and many a white scut. She was in no hurry
to get home. After the disturbance of her conversation with Miss
Spencer, she dreaded the meeting with her _fiancé_.

It had been a shock to her to learn that, if she had not been
so precipitate, her father would still have been safe; for Miss
Spencer's life was to be counted by weeks, and Sylvia's tenderness
for him could be trusted.

The green glades of the wood were exquisite. She looked about
her--at the roof of branches against the blue-and-white sky, at the
green moss, dotted with harebells, and flecked by broad patches of
sunlight on its velvety shade. The birds were singing their last
love-songs, and the wood was full of the music of many waters.

Ah! With an overwhelming revulsion of feeling it came upon the girl
that if she were only free, with her life in her hands, the beauty
of the free world were, as Miss Spencer had said, paradise enough.
If she were but free, if she were but free!

She had come to the Wishing Well in the wood. She put up her hand to
her throat. Round it was a slender little chain of jewels and gold
which Lord Glengall had given her. It was choking her.

She took it off stealthily, and laid it on the moss at her feet.
Then she took a bracelet--his gift also--from her arm. Then she drew
off her engagement ring of diamonds and emeralds, and added it to
the glittering heap. If only she could remove those other bonds as
easily! And all the time she hated herself for the wish.

Mechanically she stooped down, and, taking the water in her hand,
drank of it. She wished she might forget what had happened here, and
the poisoned sweetness of glances and words during those months of
last winter.

"I must forget--I must forget," she wailed, half aloud. "It lasted
such a little while. There was no time for it to take hold upon my
life."

And then her hands fell to her side, for there was a quick step
beside her, and, turning, she saw Anthony Trevithick.




CHAPTER XV.

THE WOOD OF STRANGE MEETINGS.


"Pamela!"

He had come back, and his eyes and his voice were full of fire.

"Pamela! What have you done to yourself, my sweetheart? You are not
the Pamela I left."

She had turned towards him as irresistibly as the needle to the
pole. But at his words a quick shiver ran through her. Her eyes
turned from him and darkened. Her head drooped.

"You have come too late," she said, almost under her breath; and her
voice was cold.

"Look at me, Pam. I have so much to tell you that you must hear. You
must not be angry with me. We have been cheated and tricked. I wrote
to your father to say I would come and ask for you, Pam, the road
being clear."

"He never had your letter."

"It was not posted, Pamela. I must tell you, Pam, though it is hard.
You have a right to know. My mother intercepted the letter."

"She detested me. I knew it from the first moment her cold eyes
rested upon me."

"She does not like me, Pam, much. But that will not part us."

"Ah!" said Pam, and her voice was almost a cry. "But we _are_
parted. She could not do it, but I have done it by my own act."

His foot knocked against the heap of trinkets on the moss.

"What are these, Pam?" he asked wonderingly.

"Give them to me," she implored. "They are mine. And you must go
away, Sir Anthony, and never come again."

"Why, I see"--holding the jewels in his hand--"they are his gifts.
But you have thrown them off!"

His eyes blazed suddenly.

"It is an omen, Pam. Let him follow his jewels. What right has he to
buy you? You had given yourself to me."

"Ah!" cried Pam, still stretching out her hands for the jewels. "You
don't know what you are talking about. He is the best man in all
the world; and our wedding-day is fixed, and my wedding-dress is
ordered."

The young man flung the jewels on the ground.

[Illustration: The young man flung the jewels on the ground.]

"There," he said, "let them lie where I found them. Why should we
think of them? It is all a bad dream, Pamela, but not so bad as it
might have been--not so bad as it might have been. Why, you are
talking folly, Pam, about wedding-days and wedding-dresses. It is
our wedding-day you must think of, and the wedding-dress you will
wear for me."

He held out his arms to her imploringly, and for a moment, with a
dazed look, she seemed as if she must come. Then she pushed him off
with a gesture of her two hands.

"No," she said. "Love is not everything--love is not everything.
There is honour, there is loyalty, there is faith. And you,--you
have your cousin to think about. She is sweet and lovely. I felt it,
though I----"

She broke off suddenly.

"Though you loved me and were jealous"; and he laughed masterfully.
"All wrong, my Pam! I never cared for Kitty in that way, nor she for
me. She is going to marry my chum, Jack Leslie. They have been in
love with each other for years."

"Your mother told me----"

His face darkened.

"I know. I shall forgive her when you have yielded your will to
mine."

"That will never be."

"Never, Pam? Ah! yes, it will. If I had come here and found that
you loved this other man, I could have done nothing but leave you.
I came full of anger and fury. All through the journey I had been
goading myself to a jealous madness; but the minute I saw you here
beside the well where I told you I loved you, I knew you were mine.
I can afford to forgive Lord Glengall."

"What do you propose to do?"

"I shall go to the house and explain to your father about the
missing letter. I was on my way there when I turned aside to the
Wishing Well and found you."

"My father loves Lord Glengall."

"He loves you better, Pam. He will not want you to marry him, loving
me."

"You take too much for granted."

"Oh, no, I don't, Pam! You are not the girl to love me seven months
ago and love another man to-day. And your eyes betray you, darling!"

"And if my father chooses Lord Glengall before you?"

"Then I will tell him the choice does not rest with him. I will go
to Lord Glengall himself."

"And if he should refuse to listen to you?"

"Then I will come to you, Pamela, my beloved."

She suddenly turned on him her beautiful, stormy eyes, and her face
was full of tragedy.

"And I shall send you away," she said. "It is no question of loving.
I shall not see you any more, Tony"--using the familiar name
unconsciously--"never, I hope, after to-day. And I love you; I do
love you, and if I might love you for ever I should be the happiest
woman on earth. No, don't come near me, for I am saying good-bye to
you. I decline to purchase my happiness, and even yours, at the cost
of unhappiness to the best man I ever knew. Ah! go now, my love, and
do not tempt me any more. You will soon forget me."

She turned as if to go, but before Anthony Trevithick could make any
effort to detain her, a quiet voice spoke beside them.

"I came to meet you, Pamela. I expected to find you alone. Who is
this gentleman?"

Pamela turned quickly, and put her hand into the hand of her
betrothed.

"It is Sir Anthony Trevithick, Lord Glengall."

The two men bowed coldly.

"I will take Miss Graydon home now," said Lord Glengall, drawing her
hand through his arm. "I am grateful to you for having taken care of
her."

[Illustration: "I will take Miss Graydon home now," said Lord
Glengall.]

The two stood looking at each other, and the air was as if charged
with a storm.

"I am staying in the neighbourhood," said Sir Anthony stiffly. "I
shall hope to see your lordship later on."

"Come," whispered Pamela to her betrothed, "come away. I will
explain to you."

She stole one glance at the hot and angry face of her young lover.
Then, without a word, she passed out of his sight down one of the
wood paths, still clinging to Lord Glengall's arm.

They walked in silence for a few minutes. Then she lifted her eyes
to her companion's sad face.

"You heard what I said," she half-whispered. "I am not afraid of
you; I was loyal."

"Yes, you were loyal, Pam, in the spirit, but loyalty without love
is poor comfort. It is not enough for me."

"I do love you."

"I believe you do, Pam, but there are different kinds of love. Is
this that other you once told me about?"

"Yes."

"I thought so. You have had few opportunities for meeting men in
your quiet life. This is the lad who was your father's pupil?"

"The son of his old friend, Sir Gerald Trevithick."

"I ought to have met him when he was here. But I was finishing up in
Australia. He is honest, Pam--is he?"

"I am sure he is--now. Before I thought he was false."

"How did it come that he went away like that, having made you love
him?"

"He was called away to a sick uncle. He wrote to father to explain,
but the letter never reached him."

"You are sure he wrote?"

"Yes, he has told me. His mother----You saw her once?"

"A frozen-looking woman, dressed like an empress, who came one day.
She was so haughty to me that I very soon removed myself."

"That was her."

"My poor little Pam!--that was the woman you went to visit
afterwards? I had not realised it. I never thought of her after that
day."

"She made me very unhappy. From the first she had a quiet way
of making me feel not of her world, and afterwards she was
horrid--about papa. She told me--falsehoods, too."

"Why didn't you come home, Pam?"

"I wouldn't let them know that the visit had been so horrible. Papa
was pleased for me to go. Then he fell ill, and I came away."

"What did she tell you, Pam?"

"She told me Sir Anthony was engaged to his cousin. It was she who
intercepted his letter to papa, in which he said he would come back."

"Ah! there are such women. But why didn't he speak fully and frankly
before he went?"

"I do not know. There was some reason. He spoke of something that
stood in the way."

Lord Glengall frowned, with his eyes on the ground.

"I shall find out the reason," he said.

"Ah! no," cried Pamela, clinging to his arm. "Let it be. I have told
him he must go away. I belong to you, and not to him."

A little spasm of pain passed over the irregular features.

"Don't try me too much, Pamela, or I might take you at your word."

"I want you to take me at my word."

"I am sure you do--at this moment."

"Now and always."

"My little Pam! Still mine till I give you up of my own free will.
You will trust me to do what is for the best?"

"I will trust you for ever. You are not going to give me up?"

Again his face contracted.

"Not unless I ought to, Pam. Not unless the lad is straight and can
prove himself worthy of you. If I feel he can make you happier than
I can, I will give you to him. If not, I will keep you in spite of
yourself, and trust to my love to make you forget him."

"I think that might easily come true."

"Don't make it hard for me, Pam, if I have to cede my right
to another. Pamela"--she had lifted her hands to him in her
emotion--"where is your ring?"

Pamela wrung her hands in her trouble.

"Do not be angry with me," she entreated. "I took it off in the
wood, there where you found me. It is there still."

"Pamela," his voice was stern. "Did _he_ remove your ring?"

"No, no. A thousand times, no! How could you think I would let him?"

"Forgive me, child--I ought to have known you better. But why did
you take off the ring?"

She looked to left and right, as though seeking a way of escape, and
answered nothing.

"I see," said Lord Glengall, and his face had a look of suffering.
"You took it off because it irked you to wear it. You wanted to be
free."

"It was only a mood."

"A bad mood for me, child. Why could you not have trusted me, and
have told me I had asked too much? It would have been kinder."

