Mr. Mark Hunter threw aside the paper, and smoked his pipe. It seemed to him that he already heard the murmur of a vast sea, not remote from his own door, and yet unfathomed by him. This sea was the existence of the mass of his fellow-creatures who have no leisure to analyze their own thoughts in the desperate struggle of each day to gain bread. An ed from the salons of a marquise, but he | man, who bade her return home, guardwas never bored. ing the precious blankets, and thrust double the expected sum into her hand. Arab of the town, in shirt sleeves, his last coat rolled under his arm, the need of bread being so bitter in his cellar habitation, ripe for any crime, in revolt against society, was stupefied by a kind word from the same stranger, and a question or two, which resulted in his slouching back to the cellar with the coat on his back, and his arms full of provisions. A girl approached, hurried and nervous in manner, and drew from beneath her shawl a silver lamp. The lamp was small, of unique design, and richly embossed. "Allow me to look at that lamp," said a voice. A stout gentleman snatched it up, and scrutinized the bottom, where some initials were inscribed. The following morning he strolled forth as usual, and wholly without purpose. A whim led him to the east side of the town as remote from sister Hetty's sphere. A month had not elapsed since his return, and yet he avoided the young Erskines. On the east side, wide streets, noisy and dirty, were succeeded by narrow streets, also noisy and dirty. He saved a child from being run over by a butcher's cart, and got entangled in a net-work of passing cars. Clearly his choice of a promenade was a bad one. He paused for the next car to extricate him from the Babel The girl turned, and pushed aside her of traffic, when he noticed the sign of a veil with a fierce gesture. Mr. Hunter pawnbroker. He smiled, and approach-recognized the Martha of the church galed. The paragraph about the eccentric Frenchman, read the previous evening, recurred to his mind. "You can not invest a New York pawnbroker's with sentiment such as may belong to the Boulevard du Temple of Paris, or the Roman Monte," he reasoned. "No family heirlooms in the shape of antique fans, jewel boxes, and watches are traceable here. Every man likes to play Haroun-al-Raschid once in a way, though." No He peered into the place, which was dark, mouldy, and with a sinister quiet about it in contrast with the bustle of the adjacent thoroughfare. The pawnbroker's shop lurked around the corner, a patient monster, sure of its prey-the haggard mechanic out of work, and the careless youth spending his wages in the tawdry billiard saloon of the avenue. object of value met the eye; faded carpets, lounges, rickety chairs, a dilapidated clock, were visible on one side-the wrecks of needy families; for the rest, not as much as a gambler's watch. It was a memorable morning at this particular pawnbroker's, however. The French emigrant's wife came, her eyes blinded with weeping, the last shreds of household bedding in a bundle ready to pawn. At the door she was stopped by a stout gentle "Ah! I never saw another like it," he exclaimed. "I sent it to my brother Henry years ago.' lery. "The lamp is mine, and I may sell it if I choose," she said, hoarsely. "Trust me as a friend, and come away where we can have a little conversation," he said, quietly, and restored the lamp. The pawnbroker blinked behind his counter. He opined that Mr. Hunter was a private detective in search of stolen goods, and rather an awkward novice in his profession. The two persons thus strangely brought together by chance paused in a little square where flourished a few discouraged trees adorned with sparrow boxes, and hemmed in by tall discolored houses with ragged garments floating from the windows. "Now explain to me all about the silver lamp." Martha Davenport looked at him with clear, penetrating eyes. 66 Mark gave it to me on my last birthday," she said. "He had promised never to part with it, only he had nothing else to give." Martha advanced a step nearer, and in- | agony of suspense; then whir! minute quired, imperiously, "Do you believe in him ?" me. "Why should I believe in him?" "Cruel! cruel!" she cried. "You speak as his rich relations would speak. I would go and beg of them, but he will not let They could only show me the door. Mark is an inventor, a great inventor; perhaps in advance of his time. Do you hear? We have reached the end. Why should we not be allowed to live? Yes, we are one household; we came from the West to find work in the great city. I have been employed at the ribbon counter of Hope's fancy store until last week. The forewoman was my enemy since I found a mistake in her accounts a year ago. You know the proverb, when the master wishes to drown a dog, he pronounces the animal mad, in excuse. Well, a package of lace was found in the pocket of my water-proof cloak. I did not put it there. I was dismissed, and without a character. Mark has not finished his model. Yesterday mother wished to go to church, and I saw on the wall, 'Thy word shall be a lamp unto my feet.' I laughed; I feared I was going mad; but I remembered the silver lamp at home. I decided to sell it in order that Mark might finish his model in peace. I did not dare to look beyond." Martha spoke rapidly; her color came and went; she extended the lamp with a proud gesture, and a ray of sunshine fell on it. Mr. Hunter had seated himself on the stone bench, and traced lines on the gravel with his cane as he listened. "Why was the lamp preserved ?" he finally inquired. Martha smiled and sighed. She was not afraid of him. "Mark's uncle sent it from China. He was never heard of again. Did you say Is it possible that you