inished their business by putting on and slapping the sod, he
saw this old woman remaining. She came up and, courtesying, said, "Ye
wad ken that lass, sir?" "Yes; I knew her when she was young." The woman
then burst into tears, and told Hugh that she "keepit a bit shop at the
Closemooth, and Mary dealt wi' me, and aye paid reglar, and I was feared
she was dead, for she had been a month awin' me half-a-crown:" and then
with a look and voice of awe, she told him how on the night he was sent
for, and immediately after he had left, she had been awakened by some
one in her room; and by her bright fire--for she was a _bein_,
well-to-do body--she had seen the wasted dying creature, who came
forward and said, "Wasn't it half-a-crown?" "Yes." "There it is," and
putting it under the bolster, vanished!

Alas for Mary Duff! her career had been a sad one since the day when she
had stood side by side with Hugh at the wedding of their friends. Her
father died not long after, and her mother supplanted her in the
affections of the man to whom she had given her heart. The shock was
overwhelming, and made home intolerable. Mary fled from it blighted and
embittered, and after a life of shame and sorrow, crept into the corner
of her wretched garret, to die deserted and alone; giving evidence in
her latest act that honesty had survived amid the wreck of nearly every
other virtue.

"My thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways, saith
the Lord. For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways
higher than your ways, and my thoughts than your thoughts."

_OUR DOGS._

"_The misery of keeping a dog, is his dying so soon; but to be
sure, if he lived for fifty years, and then died, what would
become of me?_"--SIR WALTER SCOTT.

"_There is in every animal's eye a dim image and gleam of
humanity, a flash of strange light through which their life
looks out and up to our great mystery of command over them, and
claims the fellowship of the creature if not of the
soul._"--RUSKIN.

_To Sir Walter and Lady Trevelyan's
glum and faithful_
"PETER,"
_with much regard_.

I was bitten severely by a little dog when with my mother at Moffat
Wells, being then three years of age, and I have remained "bitten" ever
since in the matter of dogs. I remember that little dog, and can at this