mysel', but they canna lay a hand on me."

66

Oh, hold your tongue, woman," cried Duncan Fraser. "If ye canna help us, ye can let us be."

"And wha says that I canna help ye? I am just saying-I pay my debts as I wuss that ithers should pay their debts to me: and that's Scripter," said Nancy; but she added, "I never said I would shut my door to a neebor: ye can bring in granny here; I'm no just a heart of stane like that young lord."

first thing that had moved him even to the faintest curiosity. He came forward slowly, observed by no one. The factor was still standing with his back to the woeful scene, gloomily contemplating the distant country, while Oona was mingled with the women, joining in their consultations, and doing her best to rouse poor Nelly, who sat by her baby's cradle like a creature dazed and capable of no further thought. There was, therefore, no one to recognize Lord Erradeen as he came slowly into the midst of this tragedy, The women had not waited to witness not knowing what it was. The officials Nancy's difficulties. Most of them had had recovered their spirits as they got on gone into their houses, to take a shawl with their work. Natural pity and symfrom a cupboard, a book from the "draw- pathetic feeling had yielded to the careers-head." One or two appeared with lessness of habit and common occupathe family Bible under their arm. "The tion. They had begun to make rough Lord kens where we are to go, but we jokes with each other, to fling the cotters' must go somewhere," they said. There possessions carelessly out of the windows, was a little group about Oona and her two to give each other catches with a "Hi! pound-notes. The moment of excitement tak this," flinging the things about. Lord was over, and they had now nothing to do Erradeen had crossed the little bridge, but to meet their fate. The factor paced and was in the midst of the action of the back and forward on the path, going out painful drama, when they brought out of his way to avoid here and there a pile from Duncan's house his old mother's of poor furniture. And the work of de-chair. It was cushioned with pillows, vastation went on rapidly: it is so easy, one of which tumbled out into the mud alas, to dismantle a cottage with its but and was roughly caught up by the rough and ben. Duncan Fraser did not move fellow who carried it, and fung at his till two or three had been emptied. When companion's head, with a laugh and jest. he went in to bring out his mother, It was he who first caught sight of the there was a renewed sensation among the stranger, a new figure among the disconworn-out people who were scarcely capa-solate crowd. He gave a whistle to his ble of any further excitement. Granny comrade to announce a novelty, and ratwas granny to all the glen. She was the tled down hastily out of his hands the only survivor of her generation. They heavy chair. Walter was wholly roused had all known her from their earliest by the strangeness of this pantomime. days. They stood worn and sorrow-It brought back something to his mind, stricken, huddled together in a little though he could scarcely tell what. crowd, waiting before they took any fur-stepped in front of the man and asked, ther steps, till granny should come.

But it was not granny who came first. Some one, a stranger even to the children, whose attention was so easily attracted by any novelty, appeared suddenly round a corner of the hill. He paused at the unexpected sight of the little cluster of habitations, for the country was little known to him, and for a moment appeared as if he would have turned back. But the human excitement about this scene caught him in spite of himself. He gazed at it for a moment trying to divine what was happening, then came on slowly with hesitating steps. He had been out all the morning, as he had been for some days before. His being had sustained a great moral shock, and for the moment all his holds on life seemed gone. This was the

He

"What does this mean?" in a hasty and somewhat imperious tone; but his eyes answered his question almost before he had asked it. Nelly Fraser with her pile of furniture, her helpless group of children, her stupefied air of misery, was full in the foreground, and the ground was strewed with other piles. Half of the houses in the hamlet were already gutted. One poor woman was lifting her bedding out of the wet, putting it up upon chairs; another stood regarding hers helplessly, as if without energy to attempt even so small a salvage.

"What is the meaning of all this?" the young man cried imperiously again.

His voice woke something in the deep air of despondency and misery which had not been there before. It caught the ear

of Oona, who pushed the women aside in | best of reasons. Rent-your lordship sudden excitement. It roused was it a understands that -a little more money faint thrill of hope in the general despair? lest your coffers should not be full enough. Last of all it reached the factor, who, And as for these poor bodies, they have standing gloomily apart, had closed him- so much to put up with, a little more does. self up in angry wretchedness against any not matter. They have not a roof to appeal. He did not hear this, but some- their heads, but that's nothing to your how felt it in the air, and turned round, lordship. You can cover the hills with not knowing what the new thing was. sheep, and they can-die-if they like," When he saw Lord Erradeen, Shaw was cried the factor, avenging himself for all seized as with a sudden frenzy. He he had suffered. He turned away with a turned round upon him sharply, with an gesture of despair and fury. "I have air which was almost threatening. done enough; I wash my hands of it," he cried.

"What does it mean?" he said. "It means your will and pleasure, Lord Erradeen, not mine. God is my witness, no will of mine. You brute!" cried the factor suddenly, "what are you doing? stand out of the way, and let the honest woman pass. Get out of her way, I tell you, or I'll send ye head foremost down the glen !"

