Eagerly had I come to the inn, full of enthusiasm at my search for my friend Basil being come to an end; now, notwithstanding, I lolled there in my chair without a word of inquiry, without the desire to speak or to know, in lethargy serene, and well content to sit with the old clown in the silence till night should come down and the twinkle of candles in the windows of the inn should call us to rest. Presently, however, came the maid, carrying a tray upon which was spread my meal. She brought to my knees a low three-legged table and set the tray thereon. The sight of the brown bread and the yellow cheese richly enlivened me, and when the maid, having gone again to the house, returned with a pint tankard of old ale I almost laughed aloud. I rose, and, with a pretty bow to the maid and a wink to the landlord, took a long pull at the stuff, gazing over the froth as I did so at the weather-cock upon the inn top, all of a glitter in the reddening sun. When I replaced the tankard upon the table the maid had already tottered a few steps towards the house. I called loudly. The sound of my voice seemed as sudden as à clap of thunder in the quiet place.

"No, no, my dear." said I. "you must give a tired traveller your pretty company and chat with him. There are some few questions I wish to put ye."

She turned about with her right hand upon her bosom and her red hair falling in wisps upon her wrinkled forehead. She came very slowly and stood a few paces distant. I slashed at the loaf with excessive zest.

"Poor soul!" whimpered the old man. "A right eno' lassie was Janie, ruddy as a winter apple; ay, full of trickins and

"But, sir," said the maid, facing the sun, "here it do seem a wearisome long journey to the yard. Most of us be old folks e'en at fifteen, but in the yard not a one under ninety. I do miss me fayther's farmyard. I look for the jangle of bells and the baa of the sheep. And my fayther had a daw. Here the day is always noon, and the night la! a wearyin' hour for the spirits to walk.” "Tut, tut, you want a holiday," said I, chewing my bread and cheese, for 1 was very hungry. "The neighbors should wake a clamor in this mossy place, should rummage and drive away the silence. 'Pon my word, you shall take a walk with me this very sunset.” The old man smiled at his apple-trees, heavy with young fruit. "Thou be'st a stranger for sure-naybors!"

Then I remembered with new surprise how barren and deserted was the highroad, how empty were the fields, and how desolate the gardens.

"The lassie shall take a walk on my arm," said I, "and see that God made the world."

"I would no' think that God might be so cruel," said the maid.

I jumped in my chair. "Will you drink with me, sir?" said I with pomposity to the landlord, but I could not otherwise than stare at the red-haired, meagre girl in the sunlight.

"Nay," said the old man, "I'll not drink with thee. Jollity eno' for the morn, a gaudy dizened jollity, but for what is t' end of 't?-a rainbow in sleeping-time. And then the going down of the red sun. Sure we play wi' our toys, and a lean wisdom clucks l' the throat and calls 'em bubbles. Mebbe God's i' the bubble. Who knows? He drives us all into the pen. The day be late. The dew falls very heavy at times."

I was sick of speech, and set to my victuals with poor simulation of relish. When I had finished my joyless meal, I spoke again. Try as I would, my voice was bereft of its ring; weariness was again stealing upon me. "I have come a long distance to find a friend.

Men have pointed me out this village, have told me that here I shall find him. Pray, sir, do you know my friend, Mr. Basil Gray?"

The old man never turned his palsied head. He peered at me vacantly out of the corners of his feeble eyes. "I know o' the name," said he.

"He lives in the Grey House," said the maid; "an old man wi' beautiful silver hair. I know him, sir, in the Grey House, where the owls hoot o' nights, and ivy bursts in at the windows."

"Silver hair!" said I, in dismay. "His hair is black, and his voice loud and full. Good people, you live in this remote nook out of the world, and you look at all things through an old man's spectacles. Silver hair! Now, my pretty maid, you shall show me the house. I am tired of being alone. Fancy this, I have not a friend alive but Mr. Gray. In the midst of a hale hearty life to be alone! Fancy it! Now, little maid, come away."

I thought the old man smiled faintly at something in my speech. I cannot say. I spoke very tenderly, for a sudden pity and a new sympathy had come into me for the frail child. Perhaps some day I shall need the like, thought I. So I put my arm round her waist, and we went together into the house. When we reached the steep steps I saw upon the topmost a little child. This pleased me greatly. "And whom does this mite, this · flower-maiden belong to?" said I. "Now, little one come and play with me. Many years have gone by since I was a little child. Come along. Put on the bonnet, and we will gather pretty posies and weave daisy-chains. Dear me, it seems that my mother taught me but yesterday."

