He dipped his paddle into the water and the canoe shot forward.

"Stay!" shouted Nelson. "For Heaven's sake, what is your relation with Esther?"

"I'm her brother," said Ailsbury. “My real name is Eugene Urquhart. I don't tell that to everybody, but you've been good to me. Good-by!"

"God forgive me!" cried Nelson, as the canoe shot into the middle of the river and disappeared in the darkness, "for the wrong I have done them both."

He could hardly realize then how greatly he had been self-deceived. The golden possibility that Miss Urquhart might still be his, that the hours of pain and hopeless despair which he had passed had after all been suffered for naught, the comprehension that the assassin of Captain Fernstall was not Esther's lover, were things which his bewildered mind could not in an instant grasp. With a new joy in his heart he returned to the house and sought his room to ponder upon Eugene's parting revelation.

Before he had begun to undress he heard a light footstep ascending the stairs, and the rustle of a woman's skirts in the hall. Rightly divining that it was Miss Urquhart going upon her usual nocturnal visit to the attic, he opened the door softly and listened. He heard her enter the upper room, caught the sound of her voice calling gently to Eugene. There was a moment of silence, and then he heard the scraping of the box upon the floor as she pushed it back from its position. He knew, from the deathlike stillness which followed, that she was standing in mute terror on discovering that the corner was empty, her guarded treasure gone. Then a piercing scream rang through the house, and the sound of some heavy body suddenly falling shook the ceiling above his head.

He knew perfectly well, by that dead jar, that she had swooned with the shock of the discovery, and had fallen to the floor. He seized a light and dashed quickly up the stairs. She lay quite senseless where she fell, between the doorway and the box of books. She was partially undressed, and the shawl which she had thrown about her shoulders had slipped away, leaving her beautiful and bare white arms covered only by the luxuriant masses of her rich dark hair. So, upon the dusty floor of that ghostly room did Nelson find her, lying like a pure and spotless flower which a sudden blow had crushed and broken.

VI.

ORANGE-BLOSSOMS.

IT was but the work of a moment for Nelson to raise the limp insensible form in his arms, to bear it swiftly to Miss Urquhart's own room, and to arouse his mother and Kate. Indeed, the family had been already awakened by that agonized scream, ringing so startlingly through the echoing house at that strange hour of the night. None but Nelson knew the secret of the attic, and there was no necessity for revealing it. They found the unconscious girl upon her own bed, and it did not occur to them that she had not been there during all the night.

"She is ill; she has doubtless been dreadfully frightened. For God's sake, do something for her!" cried Nelson, hanging over the prostrate form in an agony of alarm.

"She has been walking in her sleep," said Mrs. Ashley, "and perhaps she has seen her own face in the glass."

Nelson, quite satisfied with this conjecture, said nothing. Kate hastened for restoratives and cold water. Her brother, his anxiety too real to be concealed, kneeled before the bed and chafed the poor chilled hands, while Mrs. Ashley, experienced in such cases, brought all her motherly solicitude to aid her in bringing back the color to the blanched cheeks, and life to the white and beautiful face upturned in the calmness of death. At last it came, a little feeble, fluttering sigh, so soft that it was almost breathless. Then the dark eyes opened and closed again, and they knew that life had returned once more.

Mrs. Ashley signed to Nelson to withdraw, and so, assured now that his charge was safe, he retired after a lingering farewell look upon the figure on the bed to his room, where, worn out with the anxiety and the bewildering events of the day and night, he hastily threw off his clothing and was soon asleep.

Next morning Mrs. Ashley announced Miss Urquhart to be in a burning fever. In vain Nelson pleaded for permission to see her. He alone knew how potent a cure he could work for that poor, harassed, overstrained mind, could he but have an opportunity to tell her of her brother's safety. But it was not to be. During the day she became rapidly worse, and at night delirium set in, and a physician was hastily sent for. Dr. Mallow passed into the sick-room, sucking the end of his gold-headed cane, and to Nelson, pacing the floor of the library below,

seemed an age When the doceagerly cried: Care for her

in an agony of suspense, it before he reappeared again. tor came down the young man "Save her, Doctor Mallow.

as you would for your own child. Double your usual fees, but save her life, if it be in human power to do it."

"I see," said the physician; "you want me to save her for you. Well, you're a noble fellow, Nelson, and I'll do my best. She is very ill. Everything depends upon judicious management and absolute quiet. Her brain has been laboring under the influence of some extraordinary excitement, and the tension has been far greater than she could bear. If we can soothe her mind we will have her all right in a very short time."

