even

ioners in to see you?" And Father Munro's smile grew brighter. "Tut tut!" the chief went on testily, "you're off duty, man! Some one else is seeing to your work." But Father Munro laid an entreating hand upon his sleeve, and, beckoning him to stoop, whispered in his ear.

"Can't be done," the chief snapped at him when he finished. “I'm responsible for you, you know."

"And I for him," pleaded Father Munro.

The chief frowned down with the frown that awed so many students before they knew him.

"Man, it's fair ridiculous!" he said: "quite unprecedented. I certify that you're not fit for any duty." But Father Munro pleaded on.

When he finished, Macintosh, standing with the chart in his hand, held it out for the chief, who, with a snort of

"I'm glad you leave him quiet," I said. "I thought you'd be at him if you got a chance."

"There's a time for a' things," said Craig philosophically. “I've kep' an ee on him an' he's a guid heart, though sair misled. We'll hae a bit crack later, maybe, and the doctor needna' be feared. I'll keep the ward quiet."

Twice a day Young Tim came for our bulletin, wild-eyed and anxious, and twice I sent him away comforted. Father Munro lay placid and patient, worshipped by the nurses, and respected by all.

For three days we hoped, and then a change came. He grew restless, turning from side to side, and murmuring to himself. As I stood watching him from Graig's bedside that night he spoke aloud:

"A wife and bairn," he said, "a wife and bairn," and was silent again.

I was reading the chart that hung at his bed head, when the chief and the resident came in together and looked at him, at which he turned over a little, and looked up into the chief's face with a smile, not quite so bright as usual.

"What's this you want, sir?" asked the chief at last. "One of your parish

towards me. Then he laid a finger on the upward line that marked a rising body temperature, and turned to Macintosh again.

"Partly this notion of his, I think, sir," Macintosh said softly. "He's worrying over it tremendously, or I shouldn't have troubled you. He slept very little last night, you know."

"What on earth does he want to confess a man for?" asked the chief impatiently; but that was beyond Macintosh, and he shook his head.

"If things go on like this," said the chief, with his finger on the chart, "I shall operate to-morrow morning."

"What do you think of letting him have his way in this?" asked Macintosh; but the chief was quite indignant, and they went down the shadowy ward -it was growing very late-with their heads together, talking softly, while Father Munro lay and watched, peer ing anxiously after them all the time.

What Macintosh said further I do not know, but they came back to the bed. What Father Munro said further I don't know either, but at last the chief called me, and at once began to relieve his mind.

"What are you doing here at this time of night, Mr. Tregenna?"

"Taking a case, sir."

"You've no right to be here, none at all. There's no discipline here. We can't have this sort of thing, Dr. Macintosh! There! there" (as Macintosh tried to speak); "that will do! it must be seen to." Then he turned and bent over Father Munro again.

"You'll be satisfied if you see this man to-night?" And Father Munro smiled on him. "Ten minutes are all you want, and you promise to sleep after?" "I shall sleep," he promised; and then I got my instructions.

I was to fetch Young Tim to Father Munro's bedside, and I was to leave him there ten minutes. I was to warn him first as to his behavior, and I was to take him away when time was up. Then we all three left the ward-Macintosh to get a little sleep, for he was to come round again later, the chief to go home, and I to do my errand.

I found Young Tim sitting in his one room, at the top of a seven-storied house, staring out at a cloudless sky, in which stars were beginning to show. His wife and the baby were sound asleep, but Tim looked as though he had never known what sleep meant. He heard my errand in silence, and in silence he walked by me until-in the darkened ward, where only here and there a glimmer of gas was shown, and where the only other moving thing was the ghost-like shape of the night nurse -we stood by Father Munro.

"Ten minutes, my son," was all that the priest said to me; and then, drawing away to a window seat, watch in hand, I left them. Screens fenced the corner in which the bed lay, the last on that side of the ward. I could not see, I could not hear, what was going on. Once or twice I heard a stifled sob, hushed at once by the voice of the Little General. The minutes dragged like hours. The night nurse, moving like a shadow here and there down the glimmering length of the place, the silent forms dimly outlined in the nearer beds, were no company to me. Once I raised my watch until I could see the secondhand moving and hear the sound.

