yours,' murmured his sister, fighting valiantly against a hard ball that seemed sticking in her throat.

Lennard threw his thin arms round her neck and kissed her before he went on.

'To-day I went to the rehearsal, but couldn't play. The violin would do nothing but wail. So I begged them to let me off. Then I started for her house. I have spoken to an old woman who nursed her the time she was born, and I was allowed in. O Nell, I went all over the lovely place, filled with pictures and flowers; and in Mr. Seymour's study there is a likeness of her. Nell, I couldn't help it if the old woman saw me, but I went down on my knees before it.'

He paused a moment; and Nell soothed him with pats on his head and back, which in her agitation were more violent then she wot of. 'Poor boy poor boy she whispered.

And her own room, Nell: it's like a fairy's bower in the Prince's Theatre-all pink silk and white lace; a canary bird in a little brass cage; a chair by the window where she used to sit; and, Nell-'

'Yes, dear!'

'On a tiny table there was a glove. Nell, it is the first time in my life that I forgot what mother used to tell us, "keep your hands from picking and stealing," when the old woman was looking the other way, I slipped the glove into my breast. See!'

He pulled out a primrose glove that Titania might have worn; then hastily pushed it back in its hiding place, as though it were too sacred a thing for even Nell's eyes to look upon.

Then he lay on his hard humble couch, and told his sister the whole story, the poor pathetic little story, that meant so much in his dreamy imaginative soul.

'I feel as if I should die if she

stays in America,' he said. 'When she was here, even if I didn't see her, it seemed to give me new life; but to know that she is so far away makes me feel as if some chord in my heart was so stretched that it must break. I can feel it trembling to-night, Nell.'

Nell did not attempt to argue with him. She only listened patiently, caressing him until at length he grew quiet and fell asleep.

Nell's work was forgotten. She sat rolled up in a monster ball at the foot of the couch, her forehead puckered into a dozen wrinkles as she essayed to find means which might bring a little comfort and happiness to the boy.

Her great little heart was wrung when she looked at him slumbering there so white and so fragile, as though the first puff of Zephyr's wing would blow him straight into his place among the holy angels. His long lashes shadowed marble cheeks; his small mouth quivered and twitched as though he suffered even in sleep.

'She loved him so!' murmured the child piteously. It would kill her over again to see him so unhappy; and she put him in my charge too! Who would ever have thought that those trumpery baskets of flowers would have caused so much misery! I ought to have been put into the lions' den with Daniel for having thought of such things.'

Suddenly her face brightened. She fairly clapped her hands in noiseless triumph; and creeping to the stove she put the water on to boil.

'Lennard shall have the news comfortable, along with his tea,' she thought.

When the boy got up she pushed him into the easiest of the rushbottomed chairs, and put his evening meal alongside of him. Then she perched herself on the deal table, and began.

'I have something to say, Lennard. Listen now with both your ears wide open; but drink your tea first, or I'll be as obstinate as Balaam's ass, and not open my lips. There! Now eat a little atom of bread. What a wicked old woman that must have been who lived in the shoe, Lennard! who put her children to bed without any supper. Now I like you to eat-do try.'

He ate a mouthful languidly; then dropped the slice of bread on the plate the food literally sickened him.

'What is your news, Nell?'

'If you thought you would see her again soon, would you promise to get well?'

Oh, wouldn't I!'

'And would you try and finish that nice thin slice that I cut so carefully, and buttered so thick ?' 'Yes!'

'Finish it then, and you won't repent it.'

He opened his lovely blue eyes wide, and stared at her in amazement. Then he swallowed mouthful after mouthful, making a wry face.

She nodded her small head in intense satisfaction as she marked the last morsel disappear.

'I have been thinking,' she said solemnly. I don't believe in having a head for nothing. I have been thinking-'

Nell, say quick!'

"That you play the violin like an angel-only it's harps they use, don't they? But no matter. You can play and sing; and father, too, is clever when I am by to keep him straight.'

Nell, please be quick!'

The boy was sitting erect now; light flashing from his sapphire eyes-a beautiful wild-rose bloom flushing his cheeks.

'I am getting to it,' she answered slowly. I want us all to start out and give concerts in America.

VOL. XXI.

They'll be sure to hear of your wonderful music, and you'll see her again, besides making such a lot of money that you'll be like a prince, or the Grand Pashar Mrs. Keane told me about.'

'And I shall grow famous!' cried the boy, in an ecstatic voice, seizing on her idea with a fullness and breadth which she had not reached herself. 'O Nell, we can do it! I know we can!'

