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healty curse in Irish, for fear he'd know what I said. I got off his back with a heavy heart, took a hold of the reaping-hook, and sat down upon

"WHAP! IT CAME IN TWO."

the moon; and a mighty cold seat it was, I can tell you that.

"When he had me there fairly landed, he turned about on me, and said, 'Good morning to you, Daniel O'Rourke,' said he, 'I think I've nicked you fairly now. You robbed my nest last year' ('twas true enough for him, but how he found it out is hard to say), 'and in return you are freely welcome to cool your heels dangling upon the moon.'

"Is that all, and is this the way you leave me, you brute you!' says I. 'You ugly unnatural baste, and is this the way you serve me at last? Bad luck to yourself, with your hooked nose, and to all your breed, you blackguard.' 'Twas all to no manner of use; he spread out his great big wings, burst out a laughing, and flew away like lightning. I bawled after him to stop; but I might have called and bawled for ever without his minding me. Away he went, and I never saw him from that day to this-sorrow fly away with him! You may be sure I was in a disconsolate condition, and kept roaring out for the bare grief, when all at once a door opened right in the middle of the moon, creaking on its hinges as if it had not been opened for a month before. I suppose they never thought of greasing 'em, and out there walks-who do you think but the man in the moon himself? I knew him by his bush.

"Good morrow to you, Daniel O'Rourke,' said he: how do you do?'-'Very well, thank your honour,' said I. 'I hope your honour's well.' What brought you here, Dan?' said he. So I

told him how I was a little overtaken in liquor at the master's, and how I was cast on a dissolute island, and how I lost my way in the bog, and how the thief of an eagle promised to fly me out of it, and how instead of that he had fled me up to the moon.

"Dan,' said the man in the moon, taking a pinch of snuff when I was done, 'you must not stay here.' 'Indeed, sir,' says I, 'tis much against my will I'm here at all! but how am I to go back?' 'That's your business,' said he, 'Dan: mine is to tell you that here you must not stay, so be off in less than no time.' 'I'm doing no harm,' says I, 'only holding on hard by the reaping-hook, lest I fall off.' 'That's what you must not do, Dan,' says he. 'Pray, sir,' says I, 'may I ask how many you are in family, that you would not give a poor traveller lodging: 'I'm sure 'tis not so often you're troubled with strangers coming to see you, for 'tis a long way.' 'I'm by myself, Dan,' says he; 'but you'd better let go the reaping-hook.'Faith, and with your leave,' says I, 'I'll not let go the grip, and the more you bids me, the more I won't let go-so I will.' 'You had better, Dan,' says he again. Why, then, my little fellow,' says I, taking the whole weight of him with my eye from head to foot, there are two words to that bargain; and I'll not budge, but you may it you like.' 'We'll see how that is to be,' says he; and back he went, giving the door such a great bang after him (for it was plain he

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three months, and the minority meekly yielded, in the hope that something might turn up to prevent it. And it did.

The winter of 1851 will long be remembered in the foothills. The snow lay deep on the Sierras, and every mountain creek became a river, and every river a lake. Each gorge and gulch was transformed into a tumultuous water-course that descended the hillsides, tearing down giant trees and scattering its drift and débris along the plain. Red Dog had been twice under water, and Roaring Camp had been forewarned. "Water put the gold into them gulches," said Stumpy. "It's been here once, and will be here again!" And that night the North Fork suddenly leaped over its banks, and swept up the triangular valley of Roaring Camp.

In the confusion of rushing water, crushing trees, and crackling timber, and the darkness which seemed to flow with the water and blot out the fair valley, but little could be done to collect the scattered camp. When the morning broke, the cabin of Stumpy nearest the river-bank was gone. Higher up the gulch they found the body |

of its unlucky owner; but the pride, the hope, the joy, the Luck of Roaring Camp had disappeared. They were returning with sad hearts, when a shout from the bank recalled them.

It was a relief-boat from down the river. They had picked up, they said, a man and an infant, nearly exhausted, about two miles below. Did anybody know them, and did they belong here? It needed but a glance to show them Kentuck lying there, cruelly crushed and bruised, but still holding the Luck of Roaring Camp in his arms. As they bent over the strangely assorted pair, they saw that the child was cold and pulseless. "He is dead," said one. Kentuck opened his eyes. "Dead?" he repeated, feebly. "Yes, my man, and you are dying too." A smile lit the eyes of the expiring Kentuck. "Dying," he repeated, "he's a-taking me with him; tell the boys I've got the Luck with me now ;" and the strong man, clinging to the frail babe as a drowning man is said to cling to a straw, drifted away into the shadowy river that flows for ever to the unknown sea.

A SILVER WEDDING.

[By GEORGE R. SIMS.]

