sell the specimens to the people who make up geological collections and museums. It is rather an interesting occupation, for I make microscopical sections, test with the blow-pipe and with chemical reactions, and so forth. The remuneration is far from princely, but it helps, and then I have my little croft, and grow potatoes and other vegetables. In a word, I live comfortably that is, I have all I want. I used to fish in a loch hard by, but I have given that up the game is not worth the candle, for fish is not nourishing in proportion to its bulk; and why should I disturb the trout? I don't wish to annoy even my humblest neighbors. I don't think man will ever shake off his primeval barbarism till he sits down to a guiltless feast.""

"But I always understood these things were created for the good of man.

"People say so; but remember that the animals have never been consulted on the question. And observe that our finer feelings are at variance with our practice. Conceive the absurdity of this: the poet in a lyric mood goes forth on a fair May morn and sits him down, and makes a dainty little canzonet about the lambkins frisking on the mead; then he goes home and dines on roast lamb and mint sauce. I wonder he is not ashamed to look the poor creatures in the face. Would you eat a fowl if you had to wring its neck?'"' "I suppose not."

"Well, but if you eat it, you are particeps criminis."

"But a case might arise when you must either kill or be killed. What if you met a tiger in the jungle?"

"I might be attacked by a robber, and have to kill or disable him to preserve my own life. It does not follow that I am to run amuck among my fellow-creatures."

drawn in a chariot by her two tigers, for she loved her fierce children and the sombre woods, the home of slaughter and swift death, and she drank most gladly of the Hebrus when its waters were dyed with blood. But lo! in the midst of the path she came upon a naked Boy, who stood and gazed fearlessly upon her, and took the tigers by the mane and held them undismayed. And the Dread Mother descended from her chariot slowly and with half-sorrowful half-glad resignation, for she knew that her reign was over; and coming to the Boy she laid her hand upon his arching brow, and said in low and faltering tones, and the winds from Rhodope sighed as she spoke, and the tigers growled sullenly like the sound of departing thunder: Thou art come at last, bright offspring of the Dawn, a nobler Phoebus. 'Tis thine to wield the power I have used and abused. This superfluity and rank overgrowth of life has been an incessant care to me, and ravening tooth and claw, pestilence and famine, coupled like my tigers here, have been my only remedies. But I grow old and am weary of slaughter. Here in thy fair brow resides a power greater than tooth and claw, and pestilence and famine. Use it well, for Reason can never be cruel. Destroy the relics of my former sway, slay the slayer, defeat organic death, chase the lion to its lair, the viper to its hole. I appoint you keeper of my wide domains; check this hot foison of life, and keep it within bounds. Let the mouth keep pace with the blades of grass. For if thou slay, as I have ever slain since the mists cleared off the face of chaos, then thou art not the Deliverer, and a mightier than thou, mightier because more merciful, One foreshadowed in every peaceful sunset, in every stilly dawn, in cloudless sky and waveless sea, shall come and supplant thee, as the dragons of the old weltering world have been supplanted.' So saying, she took off her towered diadem, and put it on his head and kissed him with her, wrinkled lips. Then mounting her chariot anew and lashing her cowering and chapfallen tigers with her bloody whip, all intertwined with piercing claws and jagged teeth, disappeared in the ancient wood, never more to return."

Evelyn had listened to him with parted lips and a deep intent look of boundless interest; and when he had ceased she

sighed softly, and passed her hand across her brow.

Then after a pause she said, "It was worth my while to be storm-stayed to listen to all this."

He gave a low laugh, and slightly waved his hand.

"I must see if the storm abates," he said, and going to the door opened it. The wind charged with snow came whirling in. In this somewhat sheltered situation the roar of the storm was subdued, but the blast could be heard trumpeting amid the distant hills.

"Your conveyance, Miss Markham, is

quite buried in the snow," " he said.

You need not look for deliverance tonight."

"Well, well," she replied, " à la guerre comme à la guerre. And I shall be very

comfortable in this arm chair."

"Oh, but you shall have Flora's room. It will be a pleasure for her to do this slight service, for she has all a Highland woman's respect for gentlefolks."

