in social questions and economic theories he is prepared to believe in the least realizable Utopian scheme and to be captivated by the most chimerical theories. Herein lies the chief danger to society. Much of the rebellious spirit of the higher classes is owing to the persistent exclusion of able men of social position and culture from a share in the government of the country, directly or indirectly, while this is carried on nominally by the Tzar, but in reality by a small knot of military and diplomatic favorites who surround his person and enjoy his confidence.

Not until some voice in public matters is given to the educated classes, and promotion is facilitated in the ranks of the army-not until timely land reforms have been adopted to complete the work of emancipation in securing the independent development of the rural communes-in short, not until social and political reforms have been introduced is there any hope of these three sections of society becoming truly loyal. The ruling classes, the army, and the people will learn to defend existing institutions when they have learned to appreciate their value.

To know approximately the nature of such reforms we have only in brief to consult some of the suggestions in an official report made to the Emperor by one of the Provincial Assemblies. Speaking of the grave causes of discontent which exist in Russian society, and which at this moment foment the Nihilistic movement, in putting the bulk of the people into antagonism toward the government, they suggest, among other things, liberty of speech, freedom of the press, judicial reforms to gain respect for the laws, an improved system of education, and some sort of popular representation. The Great Empire of Police," in short, is to become a self-governing body, and the system of Knoutocracy (i.e., government by lash abolished by law, but not altogether abandoned in practice) is to be replaced by constitutional government. At present the palace of the Tzars, like a sentinel, stands opposite to the fortress of St. Peter and St. Paul, in which State prisoners are languishing, and, it is rumored, undergoing secret tortures, incarcerated for life in the damp, dark

cells, saturated with the waters of the Neva flowing by the prison walls. This symbolizes the close connection between despotism and secret plotting, autocracy and conspiracy. Constitutional freedom is, therefore, the first step toward national regeneration and the restoration of social peace. Judicial reforms come next in order. At present, we are told by a competent authority," a civil suit is, in fact, an auction in which the highest bidder prevails on the judge to select from the code the decree which he requires to put him in the right." Another reliable eye-witness concludes a long indictment against the corruptions of the Russian courts of justice in these remarkable words: "The nature of Russian law may be described in a few lines-in fact, in a few words-Arbitrariness, legal violence, denial of justice, passive obedience." For such abuses immediate remedial measures have to be adopted, if the spirit of lawlessness is not to spread farther than it has done already. Again, a reduction of the wartax, both in men and money, and a healthy reconstruction of the financial and fiscal system, has become imperative, so as to lessen the burdens which oppress the nation and lame industry, and so prevent a healthy development of the vast resources of the country.

But such material improvements are conditioned by the education of mind and heart in the bulk of the nation, and the formation of character by means of mental, moral, and religious culture. Faulty education, out of all harmony with practical life, and limited education with an intention to nip in the bud the liberal aspirations of the young, have had the effect of producing a rebellious spirit in school and college, so that the enthusiasm of youth has been enlisted in the service of Nihilism. reformed and less restrictive system of education will have the contrary effect in creating higher ideals as opposed to the existing materialistic views of life, and in stemming the current of cynical scepticism which is undermining Russian society.

A

Unfreedom has not only enslaved the people hitherto, it has also morally brutalized them. The liquor traffic of the government, farmed out to irresponsible speculators, has produced and

common to rugged natures. She had always thought there was sympathy between his nature and hers, for her innate reserve was as great as his own; the effort to overcome it had always been like a physical pang, and in the bitterer and more desponding moments through which she had often passed, she too had felt repeatedly as if she could be rough, could use harsh words, and could gird savagely at those who worried her with their stupidity. She had made a great mistake. The ruggedness concealed no deep wells of tenderness, but a harsh, hard-yes, a brutal nature. It was nothing short of brutality to which he had treated her this afternoon. What trembling hopes she and Delphine had built upon this poor little chance; the possible result of so tremendous an effort! How they had planned a course of work, of economy and saving, and patient waiting! They had come to the solemn conclusion that their present life was wrong and degrading, or at least that it was wrong and degrading to make no effort to escape from it. They did not believe it was what they had been born for. Delphine had been much moved by Judith's account of how, while she was at Irkford, a girl had been pointed out to her, at a picture exhibition, as a young artist of promise, who painted portraits and got forty guineas apiece for them.

"That would be the height of happiness to me," Delphine had said, tears in her eyes. "I could paint portraits to earn money to do greater things. Ah, what a happy girl! I wonder if she knows how happy she is."