O Dick on our silver wedding, from | The wedding was fixed and settled, the wedding
Harold and Elspeth Grey "-

Give me my glasses, nephew. Is that what the letters say?

How stiffly these lockets open. Ah, there's a spring, I see

A picture of both, God bless them! to show that they think of me.

Did ever you see two faces so sweet and calm and kind?

Their ocean of life can hardly have known a boisterous wind.

Look at their happy features-the peace in the eyes of each;

Ah! strange is the tale they'd tell you, had pictures the gift of speech.

To-day is their silver wedding-a fourth of a century's past

Since, after a fierce, wild tempest, they came to their rest at last;

And I who had known their story, who from boyhood had been his friend,

Knelt with them both at the altar where their lives were to meet and blend.

But a year was gone and over since their names were asked in church,

that should have been

But it happened a twelvemonth later-the first one

was stopped, I mean.

Yes, stopped, as it were, at the altar, stopped on the very morn ;

And the bride had to hide her secret, and swallow the whispered scorn.

She was dressed in her bridal raiment, and bonny and flushed and glad,

When he came to the house like a spectre, with a look so scared and mad

That the bridesmaids shook like aspens as he passed them in the hall.

Then he asked for the mother and Elspeth, and

then came a cry and fall

She had fainted away, poor darling. He had left it till the last,

This

message of evil fortune, that came like a blighting blast.

And presently Elspeth's father came, with a sternset face,

To

gather the guests together, all who were in the place.

He said that a great misfortune had come upon Harold Grey,

And whispers went round the neighbours so ready And his daughter was lying speechless, and would

one's fame to smirch.

be no bride that day.

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Then the guests in their wedding favours drove She angled for Harold, the hussy, and landed him

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"To Dick on our silver wedding"-I was always And taking his Mimi with him went back to his his old friend Dick;

English home,

We were chums when the oats were sowing and And then, so I heard from his cousin, he went the pulse of our youth beat quick. painting again to Rome.

his wandering life

We were students in Paris together, we were both From time to time still I gathered some news of of us mad for art, We lodged in the Latin Quarter, and for months He was worried and ill, they told me, and had work were never apart,

with his foreign wife.

Till Harold got hit by a model, a beautiful, bold, She left him at last in a passion-left him and bad girl,

crossed the seas,

With a face that was meant for mischief, and eyes And his lawyers sent her monthly the price of

to set brains in a whirl.

their client's ease.

Then Harold and I were cronies once more as in The people had come about us, and a hearty cheer days gone by, was raised; For he sought me out in my chambers, and told But he with a look of horror in the face of the outme with many a sigh cast gazed, Of the bonds that had worn his heart out, and how, For there, with her breast fast heaving with the now that his life was free,

signs of returning life,

He had thought of our old, sweet friendship, and Lay the woman he once had honoured with the how happy he'd been with me;

Here we had rooms together, and painted and smoked and wrote,

Contented on life's vast ocean like rudderless ships to float.

We were happy as lords, and as lazy, when a message to Harold came

That the Court of Death had divorced him from the woman who bore his name.

Two years went by ere he whispered a secret he'd kept with care-

A story all love and rapture, and the charms of a maiden fair.

He spoke of his boyhood's error and his manhood's bitter pain,

And the angel who'd come to bless him, the beautiful Elspeth Rayne.

It was settled before he told me, and they'd fixed the happy day

I must see her at once; he took me and carried me straight away

To papa and mamma and Elspeth, and I felt such an awkward stick

When Harold, his blue eyes laughing, cried, "This is my dear old Dick!"

Her

sacred name of wife.

death was a well-planned fiction she nourished a cruel hate,

And bided her time to strike him, on the eve of a happier fate.

She would wait till he wedded another, then prey on his hopes and fears,

And the gold that would buy her silence would pay for the two lost years.

she

But she drank, and her brain was maddened;
had leapt in the stream to-night
When her soul was a prey to terrors and the fever
was at its height.

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He spoke of our life-long friendship, and how good And never a sign made Harold of the broken I had been to him,

heart within,

Till I felt like a blushing school-girl and my eyes For he smothered his love for Elspeth as a black were queer and dim;

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and an awful sin;

she like a noble woman came here as the outcast's friend,

And nursed her with me and Harold right to the very end.

One eve, as the shadows deepened, and we sat by the patient's bed,

She spoke, in her broken English, and asked us to raise her head ;

She called to her spouse and Elspeth to stand in the fading light,

That her eyes might rest on their faces and be blessed with the holy sight;

Then, taking their hands, she joined them, and bade them forgive her sin,

And

pray to the Lord of heaven to pity and take her in;

“And when I am dead," she murmured, “let Elspeth be your bride;"

Then she spoke no more till the morrow, when she blessed them both and died.

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