"Would you like a book? I have a fair supply as you see, but in fiction only the divine Walter and Les Misérables,' the prose epic of this century." "I would rather listen to Casanove," she replied, smiling.

you,

Mr.

'Ah, I would bore you. All heretics are bores. That is why they have so often been put to death. I am, as you have perceived, a rank heretic, only I don't want to convert any one.

"You would easily convert me to greater simplicity of life. Indeed women are seldom fastidious about their food, and are very glad when the gentlemen dine out."

"It is a singular reflection that cooking is the main occupation of most households," he remarked. "No sooner has the lady of the house got up than the shades of her prison-house begin to gather round her. The freshness and hopefulness and inspiration of the morning are expunged by the thought-What is to be for dinner to-day? Say, shall it be beef or mutton, and how transmuted, gar

'By all means. "Much of this is too learned for me," she remarked, with a slight shrug.

"And for me too, unless in my more strenuous moods. But it is well to have books that embody an aspiration and remind you of your vows. Plato, for example-I don't often read him, but his presence rebukes my meaner thoughts.'

"You are a philosopher, Mr. Casanove. As for me," she said, with a tinge of sadness, "I am a creature of convention without any faith in convention. All my paper-boats have gone down the stream."

She walked slowly back to her seat, and seemed to sink into a somewhat melancholy reverie. After a short while she shook her head impatiently and looked at her host.

"Have you lived here long? Do you intend to live here all your life? Why have you forsaken society? But perhaps these are impertinent questions."

"Given a certain degree of friendship -and friendship may grow rapidly-they are most pertinent.'

You have been in the army," she remarked, glancing at the sabre over the bookcase.

"Yes, in the French army. I served as a volunteer under General Faidherbe during the Franco-Prussian war."

"What you fought for democratic France? the country of plebiscites, of universal suffrage, tempered by revolution and directed by political boulevardism ?"

Well, I am a descendant of a Huguenot family, for one thing. And I don't like the latter-day Goths, the scientific Orsons of modern Europe."

"And you killed a few Orsons, I suppose.

"Oh, we were beaten, but we did our best, Miss Markham. I give you warning that I am not a benevolent being. Benevolence is often a kind of lazy purring in the sun. I wish people well-out of the world, if need be. Fair-play first and philanthropy afterward! No, I don't regret my campaigning. I have seen noble deaths and soul-satisfying extinctions." "I wonder how long it would take to understand you, Mr. Casanove," remarked Evelyn with a smile.

Perhaps we wish too much to understand each other. Perhaps we should go on revealing ourselves to the very end, and leave the world with unguessed potentialities. Curiosity is not necessarily love of knowledge. I feel as if the globe would not be quite so interesting if the North Pole were discovered. Well, now, donnant donnant, pray tell me something about yourself.

"Oh, I have been a mere lichen growing on a wall. But it has been a pleasant wall; for the house where I was born is very old, very quaint, and very beautiful. Then my ancestors have left a bit of their character in it, and so modified my character and tastes. One was a musician, and so he constructed an organ-chamber another was a Nimrod, and the spoils of the chase adorn many a corner; another was a book-lover, and compassed sea and land to make a proselyte of a first edition, and so we have a library which contains many rarities; another collected paintings and engravings, and so forth. Oh yes, dear old Daventry Hall has been my Academe, my college, my shrine and sanctuary.'

She leaned back in the chair and meditatively clasped her hands behind her head, manifestly quite unconscious of the graceful and charming attitude.

"I perceive," said Austin, after a while, that you have made a fetich of your family abode. I quite understand your feelings; but you should, I think, resist them. We should sit loosely to our surroundings. We are pilgrims, and should have as little scrip and scrippage as possible. To be too much attached to any person is bad; to be anchored to a house is worse. We should grow on the surface, and not have to be pulled up shrieking like mandrakes.”

