for only through the medium of his own edge (without any intention of ever sawnature could man receive the revelation. ing anything), and drooping sheath of Hence He was "the fulness of the God-something which had vainly tried to head bodily." And when He had re-ripen, and umbellate awning of the vealed the perfect beauty of a moral life stalks that had discharged their seed,. He made its attainment practically possi- were one and all alike incrusted with a ble for every one of us by His sacrifice little filmy down. Sometimes it looked and resurrection. Thus He has potentially "swallowed up death in victory."

From Blackwood's Magazine.
ALICE' LORRAINE.

A TALE OF THE SOUTH DOWNS.

CHAPTER LXIV.

like the cotton-grass that grows in boggy places; and sometimes like the "American blight," so common now on appletrees; and sometimes more like gossamer, or the track of flying spiders. The shepherds had never seen this before; neither had the sheep the woolly sages of the weather. The sheep turned up their soft black eyes with wonder towards the heavens,- the heavens where every sheep may hope to walk, in the form of a fleecy cloud, when men have had his legs of mutton.

THE darkness of the hardest winter of the present century-so far as threefourths of its span enable us to esti- It is needless to say that this long mate was gathering over the South warning (without which no great frost Down hills, and all hills and valleys of arrives) was wholly neglected by every England. There may have been severer man. The sheep, the cattle, and the pigs cold, by fits and starts, before and since; foresaw it, and the birds took wing to but the special character of this winter fly from it; the fish of the rivers went was the consistent low temperature. into the mud, and the fish of the sea to There may have been some fiercer win-deep water. The slug and the cockters, whose traditions still abide, and roach, the rat and the wholesome toad terrify us beyond range of test and fair thermometer. But within the range of trusty records, there has been no frost to equal that which began on Christmasday, 1813.

Seven weeks it lasted, and then broke up and then began again, and lingered; so that in hilly parts the snowdrifts chilled not only the lap of May, but the rosy skirt of June. That winter was remarkable, not only for perpetual frost, but for continual snowfall; so that no man of the most legal mind could tell when he was trespassing. Hedges and ditches were all alike, and hollow places were made high; and hundreds of men fell into drifts; and some few saved their lives by building frozen snow to roof them, and cuddling their knees and chins to gether in a pure white home, having heard the famous and true history of Elizabeth Woodcock.

But now, before this style of things set in, in bitter earnest, nobody on the South Down hills could tell what to make of the weather. For twenty years the shepherds had not seen things look so strange-like. There was no telling their marks, or places, or the manners of the sheep. A sulky grey mist crawled along the ground, even when the sky was clear. In the morning, every blade and point, and little spike of attraction, and serrate

came home to their snuggeries; and every wireworm and young grub bored deeper down than he meant to do. Only the human race straggled about, without any perception of anything.

In this condition of the gloomy air, and just when frost was hovering in the grey clouds before striking, Alice Lorraine came into her father's book-room on the Christmas eve. There was no sign of any merry Christmas in the shadowed house, nor any young delighted hands to work at decoration. Mabel was gone, after a longer visit than had ever been intended; and Alice (who had sojourned in London under lofty auspices) had not been long enough yet at home to be sure again that it was her home. Upon her return she had enjoyed the escort of a mighty warrior, no less a hero than Colonel Clumps, the nephew of her hostess. The Colonel had been sadly hacked about in a skirmish soon after Vittoria, when pressing too hotly on the French rear-guard. He had lost not only his right arm, but a portion of his one sound leg; and instead of saying his prayers every morning, he sat for an hour on the edge of the bed and devoted all his theological knowledge to the execration of the clumsy bullet, which could not even select his weak point for attack. This choler of his

made much against the recovery of what was left of him; and the docters thought that country air might mitigate his state of mind, and at the same time brace his body, which sadly wanted bracing. Therefore it had been arranged that he should go for a month to Coombe Lorraine, posting all the way of course, and having the fair Alice to wait on him—which is the usual meaning of escort.

Colonel always did form opinions, and felt himself bound to express them.