"I shall never forgive myself," cried Pam.

"I am going back for the ring, Pam. Run away home now, and I shall
bring it. Run now--I can keep you in sight till I see you within the
door of Carrickmoyle. I shall not be long."

"The ring is on the ground, by the well," said Pamela, her head
hanging like the head of a sensitive child caught in the act of
wrongdoing. "You will find it there, and my necklet and bracelet
also."

Her voice stumbled as she made her full confession.

"Poor Pam!" said Lord Glengall.

"Ah!" she said, "if you would only forget about it. There was never
any man like you. If I do not love you now, it is only because he
came first. I shall love you in time. I could not help it."

"Kiss me, Pam, before you go. I have not asked you for kisses when I
might."

"I have done nothing but hurt you," she cried, conscience-stricken.
Then she lifted her face for his kiss.

[Illustration: "I have done nothing but hurt you," she said.]

"And I have been hurting you, quite unconsciously, all the time. It
is the old story of May and December. But, thank God! it is not too
late."

He lifted his hat again, with the reverential gesture characteristic
of him. As he stood bare-headed, a glint of the dying sun fell on
his hair and forehead. It made him look old and dusty and tired.

Then Pamela went away slowly across the park to the house, while he
stood watching her. When she had entered the house, he went back
down the wood path.

As he went slowly and sadly, he felt something thrust against him.
He looked down. It was Pamela's dog, Pat, who had remained behind,
hunting an elusive rabbit, and had only just come up with their
trail. The dog jumped about him with demonstrations of joy.

Lord Glengall stooped down and patted the rough head.

"I am not to be your new master, after all, old fellow," he said.

Pat licked his hand vigorously, and then looked up inquiringly into
his face.

"She has gone home," said Lord Glengall in answer, "and I should be
a bad substitute."

But Pat manifested very unmistakably that he was going to accompany
this friend of his back into the woods.

"Ah! good little beast," said Lord Glengall, oddly comforted. "It is
good to have a dog sorry for one, Pat."

                  [END OF CHAPTER FIFTEEN.]




[Illustration: _Illustrated from Photographs._]

CURIOUS CHARITABLE GIFTS


It is a well-known and pleasing fact that several millions of pounds
are annually devoted, throughout the kingdom, to the purposes of
public charity, but few people are aware to what a great extent
charitable gifts in _kind_ are nowadays sent to philanthropic
institutions. These "donations" vary in value from a few pence
to hundreds of pounds; and although the greater number consist
of ordinary articles which are easily disposed of, yet some most
extraordinary gifts are frequently received, of which the outside
public hears little.

Quite recently two mummified hands--one with the forearm
attached--both authoritatively stated to be over 3,000 years old,
were sent to the Church Army by a West-End physician, who brought
them from Egypt, and they will doubtless be the means of an
appreciable accession to the funds of the organisation when disposed
of.

The Salvation Army also receives some curious articles at times.
Jewellery of various kinds often finds its way to the Headquarters,
and some little time ago a deaf-and-dumb convert presented a perfect
model in cork of one of the barracks, showing the soldiers marching
in and the roughs gathered around; whilst a travelling showman who
recently joined the Army begged to be allowed to hand the officers
his stock-in-trade, which included two remarkable-looking effigies
used in his ventriloquial entertainments.

The most singular donations received by the Army, however, are
presented at the harvest festivals. General Booth's followers are
exceptionally energetic at such times, and it is no uncommon thing
for the proceeds of the gifts collected for a festival service in a
poor neighbourhood to amount to some seventy or eighty pounds, half
of which is retained for the local funds, whilst the remainder is
sent to Headquarters as a donation towards the general expenses. An
impromptu barn is frequently erected in the meeting-room with the
front open to the audience, and in this the gifts are displayed to
the best advantage.

In addition to fruit, flowers, and vegetables, presents of live
stock are often made which are not _always_ acceptable. For
instance, at one place a calf was given, and was accommodated in a
temporary stall on the platform. But it did not appear to enjoy the
service. Whenever the band played, it made such a terrible noise
that eventually it had to be escorted to a quiet corner outside.
Birds of many descriptions have also joined in these services; and a
Russian cat which was presented on such an occasion kept up harvest
celebrations during the night, we are told, by devouring a pound of
beef sausages, which represented another, though humbler, gift.

[Illustration: MUMMIFIED REMAINS PRESENTED TO THE CHURCH ARMY.]

Many people will question the advisability of allowing live stock to
be present at such services. The important fact remains, however,
that gifts of this nature frequently serve to attract large
crowds of the very people the Army officers wish to influence.
But difficulties sometimes arise through the thoughtlessness of
enthusiastic donors. At Chester recently a live donkey was led
up four flights of stairs to the barracks, and handed over as a
free-will offering. When the service concluded, it was discovered
to be impossible for the animal to walk down again; and, to use
the words of the officer, they "had to tie the thing up in a knot,
wrap it up in a sack, and lower it gently and gracefully over the
banisters!" We may hope that the patient animal did not suffer any
ill effects from his attendance at the service.

Some most curious articles are also occasionally received by the
Poor Clergy Relief Corporation, which, as is well-known, does a most
useful work by making grants in money and clothing to clergymen in
temporary distress, and to the widows and children of clergymen
who are left insufficiently provided for. These articles comprise
revolvers, respirators, artificial teeth and wigs, feeding-bottles,
military and naval uniforms, silk-worm cocoons, and bicycles, and
all are turned to account either by direct gift or by realisation at
a jumble or auction sale. An amusing incident, the secretary states,
recently occurred in the clothing department in connection with an
involuntary gift. The matron was filling a large bag for a poor
family whilst a carpenter was in the room engaged on some repairs.
He had placed his cap--which was a good one--on the table, and the
matron, thinking it part of the stock, promptly annexed it and
despatched it with the other things. It was gratefully acknowledged!
Of course, the carpenter had to be provided with a new cap, which
he has since been careful to place in his pocket when working in the
building.

[Illustration: (_Photo: Russell and Sons, Baker Street, W._)

A STACK OF OLD CLOTHING.

(_At the Offices of the Poor Clergy Relief Corporation._)]

But the institution which receives the greatest number of gifts in
kind is undoubtedly Dr. Barnardo's well-known Home for Waifs and
Strays in Stepney Causeway. During last year alone 9,651 parcels
were delivered from various supporters, containing in the aggregate
over 97,000 articles of various kinds! When it is also stated that
the sales of these goods realised, in the same twelve months, the
grand total of £1,850, some idea will be gathered of the enormous
number of articles dealt with every year, and the welcome addition
which they bring to the income of the Homes.

The gifts come from all quarters of the globe. Even such far-distant
countries as India, China, Corea, Burmah, and Japan contribute their
quota, and many a pathetic history and much amazing romance is
embodied in the articles received.

One of the most valuable, and certainly one of the most remarkable,
of the donations which have found their way to Stepney Causeway
was ex-King Theebaw's ivory throne, sent a year or two ago by a
gentleman in Rangoon. The throne was somewhat in the form of a
large armchair, and was ordered by the king in the palmy days of
his despotism. According to his edict, only the very best craftsmen
were employed to fulfil the commission, and only the finest and
soundest tusks were used. The design was exceedingly elaborate,
and both time and special talent were needed for the task, which
it took years to accomplish. But, such is the irony of Fate, when
the work was practically finished the king was deposed, and the
completed throne never passed into his possession. After some little
time it came into the hands of the Rangoon donor who so generously
presented it to Dr. Barnardo. This interesting piece of furniture
was estimated to be worth some £500. The detail of the work was
exquisite, a delicate tracery covering nearly the whole, with some
most beautiful and elaborate carving in high relief lying behind
it. The little figures inside appeared to be executed with the
utmost thoroughness, and the chair was an eloquent testimony to the
genius and patience of the native workmen.

From the same country a number of quaint silver goods are constantly
received from a resident Englishman and his native wife, both of
whom take a very keen interest in the work of saving the waifs of
the slums. Owing to the extensive fluctuations in the value of the
rupee, and to the low rate of exchange in England, they find it more
advantageous to purchase native goods which will realise good prices
in London than to send their donations in cash.

[Illustration: A HANDSOME PIECE OF INDIAN NEEDLEWORK.

(_Worked in Gold and Silver Braid and Sequins._)]

Dr. Barnardo has little difficulty in disposing of such gifts.
There is a special trade department at Stepney Causeway, consisting
of a show-room and several large and airy stores. These storage
rooms, which are not open to the general public, contain a most
extraordinary collection of gifts, including such articles as
bedsteads, false hair and teeth, old pictures, jewellery, a
microscopic cabinet, a three-manual organ, an oak lectern, boxes of
geological and ornithological specimens, air pillows, sewing and
sausage machines, a bottled snake, as well as a great variety of
clothing both new and secondhand.

[Illustration: A GROUP OF CURIOUS GIFTS.

(_From Ephesus, New Zealand, and India._)]

Amongst the more valuable of the articles which have recently
been received may be mentioned a number of exceedingly dainty and
costly Eastern shawls, and a cape constructed entirely from birds'
feathers, which is supposed to be the only one of its kind in
England. This handsome cape originally belonged to a Spanish lady,
and is now more than a hundred years old. Each feather was worked in
separately, and the various colours are so beautifully blended that
the worker must have possessed considerable artistic talent as well
as great patience, for it contains some thousands of tiny feathers
of various hues. Another piece of work that must have entailed an
immense amount of time and care is a sample of Indian needlework,
of which we give a photograph. The ground is coarse black cloth,
but the design is so cleverly worked in gold and silver braid
and sequins that the result is a most handsome example of native
embroidery, which needs to be seen to be fully appreciated.

[Illustration: THE RECEIVING ROOM AT STEPNEY CAUSEWAY.]

From India also come the two models of native types photographed
in the group shown on the preceding page. They are most delicately
moulded, every detail being scrupulously attended to. The figure on
the left is ten inches in height, and represents a grass-cutter,
whilst that on the right depicts an Indian water-carrier, and both
bear the name of the modeller--Buckshar Paul of Krishnagar.

