but she? and she did not seem inclined. She was a girl that thought slowly and spoke heavily. Perhaps you have seen such persons, and have realized that questioning and hurrying only confuses and drives them farther from the subject and the intention of communicating it to you. I knew that she could not be hurried, so I waited patiently; for I am not in the least curious, I am happy to say. After she had swung and chewed a good while, she stared at me for a minute, and then said abruptly, "We are going to have a visitor next week- a widow." So the murder was out at last, and all at once. "Ah!" I said, with a relieved air, and then added interestedly, "perhaps she is musical; how nice that would be!" "O! she will be musical enough," said Amoret, with another stare," and I don't know why I think so, but I'd rather that she did not come!" "Why, that is strange. don't you?" "No, I don't," replied my friend. since she visited us, and then we were children; but I remember well how ugly she called me, and how she slapped me, and said that I was vulgar because I ate bread and molasses, and told how she always drank tea at home with white sugar in it; and she made up fibs and told them to Eva Marshall, who was my friend till then, and afterwards she died of measles and never forgave me, and she never asked me to go and see her body or to 'tend the funeral, and every girl in Rivermouth was there." And here poor Amoret, whose voice was getting more husky at each sentence, put her apron to her eyes and wept at the sad remembrance.

You like her,

"It is years

I comforted her as well as I could, and told her "never to mind the ugly old thing." "Oh, no!" sobbed my friend, "she is not ugly or old; she is six months younger than I, and is very beautiful; and now she has lost her husband, and is very sad; and I know that I ought to be glad to see her- but I am not. Oh! no, I am not." And Amoret wept afresh.

I might have wept, too, if I could have foreseen the consequences of this young widow's visit. But alas! I could not peer into futurity. I think our eyes in this respect are mercifully blinded. I thought Amoret foolish to cry about things that had happened so long ago.

I might just as well have shed tears at the recollection of the sad time when a neighbouring child, who was much larger and stronger than I, pounded me and made me eat mud pies at the

tender age of six years. I remember it went terribly against the grain with me then, but I care nothing about it now. I lived to have my revenge, too; for, "after long years," she knocked down one of my hives, when she was trying to climb a tree, and the infuriated insects nearly stung her to death; and I think she wears a "bee in her bonnet" to this day as the sad result. No, I never cherish ill-will. I "let the dead past bury its dead," and more too; so, although I sympathized with, I still wondered at, my friend's

sorrow.

After spending a quarter of an hour in affliction, she recovered her spirits, and told me, with another prolonged stare, that they were going to give a party for the widow's benefit soon after her arrival. "Why, I thought that she had just lost her husband and was sad," I said, in surprise. "So she has, but then she is coming to us to be cheered up; besides, people always make parties for strangers, you know, Belle," replied Amoret with another stare. She was the greatest girl to stare that I was ever acquainted with. She did not look at you either impudently or scrutinizingly, but she fastened her eyes on your face in a paralyzing and mesmeric way, as if your head was a magnifying glass through which she viewed a lovely scene beyond. As a starist she was a success. I was accustomed to her ways, but they greatly disconcerted strangers.

“Well, all this time you have never told us how cousin George fell in love, and we thought that that was the sum and substance, plot and incident of your story!" Thus indignantly cries the deluded reader.

Patience! Patience! I was just going to escort Amoret home, and arrange things methodically; but if you won't wait a moment longer, I shall just leave her swinging on the gate, and go on with double speed to the said cousin George. I told you before how proud and fond I was of him, and also that I thought he was proud and fond of me; so I need not repeat it. We had walked and talked and escorted each other to parties, and he drove me to picnics and selected me the oftenest as his partner, in the hazy and mazy whirligigs of the "Eights" and "Fours," of our rural and primitive dances. I was, so to speak, allotted to him by the district, along with a piece of burnt land. They guessed that George Morse would soon buy that piece of burnt land that joined his mother's farm, and they also guessed that he would marry that

cousin of his, Belle Barnaby. And their talk often ended in this manner. "They do say, he asked the old man,' two months ago you know."

6

Of course, like all gossips, they took a great deal for granted; but, although my cousin had never asked the old man at all, we both believed firmly in the popular delusion. You may judge then of my conflicting emotions when George came into my little garden one fine afternoon, and with any amount of confusion of face and stammering of speech, told me that he had fallen in love -and it was not with me. Now this was trying, especially to a girl that believed in the burnt land theory. While he was speaking, my head buzzed inside as noisily as my own bees. I tried to summon up my courage and look pleased and interested; but alas! my smiles were more like grimaces, and the few words of congratulation and friendly counsel that I tried to say, came from my lips by jerks and were only half intelligible. George never noticed how embarrassed I was, being in the clutches of the rosy god, and consequently very much embarrassed himself; and he stammered on in a confiding way about the grace and accomplishments of his inamorata. Poor fellow, he was far gone! I did not hear his concluding remarks, for my thoughts were confused. It was enough to disarrange the contents of a harder head than mine. To think of his coming to me with his love affairs!