"I live in this house," he said, when Alice hinted at some such phantasy; " and the affairs of this house are my concern. If I am not to think about the very things around me, I had better have been cut in two, than made into three pieces." He waved the stalk of his arm, and stamped the stump of the foot of his At the date of this journey, the Colo- better leg, with such a noise and gaze of nel's two daughters were still away at wrath, that the maiden felt he must be in a boarding-school; but they were to come the right. And so perhaps he may have and spend the Christmas with his aunt been. At any rate he got his way, as a in London, and then accompany her into veteran colonel ought to do. Sussex, and perhaps appear as brides- With everybody he had his way. Bemaids. Meanwhile their father was making unable to fight any more, he had come ing himself a leading power at Coombe to look so ferocious, and his battered Lorraine. He naturally entered into and shattered body so fiercelý backed up strict alliance with his aunt's friend, Lady the charge of his aspect, that none withValeria, and sternly impressed upon out vast reserve of courage could help everybody the necessity of the impending marriage. "What earthly objection can there be?" he argued with Mrs. Pipkins, now Alice's only partisan, except old Mr. Binns, the butler; "even if Captain Chapman is rather lazy and a little too fond of his wineglass, both points are in her favour, ma'am. She will manage him like a top, of course. And as for looking up to him, that's all nonsense. If she did, he would have to look down upon her; and that's what the women can't bear, of course. How would you like it now, Mrs. Pipkins! Tut, tut, tut, now don't tell me! I am a little too old to be taken in. I only wish one of my good daughters had 50,000 thrown at her, with £20,000 a year to follow."

"But perhaps, sir, your young ladies is not quite so particular, and romanticlike, as our poor dear Miss Alice."

"I should hope not. I'd romantic them. Bread and water is the thing for young hussies, who don't know on which side their bread is buttered. But I don't believe a bit of it. It's all sham, and girlish make-believe. In her heart she is as ready as he is."

Almost everybody said the same thing; and all the credit the poor girl got for her scorn of a golden niddering, was to be looked upon as a coy piece of affectation and thanklessness. All this she was well aware of. Evil opinion is a thing to which we are alive at once; though good opinion is well content to impress itself on the coffin. Alice (who otherwise rather liked his stolid and upright nature) thought that Colonel Clumps had no business to form opinion on her affairs; or at any rate none to express it. But the

being scattered before him. Even Sir Roland Lorraine (so calm, and of an infinitely higher mind), by reason perhaps of that, gave way, and let the maimed veteran storm his home. But Alice rebelled against all this.

"Now father," she said on that Christmas eve, when the house was chilled with the coming cold, and the unshedden snow hung over it, and every sheep, and cow, and crow, and shivering bird down to the willow-wren, was hying in search of shelter; "father, I have not many words to say to you; but, such as they are, I must say them."

Sir Roland Lorraine, being struck by her quite unwonted voice and manner, rose from his chair of meditation, left his thoughts about things, which never can be thought out by mankind, and came to meet what a man should think of foremost his child, his woman child.

"Papa, I did not mean to look at all out of my usual look. I beg your pardon, if indeed I do. I know that all such things are very small in your way of regarding things. But still, papa - but still, papa, you might let me say something."

"Have I ever refused you, Alice, the right to say almost everything?"

"No, that you have never done, of course. But what I want to say now is something more than I generally want to say. Of course, it cannot matter to you,

papa; but to me it makes all the differ-with), the stumbling-block-the fatal obstacle to the honour and the life of the family?"

ence.

“My dear, you are growing sarcastic. All that matters to you matters a great Ideal more to me, of course. You know what you have always been to me."

"I do, papa. And that is why I find it so very hard to believe that you can be now so hard with me. I do not see what I can have done to make you so different to me. Girls like me are fond of saying very impudent things sometimes; and they seem to be taken lightly. But they are not forgiven as they are meant. Have I done anything at all to vex you in that way, papa?"

"How can you be so foolish, Lallie? You talk as if I were a girl myself. You never do a thing to vex me."

"Then why do you do a thing to kill me? It must come to that; and you know it must. I am not very good, nor in any way grand, and I don't want to say what might seem harsh. But, papa, I think I may say this you will never see me Stephen Chapman's wife."