A different form of Indian work may be seen in the candlestick in
the same illustration, which is moulded in brass in the form of a
serpent, and forms a curious and certainly not inartistic ornament.
Standing beside this is an ordinary-shaped box with a diamond design
on the lid, and this article is specially interesting, owing to
its having been constructed of sixteen different varieties of wood
grown in New Zealand. It is a far cry from this fertile colony to
the historic city of Ephesus, but we are carried thither in order
to explain the presence of the two odd-looking pieces of ware
(representing an ancient vase and lamp) to be seen in the forefront
of the same photographic group. They were selected at random from
a number of such articles which Dr. Barnardo has in his possession
awaiting a remunerative purchaser. The extraordinary character of
the gifts received at the institution is well exemplified in these
articles, which were actually discovered in the ruins of the Temple
of Diana by the well-known antiquarian, the late Mr. F. Wood. Each
piece is authenticated by the signature of the excavator, which is
affixed, and they were presented to Dr. Barnardo by Mr. Wood's widow
about three years ago.

A striking instance of the wonderful changes wrought by time is
shown in the generous gifts in money and kind recently received
from the descendants of the mutineers of the _Bounty_. Here is
romance pure and unadulterated, and Dr. Barnardo may well have said
that the following letter which recently came into his hands read
like "something out of a book." It appears that the captain of a
British vessel wrote to him from Australia as follows: "I called
in our passage through the Pacific at Pitcairn Island. A number of
the natives came off, and when they learned I was bound to Great
Britain, they desired me to take some presents for you, consisting
of a case full of fancy articles made by themselves. I have already
despatched this case to you, and I now enclose postal orders for
£5 10s. 8d., being the cash, less a spurious two-shilling piece,
which the islanders had collected for your institution." The case
contained six walking-sticks, eighty cocoanut-shell baskets, as well
as a quantity of shells and a large number of bananas. These gifts
form undoubted evidence of the Christian and philanthropic spirit of
the present Pitcairn Islanders, and at the same time bear valuable
testimony to the world-wide appreciation of Dr. Barnardo's life-work.

[Illustration: A CORNER OF THE CLOTHES STORE.

(_At Dr. Barnardo's Homes._)]

A walk through the storage rooms is amply repaid by the number and
the limitless variety of the articles to be seen therein. Here is an
organ constructed by an amateur after seven years of assiduous work.
It is unique in its way, the pipes being made of cardboard; but
whether the gift of the ingenious organ-builder was an altogether
disinterested one is not for me to state. I heard it whispered
that the cleverly constructed instrument refused to work properly,
and was somewhat of the nature of a white elephant to the present
owners. Another example of tireless ingenuity is to be seen in the
three large brass models of engines which adorn a corner of the same
room. The mechanism of these engines is perfect in every way, and
the models are of considerable value.

In close proximity to them is a dinner service of Worcester china,
dated 1794, and consisting of 150 pieces. This will doubtless soon
be "discovered" by a lover of old china, who will also see another
"find" near by equally worthy of attention. I refer to a dessert
service of seventeen pieces, which originally formed a wedding
present before it found its way to Stepney Causeway. The service is
more than fifty years old, and its chief value lies in the exquisite
pictures to be found on each plate. The design is different in every
case, and when it is added that the pictures are hand-painted the
munificence of the kindly donor will be recognised.

But it is impossible to give an adequate idea of the curiously mixed
contents of the stores. Cumbersome articles such as mail-carts,
rocking-horses, Bath-chairs, and water-beds will be found adjacent
to billiard balls, pipes, samples of inlaid ebony work and other
"small" goods; whilst near at hand will be found piles upon piles of
articles of dress of all sorts and conditions. It is not surprising
that a number of assistants are kept constantly employed in
receiving, listing, sorting, and selling these miscellaneous gifts,
which are sent by a grateful public as a small donation to the good
and beneficent work which has for so many years been carried on by
means of the Homes.

                                 A. PALFREY HOLLINGDALE.

[Illustration: CLASSIFYING THE MISCELLANEOUS GIFTS.

(_A View at Stepney Causeway._)]




HIS STRANGE REPENTANCE.

AN ADDRESS TO YOUNG MEN.

By the Venerable Archdeacon Madden.

[Illustration: (_Photo: Elliott and Fry, Baker Street, W._)

ARCHDEACON MADDEN.]


It was close upon midnight. I was alone in my study, busy clearing
off a pile of letters that had been waiting all day for a "leisure
moment." In the midst of my work a vigorous ring of the door-bell
resounded through the house, followed by such a peremptory _ran-tan_
at the knocker that I jumped to my feet and rushed to the door to
see what was the matter. There I found two rough-looking men, who
lost no time in stating their business. "We want your reverence,"
they said, "to come and see a poor young fellow who is dying; the
doctor has given him up, and he is crying out for a minister to come
and pray with him." I could not refuse such an appeal, and off I
started with the men. They led me to a narrow street in my parish
and into one of the most dingy houses in the street. After groping
my way, by the aid of lighted matches, up a dark flight of stairs, I
found the dying man in a dirty back bedroom.

He could not have been more than thirty years of age. He was propped
up in bed, and the grey look of death was upon his face.

As I entered he turned eagerly to me, and, holding out his hand,
said, "I'm dying, and I am not ready--_not ready_!"

Just as I was about to speak he suddenly gasped out, "John, John!
hand me those things on the table." John came forward and laid upon
the bed a sporting paper, a pack of cards, a set of dice, a bottle
of whisky, and some race lists.

There was a deliberation about the whole business which convinced me
that the matter had been talked over between the men. When all were
spread out in due order, the dying man again turned to me and said,
"Look, vicar, those things have been the ruin of me; and they have
been a curse to me, and I want to turn my back upon them all--I want
you to help me to do it." Again I was about to speak, when suddenly,
stooping down, he gathered them all up and thrust them into my hands
with the words "Shove them up my back." I was so staggered by the
request that I stammered out "What--what do you mean?" "I want you,"
he said, "as God's minister to shove them up underneath my shirt.
I want to put them behind my back. I want God to see that I have
done with them for ever." I did not know whether to laugh or cry. It
was all so absurd and yet so pathetic. The man was in dead earnest.
He had evidently thought over it, and meant it as an "act" of true
repentance. He was undoubtedly a man who had "come down in the
world," and it was not all ignorance.

I said to him, "I will do what you wish, but I will kneel down
first, and you will repeat a prayer after me." I knelt and he
repeated after me these words: "Father, I have sinned against
heaven and before Thee. I renounce all my sins--from the bottom of
my heart I renounce them all. Father, receive Thy prodigal son, and
forgive me for Jesus Christ's sake. Amen."

I then rose from my knees and carried out his wishes. To us all in
that chamber of death it was a most solemn sacramental rite. I,
indeed, verily believed that it was the outward and visible sign of
the inward and spiritual grace of a true repentance. There I held
the things that had cursed his young manhood, ruined a promising
career, and brought him down to poverty and a premature grave; and
as I held those emblems of evil behind his back I told him of a
Saviour who "carried our sins"--upon whom the Lord had laid the
iniquities of us all.

Little by little he gasped out his tale of sin: the gambling, the
betting, and the "horsey set" he had got amongst as a youth; then
drinking and bad company; then "striding came ruin and poverty
like a weaponed warrior." Deserted, degraded, he crawled into this
wretched room, sick in mind and body, to die forsaken and forgotten
by all his old boon companions except John.

The scene of that night has left an indelible impression upon my
heart and mind. I believe the merciful God accepted that strange
outward act as an evidence of sincere repentance. To the very last
he would have us hold those instruments of sin between his shirt and
his bare back, and as I held them there he died calling upon God.

When I passed out of that house of death into the streets and the
morning light, I prayed, as I had never prayed before, that God in
His mercy might deliver this fair England of ours from the deadly
and degrading vice of gambling.

It is over ten years since my midnight visit to that gambler's
death-bed. I remember still one sentence of the ruined man: "It
doesn't pay, sir! It doesn't pay!" Aye! and even if it does pay some
few, what then? Is it not ill-gotten gain? And if so, what shall it
profit such a man, though he gain the whole world and lose his own
soul?

The vice of gambling does not stand alone. It is the mother of sins;
the sordid and the sensual too frequently go hand in hand. Lying,
blasphemy, impurity, dishonesty, trickery, double-dealing, follow in
its train.

The gambler who, by a stroke of "luck," becomes rich in an hour, is
tempted to spend his winnings in riotous living. It is with him a
case of "luxury" to-day, despair and drink to-morrow.

A general atmosphere of blackguardism seems ever to pervade the
race-course. Here is a cutting from the daily press of August last:--

     "BLACKGUARDISM AT THE ALEXANDRA PARK RACES.--Fourteen
     brutal assaults, committed on the Alexandra Park race-course
     on Saturday afternoon, have been reported to the police, the
     assaults in several cases having been accompanied by robbery.
     One of the gentlemen assaulted was a professional man well
     known in the neighbourhood. He was standing at a refreshment
     bar in the grand stand when he was half-killed by roughs.
     Another person who was assaulted was a member of the Jockey Club
     staff; but many frequenters of the course were heard to express
     pleasure at this, in the hope that it would lead to some better
     provision being made for the exclusion of well-known roughs from
     the rings and stands."

I have seen more than one young man of my acquaintance stand in the
felon's dock, and I know they were brought there by betting. I have
heard the wail of wife and children in the court as the culprit was
hurried from the dock to his cell. And what was left for him to do
when he was released from prison? Who will employ a man with the
stigma of "imprisonment for dishonesty" resting upon him? He sinks
lower and lower, dragging his poor wife and has little children down
with him in his degrading descent--down to abject misery.

"In addition, too, to the frightful injustice to wives and children
caused by betting and gambling, and the results on the home life,"
says a recent Report of the Convocation of York, "they have an
injurious effect on those who are addicted to them, deadening
their spiritual life, and making them indifferent to higher joys
and nobler pursuits while the passion lasts. An example of this is
afforded by Greville, who, in his memoirs, says: 'Thank God! the
races are over. I have had all the excitement and worry, but have
neither won nor lost. Nothing but the hope of gain would induce me
to go through the demoralising drudgery, which I am aware reduces
me to a level of all that is most disreputable and despicable,
for my thoughts are eternally absorbed in them. It is like
dram-drinking; having once begun, you cannot leave it off, though I
am disgusted all the time with my occupation.'"

