his own career, galloping backwards and forwards, to the left and right, without aim or motive; racing to and fro in the very madness of his panic, as he tried to escape the grasp of the hungry waters; racing to and fro until at last, quite suddenly, he stopped in his wild gallop, stood trembling for a moment with his eyes wild and strained, while the waves broke under his raised head, then with a cry that was almost human in its anguish, he threw his head back, and Royden knew that he alone lived in that rush of rising waters, and that his only chance of safety was to cling to his dead companion.

At first the effort to keep his seat engrossed all his energies, but gradually that tension relaxed, while now he held one hand upon the breast of his coat, guarding that lately won paper in its grip. Dreamily, with a consciousness of utter helplessness which was almost a relief after his restless feverish exertion, he floated on the surface of the tide; recalling brokenly, as one sometimes recalls a dream, how one man years ago, carrying an infant in his arms, had been drowned within this bay; languidly wondering over the exact spot, and morbidly trying to imagine the scene. Then there came into his mind-still softly and vaguely-the story of a wreck upon this coast, and, looking out to sea, he tried to guess the spot where the ship had foundered, and wished that he could float far out to sea, and fall just there.

One minute he was piercing the misty darkness with his eyes, and calculating how long it might be possible for him to live, and in the next he bent his head against the beating spray, with a faint smile upon his lips, and dipping his hand into the water, laid it upon his burning brow and

lips. But, through all, his fingers never once relaxed in their close clasp upon those papers he had borne so far in safety-so far!

Just before the dawn of the June morning a group of fishermen slowly passed along the silent, dewy park to the locked door of Westleigh Towers. They were men to whom this beautiful park had been lent as holiday ground; they were men who had learned to love the master who had treated them as brothers, and not serfs; and so no cheek was dry when they trod noiselessly under the whispering leaves, bearing him among them, still with his fingers tightly closed upon the paper he had borne so far.

Gently and regretfully these men disturbed the sleeping household, and, with hands that were delicate then, if they had never been so before, they laid him in one of his own beautiful rooms. And when a girlish figure crept in and stood beside him, appealing mutely and tearfully for tidings, they whispered, in hushed and broken tones, that, sailing past the bay as the tide went down, they had found him there upon his dead horse, benumbed and motionless, as he must have floated for three hours at least.

Benumbed and motionless! These were the words the men chose, because they saw the fear and horror in the pale face they gazed upon. But Alice knew what they left unsaid, and when she bent above the prostrate form, seeking in vain for some faint sign of life, a cry of terrible despair escaped her parted lips.

White and still the brave face lay; nerveless and powerless was the tall strong form; yet still the wet stiff fingers of the right hand held their firm grip upon that packet, safely borne through all.

CALL this idle history the "Berry of the Yew;"

Because there's nothing sweeter than its husk of scarlet glue,

She loved me all things told it; eye to eye, and palm to palm :

As the pause upon the ceasing of a thousandvoiced psalm

I loved, saw hope, and said so; learned that Laura loved again;

Wherefore speak of joy then suffer'd? My head throbs, and I would fain

Find words to lay the spectre starting now before my brain.

calm.

On her face, when she was laughing, was the seriousness within ;

Her sweetest smiles (and sweeter did a lover never win),'

Ere half done, grew so absent that they made her fair cheek thin.

So that when she whisper'd to me, "Better joy Earth cannot give,"

Her silent lips continued, "But Earth's joy is fugitive."

For there a nameless something, though suppress'd, still spread around;

The same was on her eyelids, if she look'd towards the ground;

When she spoke I knew directly that the same was in the sound ;

A fine dissatisfaction which at no time went away,

But brooded on her spirit, even at its brightest play,

Till her mirth was like the sunshine in the closing of the day.

II.

more

There's weight in earthly blessings; they are earthy, and they tend

By predetermin'd impulse, at their highest, to descend.

I still for a happy season, in the present, saw the past,

Mistaking one for the other, feeling sure my hold was fast

On that of which the symbols vanish'd daily: but at last,

then

This pass'd off, and soon after I went home, and took a pen,

And wrote the signs here written, with much more, and where, and when;

And, having read them over once or twice, sat down to think,

From time to time beneath them writing more, till, link by link,

The evidence against her was fulfill'd: I did not shrink,

about the low sun ranged,

We suddenly remember some rich glory gone or changed,

All at once I comprehended that her love was grown estranged.

no dream.

What I felt I can't remember; an oblivion which the gleam

Of light which oft comes through it shows for blessedness extreme.

came on:

They came; but since I scorn'd them, were no sooner come than gone.-

At times, some gap in sequence frees the spirit, and, anon,

We remember states of living ended ere we left the womb,

And see a vague aurora flashing to us from the tomb,

until

I've spoken once with Laura." Thereon all my heart grew still :

For doubt and faith are active, and decisions of the will.

IV.

I found my Love. was pale. We talk'd: but words on both sides, seem'd to sicken, flag, and fail.

She started: I suppose that I

whether she would quail.

From conflagrations, filling the alarm'd heart with surmise,

They lighten now, now darken, up and down the gloomy skies.

world its hearse;

Or, as the sun extinct and dead, after the doomsday curse,

It rolls, an unseen danger, through the darkened

universe.

"Ah tears! not lost to God then. But pray

Laura, do not speak :

I understand you better by the moisture on your cheek."

She shook with sobs, in silence. I yet checking passion's sway,

Said only, "Farewell, Laura!" then got up, and strode away;

learn'd by heart,

And never, save when sleeping, suffer'd thence

forth to depart,

The feeling of my sorrow: and in time this sooth'd the smart.

Yet even now not seldom, in my leisure, in the thick

Of other thoughts, unchalleng'd, words and looks come crowding thick—

makes me sick.

F course, when I received a letter from little Ned Ward, announcing that at last he was going to be happy, I ought to have felt sympathetically joyful. When the letter went on to state that I must, under extraordinary penalties, present myself that evening at his chambers in Crown Office Row, to partake of a gorgeous banquet in honour of the occasion, and to drink her health in a great number of bumpers, I ought to have accepted the invitation with a rapt alacrity, and have conducted myself generally in a light-hearted and genial manner.

He had always been little Ned Ward to me. He was my junior: he had been my fag at school. He had been a little pale-faced boy, very thin and weakly, with dry, fair hair, and a blue jacket and bright buttons, when I had been an ultra-grown youth, suffering acutely in stick-ups, and perplexedly grand in a tail-coat. But now things were changed. Professionally he was a barrister in the Temple; I was simply an attorney in Essex Street. He had been decidedly successful; I had been decidedly less fortunate.

It was a dull November afternoon, and though the clock of St. Clement Danes had only just struck three, it was so dark and foggy that the office candles-massive dips, with a tendency to gutter, and otherwise conduct themselves disagreeably-were already lighted, when entered my room my clerk, Mr. Beale, and presented me with a card, informing me that the gentleman whose name it bore desired very much to see me. "Captain Brigham, R.N." Could he be a new client? But I had no time for reflection. I raised the shades of my candlesticks, to distribute the light more generally about the room, and became conscious of the presence of a tall, stout, elderly gentleman, with a flaxen wig and gold spectacles. I begged him to be seated. He bowed politely, placed an ebony walking-stick, heavily mounted with silver and decked with copious black silk tassels, on the table beside him, and a very shiny hat with a vivid white lining on the floor, and then calmly seated himself, facing me at my desk. Without speaking, he drew off his black kid gloves and dropped each into his hat. He produced a heavy gold snuff-box, and solaced himself with no stinted pinch. He