ith the bright blue patch in it, that
she had been mending it with the last time he was at home. Louise was so
absorbed in her thoughts that she did not hear his approach, and
stepping softly, he passed in and stood before her; she started back,
and immediately began to whimper a little, putting up her hands to her
face.

"Louise," said Peter, "wilt thou forgive me?"

She looked up perplexed, only half believing what she heard.

"I know everything. I have seen Jacques. I was harsh to thee, mon
enfant."

"I meant no harm," said Louise. "I begged him not to come. I knew thou
wouldest be angered."

"I am not angered. He is thy husband."

She glanced up with an irrepressible start of eagerness.

"Thou meanest--" Her very desire seemed to take away her speech.

Peter laid his hand on her wrist, as gently as a woman.

"Louise," he said, "thou lovest him?"

She gazed at him in silence; the piercing question in her eyes her only
answer.

"Thou shalt go with him," he said. "I only came to say goodbye."

He went to the door: then stood and looked back, with a world of
yearning and tenderness in his face. He stretched out his arms. "Kiss
me, Louise," he said.

She rose, still half frightened, and kissed him as she was told.

He held her tightly in his arms for a minute, then put her silently from
him, and turned away.

Peter was not seen in those parts again. It was understood that he and
his wife had emigrated to New Zealand, and the cottage was sold, and the
furniture and things dispersed.

In a fishing village on the coast of Brittany, there appeared, not long
afterwards, a tall Englishman, speaking the Channel Island patois, who
settled down to make a home among the Breton folk, adopting their ways
and language, and eking out, like them, a livelihood by hard toil early
and late among the rocks and sand-banks, or by long months of fishing on
the high seas; a man on whom the simple-minded villagers looked with a
certain respect, mingled with awe, as on one who seemed to them marked
out by heaven for some special fate; who lived alone in his cottage,
attending to his own wants, no woman being ever allowed to enter it; and
about whose past nothing was known, and no one dared to ask.

[Illustration;]

TABITHA'S AUNT.

From the very hour that Tabitha set foot in my house, I conceived a
dislike for her Aunt. In the first place I did not see why she should
have an Aunt. Tabitha was going to belong to