And it is useless, my brother, to juggle with your conscience in
this matter. Gambling is a vice, whether it be for penny points or
for "ponies." The question of the amount of the bet has nothing to
do with the sin of gambling. The principle is what we look at.

"The wrong of gambling lies not in the excessive indulgence in an
intrinsically innocent practice, but in the surrender to chance
of acts which ought to be controlled by reason alone, and decided
by the will in accordance with the moral laws of justice or
benevolence."

Brother men! shun this vice. It is the certain road to ruin. Do not
be lured to your doom by this terrible fascination. Shake off its
spell, renounce its tyranny: "It doesn't pay! It doesn't pay!"

[Illustration: "It doesn't pay, sir! It doesn't pay!"]

It is an accursed thing. It degrades the mind, it demoralises the
whole moral being, and, if not renounced, means everlasting ruin.

This is no time for smooth words. Gambling is a growing evil in the
land. Women and children, as well as men, have become entangled
within its meshes, and are being dragged down to perdition. It
destroys all that is noble and unselfish in the human heart. It
paralyses the will, stultifies the reason, and stifles every holy
emotion in the soul. The man who "prepares a table for fortune and
fills up mingled wine to destiny," who makes chance his idol and
gain his god, will live to curse the day of his birth. Be wise,
therefore, O ye sons of men and seek the Lord your God with all your
hearts; for "the blessing of the Lord, it maketh rich, and He addeth
no sorrow with it."




Told in Sunshine Room.]

[Illustration: THE PRINCE'S MESSAGE.]

A Fairy Parable. By Roma White.


Once upon a time there was a country all sweet with the honey-smell
of white clover, and all full of music with the song of birds. Rain
and wind swept it now and then; but, when they had passed the warm
joy of sunshine came again, and the shadows of sailing, snowy clouds
drifted purple over the soft green sides of the hills where the
young kids played round their quiet mothers, so that all the people
who lived in the beautiful country felt its loveliness thrill their
hearts.

But surrounding the clover-fields and the bright gardens and the
sunny meadows was a band of black darkness, and those who had passed
into the darkness never came back. Everybody who sang and laughed
and loved in the sunshine knew that some day their turn would come
to step alone into the strange country of night that girdled the
land like an impenetrable curtain; and sometimes one or another
would come and look sadly and tearfully on the darkness, and then
turn back with bowed head, and try to forget it. And sometimes a
sound of low, sad singing would approach it, and men and women,
with tears running down their faces, would accompany some dear one,
whose time in the bright country was finished, to the edge of the
silent darkness and watch him pass away into it, never to return;
and though they held out beseeching hands after him, and strained
their sight that they might perceive whither he had gone, the
darkness never gave up its secret; only continued to lie, hushed and
mysterious, round the land where the apple-blossom budded and the
young lambs played.

Now the King of the country had seven daughters and an only son. The
daughters were very beautiful, but the son was fairer than the day.
His hair was as golden as the noontime of the South, and his eyes
were blue and laughing as the summer sea, and his mother loved him
better than life, from the day when he lay in a little white and
silver cradle by her side.

The royal children played together in the gardens and courts of the
palace, and sometimes the Queen gathered them about her and told
them tales of the fairies and the dewy rings which they danced into
greenness on summer nights; or she would tell them of brave kings
who had done their duty, and loving queens whose names had been
blessed by their subjects. And the children would ask questions
about the dark belt that encircled the country, of which they had
heard, but which they had never seen. And then the Queen would shake
her head and fold her arms tightly about them one by one, but the
child that she pressed most closely to her was her only boy.

But one day a great fear fell upon the kingdom, and all the palace
was hushed and still. It was told that the little Prince's days
were numbered, and that he must soon pass away. And a few hours
later twilight fell over the land, and through the twilight came
the solemn steps of mourners and the sound of tears. And the lilies
bent their white heads, and the roses nestled sadly together among
their green leaves as the royal procession swept wailing by through
the dusk. And for a few moments a child's voice spoke, and then
it ceased as the little Prince went bravely away, alone, into the
darkness, and those who had loved him were left behind.

[Illustration: The little Prince went bravely ... into the darkness.]

They returned by-and-by to the palace, and the King took up his
royal duties again, and the seven Princesses went back to their
lessons and to their play. Sometimes they would talk, with sudden
sobs, of their brother, and then they would forget him while tending
to their flowers and watching the wild birds on the wing. The King,
too, now and then, would rest his face upon his hands, and be very
silent for a while. But his kingdom claimed him, and he had not the
time always in which to mourn.

Only the Queen never forgot, for the little Prince had been her
only son. Night after night she went alone to the edge of the
darkness, and tried to pierce it with her longing eyes, and to beat
it away with her mother's hands; but it was always motionless and
impassable, and seemed to extend into endless night.

But one evening, as she knelt there, quiet for very weariness,
there came a sweet smell through the dusk, as if the spices of wild
thyme were crushed out by some approaching tread; and the sleeping
flowers that had hung heavily under the weight of her falling tears,
lifted their faces and unfolded their closed petals, as if they were
dreaming of the morning sun. And then, all at once, fragrance and
warmth and light were about the Queen; and, looking up, she saw the
radiant figure of a wise, quiet man.

His voice spoke to her, and she heard many echoes in it, so that it
stirred her memory strangely. It was as if she listened to the notes
of a thrush on a dewy morning, or to the south wind among the summer
trees by night.

"Why do you mourn here, all alone?" he asked her gently.

Her tones shook as she answered him.

"I am weeping for my only son, who has gone away from me into this
darkness by which we stand."

For a moment the wise man was silent; his grave, tender eyes looked
down into hers.

"You try to beat the darkness away with your hands," he said
by-and-by, "and you feel only that it is like solid rock to your
touch. You strain your sight to pierce it, and, as you gaze, you
realise its blackness, and it becomes deeper to your eyes. Why,
then, do you stay upon its margin?"

"I stay because I hope and pray that, by dwelling near it, I may
catch a glimpse of my only son; that I may hear his voice speak to
me, or feel for a moment the warm, clinging touch of his little
hands. I stay because I crave for a message from him, to tell me
that he loves me still."

Then there was pity in the wise man's eyes, and it was the sweet
pity of a mother who sees a child cry over a broken toy.

"Your son has many messages far you," he said, "but you cannot find
or read them here; and, if you stay, your eyes will soon grow too
dim to see, and the darkness will hold itself all about your heart.
Turn your face and footsteps back to your people and your king, and
seek there a message from your son which shall speak of consolation."

The Queen was silent then, and her feet and hands were still. She
looked up at the wise, quiet man, and, as she looked, she saw that
his eyes were like those of the child who had passed away, and she
caught at the hem of his robe with trembling fingers.

[Illustration: "My sentence is--Forgiveness!"]

"Who are you?" she cried. "Who are you, with your wise words, and
your eyes like those of my son, who was but a little, little child?"

Then into the face of the man came a wonderful look, so that the
Queen, seeing it, bent her head and bowed her forehead upon her
hands. And it seemed to her, for a moment, as if strange sweet
scents blew to her, and the darkness broke away into long alleys of
light and bloom. And then there was a hush, and when she looked up
again the wise man was gone.

But she remembered that he had given her the sweetest promise in the
world--the promise of a message from her only son; and, believing
him, she went away from the belt of darkness, and turned again to
the palace, to her children, and to her king.

And as she passed along the road she came across a poor cripple who
had fallen and hurt himself by the way. His wounds bled, and he
looked up at the Queen with wistful eyes. So she went, herself, to
the nearest stream to fetch water for him, and she gave him some to
drink, and bound up the poor bruises, and soothed him with gentle
words. And as she tended him, she forgot for a moment the darkness
into which her son had passed, and only remembered that the land, in
spite of its beauty, was full of suffering and tears, and that she
had her work to do among her people; and she looked with her shining
mother's eyes into the cripple's face, and bade him be comforted.

And then, all at once, a wonderful thing happened. The cripple
spoke, in faltering tones, to thank her; and his voice thrilled her,
for it was the voice of her little son.

Wondering and grave, the Queen passed on. Some blue butterflies flew
by, circling in the still air. As she looked at them her heart was
suddenly stirred to reverence and gratitude and joy for the beauty
of their silken burnished wings. And as the thrill of tenderness
shook her, it seemed, all at once, as if a glow were across her
path, and as if, through the glow, she heard the child-laughter of
the little Prince who had passed away.

And so it happened, day after day, as the weeks sped by. Whenever
the heart of the Queen was stirred to holiness by deeds and thoughts
which were true and lovely and pure there came to her all the tender
sweetness of memory and of communion, so that she knew that beyond
the darkness her little son still sent his thoughts to her in love.
But whenever she went to the belt of gloom to weep his voice was
silent, and it seemed to her as if he had gone away for ever.

And one day there came a strange beggar to the palace gates, with
wild, wicked eyes and hatred of all men in his heart; and he had
sworn to injure the King because the King was great and good. He
kept his vow, and struck at the kind King as he was passing through
the gates. But the Queen saw the raised dagger, and sprang in front
of her husband, so that she received the blow herself.

Then the Queen lay in strange silent illness, and the court met to
judge the deed. The beggar crouched, terrified and trembling, before
them; but, ere sentence could be given, a sweet woman's voice bade
those who condemned him to pause, and the judges saw that the Queen
had risen from her bed of sickness and stood among them.

"Wait!" she cried, "wait! I, who have borne the pain, must speak the
sentence."

She paused, and, crossing to the beggar, laid her hand upon his head.

"My sentence is--Forgiveness!"

Her voice rang out like a sweet silver trumpet in the court-room,
and everybody was very still. Then, all at once, the beggar burst
into tears.

But nobody else spoke or moved. Only the tears of the beggar flowed
down until they made a tiny crystal pool, and the Queen, who bent
over him, saw into the pool as into a mirror.