66

Two years; and I think it is nearly time to change my horizon. I detect a sameness in my thoughts and feelings which is ominous. As for family associations, they are very pleasant and interesting, but we have got to live our own life, and our own experiences are more valuable to us than all these mouldy records. Let us get rid of lumber, inherited lumber particularly. Why should a thing be respectable because it is old? unless it be old because it is respectable. Happy is the man who has no grandfather, because he does not feel bound to pay him deference. But if your grandfather was a Quaker or a Papist, or an indurated Tory or a vaporous Radical, you are apt to have a leaning that way. It is hard enough to get the grandfather out of our blood without binding him upon our back. Don't let us cast our nativity backward. Orion shines for me as it did for Meno or Ptolemy. Why bind the sweet influences of the Pleiads? Life was meant to be for you and me a perpetual discovery."

"Well, for a groping and tottering child like me it is pleasant to have my shadowy ancestors leading me by the hand. Apropos of music, I see you play on the flute. Will you not play a little ?"

"With pleasure, though I am but an indifferent player. Still, I love the flute. It is a business-like instrument, without arrière-pensée, while your violin is a moody enfant du siècle, an impassioned pessimist, if the paradox is not too glaring, even in its gayest humor full of overtones of sadness. The flute, on the other hand, is as brisk and cheerful as a morning breeze, or if plaintive, never morbid; it is sweet without being luscious, lively without hysterics, an instrument for alert pedestrians, not for lotuseaters. It has even an air of grotesqueness and latent humor which is diverting. The very triviality of screwing it together and blowing through it excludes artifice and affectation, whereas the tuning of a violin is a serious, indeed almost a solemn act.

Evelyn laughed gayly at the whimsical description, and he smiled responsively.

Well, I shall play you Beethoven's arrangement, with variations, of Kind, willst du ruhig schlafen. May it prove a happy presage. You know German, I

suppose ?"

"All but the genders," was the smiling reply, but I like the language.

66

Yes, it will be very nice when it gets a literature," remarked Casanove, so gravely that Evelyn laughed again. When had she felt so happy? She listened to his playing, which, without being masterly, was expert and pleasant; and there were intervals of conversation gay or thoughtful, till she felt a little tired and sleepy, and he left her to arrange with Flora about her quarters for the night. The bedroom was sinall, but delightfully clean and tidy, and she had hardly laid her head on her pillow when she sank into a dreamless sleep.

When she woke next morning she had the blissful sensation of having enjoyed a sleep so profound and so refreshing that it transcended mere physical repose, and was a kind of fresh reconciliation with life. Her feeling of tranquillity had been supreme, and the howling of the wind had only lulled her senses and deepened her content. How delightful, she thought, to waken with the flesh cool and the heart warm! Innocence is justified by the freshness of every dawn. She dressed herself leisurely, and came down the little creaking wooden stair. When she entered the kitchen-parlor she found Mr. Casanove reading aloud to Flora, who was bending over the fire, preparing a simple breakfast. What he read seemed to be Gaelic from its wealth of gutturals. He greeted Evelyn with calm and gentle cordiality, and placed a chair for her.

66 The storm is over," he said; "I think your imprisonment draws to an end. I have dug your conveyance out of the snow, and cleared a portion of the road, so you will be able to get a little walking exercise.'

"How very kind and thoughtful of you!" she said, gratefully.

My motives were mixed," he replied; "I need a good deal of exercise in the open air.

And now for breakfast."

The three people took their places at the table. Flora closed her eyes and folded her hands, and seemed to be repeating inwardly a grace, which Casanove respected by his attitude of silent gravity. The meal despatched, Evclyn proposed to go out, and she hastily put on some wraps. Issuing into the open air, she found the carriage standing clear of the snow which had enveloped it. The air was still keen

though no longer harsh, and the wind had fallen dead. Side by side with Casanove, she paced to and fro the track which he had cleared in the snow.

They chatted together like old friends, and Evelyn was probably more expansive than her companion; for his manner was consistently shaded with an air of respectful aloofness and reserve, which indicated how he interpreted his duties as a host brought into unconventional relations with a lady guest. It was astonishing how much they found to talk about. Even the social themes that she touched upon at times seemed to interest him, though he generally referred them to vast and, as it were, cosmic principles, and his line of comment took a parabolic sweep into ethereal regions haunted by Platonic ideas and prototypes.