Their plan had been for Judith to secure their uncle's assistance, and go to Irkford, and, failing other things, adopt the nursing of which she had spoken to her mother; to look out all the time with a view to finding some employment for Delphine, which, they were both convinced, was to be had, however humble. This was their scheme, and had it succeeded, they would have rejoiced more than if they had suddenly inherited fortunes twice as large as their uncle could leave them, and which their mother was always craving for them.

If it had succeeded! How quickly would that road have been traversed,

and how high would Judith's heart have beaten !

But it had not succeeded. Her thoughts suddenly flew off to what was left to the prospect before them of a whole lifetime of this pinching and scraping and starving, and saving sixpences, till they grew old, and friends had disappeared, and joys were past, and death longed for. The effort to change these grinding circumstances had failed; that which remained was almost too fearful to think of. It takes a great deal to chill the blood and dismay the heart of two-and-twenty, healthy, resolute, and untroubled by morbid fancies; but Judith Conisbrough felt her blood cold and her heart as wax at the prospect before her. Nothing gained, and all the few privileges they had ever had irretrievably lost.

An indescribable weariness palsied her limbs, a despondency which amounted to despair laid its cold hand upon her heart. The storm-wind came whistling over the desolate fells, the lake beneath her looked like a sheet of lead. Where was its shining? Where the glory and the dream which had sustained her on her way to Scar Foot an hour ago?

Straight before her the bleak, cold mass of Addlebrough rose, and looked like a monstrous barrier which she could not pass-looked like the embodiment of her poverty, her circumstances, her doom. In the dusk her foot struck against a large, loose stone. She stumbled, but recovered herself, sat down on a rough log by the roadside, and covered her eyes with her hands, as if trying to shut out all which confronted her

all which had once been so dear and warm, and was now so cold and cruel.

No tears would come. Her eyes burnt; her brain was filled with the remembrance of that irate old man, towering over her, pouring upon her angry rebukes for some crime of whose nature she had not the least idea, uttering words of abuse and condemnation. Thrills, hot thrills of passionate indignation and cold ones of chill dismay shook her one after the other. Now she felt as if she must go back and beard the old man in his anger, and tell him how wicked he was that he maligned her, and that she defied him; and

again, she felt as if she must remain there where she was for the rest of the night, too out of heart to rise or move another step.

The last consideration had grown uppermost, and had at last forced from her a deep, tearless sob, which gave her no relief, and only seemed to set her heart in wilder agitation. No outside sound roused her, or would have roused her, less than that which she now heard— her own name.

"Miss Miss C-Conisbrough!" came in accents of surprise.

Judith started violently, crimsoning with shame; the instincts of pride, reticence, reserve, impelling her instantly to subdue and conceal every sign of emotion. But they came too late. Randulf Danesdale had seen her. It was he who reined up his horse close beside her; his face, wondering and shocked, which looked from his elevation down upon her, as she gave a startled glance upward.

He was alone, apparently, save for his dog. Air and exercise had a little flushed his usually pale face; surprise gave it animation, and lent expression to his eyes. He looked, as she could not help seeing, very handsome, very manly, very well. Horse and rider were on the best of terms, and they formed a good-looking pair.

He had spoken her name half inquiringly, as if he doubted the evidence of his own eyes. But when she suddenly uncovered her face, and looked up at him, and he saw that it was indeed she, he backed his horse a step, and bowed. She had risen in an instant, but she could not entirely recover her presence of mind in the same space of time.

"I- Mr. Danesdale !"

"Good-evening; I fear I startled you," he replied, and his presence of mind had not for a moment deserted him.

He had waited for her to speak, that he might know what line to take, and he followed it up at once.

"I must have been sitting there without calculating the time, for I don't possess a watch," she said, with a faltering attempt at a laugh. He smiled in answer, and dismounted.

Are you

"That is quite evident," he said, holding out his hand. thinking of walking back to Yoresett?"

"Certainly I am; having no other mode of conveyance, I must either do so or remain where I am."

Judith had recovered her outward self-possession, but her answers were curt, and there was bitterness in her tone, and the mental agony which she was obliged to suppress forced from her certain tones and expressions which were unlike her usual ones.

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Then," said he, " since I have been fortunate enough to overtake you" (with as much gravity as if he had overtaken her walking at the rate of three miles an hour), "allow me to have the honor of escorting you home. I of course have to pass through Yoresett on my way to Danesdale Castle."

