om with the news, and the
two ladies had first a cry and then a laugh over it. "Alice will be
duchess yet," said Lady Arthur: "that boy's life has hung so long by a
thread that he must be prepared to go, and he would be far better away
from the cares and trials of this world, I am sure;" which might be
the truth, but it was hard to grudge the boy his life.

Lady Arthur was in brilliant spirits at dinner that evening. "I
suppose you are going to live on love," she said.

"I am going to work for my living," said George.

"Very right," she said; "but, although I got better last year, I can't
live for ever, and when I'm gone Alice will have the Garscube estates:
I have always intended it."

"Madam," said George, "do you not know that the great lexicographer
has said in one of his admirable works, 'Let no man suffer his
felicity to depend upon the death of his aunt'?"

It is said that whenever a Liberal ministry comes in Mr. Eildon will
be offered the governorship of one of the colonies. Lady Arthur may
yet live to be astonished by his "career," and at least she is not
likely to regret her dying letter.

THE AUTHOR OF "BLINDPITS."

THE HOUSE ON THE BEACH.

"What is that black mass yonder, far up the beach, just at the edge of
the breakers?"

The fisherman to whom we put the question drew in his squid-line, hand
over hand, without turning his head, having given the same answer for
half a dozen years to summer tourists: "Wreck. Steamer. Creole."

"Were there many lives lost?"

"It's likely. This is the worst bit of coast in the country, The
Creole was a three-decker," looking at it reflectively, "Lot of good
timber there."

As we turned our field-glasses to the black lump hunched out of the
water, like a great sea-monster creeping up on the sand, we saw still
farther up the coast a small house perched on a headland, with a flag
flying in the gray mist, and pointed it out to the Jerseyman, who
nodded: "That there wooden shed is the United States signal station;"
adding, after a pause, "Life-saving service down stairs."

"Old Probabilities! The house he lives in!"

"Life-boats!"

Visions of the mysterious old prophet who utters his oracles through
the morning paper, of wrecks and storms, and of heroic men carrying
lines through the night to sinking ships, filled our brains.
Townspeople out for their summer holiday have keen appetites for the
romantic and extraordinary, and manufacture them (as sugar f