I gave them the ten minutes and a few seconds over. Then I went and

tapped at the screen. The voices had stopped, and when I went round at the Little General's word, he lay and smiled peacefully at me, his hand laid upon Young Tim's head, while Tim's face Iwas buried in the bed-clothes.

"Tim and I have settled our affairs," said the Little General, "and you are a witness to it, my son, if ever witness is needed."

"Tell him, father!" Tim begged.

"Would ye doubt my authority, Tim M'Carthy? I've confessed you, and absolved you, with a penance and a promise. Fare ye well!"

The thin fingers were extended in benediction, and then Tim, the tears streaming down his face, crept away into the darkness, and I knelt in his place.

"Can I do anything for you, sir?”

His hand trembled in the air once more, whether for me or for the vanished man I do not know.

"An innocent wife and a bairn," said Father Munro, "Nunc dimittis," and turning his face to the wall slowly, slipped into dreams from which he never rallied.

The Little General was carried to his grave with more pomp than ever he had encouraged while alive; and many masses were said for his soul before I met Young Tim again, "Though the use av masses to a holy saint in Paradise," as Bridget M'Closky said to me, "is unbeknown."

I had thought of Young Tim often having an uneasy doubt concerning him, and passing up the Grassmarket one night, had him in my mind again, when he stood before me.

"Think of the devil!" I misquoted, and then stopped, for there was light enough to see the words didn't apply.

It was a Saturday night, but Young Tim was sober though excited, and when he asked me for a moment's chat, I invited him to my room. We passed up in silence, I wondering a great deal, but determined to ask no questions. I pointed to a chair, and looked dubiously at my shelves. Hospitality suggested an offer of whiskey and a fill of 'baccy, but I restrained my instincts and faced him in silence.

"I was thinkin', docthor," he said at last, "that as you were friends with the holy father- "and he stopped again. "What holy father?" I asked. "I know none."

"There's but wan for me," said Tim, and then stopped again. "If you mean poor Father Munro," I answered, "what of him?"

"He laid a penance on me," Young Tim said softly, "an' I'm doin' it, an' will till I die. He giv' me absolution too, an' I giv' him a promise."

"Keep it then!" I said sourly, but Tim went on.

easily understood. But I have asked no questions, and do not intend to. If Young Tim has ever to give an account of that night's doings, I fancy somehow that the Little General will be there to plead for him.

RICCARDO STEPHENS.

From The Economist.

THE QUEEN.

There is no doubt that Britain is "a veiled Republic," and no doubt either

"Shame," I said. “Would you break your promise to a dead man?"

“Sure an' I will if need be," said Tim fervently. "You were there, an' what I must know, had he his sinses?"

"As much as you or I," I said angrily, "if not more. You can't get out of it that way."

Tim rose from his chair and faced me frowning.

"Ye don't know," he cried; "I've all to lose if I break me promise. But, if I made it to a sinseless saint who couldn't judge me or me sin, I'll break me promise, and be judged by a harder

man."

I sat and puzzled it out, while the voices of the children came up from the reeking court, and Tim leaned against the mantelpiece, breathing hard, but watching me steadily.

"He was a better and wiser man than either of us," I said at last. "The secret lies between you and him, and you must keep it;" and Tim, sober and hardworking, holds to his promise still.

As for me, I remember that the only time I saw such wounds as Father Munro had was when, in an election riot, a constable felled a rioter who afterwards came under my hands. His staff made two parallel wounds like knife-cuts, and the other wound was caused by the fall. It was night, and the stair a dark one, where the Little General came by his death-blow. If Young Tim, who had often threatened, was waiting there for Ould Tim when Father Munro toiled up, the rest is

