prang up, and, putting her arm about his neck, answered, "Why,
Alfred, you _know_ your sister loves you."

"Not as a brother, not as a brother, dear Loo Loo," he said,
impatiently, as he drew her closely to his breast. "Will you be my love?
Will you be my wife?"

In the simplicity of her inexperience, and the confidence induced by
long habits of familiar reliance upon him, she replied, "I will be
anything you wish."

No flower was ever more unconscious of a lover's burning kisses than she
was of the struggle in his breast.

His feelings had been purely compassionate in the beginning of their
intercourse; his intentions had been purely kind afterward; but he had
gone on blindly to the edge of a slippery precipice. Human nature should
avoid such dangerous passes.

Reviewing that intoxicating evening in a calmer mood, he was
dissatisfied with his conduct. In vain he said to himself that he had
but followed a universal custom; that all his acquaintance would have
laughed in his face, had he told them of the resolution so bravely kept
during six years. The remembrance of his mother's counsels came freshly
to his mind; and the accusing voice of conscience said, "She was a
friendless orphan, whom misfortune ought to have rendered sacred. What
to you is the sanction of custom? Have you not a higher law within your
own breast?"

He tried to silence the monitor by saying, "When I have made a little
more money, I will return to the North. I will marry Loo Loo on the way
and she shall be acknowledged to the world as my wife, as she now is in
my own soul."

Meanwhile, the orphan lived in her father's house as her mother had
lived before her. She never aided the voice of Alfred's conscience by
pleading with him to make her his wife; for she was completely satisfied
with her condition, and had undoubting faith that whatever he did was
always the wisest and the best.

[To be continued.]

CHARLEY'S DEATH.

The wind got up moaning, and blew to a breeze;
I sat with my face closely pressed on the pane;
In a minute or two it began to rain,
And put out the sunset-fire in the trees.

In the clouds' black faces broke out dismay
That ran of a sudden up half the sky,
And the team, cutting ruts in the grass, went by,
Heavy and dripping with sweet wet hay.

Clutching the straws out and knitting his brow,
Walked Arthur beside it, unsteady of limb;
I stood up in wonder, for, following him,
Ch