For thirdly, we shall certainly from the end of the punt for the greater ease J. P. MAHAFFY. 1 These ostraka are ordinary potsherds on which of which whole fields remain in certain parts of From The Gentleman's Magazine. I. "ARE you the girl who did it ?" 'I," said Norah, with a smile, "am the girl who did it." All day long and every day, come wet, come wind, come sunshine, Norah, the girl at the ferry, poled the punt backwards and forwards across the river, and many people lately had come to be ferried across by her. They thought there was an honor in being ferried across by the girl who had done the thing to which the vicar's wife from the next parish alluded in the question given above. "Tell me," continued the lady, "all about it. I must hear it from your own lips. I will sit here, at the end of the punt, and hear the story from your own lips." It was nothing, nothing at all," "But I don't think so, my dear, and I want to hear your own account of it." 66 "Why, you see,” Norah began, looking thoughtfully at the great broad stream that even in that summer weather swirled and eddied turbulently by, why, you see, I had just ferried the picnic party across, and noticed what a pretty little girl it was they had with them, and so had watched them making their preparations for tea beside the bank, when, all at once, I heard a scream and saw the poor little thing in the water. What was it, on a summer day, to have gone in after the child and brought her out? Any one would have done it, placed as I was. They couldn't have helped doing it; and it isn't worth a word." "It would have been a brave thing, standing alone. But it is not your first rescue, ," Mrs. Marcus said, with admiring eyes hardly dimmed by the spectacles through which they glanced up at the tall, strong figure and the handsome gipsy face. "Old Clark, when he got tipsy and fell out of my punt last winter in the twilight? Oh, I couldn't drown a passenger, you know! It would ruin business." "You're a remarkable girl ! "" Mrs. Marcus returned, still looking admiringly at face and figure. "Do you really mean to tell me that you're contented with your life, living all by yourself in that little hut (which you keep as neat as a new pin), and that you wouldn't like to try a new life—I don't like to say a better station of life, seeing the noble things you've done in your present one somewhere else?" "I do mean it, Mrs. Marcus, hon estly. P'r'aps if I'd been able to arrange things for myself I'd have had one or two things different. I'd have liked poor father to have lived on, so that I shouldn't have been quite so lonely in the winter's evenings. P'r'aps if he hadn't said with his last breath, 'Norah, keep you on the ferry! There's been Jacksons at Swiftwater Ferry for three generations; keep you on the ferry,' I'd have turned to something else. As it is, you see — why, it's as it is, and here I am." Then Norah laughed. the punt, a little mite of three ; I've changed so very much and it hasn't changed at all! " "And won't, my dear, I expect, for the next five hundred years.” "Unless, you know, they come to make that bridge they're always talking of, and so do away with me altogether. I don't seem to belong to the present age at all, do I? I'm such an oldworld institution, you see; I feel as if I belonged to the gallant days when 'knights were bold,' and there were barons holding sway, and all that sort of thing. When there was chiv what's the word, Mrs. Marcus ?" "Chivalry, my dear?" "Yes; but I wasn't quite clear about "Well, my dear," Mrs. Marcus rejoined, as you seem to like it, and as you are so useful at it, perhaps this ferry's your right place in the world. I don't know, I'm sure. If you'd been anywhere else you wouldn't have saved "But you know a very great deal. two lives, I expect. Fancy it! What I think you wonderfully well edudanger you must have been in." " said it." cated." "Not very much, either time," "All that curate who's gone away,' Norah, laughing still. "The third's Norah said, with a grave face. "All the dangerous time, you know. When his doings, when father was smoking that comes I must be careful." his pipe in the evenings. Night work.” "I hope," replied Mrs. Marcus, "that it never may come !" "Oh, I don't know. If it does, I'm ready for it! Shall I punt you They were nearing the opposite bank now, and Mrs. Marcus looked very closely at the handsome gipsy face, and wondered whether the rumor were true that poor Mr. Chex, curate, of no expectations, had been wildly in love with his pupil and would have married her if she'd given him the least encouragement, which she wouldn't. In the final survey of that face as the end of the punt bumped on the bank, Mrs. Marcus felt she wouldn't have been greatly surprised if that rumor had been a true one. across it. The exertion was of so slight "Well, my dear," she said, handed a nature to Norah that she spoke as un-out by Norah with the greatest care, "I constrainedly in mid-stream as though she had been sitting in a drawing-room with an egg-shell teacup in her hands in lieu of the long pole that bent in her grasp notwithstanding the apparent ease of her movements. "It's strange to me," she said, "sometimes, to think I've got to make just the same allowance as father had for the current; that there's just the same strength in the