This sudden outcry, which was a relief to the factor's feelings, was addressed not to Walter, but to the man who, coming out again with a new armful, came rudely in the way of the old granny, to whom all the glen looked up, and who was coming out with a look of bewilderment on her aged face, holding by her son's arm. Granny comprehended vaguely, if at all, what was going on. She gave a momentary glance of suspicion at the fellow who pushed against her, then looked out with a faint smile at the two gentlemen standing in front of the door. Her startled mind recurred to its old instincts with but a faint perception of anything new.

Sirs," she said, in her feeble old voice, "I am distressed I canna ask ye in; but I'm feckless mysel being a great age, and there's some fitting going on, and my good-daughter she is out of the way."

Walter cast around him a bewildered look. To his own consciousness he was a miserable and helpless man; but all the poor people about gazed at him, wistful, deprecating, as at a sort of unknown, unfriendly god, who had their lives in his hands. The officers perhaps thought it a good moment to show their zeal in the eyes of the young lord. They made a plunge into the house once more, and appeared again, one carrying Duncan's bed, a great, slippery, unwieldy sack of chaff, another charged with the old, tall, eight-day clock, which he jerked along as if it had been a man hopping from one foot to another.

"We'll soon be done, my lord," the first said in an encouraging tone, "and then a' the commotion will just die away."

Lord Erradeen had been lost in a miserable dream. He woke up now at this keen touch of reality, and found himself in a position so abhorrent and antagonis tic to all his former instincts and traditions, that his very being seemed to stand still in the horror of the moment. Then a sudden passionate energy filled all his veins. The voice in which he ordered the men back rang through the glen. He "Do you hear that, my lord?" cried had flung himself upon one of them in Shaw; "the old wife is making her ex-half-frantic rage, before he was aware cuses for not asking you into a house you what he was doing, knocking down the are turning her out of at the age of eighty- astounded official, who got up rubbing his three. Oh, I am not minding if I give elbow, and declaring it was no fault of ye offence! I have had enough of it. his; while Walter glanced at him, not Find another factor, Lord Erradeen. I knowing what he did. But after this would rather gather stones upon the fields encounter with flesh and blood Lord Erthan do again what I have done this day." radeen recovered his reason. He turned Walter looked about like a man awak-round quickly, and with his own hands ened from a dream. He said, almost with

awe,

"Is this supposed to be done by me? I know nothing of it, nor the reason. What is the reason? I disown it altogether as any act of mine."

"Oh, my lord," cried Shaw, who was in a state of wild excitement, "there is the

carried back granny's chair. The very weight of it, the touch of something to do, brought life into his veins. He took the old woman from her son's arm, and led her in reverently, supporting her upon his own: then going out again without a word, addressed himself to the manual work of restoration. From the moment

of his first movement, the whole scene | looked at him with eyes that were almost
changed in the twinkling of one eye. tender in their pity. He turned round
The despairing apathy of the people gave suddenly and met her glance.
way to a tumult of haste and activity.
Duncan Fraser was the first to move.

My lord!" he cried; "if you are my lord," his stern composure yielding to tremulous excitement, "if it's your good will and pleasure to let us bide, that's all we want. Take no trouble for us; take no thought for that." Walter gave him a look, almost without intelligence. He had not a word to say. He was not sufficiently master of himself to express the sorrow and anger and humiliation in his awakened soul; but he could carry back the poor people's things, which was a language of nature not to be misunderstood. He went on taking no heed of the eager assistance offered on all sides. "I'll do it, my lord. Oh, dinna you trouble. It's ower much kindness. Ye'll fyle your fingers; ye'll wear out your strength. We'll do it; we'll do it," the people cried.

The cottagers' doors flew open as by magic; they worked all together, the women, the children, and Duncan Fraser and Lord Erradeen. Even Oona joined, carrying the little children back to their homes, picking up here a bird in a cage, | there a little stunted geranium or musk in a pot. In half an hour it seemed, or less, the whole was done, and when the clouds that had been lowering on the hills and darkening the atmosphere broke and began to pour down torrents of rain upon the glen, the little community was housed and comfortable once more.

While this excitement lasted Walter was once more the healthful and vigorous young man who had travelled with Oona on the coach, and laughed with her on the isle. But when the storm was over, and they walked together towards the loch, she became aware of the difference in him. He was very serious, pale, almost haggard, now that the excitement was over. His smiling lips smiled no longer, there was in his eyes, once so light hearted and careless, a sort of hunted, anxious look.

66

No," he said, in answer to her questions, "I have not been ill; I have had family matters to occupy me, and of this I knew nothing. Letters? I had none, I received nothing. I have been occupied, too much perhaps, with family affairs."

Upon this no comment could be made, but his changed looks made so great a claim upon her sympathy that Oona

"You know," he said, with a slight tremble in his voice, "that there are some things they say in every family — a little hard to bear. But I have been too much absorbed - I was taken by surprise. It shall happen no more." He held his head high, and looked round him as if to let some one else see the assurance he was giving her. "I promise you," he added, in a tone that rang like a defiance, "it shall happen no more!" Then he added hurriedly with a slight swerve aside, and trembling in his voice, "Do you think I might come with you? Would Mrs. Forrester have me at the isle?"

From The Saturday Review.