'We will do it!' Nell replied, jumping off her perch and stamping the floor with her diminutive boot, as though defying Fate to interfere with her wonderful plan.

'It is a heavenly thought!' Lennard went on in raptures. 'You are like an angel to me, Nell! We will get ready and start next week; there's sure to be emigrants going soon. Father will go—you can coax him, Nell.'

'Of course I can; and the travelling will make you quite well again. Lennard; and how glad she'll be, when she looks down, to see it.'

'I am well already; you have cured me!' the boy said brightly.

But a sharp pain smote the girl as she watched his flushed face and burning eyes, lighted up into newer beauty by the hope she had brought into his darkness.

Nell had not nursed Ralph Pierce's daughter without learning the sad significance of such fitful bloom and unnatural fire.

'I must practise to-night. I wish father would come in, Nell; I want to know what he thinks of our plan.'

'Leave that to me; I am going to be the agent and business manager of the concern. You've too much music in your head. I'll go and see the man at the eating-house to-morrow. He's been to foreign parts, and he'll tell us exactly what we are to do.'

'I shall see her again, Nell! She liked my music, and will be sure

PP

to come to hear it; and when they applaud me, she'll be pleased, I know. Perhaps she'll feel I do it all for her. O sister Nell, you have made me so happy; you have given me new life.'

And Nell tried to smile as she listened, but somehow her little heart sank like lead as she looked at him.

CHAPTER XLVI.

SHANTY LIFE.

'UP by the Yuba River, with twenty thousand fair smooth acres lying near; cattle scattered over the boundless plain; a log hut shadowed by the fragrant blue-green leaves of the tall eucalyptus; above a delicious Californian sky.'

This was what Steven Keane had pictured to his wife.

There was a sorry contrast between the picture and the reality. The devoted woman had tracked him to a wooden shanty,' close to a narrow running stream-an arm of the noble Hudson. In the curve of this stream half a dozen of these shanties clustered. All the dwellings in the place were new. Some of them so recent in their construction that tufts of green leaves might be found still clinging to the logs, and close by the ground was choked up with a litter of broken stones and halfdried beds of mortar, bits of lath and blocks of refuse timber, around which the vivid grass was still growing, as though nothing could suppress its exuberance. The poisonous vine, trampled down by the workmen, started up again, and creeping with its lovely spotted foliage across the loose stones, seized upon the logs and climbed round the eaves of the huts.

A new and important railway was in construction, commencing

at Haarlem, an outskirt of New York, from which place the mushroom village of shanties was situated some fifteen miles.

Nature had munificently favoured the spot, as well as its adjacent villages of Pelhamville, Mamaroneck, and New Rochelle. The river wound round like a silver bow; the ground was above the level plain, and overlooked the tallest and most luxuriant grass that ever tangled itself into gorgeousness with the bright colouring of wild flowers-abundant as itself, and rich as the tints of a sunset sky. At close of day the scene was beautiful. The water sent up sparkles of light here and there, as the dying sun shed flashes of scarlet or gold upon it and on the 'shanties' with their clinging vines. The owners of these huts were workers on the railroad, and the contrast of Steven Keane's picture to the reality was this:

In the picture promises of wealth, domestic happiness, a better life were prominent.

In reality were poverty, trust betrayed, and old besetting sins.

The shanty life had its hour of rest, however, like lives elsewhere; and that hour of rest had fallen. The trees seemed set on fire by drifting flame tints let loose by the setting sun; the river was partly in shadow, partly sparkling with gleams of gold, but along its banks was all cool green shadow.

On these banks two persons were lingering; evidently it was the old, old story-sweeter each time it is told-that, falling from the lips of the man, flushed the woman's cheek into such radiant bloom.

He was about twenty-seven, and had a handsome thoroughbred face, that bore upon it an impress of matured thought not usual at that age; and he was a splendid specimen of manhood, tall and athletic in figure.

She had barely reached the perfection of her beauty, but her face was sweet and winsome enough as she listened with downcast eyes to the tale, as full of witchery now as when Adam whispered it to Eve in the fragrant bowers of Paradise.

All at once the man seized the two white hands that gleamed like snow rifts in the partial light.

Ethel,' he murmured, 'don't you believe me?'

She lifted her eyes from the shelter of their long lashes, gave him one look, then veiled them again; but over her face beamed a smile so sudden and brilliant, that he uttered a cry of delight, and catching her in his arms, he kissed her passionately.

'You love me, Ethel !'

She glanced up at him softly. 'Bernard, who was that girl I saw you with one night at the theatre at Liverpool ?'

He started, and released her gently from his clasp. She looked at him in surprise. The colour had deserted his cheek, a shadow swept over his eyes, and a shiver of pain seemed to pass over him.