"I cannot think of detaining you. Pray ride on," said Judith, who, however, had begun to move onward, while he, slipping the bridle over his arm, paced beside her, and his horse, his friend, followed him. "I shall enjoy the walk. I rode as far as Hawes, indeed beyond, this morning, to have lunch with the Sparthwaites. Do you know the Sparthwaites ?''

"By name, of course. Not personally-at least, I only just know them to speak to."

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But your uncle, Mr. Aglionby-" "Oh, Mr. Aglionby is on terms of friendship with many people whom we don't know at all. When my father was living, he was the vicar of Yoresett, and he and my mother of course visited with all these people. Since his death, my mother has been unable to visit anywhere. She cannot afford it."

"I beg your pardon-" began Rand If.

"Not at all," she answered, in the same quick, spasmodic way, as if she spoke in the intervals of some physical anguish. "I only think it foolish to pretend that there are reasons for not visiting people which are not the real reasons, and concealing the real one, which covers all the others, and is simply -poverty," said Judith distinctly. It was not her wont to speak in this way, to flaunt her poverty, as it were, in the face of one better off than herself. she was not her usual self at this moment. What she had just gone through seemed to have branded the conscious

But

ness of her misfortunes so deeply into her heart, with so burning and indelible a stamp that it would be long before she would be able to give her undivided attention to anything else. A week ago she would have recoiled with horror from the idea of thus hardly and nakedly stating the truth of their position to young Danesdale; she would have felt it an act of disloyalty to the hardships of her mother, an unwomanly self-assertion on her part. Now she scarcely gave a thought to what she said on the subject, or if she did it took the shape of a kind of contempt for her own condition, a sort of "what does it matter? He knows perfectly well that we are half-starved wretches-why should he not hear it, and learn that he had better go away and leave us to our natural obscurity?"

But for one slight circumstance, Judith would almost have supposed that Randulf had really forgotten or not noticed the strange position in which he had found her, "crying in a hedge," as she scornfully said to herself. That circumstance was, that he neither drawled nor stammered in his speech, but spoke with a quick alertness unlike anything she had imagined him capable of assuming. This convinced her that he was turning the case over in his mind, and wondering very much what to think of it. She knew nothing of his character. Of course he was a gentleman by birth and breeding. Was he a gentleman, nay, more, a man, in mind and behavior? Would he be likely to receive a confidence from her as a sacred thing? or would he be capable of treating it lightly and perhaps laughing over it with his friends? She knew nothing about him which could enable her to give even a conjecture on the subject. But the confidence must be made, the favor asked.

"Mr. Danesdale," she said abruptly, after they had walked on for some little time, and saw the village of Bainbeck below them, and the lights of Yoresett gleaming in the distance, and when she felt that the time for speaking was not long.

"Yes, Miss Conisbrough."

it.

"Were you not? Pray do not deny I am sure you were.' "Since you speak in that way of it, I was more than surprised. I was shocked and pained."

"Poor relations are very troublesome sometimes. I had been troublesome to my uncle this afternoon, and had got well snubbed-more than snubbed-insulted, for my pains."

The old r-rascal!" observed Randulf, and Judith almost smiled at the naïve way in which he revealed how readily he had associated the cause of her trouble with Mr. Aglionby.

"I left his house in indignation. I cannot of course tell you what had happened, nor can you have any concern to know it. I was thinking about it. I shall never be able to tell it to any one but my sister Delphine, for it concerns us alone; so, as you have accidentally seen that something was wrong, would you mind, please-not mentioning you can understand that I do not wish any one to hear of it."

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"It is natural on your part to ask it," said he, but I assure you it was unnecessary, so far as I am concerned. But I give you my word, as a gentleman, that whoever may hear of the circumstance will not hear of it from me. Pray regard it, so far as I am concerned, as if it had not happened."

He spoke with a grave earnestness which pleased Judith extremely and sent a glow of comfort to her chill heart. The earnestness sat well on the handsome young face. Looking up, as she thanked him for his promise, she thought how young he did look, and happy. She herself felt so old-so incalculably old this afternoon.

"I thank you sincerely," was all she said.

"The s-storm's close at hand,” observed he the next moment, displaying once more the full beauty of his drawl and his hesitation, "I shall be in for a drenching, in more ways than one."

"As how?" she asked, in a tone almost like her usual one.

"From the rain before I get to Danesdale Castle, and from my sister's looks when I walk in late for dinner and take my place beside the lady whom I ought to have been in time to hand in." Oh, and it will be my fault?"’