current now that there used to be fifteen years ago, when I began to learn to balance myself in don't know what to wish you in parting, I'm sure. I don't like to see you where you are; and yet I don't like the thought of your being anywhere else, because your place in life may be here, you see. But I'm very glad to have heard the story of the rescue from your own lips; and I don't in the least grudge the mile-and-a-half out of my way to come and hear you tell it. Good-bye." She freely and cordially held out her hand at parting, did good old Mrs. Mar cus. Norah shook it with her own and looked down at Norah. He was a large but shapely hand, and then got "Perhaps, my dear, the age of chiv- "Oh!" she said calmly, "so you've alry isn't entirely over yet. Perhaps, if come. I thought you wouldn't be long, you keep on looking as steadily into the so I waited to save myself the trouble stream as you were doing when I came of coming across for you, you know,” upon you half an hour ago, one day she added by way of explanation. you'll see the reflection of a knight"Get in, Noakes, please." there. Who knows?" "Ah!" laughed Norah back, "who bore, and supposed to be Christian, and knows?" Then the old lady went her way, and Norah, remaining with her punt where she was, seemed to have laid the advice very much to heart, for she sat in the far end of her craft and stared into the water with all her might. She might have so stared and waited for a period of half an hour; then there came the distant sound of heavy-booted footsteps breaking coarsely on her reverie, and, raising her head, she looked up, not in the direction of the footsteps, but across the stream to her little black-tarred, two-roomed, wooden abode. The sun had got low down in the sky, and had opened a banking account with both windows of the cabin, and paid in nothing but gold upon those two gleaming counters. There were woods both sides the river, and amongst those towards which Norah was glancing a silver moon had put in a chaste and modest appearance to bid the sun goodnight; or, perhaps, seeing the sun so overburdened by gold - he had turned the whole up-stream to that precious metal, in a molten state by that time to see if he would care for a little change in silver. As Norah looked appreciatively at all this natural glory, a sharp whistle arrowed through the silence, and made her start. It was discharged by the owner of the heavy-booted steps, and that worthy stood on the bank whence Mrs. Marcus had previously departed, Noakes- the only name he ever not sur-though nobody, including himself, knew for certain went down the bank, deposited his basket of rushplait, which held his dinner at an earlier period of the day, upon the end seat of the punt, and embarked. "Shell oi shove 'er across ?" he inquired, looking straight up at the distant moon; but presumably referring to the punt, with which the operation would be more useful and efficacious. Norah also appeared to understand the query as having a more direct bearing on the punt, for she resigned the pole into the vast hands of Noakes, and answered, "If you like you can. I'll sit down." Then Noakes, making a good deal of noise with his hob-nailed boots on the lower deck as he stepped to and fro, began to "shove 'er across." For the first three or four digs of the pole in the ribs of the river Noakes shoved 'er across in silence; then he turned his head a little to get a look at somebody's face, and shoved 'er across to the words, spoken in a tone of the sincerest conviction, יי ! du "You du ternight; that you "Do what, Noakes?" "Look uncommon-uncommon sweet; that you du." Then Mr. Noakes shoved 'er across in such remarkable fashion, that the pole appeared wrestling with him to see which should be wholly submerged first. "Don't be stupid; and mind what you're doing. You'll have the punt over if you go on like that." 66 Noa," returned Mr. Noakes, more sheepishly sickly than ever; "oi'll shove 'er across all right." Which he proceeded to do in silence. When he got out he paused a moment, and looked back across Norah to the opposite plantation. "Oi s'pose it ain't a bit o' use o'my speakin' of the thing again?" he inquired very despondently, addressing the opposite plantation, and feeling how many days' growth of beard he had on his chin with a large, rough hand. Mr. Noakes seemed prepared to take this hint, but paused irresolutely for a moment, standing first on one foot and then on the other, and appearing anxious to deliver himself of some great sentiment. " "Yer face," he said heavily, at last, 'yer face is sich a face ter me, that when I sees the sun I thinks o' yer face direc❜ly; an' when I sees the moon, I thinks o' yer face direc❜ly, I du. Yer face seems reg'lar like sun, moon, an' stars all rolled into one; fur when I sees the stars I thinks o' yer face, that I du. It's a queer thing, so I thought I'd better tell yer." Thus can love fertilize the rock, and make flowers spring and blossom in the dust! "It's 'ard," remarked Mr. Noakes, still trying to draw the wood on the "I didn't know I was so brilliant,' other side of the stream into conversa- Norah laughed. "Good-night, Noakes." tion, "ter see yer, day arter day, an' Then did Mr. Noakes, with another not ter speak. Mornin' an' night, night | momentary glance, and a sudden, dazan' mornin', you taks me athirt an' zled turning away, address a hoarse across, athirt an' across, and it seems it good-night to the opposite plantation, never ain't no use me speakin'." shoulder his empty basket and depart. "And I don't think it ever will be." "I wouldn't give oop my eighteen shillin' a week, you understan' - not oi; but oi'd go to it ev'ry day, an' leave 'ee to the ferry 'ere. Don't it seem a pity, now, as it ain't no use me speakin' ?" 