fected by the Monarchy, and, therefore, by the character of the monarch. The personality of Queen Victoria, whose reign on Sept. 23rd exceeded that of any previous sovereign, has been of more value to the country than it even yet fully recognizes. We do not mean by this only that a virtuous woman on the throne has done much for morals and for domestic life, for though that is quite true and vastly important, it is also true that the deep-seated Puritanism of the British character would have survived frivolity upon the throne or even vice. Charles II. debauched a court by choosing debauchees for courtiers, but he made no deep impression upon the solid strata of English general society. The benefit conferred by the queen upon her subjects has included a great example, but has also been of a more direct kind than that. She has for nearly sixty years helped to select wise ministers, and when they were selected has helped them to govern wisely. The whole of her influence has been well directed, and her influence has been much greater than is commonly supposed. The "figure-head theory" of our monarchy, as Mr. Bagehot long ago pointed out, is only partially true, for the sovereign can still encourage or discourage a line of policy, can still oppose or promote the selection of its agents, and can still compel every minister to consider very seriously what it is that he proposes to do. There is no right of the monarch more unquestionable or more frequently exercised than that of asking "clearer

explanations," and the person to whom you must explain yourself is always a person of influence on your counsels. The mere fact that explanation is obligatory implies deference in those who explain, and when the person to be convinced is clear-headed, is very familiar with affairs, and knows how to main tain a kind of unapproachable dignity, that deference is certain to be paid, if only to avoid the rebuke of which an outspoken sovereign, such as all the members of this dynasty have been, would not be sparing. The queen, therefore, has been, at all events ever since her marriage, a most important councillor of state, knowing everything, discussing everything, and not infrequently exerting her much dreaded reserved power-that of asking whether the advice tendered her was that of a unanimous Cabinet, or had only been arrived at by suppressing serious differences of opinion. There is no power, in the strict sense, in this right to be consulted, but there is enormous influence, and that influence has been always exerted, as is known to many politicians, to keep the march of the Monarchy steady, to make policy continuous, and to avoid capricious or even hastily-advised action. That the two great parties in the State have never paralyzed each others' action, a danger to which party government is peculiarly exposed, that personal jealousies have been well kept down, and that the great machine has never, at all events, been seen to leave the rails, is due in no small measure to steady pressure from a queen who, from the first, accepted the constitutional system, who has never been captured by any politician, and who has never betrayed any reluctance to work with any party in the State. As the queen is intensely interested in politics, and has definite and strong opinions of her own, it is difficult to exaggerate the amount of selfsuppression which such an attitude requires, or the effect which the consciousness of that self-suppression must have had upon the minds of successive ministers. It is an easy thing to say that the "Queen takes advice," but so to take it as not to embarrass the min

istry which gives it when it is unwelcome, requires tact, solid sense, and above all, a power of convincing able men, made suspicious by the party warfare, that the sovereign is immutably loyal - incapable, for example, of stimulating a growing disaffection by circulating her own opinion that ministers are in error. There have been bitter critics of the queen from time to time both in Parliament and the press, but there has never been so much as a hint given yet that the queen was undermining a ministry.

The service thus rendered to the State in steadying and clarifying counsel has been greatly increased by the secrecy which her Majesty has to the most singular degree succeeded in maintaining. Outside a most limited circle, the public has never known the queen's opinions. Many will consider that a trifle, but it reveals the possession by the sovereign of very exceptional judgment. Princes have usually much con、 fidence in themselves, they by no means like to hide their light, and they enjoy showing that they are constituent and important parts of the machine of government. The queen has never put herself forward so as either to shield or to thwart a minister; has, on the contrary, while working steadily for six or seven hours a day, suffered herself to be considered by the majority of her people rather as an ornamental figure-head, than as one of the propellers in the great ship. There is a great absence not only of vanity, but of selfishness, in that line of conduct, which is one that very competent statesmen have repeatedly shown themselves unable to follow. They must make a fuss with themselves instead of leaving it to time to reveal the parts they have played and the judgments they have formeda weakness from which the queen has shown herself to be entirely free. She has been silent, sometimes under strong provocation-as, for instance, in regard to all the preposterous libels as to her habit of accumulation-and has left it to her life to reveal her to her people. She has, in fact, throughout life played in a supreme position the part of a woman of strong sense, much reticence,