And she beheld the margin of the country and the deep black fog
which lay beyond; and as she looked, the fog broke away into long
gleaming alleys of flowers with shining mists above them, as if of
a rising sun, and, among the bloom, the face of the little Prince
smiled fully upon her once again.

Then, all at once, she heard the voice of the wise, quiet man, and
she perceived that he stood again by her side.

"What does it all mean?" she asked him breathlessly; "what does it
all mean?"

The beggar, whose face was pressed to the hem of her robe; the
court, who still remained hushed and motionless; and the King, whose
eyes reverenced her, all waited for the wise man's reply. It came to
them softly, like the murmur of pine needles in a south wind.

"There can be no Death where there is Love."

[Illustration: decorative]

[Illustration: Our Roll of Heroic Deeds

We record this month a signal act of heroism which took place a
few years ago in a coal-pit near Dalkeith. The mine was suddenly
flooded, a vast volume of water rushed through the workings, and
it was only after some hours of dangerous and most difficult work
that the imprisoned miners were rescued. It was then discovered
that Walker, a boy of twelve, had been left behind, and immediately
James Nolans volunteered to save him. Nolans had to be forcibly
pushed through the rushing torrent by some of his comrades; then he
had to grope about under the water to find a rail which he used for
the purpose of guidance, and, after narrowly escaping death from
drowning, he eventually discovered the terrified lad. Even then it
was doubtful whether they would escape alive; but after a plucky
dash through the water, and by the help of some old ladders hastily
fastened together, they managed to regain their comrades, who never
expected to see them again.]




[Illustration: musical score]

Rise, Gracious God, and Shine.

  _Words by_ WILLIAM HURN, 1813.     _Music by_ H. WALFORD DAVIES, MUS.D.
                                      (_Organist of the Temple Church._)


_With majesty._

    1.  Rise, gracious God, and shine
          In all Thy saving might!
        And prosper each design,
          To spread Thy glorious light:
        Let healing streams of mercy flow,
        That all the earth Thy truth may know.
        Amen.

    2.  O bring the nations near,
          That they may sing Thy praise;
        Let all the people hear
          And learn Thy gracious ways:
        Reign, mighty God, assert Thy cause,
        And govern by Thy righteous laws.

    3.  Put forth Thy glorious power;
          The nations then will see!
        And earth present her store
          In converts born to Thee.
        God, our own God, His Church will bless,
        And earth will teem with fruitfulness.

    N.B.--The last verse should be sung _ff_ in unison.




TEMPERANCE NOTES AND NEWS.

By a Leading Temperance Advocate.


THE CARE OF THE INEBRIATE.

The present year has brought into operation a new Act of Parliament
dealing with the habitual drunkard. The unfortunate men and women
of the type of the notorious Jane Cakebread have been the despair
of stipendiary magistrates for years past. At the time of writing
the working of the new Act has not settled into shape, so it is all
too early to forecast its probable results. Meanwhile we tender our
congratulations to Dr. Norman Kerr, F.L.S., for it is to this humane
and philanthropic physician we are indebted for anything like an
intelligent treatment of the confirmed dipsomaniac. Dr. Kerr was
born at Glasgow in 1834, and graduated at Glasgow University in
1861. While yet a student he took a keen interest in temperance and
established a society for his fellow-students. From that time to
the present, his active services to the reform have been steadily
maintained. He takes a prominent part in the work of the Church
of England Temperance Society, the United Kingdom Alliance, and
the National Temperance League. It is, however, as an authority on
dipsomania that he is best known. He is the founder and President
of the Society for the Study and Cure of Inebriety, and it was at
his instigation that a highly successful Colonial and International
Congress on Inebriety was held in Westminster Town Hall in July,
1887. Dr. Kerr has written largely on the subject, and his learned
work on "Inebriety: Its Etiology, Pathology, Treatment, and
Jurisprudence," speedily passed into several editions. He is almost
as well known in the United States as at home. The gist of Dr.
Norman Kerr's views may be best indicated by the opening sentence of
the volume referred to. He writes:--

"No _disease_ is more common than inebriety, and yet none is so
seldom recognised. No _disease_ is more widespread. In the whole
circle of even an extensive acquaintance it may happen that no
member has been known to have suffered from any of the leading
diseases which prevail in our islands, that no one has been laid
low by phthisis or cancer. But there are very few families in the
United Kingdom which have not had at least one relative who has been
subject to inebriety."

[Illustration: (_Photo: William Whiteley, Bayswater, W._)

DR. NORMAN KERR.]


ANOTHER GOOD IDEA.

The latest new effort to popularise temperance amongst women is a
scheme prepared by the Durham and Northumberland County Union of
the British Women's Temperance Association. It takes the form of a
summer school to be opened at Barnard Castle, where ladies may study
temperance in its scientific aspects, and receive various aids as
to the methods of imparting this knowledge. The forenoons will be
given to lectures, the afternoons to recreation, excursions, etc.
Full particulars may be obtained from Mrs. Richardson, The Gables,
Newcastle-on-Tyne.


BEER IN THE HAY AND HARVEST FIELDS.

This is an age of specialists, and Mr. John Abbey is certainly the
specialist of the temperance propaganda in relation to agriculture.
The son of a yeoman, he very early turned his attention to the
importance of "soberising" our harvest fields. By his writings,
his speeches, and the invention of teetotal drinks called Stokos,
Hopkos, and Cokos, he has gradually produced a wonderful change in
agricultural circles. It is Mr. Abbey's habit to go the round of
the agricultural shows in their season, where he pitches his tent,
in which he dispenses his drinks, distributes his literature, and
discusses "the why and because" of his movement with all and sundry.
From the many letters received by him, we are permitted to quote one
from a correspondent who farms seven hundred acres:--

"I am glad to tell you that we have done harvest without a drop of
beer being given to the men, and they appear to like Stokos better
this year than ever. They usually had eight gallons or more a day,
and worked well with it, and throughout the excessive heat we had
not a man ill. Years ago the men would get beer into the field,
and there was a great deal of drunkenness among them, but now I
am thankful to say that Stokos has, by virtue of its excellent
qualities, practically _driven the beer out of the field_, and work
goes on delightfully."

[Illustration: (_Photo: A. E. Coe, Norwich_)

MR. JOHN ABBEY.]

It may be mentioned that this agricultural work is only a detail of
Mr. Abbey's life, for he is the Organising Secretary of the Church
of England Temperance Society for Norwich Diocese, having previously
held a similar appointment far many years in Oxford Diocese.

[Illustration: MR. ABBEY'S TENT AT THE NORFOLK AGRICULTURAL SHOW.

(_Distributing Temperance Drinks._)]


COMING EVENTS.

On April 13th a concert will be given at Stafford House, under the
patronage of H.R.H. the Duchess of York, in aid of the Church of
England Temperance Society Juvenile Union. On April 19th the annual
meeting of the Guild of Hope will be held at Grosvenor House, the
Duke of Westminster in the chair. On May 1st the annual meeting of
the National Temperance League will be held in Exeter Hall, the
Archbishop of Canterbury presiding. In July there will be two fêtes
at the Crystal Palace--one on the 5th by the National Temperance
Choral Society, and the other on the 29th, under the direction of
the Church of England Temperance Society.


"GIVE THE BOY A CHANCE."

During the past decade the Church of England Temperance Society has
developed a wonderful leaning towards practical effort. Its Police
Court Mission has been of incalculable service, and has received the
hearty recognition of such able magistrates as the late Mr. Montagu
Williams, Sir John Bridge, Mr. A. de Rutzen, and others. The Police
Court Missionaries have for some time been gravely concerned as to
what to do with young boys brought up for their first offences.
Last June the Church of England Temperance Society established a
Boys' Shelter Home at Gunnersbury. To this institution boys are now
remitted instead of to prison. Here they have a chance of learning
some useful industry, situations are found for them, and they are
thus given a new start in life. The Bishop of London opened the
Home, which is managed under the direction of a small sub-committee
of the London Diocesan Church of England Temperance Society.

[Illustration: THE BOYS' SHELTER HOME.

(_Established by the Church of England Temperance Society for first
offenders._)]


[Illustration: (_Photo: Debenham and Gould, Bournemouth._)

MR. ROBERT SAWYER.]


AMONG THE RAILWAY MEN.

One of the most interesting, and certainly one of the most useful,
temperance organisations, specially catering for a distinct class
of workers, is the United Kingdom Railway Temperance Union. It
commenced in a very humble way in 1882, and in a sense owes its
origin to Mr. S. Cutler, an earnest man employed by the Metropolitan
Railway Company, who approached the Church of England Temperance
Society to see if something could be done to bring together the
different railway men who were in sympathy with temperance work.
As the result of a conference, the Union was started, and it has
remained in connection with the Church of England Temperance
Society ever since. To-day it has branches on nearly every line
of railway in the United Kingdom; and every grade of the service,
from the influential director down to the humble bookstall lad, is
represented in the membership. The railway men were fortunate in
securing the interest of Mr. Robert Sawyer, Recorder of Maidenhead,
at the commencement of their operations, for besides contributing
very largely from his purse, Mr. Sawyer, as President of the Union,
practically devotes his life to the interests of railway men. He
is literally "in journeyings oft," and has a most able lieutenant
in Mr. A. C. Thompson, the first and only Secretary of the Union.
The railway men run a little temperance journal of their own,
appropriately entitled _On the Line_. One has only to glance through
its attractive pages to see that the Union is very much alive.
For those who are employed on railways temperance is certainly an
excellent thing, and there can be no doubt also that the safety of
the travelling public is helped not a little by the hard work of Mr.
Sawyer and his cheery comrades.




[Illustration: SCRIPTURE LESSONS FOR SCHOOL AND HOME

INTERNATIONAL SERIES]

With Illustrative Anecdotes and References.


=MARCH 19TH.--Christ the Good Shepherd.=

_To read--St. John x. 1-16. Golden Text--Ver. 11._

Last lesson showed Christ as source of _light_--giving sight to the
eyes and heart of blind man; to-day's shows Him as "Love," the Good
Shepherd, giving His life for His sheep.

I. =Christ the Door of the Fold= (1-10). _Connection_ with healing
of blind man.

Pharisees were bad shepherds--he found the true.

They drove him away--Christ the Good Shepherd took him into His fold.