'I am sorry you asked me that just now, Ethel; for an hour like this should be all joy, and I should have told you later. I will answer you now, however: that woman was my wife.'

"Your wife!

A storm of crimson rushed over the girl's fair placid face. It seemed as though a bullet had passed through her heart.

'I am sorry to have been so abrupt. Forgive me,' pleaded Bernard Keane, troubled by her evident agitation.

Your wife! and you loved her! cried Ethel Seymour; so new to pain that she thought it was killing her.

Yes, I loved her. Forgive me; but I did!'

'As you love me-better than

you love me!

How dare you talk

to me as you have been doing! I shall go home!'

She made some hurried steps, but he caught her waist.

'Not till you have listened to me, dearest; not till you have forgiven me for that which was no crime-at least against you.'

'I cannot forgive-it was a deception! I thought you so true, so honourable-'

Ethel suddenly lifted both hands to her face, and burst into a passion of tears. Bernard tried to soothe her, but she began to sob.

'Ethel,' he said gently, but with firmness, 'you must not be angry with me for a thing that happened long before I knew you. If you could but understand how deeply your reproaches hurt me, you would refrain.'

'But you loved her enough to marry her?'

'Darling, give me your hands, and look in my face, and tell me if it is a deceitful one. You are almost smiling now. O my sweet one, how beautiful you are with those tears on your long lashes! Do you believe that I ever did, or ever could, love any one as I love you?'

'Are you sure? She was lovely, with such large black eyes and shining hair. Bernard, I hate her!'

'Do not say that, Ethel. She is dead!'

Unconsciously he lifted his hat as he said the words, and looked upwards to the heaven where he believed Ursula to be.

The girl gave a shiver and began to cry again, but more quietly than before. At last she turned up a forgiving pair of eyes to his, and said in sweet womanly fashion,

'Tell me all about her.'

He told her the whole sad story: how he had been thrown in the way of Ursula Pierce; how he had compassionated her loneliness, ad

miring her talent, untamed and ignorant as she was; how he had helped her, pitied her, loved her, and in the end secretly married her. Then he told her of the journeys he had taken to see her, and of the last time he had looked on her face. This was the reason of his secrecy. Death had put a seal upon his marriage, and he had shrunk from speaking of it to any one, especially as his heart had gone out so entirely to another.

Ethel listened to him with mingled feelings of curiosity and pain, but after all she was a sensible girl. By degrees her tears abated, and she exalted her lover into a hero of romance. But the subject had brought so many sad memories to Bernard, that the hour which had opened so brightly closed in shadow. He could not be wholly happy when the thoughts of beautiful, faulty, and impulsive Ursula had been so unexpectedly thrust upon him.

Ethel had unconsciously dashed the sweetest moments of her own life with painful shadows when she mentioned the woman who at first had only excited her curiosity, but later, when she learned to love Bernard, vague but bitter jealousy. She was too wise and right-hearted, however, to feel more than a passing pang at the discovery that her own pure first love must accept a second place in the life she had hoped to fill entirely. It wounded her selflove and hurt her pride at first, but that soon passed away. Bernard had in fact committed no wrong against any one, save by a secrecy that sprang from kindness.

After

all, this married life of his amounted to scarcely more than a dream. How could she cherish jealousy of a woman who was lying in her grave?

If Bernard Keane felt unhappy, he only gave evidence of it by a silence which settled upon both.

They turned and walked towards the village just as the stars peeped out in the clear American sky, and fireflies dotted the bushes with diamond sparks. They paused before one of the larger and superior built log houses, which Mr. Seymour, as one of the chief men of the new railroad company, inhabited with his wife and child.

Ethel turned her face to the starlight before she opened the door. Her big blue eyes were full of deprecation, her fair face looked a hundred times fairer enframed in the flaxen hair that glittered like gold.

Bernard Keane held out his hand. His features were pale and rigid in the dim light, and he gazed at her imploringly as though he feared she was going to leave him with hard thoughts in her breast.

'Ethel !' 'Bernard !'

He caught her to him again in a quick embrace.

'Have you forgiven, my darling?"

'We will never think of her again,' she whispered.

After that he walked away past his mother's cabin, wanting solitude; and Ethel, lingering in the dark passage of her primitive home, cried just a little, but more from happiness than pain.

CHAPTER XLVII.

THE DEMON OF DRINK. THE little wooden door of the shanty was open, and Mrs. Keane sat near it. An hour ago she had seen her son and Ethel Seymour lingering in the shadows, and the sight had set her dreaming, as mothers will dream of the welfare of their children. Since the poor