subsequently, in the same well-known handwriting, which had formerly addressed some popish tracts to her during Sir Evan's lifetime. The same invariable subject filled all these communications,— an exhortation to conceal them from Lady Edith, which Beatrice never did, and an earnest entreaty that she should prepare to join the Romish Church, which would be the means of restoring a long-lost child to her unknown relatives, and of placing Beatrice in a position of dignity and affluence beyond her utmost hopes.

A circumstance occurred to Beatrice soon after the reception of the last letter she received from this anonymous correspondent, which showed that the newly awakened activity of these incognito friends was not always to remain limited to written intercourse, but that means could be found, by the manoeuvres of a popish emissary, to elude the vigilance of those who watch most carefully over the young, and even to deceive the young themselves as to the character and objects of those with whom they associate. But the incidents which brought out this discovery remain to be told hereafter.

Beatrice was busily engaged one evening at her favourite amusement, working among the flowerbeds, and attended by her superb Italian greyhound, "Schako" by name. She was dressed in a broad-brimmed hat of the wide-awake species,

decorated with a wreath of her own favourite white jessamine mingled with ivy leaves, and her pretty picturesque velvet jacket hung gracefully over a skirt of Rob-Roy tartan. The whole effect was pleasing as one of Gainsborough's beautiful pictures, and while Beatrice continued hoeing the box-wood borders, tying up the carnations, and humming some familiar airs, she looked the very image of rural happiness. No stranger by any accident ever passed that way; but a new gardener whom she did not know by sight had been engaged for Lady Edith at Inverness, and seeing a young man whom she supposed of course to be Lady Edith's new factotum leaning on the gate, as if about to enter, she made him a good-humoured signal to bring the watering-pot, and to afford her his assistance in completing her work, which accordingly he did with the utmost alacrity. Beatrice thought this a good introduction of the stranger to his labours; but never was there so awkward a gardener in the world, though he appeared undoubtedly, in spite of hob-nailed shoes, and the strangest of deformed hats, a very graceful young man. At length a dark suspicion suddenly crossed the mind of Beatrice, that she must have made some unaccountable mistake. Her assistant evidently could not distinguish between vegetables, fruit, and flowers; but seemed equally ready to dig them all up by the roots promiscuously. He was

politeness itself to Beatrice, but there was an air of aristocracy about him not to be mistaken, so that Beatrice felt at a loss what to say, whether to ask him at once who he was, or how to dismiss him without giving offence to one who had entered by her own heedless invitation. She at length laughingly whispered her perplexity to Lady Edith, who had wandered out, leaning on her gold-headed cane to enjoy her lovely flowers and quiet garden. Lady Edith gave a hurried glance at the stranger, and, convinced that, in spite of his wearing a very weather-beaten shooting dress, and acting the part that Beatrice had assigned him of being the new gardener, he was not only a gentleman, but one of no ordinary calibre, she said to him in a tone of quiet humour, "We shall attend to the flower-beds ourselves for some days now that they are all in bloom; but if you want work I have a large potato field about a mile off, which you may be so obliging as to go and dig up for me."

The young volunteer, with a sly laugh to Beatrice at being so evidently detected, bowed himself off, threw a somerset over the gate, and with a step full of gay hilarity disappeared among the neighbouring copse-wood. Thence the sound of several shots during the day, and the noise of dogs and men, indicated his presence till the twilight closed in darkness, and several sportsmen, after a successful day's enterprise, dispersed to their homes. Then

the young stranger accidentally passed a cottage door, from which Lady Edith and Beatrice were emerging, and paused for a moment respectfully, till having smilingly glanced at the large parishbaskets carried by the two ladies, he with a matterof-course air escorted them home, and at taking leave, after having amused the two ladies by the oddity and originality of his remarks, he departed jestingly repeating these lines:

"Most sad vagaries!

First, she has given away, to starving rascals,

The stores of grain she might have sold, good lack!

Has sunk vast sums in fever-hospitals

For rogues whom famine sicken'd-almshouses

For sluts whose husbands died-schools for their brats."

Saints' Tragedy.

CHAPTER XIII.

"Behind the clouds is the sun still shining,

Thy fate is the common fate of all:

Into each life some rain must fall,

Some days must be dark and dreary."-LONGFELLOW.

NOTHING could be more pitiable than the mental starvation of the half-naked children under Lord Eaglescairn's popish domination. They were instructed in nothing but to pay their utmost reverence and also their uttermost farthing to Father Eustace, who gave them in return his own absolution and a Latin benediction. Mr. Clinton, on the contrary, instead of taking a penny from the starving man, gave his whole time and his little income freely among those whom he could benefit, and Lady Edith, finding the old schoolmistress superannuated, advertised for one competent to instruct the already well-instructed children of her own school, where the girls, besides more intellectual acquirements, learned all the intricacies of samplers, laundress-work, darning and buttonholing.

Scarcely had the vacancy at Clanmarina school been announced, before a candidate, apparently made for the situation of its mistress, seemed