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Alice, I never knew you talk like this, and I never saw you look so. Why, your cheeks are perfectly burning! Come here, and let me feel them."

"Thank you, papa; they will do very well. But will you just answer my question? Am I the fatal-am I the deathblow to the honour and life of our lineage?"

Sir Roland Lorraine was by no means pleased with this curt mode of putting things. He greatly preferred, at his time of life, the rounding-off and softening of affairs that are too dramatic. He loved his beautiful daughter more than anything else on the face of the earth; he knew how noble her nature was, and he often thought that she took a more lofty view of the world than human nature in the end would justify. But still he must not give way to that.

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Alice," he said, "I can scarcely see why you should so disturb yourself. There are many things always to be thought of more than one has time

"Well, Lallie, it is mainly your own doing. I did not wish to urge it, until it seemed to become inevitable. You en-for." couraged him so in the summer, that we cannot now draw back, honourably."

"Father, I encouraged him!"

"Yes. Your grandmother tells me so. I was very busy at that time; and you were away continually. And whenever I wanted you, I always heard 'Miss Alice is with Captain Chapman.''

"How utterly untrue! But, O papa now, you got jealous! Do say that you got jealous; and then I will forgive you everything."

"My dear, there was nothing to be jealous of. I thought that you were taking nicely to the plan laid out for you.”

The plan that will lay me out, papa. But will you tell me one thing?"

"Yes, my dear child, a hundred things, if you will only ask them quietly."

"To be sure, papa; I know all that; and I hate to see you worried. But I think that you might try to tell me whether I am right or not."

My darling, you are never wrong. Only things appear to you in a stronger light than they do to me. Of course, because you are younger and get into a hurry about many things that ought to be more dwelt upon. It is true that your life is interposed, through the command of your grandmother and the subtlety of the lawyers, between poor Hilary and the money that might have been raised to save him."

"That is true, papa; now, is it? I believe every word that you say, but I never believe one word of my grandmother's."

"You shocking child! Yes, it is true enough. But after all, it comes to noth

"I am not making any noise, papa; it is only that my collar touched my throat. But what I want to know is this. If any-ing. Of the law I know nothing, I am thing should happen to me, as they say; if I should drop out of everybody's way, could the money be got that you are all so steadfastly set upon getting? Could the honour of the family be set up, and poor Hilary get restored, and well, and the Lorraines go on forever? Why don't you answer me, papa? My question is a very simple one. What I have a right to ask is this am I, for some inscrutable reason (which I have had nothing to do

thankful to say; but from Sir Glanvil Malahide I understand, through some questions which your grandmother laid before him, that the money can only be got — either through this family arrangement, or else by waiting till you, as a spinster, attain the age of twenty-onewhich would be nearly two years too late."

---

"But, papa, if I were to die?"
Lallie, why are you so vexatious? If

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you were to die, the whole of the race | Mabel differs from you, as widely as you might end

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so far as I care.". My father, you say that, to make me love you more than I do already, which is a hopeless attempt on your part. Now you need not think that I am jealous. It is the last thing I could dream of. But ever since Mabel Lovejoy appeared, I have not been what I used to be; either with you, or with Hilary. In the case of poor Hilary, I must of course expect it, and put up with it. But I cannot see, for a moment, why I ought to be cut out with you, papa."

"What foolish jealousy, Alice! Shall I tell you why I like and admire Mabel so much? But as for comparing her with you ""

"But, papa, why do you like, and mire, her so deeply?"

ad

differ from your cousin Cecil. I begin to incline to an old opinion (which I came across the other day), that much more variety is to be found in the weaker than in the stronger sex. Regard it thus ———”

"Excuse me, father. I have no courage for regarding anything. You can look at things in fifty lights; and I in one shadow only. Good-bye, darling. Perhaps I shall never speak to you again, as I have to-night. But I hope you will remember that I meant it for the best."

CHAPTER LXV.