_Explanation_ of the different parts of the parable.

The sheepfold--Christ's Church on earth (ver. 16).

The door--Christ Himself, the only way to God.

The sheep--the people of Christ (Ps. c. 2).

The shepherds--God's ministers, feeding and leading the flock (1
Pet. v. 2) in the right way.

The porter--God's Spirit opening hearts to Christ.

_Illustration_: Christ is as a Good Shepherd. How?

He comes to the sheep in the fold. He calls by name, and goes before
to lead them. They recognise voice, trust Him, and follow.

_Contrast_ between Christ and the Pharisees. They are robbers (St.
Matt. xxiii. 14, etc.), blind guides, hypocrites, leading men to
ruin. Now thirsting to kill Him. Christ is the way of salvation.
Thief _takes_ life; shepherds _protect_ life. He _gives_ life, here
and hereafter.

_Application._ Whosoever believeth in Him shall have everlasting
life.

II. =Christ the Good Shepherd= (11-16). _His name._

Good, _i.e._ beautiful, noble, loving. He is _perfect_ in contrast
with imperfect ministers; _true_ as opposed to false; _good_ as
giving His life. Mere hirelings desert the flock in danger.

_His work._ Knows each intimately--cares for wants. Dies that they
may be saved. Seeks wanderers. Folds all safely in fold at last.

=Lessons.= The privileges of Christ's flock.

1. _Safety_ in the fold of His Church.

2. _Succour_ in time of want and danger.

3. _Sympathy._ They know Him, and He knows them.


=Christ the Door.=

It is said that the ancient city of Troy had but one way of
entrance. In whatever direction the traveller went, he would find
no way into the city but the one which was legally appointed, and
the only one which was used by those who went in and out. There is
only one right way to the favour of God, to the family of God, to
the presence of God in prayer, and, finally, to the City of God in
eternity, and that one way is Christ. "I am the way," He declares,
"and no man cometh unto the Father but by Me."


MARCH 26TH.--Review Lesson.

_Golden Text--St. John x. 27._

Christ's divine nature been seen in twelve lessons with the results
ensuing therefrom.

I. =True Light= (i. 1-14). Showing Father's eternal glory, power,
wisdom. Dwelling as man among men to lighten their souls.

II. =First Disciples= (i. 29-42). Divinity testified by God's voice
at His baptism. Faith shown by new disciples who saw Lamb of God.

III. =First Miracle= (ii. 1-11). Divinity shown by almighty power
and glory in sympathy.

IV. =First Convert= (iii. 1-17). Christ as Teacher unfolds divine
mysteries. He knows for He has seen. Nicodemus, a Pharisee, believes.

V. =First Samaritan= (iv. 5-26). Divinity shown by omniscience.
Gives water of life. Samaritan woman and others believe.

VI. =First Child= (iv. 46-54). Christ gives fresh life to sick
child. Nobleman believes.

VII. =Christ's Authority= (v. 17-29). Shares Father's counsels.
Appointed Judge. All men honour Him.

VIII. =Multitude Fed= (vi. 1-14). He Who made world, supplies His
people's wants. As God, He multiplies food; as Man, cares for and
sympathises.

IX. =Feast of Tabernacles= (vii. 14, 28-39). Christ as God, gives
life, also refreshment (like water) to soul by Holy Ghost. Thus,
Three Persons in Godhead share work of man's salvation.

X. =Freeing from Sin= (viii. 13, 31-36). Divine power alone can free
from bondage of sin and Satan. This Christ gives. Many believed on
Him.

XI. =Healing Blind= (ix. 1-11). Christ's divine light opens eyes and
heart. Blind man saved.

XII. =Good Shepherd=. Christ, Himself God, the way to God. Gives
life by laying down His life. One fold, one flock, one Shepherd.

=Lessons=. 1. Jesus Christ, the same yesterday, to-day, and for ever.

2. No man cometh to the Father but by Me.

3. Lord, I believe, help Thou my unbelief.


Christ, Lord of All.

     During the last moments of a godly woman, speech had left her;
     but she managed to articulate the word "Bring." Her friends, in
     ignorance of her meaning, offered her food, but she shook her
     head, and again repeated the word "Bring." Thinking she desired
     to see some absent friends, they brought them to her; but again
     she shook her head; and then, by a great effort, she succeeded
     in completing the sentence--

    "Bring forth the royal diadem,
    And crown Him Lord of all"--

     and then passed away to be with Jesus.


APRIL 2ND.--Raising of Lazarus.

_To read--St. John xi. 32-45. Golden Text--Ver. 25._

Gospel began with miracle at joyful family gathering. To-day's
lesson tells of sad gathering of family and friends at a funeral. He
would again show divine power.

I. =Death Triumphant= (32-37). _Scene of sorrow_ at Bethany, two
miles from Jerusalem. Little family, Lazarus and two sisters. Had
received Christ before (St. Luke x. 38). Now the breadwinner has
been taken ill and dies. Sickness, death, bereavement, all causes
of sorrow and sadness. Had sent for Christ, but He had delayed to
come (ver. 6). At last He arrives, but body had been buried. Martha
meets Him first (ver. 21), then Mary. Both utter same reproach--had
He been in time, their brother need not have died. Their faith weak.
Thought of Him as Good Physician--did not fully realise His almighty
power. How did this affect Christ? He was troubled, He sighed, He
wept. His best friends not yet learned Who He was and what His
power. To them sorrow, suffering, death, seemed to have triumphed.
Was it so?

II. =Death Vanquished= (38-44). _Scene of joy._ A Conqueror of
death is there. See actions of the different people. _Christ_
commands removal of stone. _Martha_ remonstrates--the body begun
to corrupt--four days dead (no coffin, only wrapped in linen).
Showed unbelief, after Christ's words (ver. 23). _Mary_ watches in
silence, trusting in Christ to do right. _Jews_, expectant, roll
away the stone as bidden. Then Christ speaks; thanks God for hearing
His prayer; cries aloud to Lazarus. The dead man comes forth, is
released from grave-clothes, and restored to his home. Death is
swallowed up in victory.

_Result._ Many of the Jews believed. God's glory is manifested.

=Lessons.= 1. _Christ a loving Friend._ Can be touched with the
feeling of our infirmities.

2. _Christ a living Saviour._ Taught Martha, comforted Mary,
restored Lazarus. Gives eternal life.


Faithful unto Death

     In the excavations made at the buried city of Pompeii, the
     remains of a Roman soldier were found at one of the gates.
     Embedded in the once molten lava which swept down upon the
     doomed city was found the skeleton of the soldier whose post
     of duty was at the gate, still grasping a sword in its bony
     fingers. When the panic came upon the city, and those who could
     made good their escape, he had remained faithful to his sense
     of duty, and with resolute courage faced a fearful death. The
     Christian soldier can face death with equal courage, for he has
     obtained victory over sin and death through Jesus Christ his
     Lord.


APRIL 9TH.--The Anointing in Bethany.

_To read--St. John xii. 1-11. Golden Text--St. Mark xiv. 8._

Christ again at Bethany, preparing for His sufferings and death.
Chief priests and Pharisees took counsel to kill Him (xi. 53). His
friends gather in numbers to give Him a public welcome.

I. =Christ's Friends= (1-3, 7-9). _The feast._ Took place at
Bethany, at house of Simon, once a leper. The family of Bethany
all present--showed their regard for Christ in different ways.
_Lazarus_, honoured guest, at the table with Him. _Martha_ giving of
her skill in house-keeping (St. Luke x. 38). _Mary_ giving a costly
present.

_The anointing._ Mary comes behind Christ--having fetched an
alabaster box full of precious ointment--breaks the box, pours it
on His head (St. Mark xiv. 3) and His feet (ver. 3), wiping them
with her hair. The house is filled with sweet smell. Why did she do
this? _It was an act of love._ Christ had done much for them--stayed
with them, above all restored their brother to life. Another
reason: Christ had lately spoken of His death as soon coming. This
thought quickened her love to intensity. She must give it outward
expression. She had kept it for His burial (ver. 7), but gives it
now. _It was an act of self-denial._ Did not stay to count the cost,
to think how little she need give. Gave the best gift she had. Would
keep back nothing from Him. _The act was approved and accepted._ She
did what she could.

=Lessons.= 1. Christ's death draws men's hearts (xii. 32). Therefore
send the Gospel to all.

2. True love delights in self-denial. Deny self, take up cross and
follow Christ.

3. Offerings accepted by God. Alms as well as prayers come before
Him (Acts x. 4).

II. =Christ's Enemies= (4-6, 10, 11). _Judas_ grudges the
gift--calls it waste--professes zeal for the poor. What was his real
motive? Covetousness. Had been made treasurer of monies given to
and spent by Christ and apostles. Hoped to get something out of it
for himself. Was it waste? Gifts given to Christ cannot be wasted.
Others will take note and copy. This loving gift has led multitudes
to do what they can. Missionaries to give up lives for Christ, many
to give money, work, service, etc. Even cup of water only given for
His sake rewarded.

_Chief priests._ Consult out of envy to kill Lazarus. His rising led
many to believe in Christ. Their power became less.

=Lesson.= Take heed, and beware of covetousness.

Which are we: friends or foes of Christ?


Give the Best you have to God.

     It matters not how poor the offering, if given in the right
     spirit. A legend tells how once a little boy in church had no
     money to place among the offerings. So he gave a rosy apple, the
     only gift he had it in his power to offer. Presently, when the
     alms were removed, there was found among them an apple of gold.
     The simplest gift is in the sight of God as pure gold.




[Illustration: SHORT ARROWS

Notes of Christian Life & Work]


Our New Waifs.

In accordance with the announcement in our December number, we left
it entirely to our readers to select the new QUIVER waifs.
All the votes have now been received, and arranged, with the result
that Rose Heelis heads the list of the candidates for Miss Sharman's
Orphan Home, whilst John Harrison is the successful candidate for
Dr. Barnardo's Home.

[Illustration: JOHN HARRISON.

