Eight-nine-ten-eleven-Midnight at last!

Richard, with a start, shook himself free from his dreams and woke to full and immediate consciousness of his surroundings. Much thinking, much loneliness, had made him older than his years. To-night, on the eve of his twelfth birthday, he felt that it was time to put away childish things. Amongst those childish things he numbered the habit of years-his nightly tryst with a portrait in the Picture Gallery which he had adopted as his “own” at six at six years old.

One has one's favourites, even amongst ancestors. It was a certain Margaret Cunningham, daughter of that Earl of Glencairn who, being of the Privy Council of James V., was taken prisoner by the English in the year 1542 at the Battle of Solway, who had won Richard's heart. Marrying a Farquharson, she died six months later, "whereat," said tradition," she waxed exceedingly joyful, since her love had been given since childhood to her cousin of Kilmaurs."

True to his sex, Richard had been vanquished by the most tender, the most loveable little face in the whole gallery. It was to this portrait alone that he confided his dreams, his ambitions; and it was to this one of all others that he found it so infinitely hard to say farewell.

But say farewell he would, notwithstanding, for the hardening process had already begun in him. In the future he must allow nothing, certainly not things trivial as mere womens' portraits, to influence him. He had learned the

secrets of this life's success. A poor man must fight alone. Unhampered by ties of affection, alone can we hope to win the key of that secret cupboard in which the world hides her few prizes.

Past the King's Chamber, down the long corridor, beyond a row of rigid figures in armour, Richard sped, and at his accustomed place at the turn of the gallery his collie met him. Sometimes the boy might break faith; the dog, never.

Richard pushed the door of the picture gallery wide, and stood on the threshold for a moment, a changed expression on his fresh sunny face. The older faces seemed to turn to him, expectant. Through the stained glass windows with their emblazoned coats of arms, a steady stream of moonlight flowed triumphantly, taking the colour of the glass it came through-now rose, and now a pallid green. Not less steadfast the light in the painted eyes of some of the men he looked upon; martyrs in their way-men who had fought and died for a Cause—whose purposes, nor tears, nor smiles, nor force could turn.

He knew their histories, their records, man for man, woman for woman. Before some he paused longer than before others; had the veil between the world invisible and this been rent, and the familiar shades taken fleshly form and called to him, he would have had no fear. They were his friends and comrades; he passed before them as before a tribunal, with head erect.

The gallery was said to be haunted-who cared! In the

past, Richard himself had "made believe" that some day they should meet so earnestly, that more than once he had almost fancied that he heard the rustle of a silken skirt, or saw the flash of some dead soldier's dirk. But usually, at the critical moment, a cold draught from an opening door would blow upon him suddenly bleak, like the wind in the heather on the moor; the door would open, and his frightened nurse would bring a light, and lock him in his room again, with a severe scolding, and the dream-like many another later dream -would break.

"Perhaps that is what dreams are made for, Dan," he said once to his collie; and Dan looked up with the pathetic eyes of a dog who knows more than his master.

With his hands clenched very firmly and an uncomfortable tightening of his throat, Richard looked at the portrait of his ancestress to-night, and thought again, as he had often thought before, that it was strange God did not make mothers in a mould like this. Unconsciously in that moment he committed every line of the portrait to memory, never to be erased -the oval face, the soft hair, a dark curtain, banded over the low white forehead; the grave eyes that followed him everywhere, and that had been painted with a hint of tears, a favourite trick in a certain school of art: the turn of the erect head, the white neck just shewing beneath a veil of white. The moonlight fell upon all these lovingly. One little beam of light travelled upwards, lingering in the shadows of the misty eyes.

But these were childish things, the kind of things a future empire-builder must infallibly renounce. "Good-bye," Richard said gravely, "Dan and I aren't ever coming to see you again. Not like this, I mean, not in the old way, at least. I'm growing up, you see, and when one grows up, one can't go on doing these silly things."

But he walked away from the picture very sadly all the same, and thought that Margaret's eyes that night were very misty because, unconsciously, he himself saw them through a mist of tears. How cold it was! He must have been there far longer than he meant; his bare feet on the parquet floor were cold as death, and he called to Dan, who had, contrary to his usual custom, scampered away from him to snuffle anxiously at the closed door.

Outside through one light pane of glass, Richard could see the snow thick on the white stone balustrade; how silently and swiftly it must have fallen! When he came in there had been only a few flakes. At that moment there was a sound as of something falling, and Dan escaping from his master's hand with a whine, leapt forward again, scenting eagerly, then scratched at the door with a long whine of

terror.

The snow fell softly; something else had fallen too. Something that pressed against the door that Richard strove to open, at first gently, then with a sudden dread that tore at his heart-strings, and taxed his self-control. As it gave way at last, it pressed the unknown obstacle back with it-the

unknown obstacle, at sight of which the boy fell on his knees with a sharp cry. For it was a woman's figure-his mother's -which lay there in the moonlight, with its thin arms stretched out towards him, giving way too late to the longing it had repressed for years.

Face to face with death for the second time, Richard found himself more wondering than pitiful, more perplexed than sad. How swiftly God's arrows struck-how unerringly! The terrified staring eyes seemed to challenge his with a question which death had failed to answer, a question which would now be answered only on the Hither Shore. He tried to close the staring eyes and failed; tried once again, but failed, and then rose, shuddering. His cry had awakened his old nurse, who came to him feebly, candle in hand, with Dan sniffing at her ankles. At sight of his master the dog ran forward, and then, aware of mourning, crouched quietly on the floor beside the dead. And Richard looking down upon his mother, and hearing nurse Ailsa's lamentation come to him as if from far away, recognised that this was indeed "the end," that he had "put away ""childish things" once and

for all.

MAY BATEMAN.