I talked ilke a pantaloon. The little child climbed up and stood in the doorway, its tiny thin finger in its mouth, and its round grey eyes looking into my eyes, and looking out at something far away, something which seemed to catch my breath, to lay an icy finger upon my heart.

"I am tho tired," lisped the little creature; "and mummy thayth the pothieth 'll die in my hot hands."

arm round the maid's waist, for she seemed to have become an unwonted comfort to me, we passed into the house. The maid led me through the tiled passages upon which the red sun shone. The reflected ruddiness of the bricks prettily reddened her cheek. Together we went up the wide and twisted staircase and i to a little room, clean and white, which overlooked the old man sitting solitary in the garden. Far away in the soft blue haze were the ruinous tower of the church and the beckoning gravestones.

"A pretty white room, lassie," said I. "Sure it be very quiet," said she, "and sometimes I think there be talkers in the air, and sometimes, as it were, birds at sundown. When I be lying wake i' the long nights, I do think the blackness will some day come down upon me, and cover me up out o' sight." I sat on the little bed and looked up at the ceiling, and I saw Night frowning upon the child.

"But God is with you," said I, and when I had said it I looked for Him at my side and found Him gone. I turned to the maid, and knew the child's solltude, and heard the echoes of the talkers and the hovering winds. I pined to see her lips blossom into smiles. And, as in languid negligence she smoothed her hair before the open casement, I be thought me of a precious jewel-one which I had set great store by—a gem of lustre and elegance, a delight for young eyes. I searched my wallet and found the gem. This I fastened at the throat of the maid. My heart grew sick at its lack of lustre. The smile of the maid was the smile of autumn in a garden of flowers.

"Oh!" cried I. "jewels glitter brightest at dawn. Wait till the sun like a giant comes out of the east. Wait for the lark and the new flowers of dawn. Then we will be gay, you and I."

"After the night, sir," said the maid. I looked out upon the dolorous garden, upon the lazy crone, upon the gilded fields.

Of late inquisitiveness had grown upon me. I had much difficulty in refraining from pampering the habit. I pushed the door a little wider and peeped in. I looked into a darkened room; I saw in the gloaming a tumbled bed. A still sick man eyed me with glassy eyes. I felt that one more wrinkle was scrawled upon my face.

The sun was ripe for setting as the maid and I set out upon the white road between the hedges. The doors of the cottages were shut. The flowers in the gardens were in rank disorder and choked with rank weeds. Only one man we saw. He sat outside his cottage door with his grindstone in front of him-a very old shrunken man, busily grinding his scythe. But his fingers were so weak that the steel scarcely grated upon the stone, and made only a low humming sound, soft as the hum of bees in a distant hive.

""Tis Simon, the mower," said the maid; "he be forever grinding his scythe, but, la, he'st too weak to snap a twig," she smiled compassionately.

The grinder never turned his bent head nor stayed his profitless labor.

"All day long," said the maid, "all day long sings the drone of his scythe; and the childer used to sit quiet at the window watching wi' their eyes of mice for the sparks to skip fro' the stone. Their yellow hair was just golden in the green. But the childer a' gone back fro' the window, and all the white summer day the buzz shakes ' the air. Ay, and i' winter. Oh, sir, the sun climbs up sick and sulky, and crawls lik' a fat snail d' the blue, and goes down by the Black Mill, and the darkness eats him up. I do feel that my heart is o' glass and be nigh to breaken' when the chill night sneaks in at the keyhole. I do miss the cluck'n' hens in the sunny dust and the douce-smell'n hay."

I spied furtively at the glazed windows, but no children looked out upon us thence, and the forsaken nests of birds in the thatch were draggled and in wisps like a widow's weeds. Not long after the maid and I came to the village well. The hoary stones were green in patches. The brown shreds of a broken pitcher lay in the dust at our

feet. There I was fain to sit and muse, looking into the still black waters, which seemed to have in hiding the silence of the dead. But my friend called me, and we journeyed on together hand in hand. With each step upon our way I seemed to draw nearer to the thoughts of the antiquated maid at my side. Myself was not left behind, for the pleasure and lustiness of youth took a new (color. Feeble knees and waning courage were carrying me out of the ken of the world. Yet my mind's calm was rather the calm of a child's awakening to the morn than the lazy ease of falling to sleep at the slow coming of night. We climbed a steep and rocky way, full of ruts and holes, and upon our eyes, when we turned an angle of the road and came out from under the gloomy cedars, suddenly shone the red windows of a house standing gaunt and solitary and watchful upon a crest of the hill.