(_The new Quiver Waif at Dr. Barnardo's Home._)]

Our readers will doubtless be interested in the portrait of each
to be found on this page, but it is unnecessary to repeat the
particulars concerning these little ones which were given at the
time we invited the votes. The support of the new waifs will involve
a total annual expenditure of £31 (£15 for Rose Heelis and £16
for John Harrison), and for this amount we are relying upon the
generosity of our readers. Contributions to the special Waifs' Fund
will be gladly received, and duly acknowledged month by month in
our pages. Such contributions should be addressed to the Editor of
THE QUIVER, La Belle Sauvage, Ludgate Hill, London, E.C. A
list of the donations to the fund during the month of January will
be found on page 480.


Stooping to Conquer.

A peculiar feature connected with the Ancient and Honourable
Artillery Company of Boston is that each officer, at the end of
his term of command, which lasts a year, returns to the ranks as
a private; thus there are something like a score of gentlemen who
have had full control of the regiment, and who are now once more
content to obey. Here is a lesson for those who serve in the Church
Militant. We cannot all be colonels and generals--there must be a
few private soldiers!--and it is certain that he who cannot obey
is not fit to command. Much energy and temper is wasted by those
who fight against sin and sorrow through unwillingness to take what
is called a subordinate position. Surely this is to forget the
Saviour's words--"If any man desire to be first, the same shall be
last of all, and servant of all."

[Illustration: ROSE HEELIS.

(_The new Quiver Waif at Miss Sharman's Home._)]


The "Welcome."

Sixteen years ago, the first restaurant for women in the City of
London was started at 16, Jewin Street. The "Welcome" was opened in
a five-storeyed house in the very midst of factories. It is now the
centre of help of every kind for a class brought before the public
in Sir Walter Besant's "Children of Gibeon." Hundreds of women
frequent this place to refresh their jaded and chilled bodies with
soup and bread at three halfpence or excellent meat-puddings at
twopence. In cases of distress and starvation free dinner tickets
are granted. Who can tell how many women this aid has saved from
crime when hunger has driven them to the verge of stealing? The
work of the "Welcome" is not limited to care for the bodies of City
toilers. Three rooms are used for dinner and tea, three others for
evening classes of various kinds. From six to half-past nine clubs,
musical drill, sewing and improvement classes, services of song,
missionary or Gospel temperance meetings, attract an attendance
averaging from 270 to 300. The largest number come on Thursday
evening, which is devoted to Bible classes. To many whose days are
spent in hot workrooms the shady gardens lent on Saturdays by kind
friends are like a new world. One girl asked if she could see the
strawberry trees; another, why the bunches of grapes were tied to
the top of glass-houses. The revelation of a new world outside their
own limited sphere helps to raise the ambition to live a new and
higher life.

[Illustration: (_Photo: Cassell and Co., Ltd._)

IN THE "WELCOME" CLUB AT MIDDAY.]


"Nobody's Own."

Many regiments in the British army are called after and said to be
owned by this or that prince or princess. There is "The Princess of
Wales's Own," "Princess Charlotte's Own," and so on. One regiment,
however, rejoices in the nickname of "Nobody's Own," because it
is not named after anybody. It is a grand thing to think that no
Christian can be called "Nobody's Own," for we are all called after
Christ and owned by our Father in heaven.


New Books.

Elsewhere in this number will be found an illustrated article on
"Childish Memories of Lewis Carroll," and we venture to think that
readers of those reminiscences will require no pressing to turn to
the biography of this universally favourite author, just published
by Mr. Fisher Unwin under the title "The Life and Letters of Lewis
Carroll." Mr. S. D. Collingwood, who is responsible for the work,
frankly admits that it is impossible to give a really adequate
presentation of the extraordinarily complex character of his late
uncle. He has, however, produced a most able and interesting sketch,
which includes many characteristic letters, and is profusely
illustrated. Quite a different life-story is also before us in
the form of the Rev. George Adam Smith's biography of his friend,
the late Professor Henry Drummond (Hodder and Stoughton). No one
could lay down this book without feeling that Drummond was in every
sense a great man--with a great intellect, a great heart, and a
constant, burning desire to be about his Father's business. It is
true that he made mistakes, that he put forth certain theories not
generally acceptable, and which he himself modified in later years,
but throughout his life his honesty of purpose was unquestionable.
His influence and power as a preacher and teacher were remarkable,
and many of those whom he reached through his addresses and books
will feel indebted to Dr. Smith for this critical and comprehensive
story of his life.--From Messrs. Smith, Elder and Company comes a
new story from our own contributor, Katharine Tynan, entitled "The
Dear Irish Girl," of which we need say no more than that it is the
love story of a most winning Irish lassie, written in the bright,
entertaining style so well-known to our readers.--"Helps to Godly
Living" (Elliot Stock) is the happy title of an excellent little
work which consists of helpful and comforting extracts from the
writings and addresses of the present Archbishop of Canterbury,
selected and arranged by the Rev. J. H. Burn, B.D.--A pathetic
interest attaches to the two dainty volumes of poems by the late
Dr. J. R. Macduff, entitled "Matin and Vesper Bells" (Cassell), in
that the author did not live to see their completion. Many of the
poems have been already published independently in various forms,
but we believe that this collected edition of Dr. Macduff's tender
and inspiring verse will be heartily welcomed.--We have also to
acknowledge the receipt of a tastefully produced volume entitled
"The More Excellent Way" (Henry Frowde), in which the Hon. Mrs.
Lyttelton Gell has carefully arranged the choicest extracts from
the works of ancient and modern authors on "The Life of Love"; a
collection of addresses on the Beatitudes by the Rev. J. R. Miller,
D.D., entitled "The Master's Blesseds" (Hodder and Stoughton); an
interesting and instructive work on medical missionary work amongst
the blind in India, entitled "They Shall See His Face" (Bocardo
Press, Oxford); "Aids to Belief" (Elliot Stock), a series of studies
on the divine origin of Christianity by the Rev. W. H. Langthorne;
and a volume of sermons by the late Charles H. Spurgeon, which have
been published by Messrs. Passmore and Alabaster under the title
"The Metropolitan Tabernacle Pulpit."


A Wolf-Boy.

[Illustration: (_Photo supplied by the Missionary Leaves Association._)

  AS A BOY.      THE WOLF-BOY OF SECUNDRA.      AS A MAN.]

What was to be done with such a boy! The magistrate sahib of
Bulandshahr had heard of Romulus and Remus, but rational people
rejected the legend of their infancy. Yet here was a child of five
or six years of age, crawling on the ground before him, and the
statement of several witnesses that he had been smoked out of a
wolf's den could not be disputed. These men were natives of India.
Whilst travelling in a jungle of the Bulandshahr district, they
saw a queer though undoubted specimen of humanity crawl into a
hole. By the magistrate's order a fire was lighted at the mouth.
Out sprang a snarling and indignant mother-wolf, which, after
scattering the bystanders, fled for life. Behind her ran on all
fours a little boy, who was speedily secured and conveyed to the
magistrate. He was imbecile. He would eat no food but raw meat,
and he tore any clothing placed on him into shreds. The magistrate
sent him to the Church Missionary Orphanage at Secundra, a refuge
for between four and five hundred children, nearly all infants
picked up in the streets or by the roadside. There this child,
who was found on Saturday, February 4th, 1867, grew up into
manhood. On the same principle that Robinson Crusoe called his man
Friday, the wolf-boy was named Sanichar, or Saturday. By degrees
a certain amount of intelligence and a decided religious instinct
developed. He became gentle and sociable, and ready with cheerful
unselfishness to share the many little presents he received with
his companions. He attached himself with great affection to one of
the caretakers. On the death of this man, Sanichar in dumb sorrow
and bewilderment looked from one to another of his friends for an
explanation. They pointed to the grave, and then to the sky. The
boy was deeply impressed, and ever afterwards, if he felt ill, he
would feign sleep, and point first to the ground and then to the
sky. He never learnt to speak, but perhaps he was trying to convey
the impression that he looked forward to following his dear friend.
Two other wolf-boys and one wolf-girl were brought to the Secundra
orphanage, but they died soon afterwards. Whether they had been cast
out by their parents or kidnapped by the inveterate robber-wolves
of the district could not be discovered. They were a witness that
tenderness, too often lost in heathenism, may be found in one of
the most rapacious beasts. With hundreds of little outcasts under
Christian care, they tell of a Father above who remembers even
though parents may forget their children.

[Illustration: THE LOCKHART MEMORIAL.

(_In Lewisham Congregational Church._)]


Memorial to a Medical Missionary.

Medical missions have come into deservedly increasing prominence of
late years; and a few months ago a beautiful tablet was erected in
Lewisham Congregational Church to the memory of Dr. Lockhart, the
first Protestant medical missionary to China, who went out about the
year 1838. The tablet is a beautiful piece of work in alabaster and
marble, and is carved in the form of a triptych, _i.e._ in three
panels, the medallion portrait occupying the centre. On the left
hand panel appears the following inscription:--"In affectionate
memory of Dr. Lockhart, first medical missionary to China, founder
of hospitals at Macao, Shanghai and Pekin, who served the London
Missionary Society with untiring zeal for twenty-six years in the
mission field, and with unabated devotion in England to the last
day of his life. Member of this church for thirty-seven years.
Deacon and Church Secretary. Born October 3rd, 1811. Died April
29th, 1896." The following inscription appears on the right hand
panel:--"This memorial is erected by those who admired him as a
strong man, loved him as a friend, hold his services in grateful
memory, and who pray that his zeal for missions and his devotion
to the Church may inspire all who shall ever worship within these
walls." The tablet is placed on the wall of the church near the
vestry door, where Dr. Lockhart used often to stand before the
service, watching the people enter.


Self-control.

A man who lately came over from America told the writer that on
board the steamer one of the passengers went up to another in the
smoking-room and asked him to have a drink with him. The man thus
invited continued reading a newspaper and made no reply. The other
man again asked him to drink with him. No answer again. A third
invitation was then given in these words: "Sir, I have asked you in
as friendly a way as possible to drink with me, and each time you
went on with your reading, and had not the civility to answer me.
Now I ask you for the third time if you will drink wine, whisky,
or anything else with me?" The man then put aside his paper and
answered very quietly: "Do you see that glass, sir? Well, if I were
to take even a quarter of it, I could not leave off until I had
drunk all the liquor on board. This is why I would not drink with
you." All present admired the man's self-control, and learned a
striking lesson on the danger of putting temptation in a brother's
way.