"I know what that excitement has been, and I have the means of allaying it. At least, doctor, let me see her."

“Quite impossible, my boy," said Mallow, shaking his head. She wouldn't know you, and you must be patient. When she is better we will see what can be done."

Long, long days to Nelson were those that followed. By that slender thread of life or death, so feebly quivering in yonder room, hung all that made the sum of his own happiness or lifelong misery. In almost hopeless despair he watched and waited while the little flickering flame of existence grew dimmer and dimmer, and finally went nearly out. To the sufferer herself time was nothing; the days and nights were one. For her, the hours of suspense and breathless anxiety which were realized by those around her in sucli terrible intensity, were swallowed up in one great blank. She heeded not the little offices so tenderly performed for her, kuew nothing of the orange-blooms which Kate's loving hands arranged within her room so carefully every morning. Should she awake, Kate said, perhaps she would like to see them. At last there came a turning point and the eri is was passed. Miss Urquhart was not to die. At his earnest request Nelson was fin y admitted to the room. He was surpied at the e' are which had been wrought in the e. Sice, but could not say that her beauty had not become more spiritual and saintlike.

"I am old von have come," she said, when they had been left alone together. "I wanted to say that I do not feel harshly toward you. You did not know how dear he was to me." He knew that she was speaking of Eugene, and said:

"I did know. I knew you loved him with all your heart, but I never dreamed that he was your brother."

She looked at him a moment before she quite comprehended his words. Then she turned her head away upon the pillow, and said:

"You were cruel to take him from me."

Her words were spoken very gently, very gently indeed, believing, as she did, that her brother was in prison through Nelson's

means.

"You think," said Nelson, eagerly, “that Eugene has been given up. Believe me, he is safe and far away from his pursuers. I furnished him with money and with clothing. I provided him with means for making his escape, and he is long since, I hope, in a place where the law is powerless to reach him."

She turned toward him quickly and tried to raise herself in bed, trembling with excitement.

"You have done this ?" she asked.

"It was little," said Nelson. "I did what I could for him after I learned your secret." She fell back among the pillows again and was silent for several moments. At last she asked, slowly:

“Did you-do this-for my sake ?”

He bent toward her and took her hand in both his own.

"I did it," he answered, "because I loved you, and because I thought you loved this man."

Her hand trembled in his, but she made no attempt to draw it away. For a long time she was still again. Then she said, quietly: "You had better go now. Come to me again when I am stronger.”

66

May I kiss you?" he asked, artlessly. "Yes," she said.

He stooped low and imprinted a kiss upon the pale lips, and then, with a heart bounding high with hope, left her.

In Miss Urquhart's weak condition Dr. Mallow feared the result of this interview, but happily his apprehensions proved groundless. The patient steadily improved, thongh more than a week dragged its slow length past before Nelson was allowed a second visit to her room. Miss Urquhart was fairly convalescent then, and her apartment had assumed something of its old appearance.

He found her propped in an armchair near the open window, through which the wind wafted a soft murmur of rustling leaves

and the faint fragrance of the orange-groves without. Upon a little table at her side stood a vase filled with the snowy blooms she loved so well, making the whole room redolent with their subtile perfume. A little of the old color had begun to return to her cheeks, and Nelson thought, as he took her hand, that never had she looked more beautiful.

He sat down beside her, and near, very, very near indeed, in an attitude of expectation. O foolish little Miss Urquhart! You knew that it would com to this, and hoped it would. Why then look up so innocently with those bright eyes, and smile carelessly, as though this man were not dearer to you than all the world?

She wanted to gain time, perhaps, for she said, inquiringly:

"I suppose you wish to hear about my brother?"

"I have not asked to hear about him," said Nelson.

"But there is no secret, and if there was, it should not be a secret to you."

And then quietly and simply she told the story of Eugene's life-a life so sadly wasted and wrongly lived, that it pained Nelson's heart to listen. The young man had been bad from the first; one of those headstrong, turbulent natures gravitating naturally toward the wrong rather than the right. He had been expelled from college, took to drink, and forged a note. He had ruined his father by a monstrous fraud, and fled to New Orleans to escape the consequences of his crimes, leaving his father to die of a broken heart, and his sister penniless- and destitute. His mother, blessed spirit, had gone to her long home many years before. Through all his sister clung to him with the heroism of woman's truest devotion. She had furnished him with money, shielded him constantly from his father's wrath, always hoping for the best, always believing that he was not wholly lost, and never, for a moment, wavering in her love, or admitting that its object was unworthy of her sacrifices.

