u that boy?"

He nodded. "Yes: and the young lady in the chaise to-day was that
girl. Old man, I know you reckon yourself clever,--I've heard you
talk: but that when I met her to-day, three hours married, and she
didn't know me, I had a hell in my heart as I drove past the
Chalk-pit, is a thing that passes your understanding, perhaps.
They were laughing together, mark you, and yet they weren't a hair's
breadth from death. And, by the Lord, you must help me past that
pit!"

"Young man," I said, musing, "when first I met you, you were ten
years old, and I thought you a fool. To-day you have grown into an
unmitigated ass. But you are dangerous; and therefore I respect you,
and will see you home."

I turned back with him. When we came to the Chalk-pit, I kept him on
the farther side of the road, though it cost me some terror to walk
between him and the edge; for I have too much imagination to be a
thoroughly brave man.

The sun was sinking as we walked down to Bleakirk; and the recruiting
sergeant sat asleep outside the "Woolpack," with his head on the
window-sill. I woke him up; and within half an hour my post-boy wore
a bunch of ribbons on his cap--red, white, and blue.

I believe he has seen some fighting since then; and has risen in the
ranks.

A DARK MIRROR.

In the room of one of my friends hangs a mirror. It is an oblong
sheet of glass, set in a frame of dark, highly varnished wood, carved
in the worst taste of the Regency period, and relieved with faded
gilt. Glancing at it from a distance, you would guess the thing a
relic from some "genteel" drawing-room of Miss Austen's time. But go
nearer and look into the glass itself. By some malformation or mere
freak of make, all the images it throws back are livid. Flood the
room with sunshine; stand before this glass with youth and hot blood
tingling on your cheeks; and the glass will give back neither sun nor
colour; but your own face, blue and dead, and behind it a horror of
inscrutable shadow.

Since I heard this mirror's history, I have stood more than once and
twice before it, and peered into this shadow. And these are the
simulacra I seem to have seen there darkly.

I have seen a bleak stone parsonage, hemmed in on two sides by a
grave-yard; and behind for many miles nothing but sombre moors
climbing and stretching away. I have heard the winds moaning and
wuthering night and morning, among the gravestones, and around the
angles of th