ows are alive with early Spring; and again, whether the strange heart-throb in man's breast, which Lucretius never fathomed with his plummet, whether this has a meaning. Was there a fourth?

Glorious news by mail for Dr. Bushwig. Two lives stood between him and the presumptive heirship of an earldom. One of these has dropped. That wild young man Robert Devereux, full of wine, has broken his neck in a hurdle race. The Earl of Riverside's only son, accustomed from youth to give reins to all his lawless impulses, there were dark stories afloat concerning his early life. A fair young wife driven by his brutality into a foreign convent, a gray haired father whose heart is divided between Ascot, Epsom and New Market survive him. It is now more than six years since his only child, a blue eyed infant, was stolen from her cradle; abducted, as some said, by a wild woman, in return for betrayal and desertion and heart break; but every trace of her has disappeared, and, presumptively, she is in her grave.

Meanwhile we may behold in the snug study of the rectory such a picture as words upon a printed page cannot do justice to; a picture for the man who dare paint as if God meant England to have her school of art as well as Italy or Greece before, who drinks inspiration from wells that never dry, wells of Nature, and who finds, cropping out by every wayside, those deathless fame-flowers which make the grand names of history immortal.

We have not had a full glance at our little wanderer before. She is fair to look upon, though her face is all pinched with poverty; years of sorrow lie folded up in the history of that little heart. But glance again. There is more than sorrow in her eyes; a poet would call it genius; perhaps a Dryasdust, wise in the mysteries of pill boxes, might hint at fever and incipient insanity.

Come painter, try your skill at picturing for once the

a mouse.

human eye. The optics of a cat say dissimulation as plainly as if they spoke. Watch grimalkin when she is waiting for The cold green gray in her eyes reminds you of a jealous woman. The round orbs of a parrot are of a piece with his gaudy red and yellow feathers. These doll women often have the parrot eye. It accompanies those surface faces that seem out of place unless worked on rugs, knit into mat stands or painted on china vases. But your great, glowing eye, full of manhood or womanhood or childhood; try your hand at that, young artist, and succeed and live imperishable.

Dear eyes! one might have seen tears and more,—terror and still more,- want and still more,-bitter memories, and, with deeper insight, longings to be loved, which every true woman has from her very babyhood. The Christian might discern there that faith-look which gleams upon us from the wrapt faces of Madonna and Sybil. A gleam from somewhere else. But who shall draw the vail; who shall speak of that somewhere, who tell its name and place? One alone.

Our rector is deep in the contents of his epistle. Shall we disturb his revery and say to him "Man of the world, look upon that child. What if she is the pawn in God's hand, destined to bring check-mate to the king in your life's chess game."

Sure enough. His revery is broken. Listen to his soliloquy. "Heigh ho! the postman is gone. Bless my soul, I quite forgot to look at the trifles he brought with him.Ah!-dessay-Christmas gifts. Missiles from the Misses Flummery. Upon my word it is something to be a handsome mån, just in the prime of life, under forty, with unimpaired digestion, a good appetite and no love affairs. But this letter; Rector of Richmanstown, perpetual curate of Sloppery; a living of a bare two thousand. 'Gad zooks, I shall step from it into the earldom of Riverside."

A dream, Rector, a dream! But bring your mind from visions of honors and enjoyments. You are a Christian priest; prove yourself worthy of that sacred name.

Now he is fully awake. "Bless me! where did that child come from?"

“Please Sir, I am little Charity Green. In the morning they put my mother in the grave-yard. As I sat there I heard something calling me. Then I thought I saw a hand bright and shining as the stars, and then a beautiful man, carrying a little lamb in his breast, stepped out of the cloud and said, 'Follow me.' Then I was brought to your door." Evidently this child was in a state of somnambulism. The Rector bites his lip; his face grows dark; a startled, anxious expression takes the place of placid content and hope mounting up triumphant.

Now a conscience, whatever it be, is a most inexplicable thing. It is a nothing and a something. "It is here-it is there-it is gone." It dives in the pools of the past, where Lethe hides her treasures, and brings up recollections as the diver uplifts strangling and drowning men, whose pale faces thus "revisit the cold glimpses of the moon." Conscience dealt strangely this Christmas night with the Rector, pointed to eye and lip, to slender tapering hands, to high transparent brow, to wan cheeks slowly flushing with the returning crimson, and then whispered, "Providence has brought you the lost heiress. Behold your cousin, Rosa Devereux."

Men have a way of pooh-poohing at unpleasant things which they do not wish to believe. I myself have felt, poor clerk that I am, that my little life might have been better, that my little lamp might have shone more brightly, but I have cried "pish," and "pshaw," and "gammon." Reader, do not our experiences tally? David Jones spends his Saturday nights at the ale-house and goes home boozy. That awkward something whispers that he is breaking his wife's

heart. He says "pooh pooh, she's a fool to fret herself." and, when she dies, still he mutters, "pooh pooh, who says I killed her ?" So he drinks harder afterward than he did before.

I am sorry to say that our Earl expectant did this very thing. His two jerks at the bell pull summoned John. "No man is a hero to his valet," so it is said. Dr. Bushwig certainly is not to his. "John, you scoundrel, where did this beggar's brat oome from? She's a case for the parish. Send her to the Work House." John bowed and disappeared leading Charity Green.

CHAPTER III.

CHARITY GREEN'S NIGHT AND MORNING.

The winds were wild that night, and John, the Rector's gentleman little disposed to trudge through sleet and snowdrifts to the Work House with his charge. He took her to the door and said, "The right hand road. Turn at the green," and shut it in her face.

How fares it meanwhile in a distant mansion? There sits a gray haired man, as he would phrase it himself, “struck with the blind staggers." Betting books and the turf are at a stand-still. The Earl of Riverside has lost his only son. The young heir expectant is dead. His deeds go after him to judgment. We have read in the grand old book that the sins of parents are visited upon their children. This is true, and Roger Devereux's youthful passions have burned to a flame of madness and riot in his son's veins. But truth is Janus-faced, looking before and after. The sins of the children are sometimes visited back upon the parents. And again, Who moves this great pendulum whose ticking sounds so plainly, "I come back; come back." Is there a viewless Justice that rigorously governs this world, or is it only a man's luck?

Charity Green sat for a while on the steps of the Parsonage. Brave young heart, the kind voice, the beckoning hand seemed to have failed and left her to her fate.

Squire Drone was hungry in imagination, while Dr. Bushwig emphasized the pangs of want. There is in hunger