was clever, ambitious, determined, and friendless. In twelve years, spite of his talents, he had risen to no higher post than this humble one of village schoolmaster.

In the same school at Brent, three months after the arrival of Mr. Langton, Margaret Morton had been appointed mistress. She was young to hold such a post, but since her father's death the support both of her mother and brother had fallen almost entirely upon her; and this circumstance, when the place became vacant last winter, had given her a strong claim to the appointment. She had besides been monitress in the school for some years; she was a good girl, too, and clever; everybody liked her, and before she had occupied her new post for a month it became clear that the whole school was of one feeling. I say she was clever. In a very short time Philip Langton discovered that. Presently, moved, I suppose, by some feeling of kindness, he offered, if she cared for it, to help her to advance her studies. Perhaps she too had some ambition, some desire to be at a future time more than a village schoolteacher. Be that as it may, she accepted his offer, and she had now been his pupil for six months. He had found her quick, earnest, and trusting: repaying that trust, he had made himself to her patient, unwearied, and gentle. Master and pupil suited each other.

It was evening, seven o'clock on a June day. The school had long been cleared of its throng of children; books and slates were put away into their places; the brick floor was clean swept. At the girls' room the door was locked, but the boys' room was still open, and alone at the master's desk stood Mr. Langton, a thin, slight man, with a dark, resolute face, by no means prepossessing or handsome.

He used to give Margaret her

"You are late," was all he said. "Yes; I was detained a little while at home."

She had brought out her books and arranged them before he moved from his desk. Coming at length. in silence, he drew a seat beside her, and took the open book out of her hands.

"What have you prepared?"
"Those two pages."

He began to question her upon them forthwith. She could usually answer what he asked her readily; to-day, however, her thoughts were evidently wandering. He tried more than once to fix her attention, but still, in spite of that, the lesson was ill said.

He put down the book at last. "You are not well to-day?" he asked.

"Oh, yes; I am well," she said, quickly.

"What are you thinking of, then? Not of your lesson?"

"No." She hesitated a moment. "Tell me."

"I wanted to speak to you, Mr. Langton," she said, suddenly. "You were very angry with my brother this morning." " Well?"

"You hurt him very much."
"I meant to hurt him."
"He is very young."

"Young or old, he did wrong." There was a pause. Mr. Langton sat forward, leaning his dark face on his hand.

"Well?" he said again.

Her eyes had fallen. When he questioned her they looked back to his face; she began to speak again, and gradually as she spoke her cheek flushed hot and bright.

day's business was that when the door of the schoolhouse closed that afternoon, it closed forever upon Philip Langton.

He had written the sentence of their separation. Margaret knew that, but she did not reproach him. They met together that evening for the last time, at the foot of a cliff beside the sea, which had witnessed many a meeting of theirs before, with the calm wide water stretching from their feet.

"It must have come, sooner or later," he said. "Do not grieve so for it, my darling. I was wasting time here. My going now will only bring me back to you the sooner."

She looked up wistfully to his face.

"The future is all so dark," she cried; "we cannot see into it. I feel as if I was holding the last link of a golden chain; and tonight-to-night before I sleep-it will have fallen from me."

"No; it will not have fallen!" he answered, cheerfully. "Your hand grasping one end, mine holding fast the other, it will remain stretched out between us until the hour that I come back. Margaret, I will work for you; I will struggle for you; I will rise for you. And you," he cried, "wait for ine! for no power, but the power of God taking my life, shall keep me from coming back."

"I will wait," she said. "I will wait years and years. If you die before I ever see you again I will wait for you till we meet in heaven."

III.

SHE did wrong to keep their engagement from her mother. Poor Margaret knew that, and was troubled by the knowledge; but she had not courage to awaken the storm of abuse which she knew well would fall upon her head should she divulge it, so she let time pass on, VOL. VII.-10

and told her mother nothing. She kept her secret for two years, hearing from her lover occasionally, but not often, and living on her silent trust in him.

After these two years were ended, one day, a bright summer afternoon, Mrs. Morton stood at her cottage door, shading her eyes from the strong sunlight as she looked eagerly towards the schoolhouse, whence the school-children were coming pouring out and swarming down the road, and whence presently, with a step that was slower than theirs, came Margaret. Mrs. Morton's tongue was loosed as she drew near.

"Oh, dear me! what a time that school does keep you!" she ejacu lated. "Such a state I've been in all day; my poor head's just worn out with thinking. Margaret, you never will guess as long as you live, but what do you think the postman brought me here this morning?"

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What, mother?" As she spoke Margaret's whole face flushed.

"Oh, you may well ask what. I tell you you'll never guess. Why, he brought a letter from your Uncle Tom, in America-who might have been dead and buried, for anything I've known, these five years-and he's sent us money to go out to him. Yes-he says we're to go out to him, every one of us, and he'll keep us as long as we live. Why, Margaret!" Mrs. Morton cried. "Margaret! God bless the girl, are you going to faint?"

"Mother, come in. Mother, come in and shut the door."

White and trembling Margaret passed into the kitchen. She let her mother join her there, and grasping her hands tight within her own, she began to speak hurriedly, in a low, constrained, almost hard tone.