Once, after a long pause, Evelyn remarked, half timidly

"You indicated last night that you did not intend to remain much longer here. If you come as far south as London, my father and I shall be very pleased to see you. Daventry Hall is quite near Guildford."

"I am extremely obliged; but it is not likely that we shall meet again," he replied calmly, but with a wistful look.

She was conscious of quite a sudden pang of disappointment.

66

I am sorry to hear that," she said, lightly. "My father is highly cultivated as a man of letters; he held a diplomatic post at one time; and you would find his conversation very agreeable. Both indeed would be gainers, and I would sit in a corner and follow the strange evolutions of a talk between an accomplished man of the world and an idealist.

Let

"I, too, was once a man of the world," he rejoined, gravely. "Perhaps I am but a half-converted hermit after all. us, however, be satisfied with the short and pleasant meeting which the gods have conspired to grant us, and which I am not likely socn to forget, for such planets seldom swim into my ken. I shall think most of you when you have become a myth to me. Take comfort, if you need. it: you shall be planted like Berenice in the heavens, and I shall see your tresses now and then when my sky is clear."

She remained silent for a while, mechanically twisting her engagement ring round her finger.

"Yes. You call ine Berenice, not that I know who she was; but you will suppose that Berenice is speaking. You must know that she was betrothed to her cousin Hector. He was an orphan, her father's ward, and he and she were brought up together like brother and sister. He was an amiable and charming youth, handsome, high-bred, generous; and Berenice had a warm and sisterly affection for him. He became a soldier. But, alas he went too often to the Olympic games, and staked his money heavily. How sorry she was, and how she pled with him! He, too, was full of remorse and contrition, but still be returned to his fatal habits, till his patrimony was sadly diminished. Now Berenice was very grieved, and wondered if it were wise to marry him; for if he as a lover was so forgetful of himself and of her, what would he be as a husband? How could she be happy, if she could not trust her husband? Now what do you say to that?"

"Did Hector love Berenice?" he asked with a quaint smile.

"What did Berenice know of love ?" she replied, impetuously.

He was silent for a while.

"I think she should have married him,' he said, seriously. "A betrothal is a sacred thing. No happiness was ever built upon a broken vow. And if duty brings pain, it is an exquisite pain, not to be bartered for happiness. I have felt, for example, a wild delight as I roamed over the hills in stormy weather with a shrivelled and tingling skin, but a warm and bounding heart, and thoughts as merry as

"It is our only refuge," he replied, almost sadly. "And after all we are only anticipating the effect of time. A few months console us for death and disappointment. And nature is incessantly preaching peace and comfort.

Ob er heilig, ob er böse

Jammert sie der Unglücksmann,

You see me, how I am, and yet I have felt a misery which made life for a time a mere burden. And now I am contented and heart-whole, I sleep well, I eat well, I play my flute, I read my favorite books. Grief is a bad habit. If it was natural, nature would be contracted in one brow of woe, for death and disaster are universal."

Well, I take you at your word," she said, almost defiantly. Berenice mar. ries Hector, and so ends the myth."

Soon after they heard the trampling of horses and the jingle of bells, and going to the door they found Alistair holding in a pair of horses harnessed to a handsome sledge.

"Ah! everything comes to an end," said Evelyn, lightly. "I must leave you now, Mr. Casanove."

While she went to put on her wraps, Casanove talked with Alistair, and ascertained that the road, though bad enough here and there, was quite practicable. He then assisted Evelyn into the sledge, and wrapped the rugs carefully round her. She was pale and silent. Flora, with whom she had exchanged a farewell greeting in the cottage, stood at the door and gazed smilingly at her.

"Good-by, Mr. Casanove," said Evelyn, holding out her hand. And many thanks for all your kindness. Think of me now and then when you are in Brittany."

He smiled, bowed, and stood looking after the sledge till it disappeared at a turn of the road.

II.

Two years passed away. Evelyn had married her cousin and found him an affec