can be " Her companion sprang up and cried, "Take me to this namesake, Mark Hunter." wheels began to move, gliding in grooves, harmonious, rapid, perfect, in the wellnigh miraculous completion of an inventor's thought. "It moves!" exclaimed Mark Hunter the younger. Martha stood on the threshold, smiling, flushed, tearful, her hand clasped in that of a bronzed stranger whose aspect was benevolent. IV. It was an unusually bright and lovely Sunday. Trinity Church was thronged at an early hour with an eager crowd. Charley Erskine was of the number-a slender young man irreproachably attired. As he made his way slowly up the aisle, he was surprised to see his uncle Mark, far in advance, with a party. party comprised a shabby old woman, a pale youth, and a handsome girl with a bouquet of violets in her corsage. Mr. Hunter whispered in the girl's ear, and soon her voice, full and rich, joined in the opening anthem. The Charley Erskine remarked, "By Jove!" put on his eyeglass to inspect this group, and forget them, until dinner-time. "Ah, by-the-bye, mamma, I saw our uncle at church. He was with some people; friends from China, perhaps." "I do not mind, if he is happy," replied Mrs. Erskine, plaintively. The service had been poisoned, so to speak, by a Paris bonnet worn by a friend in the adjoining pew. Affairs were going badly in the household, in addition. The arch Mabel persisted in flirting with her sister's fiancé, Mr. Scroggs. At that hour a joyous banquet was transpiring in the small work-room of the young inventor-a true feast, presided over by the joyous donor, whose spirits and appetite stimulated those of his companions. A pot of roses bloomed in the open window, and on the wall hung an illuminated text: "Thy word shall be a lamp unto my feet." From time to time Mrs. Davenport turned her placid face toward this text, and directed Martha's gaze in the same direction. Martha was regaining her usual courage in the kindly sympathy of this unexpected guest. One could see that she was destined by nature to be the practical helpmate of the inventor, the rock of strength in the wilder In a small room of one of the neighboring tall houses a young man was seated before a work-table, on which was placed a model of complicated mechanism. His face was pale and wasted; he brushed back the black hair which fell over his forehead. With trembling touch he pressed a steel knob. There was a moment of stillness; the young man heldness, the Aspasia of this Pericles. Mr. his breath, and became deadly white in an Hunter was unrecognizable; he laughed boisterously at his own jokes; he told long stories to enraptured listeners; he drank toasts in the bottle of wine brought under his arm to the fête. When the meal was over, and darkness subdued the radiance of the Sabbath, his tone became graver. "I have a plan to submit to you," he said. "When Mark's invention is patented, I will become his business partner. Tut! I know more about business than you do, and I need occupation. We will find a cottage in the suburbs, after the wedding, and build a modest factory near as a commencement. Martha must take care of me when I have gout and rheumatism." "Do not interrupt, Theo. 'If the philanthropists of every city would form a league, and agree to each haunt the door of a pawnbroker's for one day in the year, how many lives might be saved!' Mark always lacked practical sense," added Mrs. Erskine. Mabel eloped with Mr. Scroggs that day. She was better fitted for the position than Helena, the bride later affirmed. The soul of Mrs. Erskine was tossed like a shuttlecock on the storm-clouds of Helena's grief and old Mr. Scroggs's indignation. At midnight she burned a package of letters never forwarded by her to the Western village. She had acted wisely at the time, "You do it all for my advantage," said she believed. Now she shivered, and wept the inventor, with emotion. 66 You have already done more for me," replied the man who had come home, with a certain solemnity. Martha had slipped away. She return ed with the silver lamp lighted, and it glowed, a pure star of flame. a little. She felt herself judged by the dead brother Henry, and the man whose home-coming had developed such unforeseen results. To-day the half-jesting boast of the uncle that Mark was destined to build up fame for his family has been amply ful Mrs. Erskine received a letter from her filled. The manufactory of the suburb brother in the morning. "The idea!" she cried. "Mark has found Henry's son at a pawnbroker's, and thinks he will yet build up our family name. He blames us dreadfully. I am sure I did not know Henry's boy was in New York, and engaged to a shopgirl. Listen to this, children: 'I wish my nieces might have displayed the same zeal in giving bread to their cousin that they evinced at the charity bazar.'" has become a giant structure, the cottage home a spacious country residence, and wherever great centres of industry are created in the civilized world, the name of Hunter is associated with them. Mrs. Erskine is very gracious to young Mrs. Hunter, and talks of proposing Charley as a third partner in the firm. The Hunters remain unmoved by these suggestions, but have left to the Erskines, without dispute, that crest of their mother's, so highly "But that was begging money of other prized by her-the cock gazing at a lightpeople," interposed Theo, naïvely. house, on a silver ground. MY SWORDS. WHERE the sunset glory falls On my else so naked walls, Crossed with a blade of later day, Hangs a sword that, far away, When the world was in its youth, Fought for country, love, and truth. Graven in strange characters on the gleaming supple steel, "Without reason, draw me not; without honor, sheathe me not." Forth it sprang in righteous