His very last words I comprehended, and they were perfectly exasperating. "I suppose, Belle, you will think it strange that I should come to you and talk about it; but you know you have always been so kind and nice, and we have been such good friends, that I thought I would tell you first." "Thank you; very much obliged, I'm sure," I said with hidden sarcasm. Perhaps my answer sounded coldly to him, for after a moment's silence he bade me good bye, and walked away. I watched him depart; and his bright curly head drew away with it all the sunshine out of my life, and left it as dreary as a rainy day. I turned and went towards the house, but I had almost to grope my way at first, for a thick mist seemed to have enveloped me, and a darkness and shadow settled upon me that has never left me, or lightened till this day. Before I reached the vine-garlanded door, I heard George's clear voice calling "Belle! Belle !" "Grant me patience," I thought; "he is coming back." But I went not, as of old, with springing step to meet him; I only turned and stood in

silence. Back he came with a light tread and an eager face, and eyes like forget-me-nots.' "Belle, there is to be another party to-morrow evening at the Judge's; do go like a good girl. I want you to become acquainted with her. I am sure that you and she will be great friends." "Not much," I thought to myself. "And Belle," he continued, still more eagerly, "you will say a good word for me if you have a chance." His voice had sounded as if he were speaking miles away from me; but now he took one of my limp hands in his, and the warm, nervous grasp drew me back to the reality of my own wretchedness. I tore away my fingers, and I could have wailed aloud, but I only said hurriedly, "yes, yes," and ran into the house, and shut the door upon myself and my grief. Well, of course I ran up stairs to my own little room and had a good cry. It was no joke, you know, although I would have to make the best of it; and when I thought of the wondering Rivermouthians and their condolences and perhaps sarcastic remarks, I nearly went mad, never to mention that I liked George, nor the wear and tear to my lacerated heart.

After devoting half an hour to mourning and lamenting, I began to get angry with myself for caring so much, and I regarded my red eyes wrathfully in the glass. "Belle Barnaby, you are the most pitiful kind of a fool!" I said in husky accents. "Do have some kind of pride in yourself. Remember the soldier on the battle-field expecting a cannon-ball, most likely; remember the criminal on the eve of execution; remember your great uncle that was hanged for piracy; remember the house where you were born, and stir up your courage, and forget this unnatural cousin who forever has forfeited such an endearing title." But even the touching and bygone episode in the life of my exalted and deceased relative did not have an inspiring effect, and I was just going to burst into fresh tears, when I heard my auntie Fan calling me to tea. Now tea is a meal that I dearly love, and I am blessed with a singularly good appetite, as were Anne of Cleves and other distinguished people. So I dried my tears as the smell of toast and the fragrant Bohea was wafted up the stairs. Hunger triumphed over the tender passion-for a time, at least. I hastily splashed my face with water, and went down, trying to feel as if my eyes were not red and swollen. Auntie and father thought that I had headache, and marvelled greatly that I ate so much.

(To be continued.)

66

LARRY MCGUINN'S PROMISE, AND
WHAT CAME OF IT.

"DRAW up to the hate, Sir, draw up to the hate, for it's

a cowld, bitther night, and there's a storm risin' that promises little good to any poor hooker it catches in the bay; but, thank God, most of them came in this mornin', so we needn't be unaisy. Kitty, alannah, dust the chair, and throw a few more sods on the fire, and whisper, darlint, just see what's in the house, for his Honor looks famished." Such was the hearty greeting I received one wild autumn evening on entering the cottage of a fisherman a few miles from the pretty village of Bundoran, on the Donegal coast. I had passed the summer at Brighton, and, at the end of the season, was in the unenviable position of not knowing what to do with myself. Not being in love, I had no daintily bronzed, or bewitchingly freckled mermaid to follow to London, and the other delights of the capital offered but little attraction to one already tired of them. At this juncture an old Irish friend and school-fellow happily came to the rescue by reminding me of a farewell promise I had made to spend a few weeks at his residence in the west of Ireland. Over I accordingly went, and after a very rough passage to Kingston, and a most diversified journey by railway, stage-coach, and jaunting-car (the latter being "the two sides, top and bottom of a raal convayniency," as a mad-looking Enniskillen "jarvey" told me) arrived safe at my friend's house. I have ever recollected that visit with the liveliest pleasure; and even now, after a lapse of thirty years, every incident connected with it is as vividly pictured in my imagination as if it had occurred but yesterday.

Business matters occasionally deprived me of my friend's society, and then I was wont to take long, solitary rambles with my gun,sometimes through stubble and bog, but oftener along the rocks. and sand, with the mighty Atlantic rolling in at my feet. It was on one of these latter occasions, heedless of time, and wandering farther than usual, I found myself suddenly overtaken by one of those storms so common in the west. Shelter was the first consideration, and Larry McGuinn's cottage being luckily close by, thither I hurried, feeling certain of a hearty welcome from Larry and his pretty young wife. A few trifling kindnesses I had shewn