ACCORDING to all the best accounts, that long and heavy frost began with the clearing of the sky upon Christmas-day. At least it was so in the south of Eng land, though probably two or three days "You jealous child, I did not say earlier in the northern counties. A great 'deeply.' But I like her because she is frost always advances slowly, creeping so. gentle, so glad to do what she is told, from higher latitudes. If the cold beso full of self-sacrifice and self-devotion." gins in London sooner than it does in "While I am harsh, and disobedient, Edinburgh, it very seldom lasts out the self-seeking, and devoted to self. No week; and if it comes on with a violent doubt she would marry according to wind, its time is generally shorter. It order. Though I dreamed that I heard does seem strange, but it is quite true, of a certain maltster, who had the pater-that many people, even well-informed, nal sanction. Veni, vidi, vici,' appears to be her motto. Even grandmamma is vanquished by her, or by her legacy. She says that she curtseys much better than I do. She is welcome to that distinction. I am not at all sure that the prime end and object of woman's life is to curtsey. But I see exactly how I am placed. I will never trouble you any more, papa."

attribute to this severity of cold the destruction of the great French army during its retreat from Moscow, and the ruin of Napoleon. They know the date of the ghastly carnage of the Beresina and elsewhere, which happened more than a year ere this; but they seem to forget that each winter belongs to the opening, and not to the closing year. Passing all such matters, it is enough to say that Christmas-day 1813 was unusually bright and pleasant. The lowering sky and chill grey mist of the last three weeks at length had yielded to the gallant assault of the bright-speared sun. That excellent knight was pricking mer

With these words, Alice Lorraine arose, and kissed her father's forehead gently, and turned away, not to worry him with the long sigh of expiring hope. She had still three weeks to make up her mind, or rather to wait with her mind made up. And three weeks still is a long spell of time for the young to antici-rily over the range of the South Down pate misery.

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"You are quite unlike yourself, my child," Sir Roland said with perfect truth; you surprise me very much today. I am sure that you do not mean a quarter of what you are saying."

"You are right, papa. I do not mean even a tenth part of my spitefulness. I will try to be more like Mabel Lovejoy, who really is so good and nice. It is quite a mistake to suppose that I could ever be jealous of her. She is a dear kind-hearted girl, and the very wife for Hilary. But I think that she differs a little from me."

hills; his path was strown with sparkling trinkets from the casket of the clouds; the brisk air moved before him, and he was glad to see his way again. But behind him, and before him, lay the ambush of the "snow-blink," to catch him at night, when he should go down, and stop him of his view in the morning. However, for the time, he looked very well; and as no one had seen him for ever so long, nobody cross-questioned him.

Mr. Struan Hales was famous for his sermon on Christmas-day. For five-andtwenty years he had made it his grand "It is no matter of opinion, Alice. 'sermon of the year. He struck no

strokes of enthusiasm. which nobody resurrection restored his legs; a squire dreamed of doing then, except the very of high degree (a distant and vague low Dissenters still he had always a cousin of the true Lorraines), who wantstrong idea that he ought to preach above ed to know what was going on, having the average. And he never failed to do great hopes through the Woeburn, but so-partly through inspiration of other sworn to stick (whatever might happen) divines, but mainly by summing up all to his own surname, Bloggs; and last, the sins of his parish, and then forgiving and best of all, Joyce Aylmer, Viscount them. Aylmer's only son, of a true old English family, but not a very wealthy one.

Alice Lorraine was not at church. "Snow, indeed! No sign of snow," Everybody had missed her in her usual Sir Remnant answered sharply; he had niche, between two dark marble records of an inborn dislike of snow, and he wantsome of her ancestors. There she useded to be at home on the Monday. "But I to sit, and be set off by their fine an- say, missie, remember one thing. Tuestiquity; but she did not go to church day fortnight is the day. Have all your that day, as her father could not take her. fal-lals ready. Blushing bridesmaids West Lorraine church had been hon-ah! fine creatures! I shall claim a score oured that day by the attendance of sev- of busses, mind. Don't you wish it was eral people entitled to as handsome mon- your own turn, eh?" uments as could be found inside it. For instance, there was Sir Remnant Chapman (for whom even an epitaph must strain its elastic charity); Stephen, his son who had spent his harm, without having much to show for it; Colonel Clumps, who would rise and fight if the