wrath, If a coward crossed its path; Out it leaped like a tongue of flame, If a light word with the name Of a woman soiled the air; On it flashed through dull despair, As through sanguine dream of victory, at the bugle-call, "Without reason, draw me not; without honor, sheathe me not." Now it hangeth quietly, Jewels shining steadily In its wonderful war-worn head- Casts the glamour of the past over all the haunting dreams "Without reason, draw me not; without honor, sheathe me not." And the blade of later time Straight and plain, unmarked by rhyme, Wearing only, in letters faint, Date and name, and with no gem Fit for kingly diadem Glittering in its slender hilt-deserves as well the poet's rhyme "Without reason, draw me not; without honor, sheathe me not." Synonym for grace of mien, Dropped a wreath of immortelles White and golden immortelles On the head that Death laid low, face and hand against the foe, Of the legend, "Without reason, draw me not; without honor, sheathe me not." Heroes many live and die Whom Fame's trumpet passes by; But within a homely shell Perfect pearls perchance may dwell; Thus these homely hearts heroic in the hour of need are found Wanting naught; their swords are guided, though they never heard its sound, By the legend, "Without reason, draw me not; without honor, sheathe me not." Swords so wielded worthily May be crossed with these you see Hanging now so quietly, Hanging now so peacefully, Where the golden glory falls On my else so barren walls. Jewelled hilt and bending blade, or the straight and naked steel, The old legend, "Without reason, draw me not; without honor, sheathe me not." Ο BOOK THE FIFTH.-DE STANCY AND PAULA. CHAPTER VI. N leaving the hotel, Somerset's first impulse was to get out of sight of its windows, and his glance upward had perhaps not the tender significance that Paula imagined, the last look impelled by any such whiff of emotion having been the lingering one he bestowed upon her in passing out of the room. Unluckily for the prospects of this attachment, Paula's conduct toward him now, as a result of misrepresentations, had enough in common with her previous silence at Nice to make it not unreasonable as a further de- | velopment of that silence. Moreover, her social position as a woman of wealth, always felt by Somerset as a perceptible bar to that full and free eagerness with which he would fain have approached her, rendered it impossible for him to return to the charge, ascertain the reason of her coldness, and dispel it by an explanation, without being suspected of mercenary objects. Continually does it happen that a genial willingness to bottle up affronts is set down to interested motives by those who do not know what generous conduct means. Had she occupied the financial position of Miss De Stancy he would readily have persisted further, and cleared up the cloud. Having no further interest in Carlsruhe, Somerset decided to leave by an evening train. The intervening hour he spent in wandering into the thick of the fair, where steam roundabouts, the proprietors of wax-work shows, and fancystall keepers maintained a deafening din. The animated environment was better than silence, for it fostered in him an artificial indifference to the events that had just happened-an indifference which, though he too well knew it was only destined to be temporary, afforded a passive period wherein to store up strength that should enable him to withstand the wear and tear of regrets which would surely set in soon. It was the case with Somerset as with others of his temperament, that he did not feel a blow of this sort immediately; and what often seemed like stoicism after misfortune was only the VOL. LXIII.-No. 378.-59 neutral numbness of transition from palpitating hope to assured wretchedness. He walked round and round the fair till all the exhibitors knew him by sight, and when the sun got low he turned into the Erbprinzen Strasse, now raked from end to end by ensaffroned rays of level light. Seeking his hotel, he dined there, and left by the evening train for Heidelberg. Heidelberg with its romantic surroundings was not precisely the place calculated to heal Somerset's wounded heart. He had known the town of yore, and his recollections of that period, when, unfettered in fancy, he had transferred to his sketchbook the fine Renaissance details of the | Otto-Heinrichs-Bau, came back with unpleasant force. He knew of some carved cask heads and other curious wood-work in the castle cellars, copies of which, being unobtainable by photographs, he had intended to make if all went well between Paula and himself. The zest for this was now well-nigh over. But on awaking in the morning, and looking up the valley toward the castle, and at the dark green height of the Königsstuhl alongside, he felt that to become vanquished by a passion, driven to suffer, fast, and pray in the dull pains and vapors of despised love, was a contingency not to be tolerated. Thereupon he set himself to learn the sad science of renunciation, which everybody has to learn in his degree-either rebelling throughout the lesson, or, like Somerset, taking to it kindly by force of judgment. A more obstinate pupil might have altogether escaped the lesson in the present case by discovering its illegality. Resolving to persevere in the heretofore satisfactory paths of art while life and faculties were left, though every instant must proclaim that there would be no longer any collateral attraction in that pursuit, he went along under the trees of the Anlage and reached the castle vaults, in whose cool shades he spent the afternoon, working out his intentions with fair result. When he had strolled back to his hotel in the evening, the time was approaching for the table d'hôte. Hav |