"There be the Grey House," said the maid, kneeling down amidst the long green grass.

The evening was glorious.

Here was left behind the toil and fret of men's business. And while I was looking under my hand towards the brightness, a strange company of men defiled between the iron gates of the house, carrying a burden upon their shoulders. I sat down with the maid by the roadside, and waited until the procession should come up with us. When they were come near I shouted, "Is Mr. Basil Gray at home?"

The weedy men paused. They put down their burden in the dust. They shot furtive glances the one to the other.

"Ay, sir, ‘at home' that he be," shrilly laughed a wizened little man who led the way with a lighted lantern and a mattock.

The maid turned to the west. I bent over the box, and read my friend's name upon the lid. Death took me by the hand. Presently the little band proceeded on their way. The maid and I followed afar off. When darkness was come I tottered to my musty snowy chamber in the little inn. The wan child led the way, carrying a candle. I sat at the open window. For a long

time I watched the sexton laboring by the stilly light of his lantern and the yellow crescent moon in the graveyard of the "Village of Old Age."

WALTER RAMAL.

From Temple Bar.

A DAY IN GOA.

If one talks of Bombay to people who have been there too, they invariably clasp their hands, raise their eyes to heaven in ecstasies, and exclaim, "The dear, dear place; the finest city of all India; so thoroughly English! and did you see their railway station, quite the grandest thing out?"

Yes, I did see "quite the grandest thing out," and came away from it out of countenance and in a pet.

A doctor ashore had told me it took but sixteen hours to reach Goa by rail, yet, when ready to start, with all my wraps around me, I found it took fortyeight hours each way. To one a little pressed for time, that seemed rather much of a good thing; so I bent my steps in the direction of Hadji Cassim's steamers.

Getting a native, who had half-adozen words of pigeon English on his tongue, to come to my aid, I understood that one of these steamers, the Rajahpuri, was to leave for Goa at noon next day, and to make the run, wind and weather permitting, in twenty-eight hours. After bargaining for passage, I hunted up the butler, and gave him a couple of rupees to spend on a chicken in the bazaar, with curry and cheese, and a pinch of coffee for chota hazri. Those little matters of necessity seen to, I took my tiffin very reasonably at the Apollo Bunder, and thereafter went a-shopping, and bought Surat ware, and Kashmir silverwork, and chutney. As for that chutney, it is as well, perhaps, that those who shall have its eating did not see, as I did, its making!

Next morning I took one of our boats and pulled in to the quay alongside which the Rajahpuri lay moored. Aboard her was a mighty throng, but

never a white among them; no, nor yet a soul that had a white man's speech. Our captain, who had come to see the start, stared to see me mix with such a gang, and set me down as mad. Had there been coin to be raked in by the job, well and good; but to thrust oneself on blacks, be shorn of meat and sleep, and run a certain risk of discomposure, and all for a fad! Faugh! "I go on Haj, to the shrine of a great saint," said I, with humility befitting the occasion. But that only made matters sillier still, and we changed the subject of our talk.

In the course of the afternoon a sad mortification overtook me. The Moslem master of the Rajahpuri, and nis "Malam Sahib," or mate, came up, with slate in hand and a book on navigation. On the page of the book held open for inspection lay a problem and six examples. To the five which stood first our master pointed in quick succession, and between each point tapped himself with the tip of his finger, smiled affably, and nodded. At the sixth he frowned, and sighed, and snook his head, Malam Sahib meanwhile politely pressing his slate and pencil on my attention. The problem was quite beyond my power of solution, and our conference broke up with mutual salaams and a dumb show of civil adieux.

My lamplight dinner was eaten at a bench on deck. Later on that which had been my board became my bed also, so that, in this case at least, he who pays for his board pays for his bed likewise.

Fathers and mothers led their offspring-lovely bronze angels-by the hand to see me eat, and between my several mouthfuls I smiled on the company, with motions of gentle salutation. Poor little toddling dears! they were as glad to see a Christian at his food as Christian infants are to see a beast of prey crunch his bone in the Zoo. And if the beast of prey crunches his bone in the same happy spirit of affording instruction and innocent delight as that in which I ate my curry before the multitude, he is a worthy and amiable beast of prey.