At last, for a long period, his demands upon her ceased, and she heard no tidings from him. She believed, and almost hoped for his own sake, that he was dead. Her father died, and she came South looking for something to do. One day the grave gave up its secret, and the lost Eugene stood before her. She never knew until after Captain Ferustall's murder what new scheme bad bought him across her path again, and she

believed that her unexpected presence here was an annoyance to him. Yet he turned the meeting to his own advantage and solicited her constantly for money. She did not know how bad he had become, and she loved him. She gave to him all that she could spare of her scanty earnings, and besought him for her sake, with her arms about his neck and tears in her eyes, to devote himself to some useful and honorable mode of life. He promised to do better and then left her. That night the burglary at the Fernstall mansion was committed, and the unexpected resistance of the captain had necessitated either murder or discovery.

The assassin came beneath her window after the deed was done and begged her piteously to hide him. She did not know until next day what his crime had been. She only knew that the hounds were upon his track, and that his hands were red with blood. Faint with terror she had led the way to the attic, and kept him concealed during all those long and terrible days. Why she did not go mad while the house was being searched she did not know. When she first divined that Nelson knew her secret, and, knowing it, led the officers to the very threshold of its discovery, she had hated him. When she saw that his real object was to throw them off the scent for good and all, she could not trust herself to meet his eye, and had fled to her room and locked herself in, to fall upon her knees in gratitude to God and to him to whom she owed so much.

And that was Miss Urquhart's story, simply told and artlessly touching in its revelation of her own nobility and heroism.

"And now," said Nelson, when she had done," that Eugene, though still alive, is lost to you forever, can you not find a place in your heart for another love-a love which, though different, shall be no less true and great-a place in your heart for me, Esther ?" She plucked a bloom from the vase at her side, and silently picked away its petals one by one. He tried to look beneath her lashes, but she kept her face turned away.

"Have you no answer, Esther?" The dark eyes turned toward him, and then her head drooped upon his shoulder.

"There has been a place there for a long, long time," she murmured, "but I would not let you find it, because it was only the heart of a poor governess, and I thought you would not care for it. Now I know that without you life would not be worth the living."

How much men know! 'Tis a constant brag,
And Science puts on a thousand airs,
As she points to the bright advancing flag
That the names of her many conquests
bears;

But though they are grand as grand can be,
And such vast acquisitions show,
They are but drops to the infinite sea

Of other things that men don't know.

Savans may turn their eyes to the stars,
And scan the wonders depicted there;
How brief the limit their vision bars

In those ample spaces of upper air!
They may dig deep down in the venous earth,
And weigh each grain of the waiting ground,
But they puzzle over the vagrant birth

Of a seed chance-sown in its dark profound. They may read the track of the craving tide That fritters away the sturdy rock, But mightier mysteries abide

Their pigmy efforts may not unlock; They may scale the mountain and sink the mine,

May measure space, and vastness scan, They know not whence the diamond's shine, Nor read in Nature her humblest plan.

And amid the ranks of men, how dim
Is human vision to reach afar!

His brightest beam is but a glim,
To boast the merit of a star;

Along man's journey he feebly gropes With doubtful step, and doubtful bent; His life composed of guesses and hopes, In airs of weakness and discontent.

With yearning heart and with onward glance, He presses along for the hidden goal, Unknowing whether each step's advance

May give him pleasure or give him doleNot knowing if coming time will bestow A bed of thorns, or of flowery ease; Revealing how much he doesn't know, But doing the best as far as he sees.

Even the cup of his thirsty need

Beaming with seeming truth and loveHe shrinks from tasting, with cautious heed, Lest bitter the tempting beaker prove. No finger to point, no tongue to tell

His longing soul the way to pursue; He totters and ponders deep and well, With a doleful sigh, "If I only knew." But moving along by faith imbued,

Though dark the way, it is ever right; Even though not seeing the sweet flowers strewed,

They send up fragrance to give delight; Our hand firm clasped in the Hand unseen, We catch the note of a distant song, And onward move to the pastures green, Where the sight is clear and the day is long.

THE waters of the northern portion of the Bay of San Francisco, passing through the narrow straits within which lie the islands called Los Hermanos (the brothers), soon expand into the Bay of San Pablo, and again passing in an easterly direction through the Straits of Carquinez, open out into what is known as the Suisun Bay. These latter bays of San Pablo and Suisun and the various creeks and sloughs adjacent up which the daily tides force their way, as is well known, are the resort of numberless waterfowl.