66 66 "Funny," said Norah to herself, and thinking of Mrs. Marcus, that she should have said 'look steadily in the stream and one day you'll see the reflection of a knight there;' because, when I sit here and wait for fares, I always do look in the stream; and the footpath happens to be at such an angle that I always do see my fares in the Mr. Noakes was quite pathetic in this appeal to the opposite plantation. 'But," laughed Norah mischiev- water before I see them in the flesh. ously, "there's Elms, head gardener to Mrs. Jessel at the Hall, and he has thirty-five shillings a week and a cottage too, and I've told him it's no use speaking. I tell them all the same every one." "An' they're all jest mad about 'ee," Mr. Noakes told the opposite plantation, with emotion. "Jest mad. Ain't it 'ard? Doan't 'ee think now, as it's a bit 'ard?" Getting no immediate reply from the opposite plantation, Mr. Noakes looked for an instant in Norah's face, and then looked away again hurriedly, with his hand to his eyes. "It reg'lar dazzles me," he explained. "Then don't look at it, but go home," Norah laughed. Generally, they're such awful faces. It is sad to think how many equally Norah began to sing gently to herself, and to watch the lights appearing in the TH cottage windows of her nearest neigh- | one who might have been a great artist bors, two hundred yards away; and if wealth hadn't numbed his natural then, when the summer night was fully powers. Finally, he came to the water's fallen, she went indoors to supper. edge, and said civilly to the girl : May I trouble you to take me over?” Polite as a true knight ever should be! So polite, that Norah felt she'd never said anything half so rude to any stranger before, as she replied: : "It's no trouble; it's my business.” Vale got in and went to the usual seat of fares, at the far end of the punt. 66 "I won't ask you to let me do the work," he said quietly, as he did so. "I can see you're independent, and would rather do it yourself." Yes," returned Norah abruptly, 66 would." I THE summer glided by upon perfumed wings. The river became crowded by various craft, and seemed an aquatic Bond Street. Norah, taking across such fares as required that attention, would have all eyes turned to her, and various comments would be audibly passed upon her by holiday-making They began moving across the stream, youths from distant shops, and by Norah making the same diagonal allowyouths from the great college three ance for the current that her greatmiles away up stream. All complimen-grandfather used to make for it a tary comments, and well meant; but hundred years or so ago. insufferably unpleasant to the girl, who began to find the possessing of that intangible attribute, a reputation," ," is not unalloyed bliss. At last the summer began to shiver itself away in fitful winds and showers. The fresh greens began to be streaked with yellow. But to Norah, sitting daily in her punt and looking at the stream, no true knight came. At last, on one of those early autumn days when summer seems to have come back to look for something it has left behind, Norah, in the old picturesque costume, with the wide-brimmed hat upon her head, searching the mirror of the stream as it glided by, suddenly saw a totally new reflection there, and wondered whether the knight were come. At least, she greeted his appearance with a blush upon neck and brow as she thought, "If I had to choose a knight, he would be something like that!" and then hesitated before she looked up from the reflection in the stream to the man who caused it. The stranger made no comment on anything, and, when the opposite bank was reached, said "Thank you," paid his penny and walked away. "A melancholy knight," Norah thought, glancing after him; "but just the face to look well in a helmet. Quite a pale, dark-moustached, crusading face! I wonder how long he's going to sit on that stile and stare dreamily down here? And I wonder what his great trouble is? He's got one, I'm certain." That made him all the more interesting, she told herself, as she punted back to the shelter of her little cabin. To the great majority of women, a man with some profound, soul-searing, secret sorrow (so long, perhaps, as it isn't indigestion or homicidal mania) is the most interesting and delightful experience. For all women conceive themselves the born physicians of man-at least, in all heart-affection cases. Arrived at the other side Norah moored her craft in its usual place, and taking her usual seat in it dreamily watched the stranger across the river Bertie Vale stood for a moment or as, still sitting lazily upon the stile, he two unconcernedly upon the bank, look-prepared to smoke a confidential cigar. ing at the lights and shadows on the He was deeply thoughtful as he lighted stream with the appreciative glance of that cigar, and performed the operation |