sacred story of a Paradise Lost is more than a myth of old, barbaric ages. But when I behold young love, pure, unselfish love, reviving in human hearts, moving toward each other in the attraction of an innocent fondness, as with cherub's wings, I think that if anywhere linger any of the lost seeds of those Eden flowers they are springing in their breasts.

Marian was an old fashioned girl, and had learned the great lesson that selfishness is sin, and that the essence of all goodness consists in living for the well being of others. I now relate something concerning our dear Marian that I would that each true hearted girl who reads these pages may profit by. Not because Charlie Bloomfield was the heir of the fine old estate of Wingate Hall, not because he moved in manly beauty, the pride of many eyes, and not even because he cherished the tiny glove that she dropped as a precious talisman, did she feel toward him the first yearnings of a fond heart. In her brief seventeen summers Marian had learned, what many fail to discover in three score years and ten,-learned to believe and trust in the direct Providence of a protecting God, vowing also within her soul to keep his law and to walk in his statutes blameless. Fervid, tropical natures like this are dowered with a wealth of kindly emotion, which, when perverted, becomes a raging sea of destructive and stormy passion. She knew that her breast, fragrant to the lover's fancy as some Hesperian Island in a sea of living love, might hold, as she made good or bad use of Heaven's blessings, the dovelets that coo and murmur, or the serpents that sting and kill. The whitest saint who walks to-day on the shining mountains, the wildest fury who haunts the bad man's darkest dreams, stood once in youthful freedom on the same level ground of dormant or awakening sentiment. Marian has felt the bad struggling within her for pre-eminence, and, like a true girl, steadfastly resisting its invasions, has cherished

the germs of every incipient nobleness, and meekly owned that these springing qualities of good were sown and watered within her from a higher source and better power. Her heart inclines toward young Bloomfield, because, from the hour when the star of womanhood began to shine, she has gone humbly to Him who directs even the little sparrow in its flight, and besought Him to guide that heart, of more value than many sparrows, to its own true mate. She has besought Him to keep her from the deceitfulness of riches. Charlie is good and noble and she knows it. He remembers the poor, respects the old and is not ashamed to say that he venerates the precepts of his mild and gentle mother more than he fears the ridicule of gay and worldly men. Over such courtships no shadows may ever fall, or falling they come but to purify, and to prepare the two for more close heart-union, for kinder and more auspicious nuptials by and by.

To some the romance of courtship ends with the honeymoon. To others it is a sweet lyric poem, that weaves itself through all the life, and crowns the years with a perpetual festival. Charlie mused that night, long after the lights in Wingate Hall were extinguished, of this pure and lovely Marian, and sank to sleep with a whispered prayer for long and happy years of communion with her as his dear wife. He feels the craving which comes to every true and earnest man, the craving for one to fold, not alone in his visible and human bosom, but in the sacred places and sanctuaries of the soul's invisible life. Happy are they who learn from youth to bound the limits of desire within the golden marriage ring.

CHAPTER XIII.

THE PLOT THICKENS.

There were two claimants for the lapsed honors and the great estates of the Earl of Riverside under the entail. The will has now been proved in Doctor's Commons, nor can it be set aside. Dr. Bumblefuz, having accomplished his undertakings at Coddlington Green, has laid before the expectant Rector duly authenticated documents, certifying that a woman, identified as Martha Chivers, died of the small-pox at that place, leaving an unclaimed child, that this deceased also of the same malady, and that the gipsy had informed certain of her gossips, who testified to the matter under oath, that the young girl's name was Rose or Rosa. No importance was attached to the hints at the time, and the child was buried as a pauper at the expense of the parish in the church-yard of that place.

Bumblefuz, however,

So far all favors the Divine. instead of receiving the five hundred golden guineas, has thanks for his courtesy, and a verbal promise of the reward, should the certificates be found sufficient to establish the identity of the parties. The physician swallows the pill, bitter as it is. He is not fond of pills, though he administers them to others, but still is comforted by the reflection that the Rector will soon be the Earl of Riverside, and a prospective patron. He looks forward to comfortable dinners at Riverside Hall, and an extension of his practice among the titled legs who may take their places under the Earl of Riverside's hospitable mahogany.

Guilt thrives. There is no trace of Charity Green. We left Marian Deschamps in dainty white, blushing on her pillow at Wingate Hall. Ill news flies apace. She wakes to learn in the morning that the little Christmas gift found in the snow has been spirited away. Her quick wit divines that there is a secret, and she resolves, when the first burst of womanly grief is over, that, cost what it may, no effort shall be left untried to recover the missing one. No hospitable inducements, no coaxing of the sisters, no wistful look in the eyes of the youthful lover can retain her another day in the old country house. There is a wild cry that seems to ring in the ears and two frightened eyes turned imploringly to hers. She must reclaim the child.

Peter Styles, by this time, has made himself the factotum of the household. The villager, as we have seen, is handy with the tool chest, can be trusted with crowns and guineas without fear of a misreckoning on his part, and now, for the first time in his life, has dropped into a place where his ready and varied faculties find appreciation and reward. The gate-keepers lodge neatly fitted up is set apart as the permanent habitation of him and his, and Mrs. Peter Styles is soon to be installed therein.

The gipsies are still on the wild heath and Peter has one more occasion to display his skill in bone setting. The unlucky boy has had another fall and the mother will only trust the poor man who refused the golden coin for an act of kindness. But Styles goes not alone. This time his young Master drives over in the gig and the gipsy tent sees two acts of benevolence where one only was solicited. It is no place for a crippled lad, the new year opening with a bitter January. Men even have been frozen to death on the bleak moors; so runs the gossip of the county.The Bloomfields, like our friend and orator, Epaphroditus Wagge, are in favor both of outdoor and indoor relief. A cottage is found on a neighboring farm, and the gipsies

are installed in it till the warm weather shall set in. The ailing woman, for exposure and anxiety have done their work on her too, finds a thatched roof as a cover. Merrily burns the fire, roaring up the chimney as if it were some glorious salamander who shook his shining scales delightedly to find himself in his native element. There the crippled lad is left, with generous fare, warmth and shelter, to nurse the broken limb. The woman's heart is touched, and saying little, inwardly meditates kindness in return. Preach on Peter Styles, Wesleyan as you are; live out the brave words you have read in the old Book that your grandfather knew by heart before you were born; it carries a blessing with it, that Book. It is to be observed that Brother Nasal and Peter Styles have different ways of letting their light shine.

The great day, big with the destinies of Bushwig, comes at last. Safe from the dangers of the ocean Jack Chivers has landed in some American sea-port. Genius of Bumblefuz, thy great coat surely fell on repentant Jack, when he indited the epistle which, by due course of mail, was received by the executors of the Riverside estate. The gipsy is penitent with a flourish. He extenuates the crime of the

abduction of little Rosa by a recital of the wrongs that Sally Chivers received at young Robert Devereux's hands. Making a clean breast of it, so far as that first spiriting away is concerned, the narration will bear the strictest scrutiny. He deplores that the orphan heiress is not still at his command, and then proceeds to give the history of the fictitious one, minutely narrating the circumstances under which the woman Martha and the child perished at Coddlington, during his absence from the country. All this is worked up with an artist's cunning hand. He then describes how, on returning, he found her buried and the orphan as well. Compunctions of conscience, he says, prompts him to make this confession. He regrets that he had any hand in