eir kerries, that he lay for a long time senseless
on the ground. When he regained consciousness, he limped quietly away.

He has not since been heard of in the neighbourhood.

THE FUNDAMENTAL AXIOM.

The wild ass of the desert knows,
By inborn knowledge, friends from foes.
The tame ass of the village browses
Contentedly between the houses.
He has no foes, he has no friends,
He toils and eats until he ends.

But this time, Fate, on grim jokes bent,
A wild ass to the village sent.
Oh, what a tempest shook the village,
'Twas worse than flood, or fire, or pillage!

Now if an ass I needs must be,
The desert's joys and pains for me.

Broodigrass.

I.

It was evening. In the old mission house the frugal supper was over,
and the missionary, his wife, the two lady-teachers, the eleven native
female boarders and the native probationer, all knelt down to prayers.
The eleven boarders and the probationer had come in at the sound of the
bell, the eldest boarder leading, and the probationer bringing up the
rear.

A few seconds later, the old black housemaid and cook combined strode
heavily in and knelt down just inside the door. Prayers over, Miss
Elizabeth Blake, the senior lady teacher, sat down to the harmonium and
played the first few bars of a hymn. Then the little congregation stood
up and sang. They kept good time, and their singing was fairly in tune,
but the voices of some of the native girls were very harsh and shrill,
and somewhat spoilt the general effect. The probationer, Samuel Gozani,
led the singing from his place close to the instrumentalist. The choir
stood facing the right-hand end of the harmonium, and the leader stood
just on Miss Blake's left hand, and to see the choir he had to look
over her head. The hymn happened to be Luther's "Ein feste Burg ist
unser Gott"; it was sung in English, but the Reverend Gottlieb Schultz,
the missionary, forgetting the English words, drifted into the original
German at the second verse, rather to the detriment of the performance.
Miss Blake sang out her clear, simple soprano tones, very rich in the
low notes. She was a handsome girl, rather stout, with blue eyes and
dull yellow hair. Her face was somewhat pale from overwork and want of
fresh air. Altogether, she had a strongly Teutonic look, and was, in
fact, almost an exact counterpart of what her German mother had been at
her age. Of her Irish father she showed absolutely no trace in either
appearance or chara