self away. The parcels kept falling from her basket as she ran in terror towards the village.

He cursed himself for a blazing idiot. What did he want, rushing out upon the child like that? Like enough she took him for a tramp. And then the question asked---fool!--just as if he had gone about to shame the maid. She had heard no good of him, for certain--if she had ever heard at all. Now she would take against him-be afraid of him-hate him for ever. He stamped with rage to think of it. Lord! and she was as neat, too- as a ship's gig.

He picked up his bundle and loafed uneasily into the copse out of sight. He almost wished he had not come back. Yet he was bound to come. Long ago, alone on deck at anchor watch in Saugor Roads, in the muddy Hoogly, when the hot steamy air half stifled the gurgle of the swift-running tide, something within him whispered, "Get home and marry Miriam. Go to Perriton, and make an honest woman of the girl." After that, all the world over, the idea was near to haunt him. A hopeless momentary remorse-when the Sea Witch, struck by a typhoon, lay on her beamends in the China Seas. And again, lashed to the pumps in the old New Brunswick timber-droger, water-logged in a three weeks' wintry gale in the North Atlantic, it found him as awearying after quiet life. Yet he did nothing. His spirit faltered at thought of the old folk. At last, bending a new topsail-that was in Table Bay, aboard the Glenalvine, of Greenock-there, in the upper corner of the canvas, just inside the weather earing, stared in his face the words, "Craddock, Perriton," and the whole place arose before his eyes as clearly as when he saw it just now from the hill-top. Then the thought became a purpose. He had got to hate the sea. But none of your putting back out of bad weather. Ha! ha! He would get together a few pounds and sail down some fine afternoon in a new suit of clothes with money in his pockets-and marry Miriam, and live ashore. And none of your indoor life-no sitting at the loom for him. He would buy a horse and cart and cruise about the villages with fish.

The picture was perfect. It had never left him from that moment until now.

But how could Miriam keep the girl so trim ? For certain, when a man falls in love with a not a love-child can frighten him very much. married he had made a fool of himself.

woman, it is If she was

Or if some well-to-do fellow takes a fancy to a girl, it is not money can stand in the way of that. But then, Miriam would long for a decent life, just as he longed for quiet after the sea. He cherished the sentiment of the fish-cart too dearly lightly to throw it away.

Someone passed on the road. He only plunged deeper amongst the pine-trees, opened his bundle, and put on his new clothes. Then he came out on the grass to look at himself in the open.

A pilot suit, new and stiff, blue and shiny, with straight creases just down from the shelf. A trifle roomy, but a good fit. He chuckled with joy. He wished to God the maid had not seen him before he changed. He turned up the loose trousers because of the dust. He forgot all his doubts. The hope of years was in that moment of complete personal satisfaction. He took out his money and laughed aloud with all his heart to hear the gold chink.

The sun by this time was over the church tower. He had been lying-to long enough. Ha! ha! He would take a long reach under the lee of the hedgerow, come about and run halfway down the lane, then put up his helm, and into Craddock's orchard, and there heave-to again, and wait.

It was sweet and cool under the trees covered with green fruit. The herd of cows went slowly down the street, and behind them Esau Caddey, aged and bent, walking with a stick as tall as himself.

At dusk the waggon came rattling home from the hay-field carrying the workers, who laughed and sang all along the road. It stopped at the corner to let them down. There was nobody for the Atwoods' house, he noticed. Where was Jack?-and the rest of them?

He wondered who lived there now. The thought flashed across his brain that Miriam might be dead.

From the little meeting-room came the droning of a hymn. He had heard the tune hundreds of times when his father

sang at the loom.

It was slow and made him sad. Then a resentment, as for wrong suffered long ago, sprang up and crushed the gladness out of his heart. He hated the narrow little chapel that owed him a boyhood. In the business of life it had let him in for a bad debt.

Service was over. The congregation came dropping out in twos and threes, then in a constant stream. His stepmother stood aside alone and waited. What could be keeping the old man so long?

Last came a woman dressed in black, and the young girl. Miriam! He saw her clearly. She locked the door and carried the key in her hand. Yet he could not believe his eyes. God! how altered she was! All the colour had fled from her cheek, and her face was thin and pale. The three together walked down the causeway quite close to him. He heard her speak, her very voice was changed. Yet he dimly understood, too, how this was brought about.

Miriam pious!

He had thought of everything but that, and it fell upon him like a blow.

Miriam an Early Christian. And in office! Well, I'm blessed! He watched eagerly. By the garden hatch his stepmother left them and they went in. So Miriam still lived in the old house.

He stayed staring at it as if he were struck. At last in one upstair window came a light, and for a while two shadows went flitting to and fro upon the blind. Soon all was dark,

and the whole village fell asleep.

She lived there, then, she and the maid by themselves, he thought.

In time past you could lift with a knife the back-door latch. He had done it often enough. There came to him a strange desire to go and look around.

corner.

He got in without a sound, and found both match and candle upon the mantelshelf. There were two gloving engines in the So that was how they lived. Upon the table was the work-book and a pen and ink. He turned to the first page and read the name, Mary Atwood. A sudden tenderness came over him, and he said the name aloud, "Mary Atwood."

NO. X. (VOL. IV.)

2

For a moment he hesitated. And with the fish-cart, too, they

But that dream was over.

she had been wed.

How much they earned!

Miriam was as far away as if

He tied the useless money in his handkerchief and threw it on the table. Across the book in great letters he scrawled, "Rube." Then he blew out the light and went.

There was a mystery in Perriton much talked of, but never yet solved. In the copse upon the hill a villager found a new suit of blue cloth clothes. Somebody must have drowned himself, for certain, and they dragged the pit in the next field. But they never found the body.

Reuben Lockwood had topped his boom and tramped back to the sea.

WALTER RAYMOND,

MUSICAL RECOLLECTIONS.

The man that has no music,

Nor is not moved with concord of sweet sounds,
Is fit for treasons, stratagems, and spoils :
The motions of his spirit are dull as night,
And his affections dark as Erebus."

Let no such man be trusted.

THUS wrote Shakespeare; but with all due respect for the Immortal Bard, he was wrong for once. Did not my dear friend, Arthur Stanley, hate music, and was he not to be trusted? Were his affections dark as Erebus ?

True it is, music gives us a new life, and to be without that life is the same loss as to be blind, and not to know the infinite blue of the sky, the varied verdure of the trees, or the silver sparkle of the sea. Music is the language of the soul, but it defies interpretation. It means something, but that something belongs not to this world of sense and logic, but to another world quite real, though beyond all definition. How different music is from all other arts! They all have something to imitate which is brought to us by the senses. But what does music imitate? Not the notes of the lark, nor the roar of the sea; they cannot be imitated, and if they are, it is but a caricature. The melodies of Schubert were chosen, not from the Prater, but from another world.

For educational purposes music is invaluable. It softens the young barbarian, it makes him use his fingers deftly, it lifts him up, it makes him perceive messages from another world, it makes him feel the charm of harmony and beauty. There is no doubt an eternal music that pervades every kind of music, and there are the endless varieties of music, some so strange that they seem hardly to deserve to be called a gift of the