An Ever-Recurring Question.

Two friends of the writer were sitting in a close carriage,
discussing the problems of life--where we came from and whither we
are going. The driver of the carriage went rather too near another
vehicle. "Where are you going to?" shouted the driver of the latter.
The occupants of the carriage looked at each other and remarked,
"That is just what we were wanting to know." So it is that the great
problems of life cannot be ignored, for they are reflected in the
small incidents of daily existence. Particularly is this the case
with the question whence we came and whither we are going. This can
never be shelved.


The Circulation of the Bible.

Few people have any idea of the enormous number of Bibles published
annually in this country. Mere figures of so many millions mean
little to most folks. But it may give some more adequate idea of
the vast number to put it as follows: The British and Foreign Bible
Society, of Queen Victoria Street, alone publish above a million
and a half of Bibles every year, or more than 4,100 every day. Now,
if each of these 4,100 Bibles was of the average thickness of one
and a half inches, they would, if piled upon one another, reach to
a height of 6,159 inches. As the top of St. Paul's cross is about
364 feet or so above the level of St. Paul's Churchyard, this huge
pile of Bibles would reach to a height nearly one and a half times
as great as the top of the famous cross! Or we might represent the
whole lot by one immense Bible, which would be 66 feet by 47 feet by
14 feet, and would reach from the steps leading to St. Paul's right
to the top of the pillars there! And this would but represent the
output for a single day of only one of the great Bible circulating
mediums of this country!

[Illustration: A BIBLE 66 FT. BY 47 FT. BY 14 FT.

(_Representing one day's output of the British and Foreign Bible
Society._)]




_OUR INTERNATIONAL LEAGUE OF PEACE._


We are glad to be able to report that requests for forms are
steadily being received, and a goodly number have been returned
filled with signatures. To those of our readers who are striving
to obtain the distinction of being the first to send in a thousand
names (for which a prize of Ten Pounds is offered) we would say that
it is not necessary for all the signatures to be given together.
They should be forwarded in batches of fifty or a hundred, and
credit will be given for every name so sent. The following letter
which we have received from a correspondent at Birmingham is of
interest, as it emphasises the fact that the Ten Pounds we offer
will not only act as an incentive to activities on behalf of
peace, but may also at the same time benefit some local charity.
"Please send me," the correspondent writes, "some sheets of the
International League of Peace. If I am fortunate enough to get the
Ten Pounds, I am going to give it to some good society--whichever
our clergyman thinks best. Trusting to hear from you by return."

The following is the form in which our memorial has been issued:--

     "=We, the undersigned, desire to express our earnest sympathy
     with the peace proposals contained in the recent Rescript of his
     Imperial Majesty the Czar of Russia, and hereby authorise the
     attachment of our names to any international Memorial having for
     its object the promotion of Universal Peace upon a Christian
     basis.="

This may be copied at the head of blank sheets of paper, and the
signatures placed beneath; but we shall be very pleased to send
(post free) any number of printed forms on receipt of an application
addressed to the Editor of THE QUIVER, La Belle Sauvage,
London, E.C.

The objects of our League have already been endorsed, amongst other
prominent men, by the =Lord Bishop of London=, the =Rev. Hugh
Price Hughes= (President of the Wesleyan Conference), the =Rev.
Samuel Vincent= (President of the Baptist Union of Great Britain
and Ireland), and =Pastor Thomas Spurgeon= of the Metropolitan
Tabernacle.


THE QUIVER FUNDS.

The following is a list of contributions received from January 1st,
1899, up to and including January 31st, 1899. Subscriptions received
after this date will be acknowledged next month:--

     For "_The Quiver_" _Waifs' Fund_: R. Hutchinson, Boston Spa, 2s.
     6d.; Readers of _The Christian_, per Morgan and Scott, £5; Miss
     Renée Benson, Grenoble, 1s. 6d.; J.J.E., Govan (134th donation),
     5s.; A Glasgow Mother (104th donation), 1s.; E.A., 2s. 6d.;
     R.S., Crouch End, 5s.

     For _Dr. Barnardo's Homes_: A Scotch Lassie, 5s.; Baby George,
     2s. 6d.; J.R., 5s.; E.H., Devon, 2s.; Gertie, Finsbury Park.
     3s.; M.A.C, 5s., An Irish Girl, 10s. 6d.; Madame Scaravaglioné,
     10s.; A.K., 5s.; A Warwickshire Lass, 5s.; Anon., 2s. The
     following amounts have been sent direct:--R.H.B.P., 4s.; A.H.,
     10s; M.M.Q., £5; E.A.H., 7s. 6d.; A.W.O., 4s.; M. M., 5s.;
     M.E.B., 15s.; J H.W., 5s.; "Inasmuch," 6s.; T.P., Leamington, £1.

     For _The Children's Country Holiday Fund_: Madame Scaravaglioné,
     10s.; J. and E.H., £1.

     For _Miss Weston's Homes, Portsmouth_: J. and E.H., £1.

     For _The Robin Dinners_: Alice Bishop, 3s.

     For _St. Mark's Hospital, City Road, E.C._: A Thank-offering, 1s.

     The Superintendent of the St. Giles Christian Mission asks us
     to acknowledge the receipt of a parcel of clothing from Oakham,
     Rutland.


OUR FINE ART PLATES.

Doubtless many of our readers are interested in the announcement
which has been appearing for several months past on our wrapper to
the effect that certain coupons will entitle the holder to receive a
set of Fine Art Plates for a trifling sum. We desire to supplement
that announcement by stating that the pictures will be of sacred
subjects, and will, moreover, be printed on specially prepared
plate paper in order to obtain the best possible results. The
selected paintings are by Lord Leighton, Sir John Millais, Edward
Armitage, R.A., Ford Madox Brown, W. C. T. Dobson, R.A., and William
Dyce, R.A., and the series will form an admirable selection of the
best-known works of these famous artists--well worthy of a permanent
place in every home.


ROLL OF HONOUR FOR SUNDAY-SCHOOL WORKERS.

The =Special Silver Medal= and =Presentation Bible= offered for the
longest known Sunday-school service in the county of =Durham= (for
which applications were invited up to January 31st, 1899) have been
gained by

  MR. JOHN J. BAILEY,
  Newgate Street, Barnard Castle,

who has distinguished himself by _fifty-six_ years' service,
principally in the Sunday School of the Barnard Castle Parish Church.

As already announced, the next territorial county for which claims
are invited for the _Silver_ Medal is

  DEVONSHIRE,

and applications, on the special form, must be received on or before
February 28th, 1899. We may add that =Kent= is the following county
selected, the date-limit for claims in that case being March 30th,
1899. This county, in its turn, will be followed by the territorial
county of =Cheshire=, for which the date will be one month
later--viz. April 30th, 1899.

The names of members recently enrolled will be found in our
advertisement pages.




THE QUIVER BIBLE CLASS.

(BASED ON THE INTERNATIONAL SCRIPTURE LESSONS.)


QUESTIONS.

49. From what parable of our Lord do we gather that the sheepfolds
in ancient times were large and surrounded by a high fence?

50. By what illustration does our Lord teach us that it is through
Him alone we can be saved? Quote passage.

51. In what way does our Lord contrast His care of His people with
the neglect shown by the Jewish teachers?

52. Quote passage which shows that Jesus had never attended any of
the public Jewish schools?

53. In what words does our Lord speak of the Scriptures as God's
revelation of Himself to man?

54. What were the two miracles performed by our Lord at Cana of
Galilee?

55. What was especially remarkable in the miracle of raising Lazarus
from the dead?

56. What reason did our Lord give for His delay in going to Lazarus
when he was ill?

57. What was the effect of the miracle of raising Lazarus?

58. What reason have we for supposing that Simon the Leper was the
husband of Martha, the sister of Lazarus?

59. What information does St. John give as to the character of Judas
Iscariot?

60. What prophecy concerning our Lord was delivered by Caiaphas, the
High Priest?


ANSWERS TO QUESTIONS ON PAGE 383.

37. In a desert (or uninhabited) place near Bethsaida on the
north-west side of the Sea of Galilee (St. Luke ix. 10).

38. It was known as the Sea of Chinnereth (Numb. xxxiv. 11; Josh.
xii. 3).

39. Because St. Philip was a native of the district of Bethsaida
(St. John i. 44, and vi. 5).

10. The Jews thought that Jesus was the son of Joseph the carpenter,
and born in Galilee; whereas they had been taught that no one would
know of the birthplace or parentage of the Messiah (St. John vii.
27, 41; St. Luke iv. 22).

41. They sent officers to arrest Jesus (St. John vii. 2, 32).

42. Because on the last day of the Feast special sacrifices were
offered for all Israel, and the priest, having taken water from the
Pool of Siloam, poured it upon the altar (St. John vii. 37).

43. Because they understood that, as the "Light of the World," Jesus
claimed to be the Messiah (St. John viii. 12; Isaiah ix. 2, and lx.
1).

44. "When ye have lifted up the Son of Man" (St. John viii. 28).

45. Jesus appears to have made the Jews unable to see Him, and so
passed out of the Temple, going through the midst of them (St. John
viii. 59; 2 Kings vi. 18).

46. That the disciples believed in the doctrine of "transmigration
of souls," which was taught by the Jewish Rabbis at that time (St.
John ix. 2; Josephus, "Ant." xviii. ch. 1, sec. 3).

47. By telling him to go and wash in the Pool of Siloam (St. John
ix. 7).

48. The Jews excommunicated the man whose sight Jesus had
restored--that is, they shut him out of the synagogue--thus
depriving him of all religious privileges (St. John ix. 22, 34).




       *       *       *       *       *




Transcriber's note:

Minor typographical errors have been corrected without note.
Irregularities and inconsistencies in the text have been retained as
printed.

Missing page numbers are page numbers that were not shown in the
original text.

The illustrations have been moved so that they do not break up
paragraphs, thus the page number of the illustration might not match
the page number in the List of Illustrations.





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