In their season ducks in the creeks and sloughs, snipe, plover and curlew on the marshes, and geese in the contiguous stubble fields offer rare opportunities for sportsmen.

Will Watkins and Tom Burke were sportsmen, but not in the sense of the word as commonly understood. Passionately fond of hunting, they had often explored many of the creeks and sloughs tributary to the Bay of San Pablo, and now as the season for game was at hand, our heroes were off enjoying their favorite pastime.

Their usual method was to spend a day or two at some friendly ranche, contiguous to some of the creeks, from whence they could sally forth in early morning, and seated in a light skiff, quietly paddle their way along with the tide, watching closely each bend of the stream for the flocks of teal or widgeon, or now and then a brace of wary mallards.

It so happened that Tom was left-handed in the use of his gun, and seated in the same skiff, Will had only to poke his fowling-piece over the left gunwale, while Tom took all care of the right. But it is not so much my purpose to detail the well-known practice of sportsmen, and the various methods used to enable them to get unawares upon their game.

Our heroes were both adepts in the various arts deceptive; they could float quietly along in the duck boat, covered to the water's edge with sea grass, lying flat on the bottom with the hat band ornamented with flags gathered from the river bank-or if the game was disturbed by too many hunters engaged in the same pastime, it was a favorite plan to paddle the skiff into the tules (or flags) and lay in wait for the ducks on the wing, as they passed and repassed up and down the sluggish stream. Secure from observation by the intervening flags, the poor scared flocks of water-fowl stood no chance of escape, and but one security remained them-to fly so high in air that gunshot failed to reach them.

After an exciting day's sport sunset found our heroes quietly wending their way homeward to the old ranche, their skiff well loaded with game, and themselves not a little wearied from their day's work, or perhaps better called pastime, although it would be work if compelled to perform it, but being voluntary it became a pleasure. Supper over, Will sat enjoying his meerschaum, watching the smoke as it curled lazily upward, his imagination conjuring up the face of the wife peering out among the fantastic shapes the smoke assumed, when he was interrupted by Tom, who had meanwhile been busy counting out the game to effect an equal distribution to the families at home.

"I say, Will, this game should be drawn." "I've no objection," replied Will. "You can make drawn game of it as soon as you like, but don't depend on me for any such operation; the fact is, I never was any hand for it, I never practised, have no knowledge of anatomy, and to tell the truth, I never had any desire to get my hand in. It is a

thing I never could do. You would laugh, Tom, at our experience in this line-I mean my wife and I. You see, when we were first married servants were expensive, and we just beginning a life together. It was a matter of pride in those days for young wives to do their own housework, and when my mind wanders back to those days when I used to have such a love of a servant in my kitchen, I seem to desire to live it all over again. Ah, Tom, just think of coming home from the office, to find Patty's hands (my wife's naine was Patty) in the dough up to her elbows, and if you wanted a kiss, there they were, and you had only to help yourself, for the poor little thing was helpless with her hands in limbo. There was nothing wasted in my kitchen then, Tom, and to sit by and wipe the dishes one by one as Patty took them from the suds-alas, Tom! those days will never return. But where was I?"

"Well, if I remember, you were speaking of hiring a pair of mules to draw this game," replied Tom.

"Not quite so fast, Tom, if you please. I had not got to the mules yet. I started to tell a little of our early experience. You see, Patty was as averse to the business you speak of as was 1, but upon a certain occasion having company to dine, and fowls having been sent home for dinner, the thing had to be done. So fortifying herself with a firm determination, after making the necessary researches in the body of the creature, she followed my suggestion, which was to shut her eyes and go it blind. Ah Tom, you must excuse me, but really, I had rather go without the game. You can sit down and with a pencil and paper draw all the game you like. But let the game go, Tom, I have a roguish sort of a plan in my head. What do you say to a little bit of joke practised on our unsuspecting wives at home?"

"No practical jokes, Will, on the dear little souls who have allowed us the privilege of a day's shooting," replied Tom.

"No, Tom, I never indulge in practical jokes; but my plan is simply this. You were talking of writing a letter to your spouse; now suppose we each of us write a letter to our wives, and then, as though it were done by accident you know, we will misdirect them. You shall put mine in an envelop directed to your wife, and I will do the same with your missive"

"Capital, by Jove!" says Tom. "I think I can already see the fluttering in the camp;