"Mother, I cannot go; I cannot leave England," she said. "If f you go, you must go alone. No-nodon't look like that at me. I

66

"I am going to be his wife." Her answer came almost triumphantly now. "I promised him long before he went. He wrote to me to-day to tell me that he could marry me. And he is coming!" she cried, the light flashing up into her face.

It was the last flash of gladness that lighted that poor face for many a day to come. Margaret had told her secret, and what followed was a storm of tears and passionate reproaches so violent as to exhaust all the small stock of strength that Mrs. Morton had, and force her, before many hours were over, to her bed, where she lay and sobbed and moaned all night, and by morning had worn herself ill enough to make Margaret unable to leave the house. Throughout that whole day, from morning to night, her daughter sat beside her, listening to her reproaches and her self-bewailings, and her passionate entreaties. For years past, indeed for wellnigh her whole life long, Mrs. Morton had been very well aware that her strength lay in her fretful pertinacity, and her deadness to every other creature's comfort but her own. In former days she had ruled her husband by her querulous selfishness; for years she had ruled her daughter by the same means selfishness was to her her armor of proof, and, as she had resorted to it in countless straits before, so she resorted to it now. Margaret had

worked for her, and devoted herself to her, and humored her, and Mrs. Morton felt that it would be hard now to do without this filial care; and feeling this, whatever a generous and noble nature could least bear to have itself accused of, these things did the mother launch at her daughter's head. She hung herself as a dead weight round Margaret's neck, and then, wringing her hands, called every one to witness how Margaret was about to throw her mother off.

For two days Margaret bore this persecution almost in silence, sitting hour after hour by her mother's side, with her poor heart growing cold and faint within her. What should she do? They were all against her mother, brother, friends; she had no one to take her part, no one-not a single one-to utter Philip Langton's name except with abuses or reproach. What should she do? Hour after hour for those two weary days the poor girl's desolate passionate question went up to heaven.

And slowly and relentlessly, as those hours went on the hope that had been her torch so long paled and died out. She fought for two days, and then the battle ended. When the evening of the second day came she knew that she must give him up.

She must give him up-her love! her life! She was sitting when the struggle ended by her mother's side, who, worn out with fortyeight hours of fretting, was lying at last with closed eyes and lips. She had lain so for half an hour, her thin face shrunk, her pale cheeks hollowed with those two days' illness, and for half an hour Margaret had sat and watched her. Sat in the deep silence-the first moments of peace that had been given her— and watched her as she lay there, sickly and feeble and lonely, till a conviction rose within her heart that conquered her-a despairing

hopeless conviction-that she dared not leave her.

She sat when it had come, and rocked herself to and fro, crouching her head, putting out her hands and covering her face, moaning over and over again some low, un"intelligible, broken-hearted words. She never changed sound or movement till Mrs. Morton's querulous voice broke on her misery. only changed them then to raise her white face to her mother, and strive to utter words which at her first ef fort choked her and would not come.

She

And when at last, kneeling by the bedside, with her face pressed upon her outstretched hands, the poor girl uttered them, giving her broken-hearted promise that she would go, for her reward there came this

answer:

"Could you not have said as much at the beginning," Mrs. Morton said, "without doing your best to kill me first? But you are still as you have been all your lifethinking of no creature in the world except yourself"

IV.

THE promise was given, and from that time onward she was altogether passive. The chief object of every one about her was to hurry her away before Philip Langton could hear that she was going. She knew this, but she never said a word. Living as they did they only need ed a few days to make their preparations for departure.

She sat, on the last night, in her own room alone. Through all the week poor Langton's unanswered letter had lain upon her heart. Tonight she wrote to him.

Like one whom sorrow had stunned into insensibility, she told him all that had been done; she told him of the promise she had given, almost without one demonstration of emotion. And only then, when all was said, suddenly at some stray thought the chance recalling of a

few words uttered long before-all the great agony of her heart burst forth.

"Do you remember," she said, "that evening when we parted, how I told you that I felt as if I had hold of the last link of a chain?" And then

"What am I to do?" she broke out wildly. Oh, my God! what am I to do? How am I to live all my life long alone? Oh, Philip, help me! Philip, have mercy on me! write me one word, or I shall die. Oh, if I could have seen you once more-only once more-only once more before I go! All day long-all night, as I lie awake, I think of it. Oh, Philip! write to me-write to me and forgive me, or my heart will break."

She had been in her new home for a month when the answer to that appeal was brought to her. A hard and cruel answer. This was what it said:

"I trusted all my happiness to you, and you have wrecked it. For this I give you no forgiveness. From your solemn promise to become my wife-from your solemn promise to wait for me till I should come and claim you-no power on earth had the right to set you free. You have broken those promises of your own weak choice and will.

Had I been by your side you had not dared to do this wrong to me. If you had been faithful I would have loved you as never living man will love you now. I would have cherished you as never man will cherish you. You have chosen your own lot apart from me. And 1

The letter broke off here. To this last blank desolate line there was added nothing but the passionate bitter cry-Margaret! Margaret!"

V.

A PLEASANT room, with windows opening to a terrace, and beyond,