A NEW LAKE TRITONIS. M. DE LESSEPS's report to the French Academy of Sciences on the subject of the proposed inland sea in Tunis and Algeria adds some interesting details of an engineering kind to the facts already known. But perhaps its principal importance is, that it has in all probability given the general reader his first clear idea (if it has indeed given it to him) of Commandant Roudaire's famous and much misrepresented project. Scarcely anything of the kind has ever been more exaggerated than this scheme of creating or restoring an inland waterway through the heart of eastern Algeria. Visions of a new ocean in the interior of Africa, of French gunboats sailing bravely from Algiers to Timbuctoo, of the ship of the desert giving place all over the Sahara to an actual ship furnished with steam or sails, and indeed of all north Africa flooded, have floated before French as well as English eyes. From some descriptions of the project, it really might have seemed that Africa was to be changed bodily into the semblance of a Pacific atoll, with a thin fringe of coast, parting the Indian and Atlantic Oceans from another ocean in its interior, whence the Atlas and our la mented friends, the Mountains of the Moon, were to rise islet fashion. The climate of the world was to be changed, the Mediterranean fishes to be left gasp. ing on dry land-all sorts of wonderful things to happen. Indeed, it was only not quite clear what advantage was to be derived from flooding a continent in or

der the better to get at its interior. Of to extend southwards a good way towards course every one possessed of the slight- Wargla, the centre-point of all the south est geographical knowledge knew the folly Algerian caravan routes, and an outpost, of supposing that even any considerable though more nominally than really, of part of the Sahara itself could be sub- French authority. But a very remarkable merged. The general elevation of that point about these chotts, and one which vast district is by no means low, and the is intimately connected with their progreat tableland of the Jebel Hoggar injected future, has yet to be mentioned. its centre, with ramifications which reach According to the classical accounts, there the spurs of the Atlas on one side, and was a river as well as a Lake Tritonis, the mountains of Darfur on the other, and this river has not been clearly identi would be an insuperable barrier to any-fied. But the travels of various French thing short of a new deluge. But it was explorers, especially Duveyrier and Larequally well known that there was, on a geau, have discovered various wadys or much smaller and more practicable scale, undoubted river-courses radiating from an operation of the kind possible as far the chotts. One of these, the Wady Righ, as general considerations go, in the cen- which leads from the great Chott Melrhir, tre of the north African coast, and that far in the interior, to the oasis of Tuggurt, the general inference from the statements and thence through another chott right up of travellers was decidedly in its favor, into the heart of the Sahara, is described though, of course, the consideration of as having the most clearly marked river engineering details and of expense re- banks, traces, geological and other, of mained to be settled.. This is the plan water action on a great scale, actual water which M. de Lesseps has been engaged obtainable by boring all along its bed, and in investigating, which Commandant Rou- other unmistakable signs. It is this sysdaire has been advocating for some ten tem of chotts extending about two hun years, and which may be said to have a dred and fifty miles from the sea to Biskra, calculable, if not a very immediate, chance and of indefinite and varying breadth, that of being carried out. it is proposed to flood by letting in the Mediterranean at the Wady Melah, in the neighborhood of Gabes.

The Lesser Syrtis and the Lake Tritonis are names frequent enough in classical | story, if not history, and a probability which amounts to practical certainty identifies the Lesser Syrtis with the Gulf of Gabes (the innermost recess of the great bay of Tunis and Tripoli) and the Lake Tritonis with the marsh of quicksand which now opens (or rather does not open) from that gulf landwards. Beyond this marsh, dotted westward on the way to the Atlas, there are marked on every map of Algeria things which look like lakes, and which bear the local name of chotts. They are often spoken of as marshes, but in reality they are rather the dry beds of former marshes or lakes, sometimes treacherous to caravans and even to ill-guided footpassengers, but rarely containing any water, though famous for mirages. These chotts extend westward and southward for some hundreds of miles in a broken chain connected by depressions only a little elevated above their own level. Biskra, the chief place of trade in central Algeria, and famous both for a local plague (the bouton de Biskra) somewhat resembling the "Aleppo boil," and for some social peculiarities which attract curious French tourists, is the limit in the one direction. In the other, the chotts have been less accurately surveyed, but they would seem

The objects which would be attained, supposing the operation to be successful, are sufficiently manifold. In the first place, an undoubtedly fertile region lying on the landward side of the hills which run parallel to the coast, and now only attainable by tedious and expensive road. travelling, would be opened up for direct water transit across the newly created lake. This in its shallower parts would be treated like the lakes through which the Suez Canal already passes. It would make available a large expanse of agricultural country, the actual productiveness of which is now to a great extent wasted because it is not worth while to summon it forth. In the second place, the French count on attracting to this new waterway a great part of the already coasiderable Sahara trade. At present very little of that trade reaches Algeria or even Tunis, most of it being directed either to Tafilat in Morocco or to Ghadames just across the Tripolitan frontier. But these expectations by no means exhaust the list of benefits which Commandant Roudaire and those who think with him expect from their project. They calculate on rendering fertile a vast tract of now sterile country round the projected sea by the natural