lding. She had a sweetheart of her
own, and she could understand lovers; and something of the glamour and
mystery of a great heady passion she believed she could interpret out of
her own ripened life.

But Rastus Dabb, her sweetheart, was as cloddish and unimaginative as
the heavy-uddered cows, with their great fleshy dewlaps, of which he was
prouder than he was of anything else in his world. It was quite
impossible to get his feet off the solid earth: and apparently his mind
was anchored firmly to his feet. But Ruth had the attractiveness of all
young things--she was fresh and cheerful, with a heart as light as a
feather--and, by the law of contrast, she suited him to a nicety, more
especially as she was an excellent little housewife to boot. So the
courting prospered sunnily; and he let her "romance" as she pleased.

When she was a wife and mother, Ruth presently became acquainted with
that grim Shadow who knows the secret of our tears--their source and the
bitter in them--and knows, too, the secret of everlasting peace. And
thereafter, when at intervals his wings darkened the world for her, her
thoughts went out, with a strange yearning, towards the dead who had
once inhabited the ruin and could now roam through it only as ghosts.

"Shall I one day have only such a foothold as theirs in this dear green
world of ours?" she would ask herself, shiveringly. And the
Sunday-evening's sermon could soothe her not a whit.

At last, in the waning afternoon of life, when her smooth brown hair
was as yet unstreaked with grey and her cheeks had still a splash of
colour in them, she fell ill of some mysterious malady--mysterious, at
least, to the sympathetic villagers--and one dreary day in the
blustering autumn she was aware in her heart that the Shadow was in the
room.

"Draw back the curtains as far as you can," said she to Rastus, who
stood helpless by the bedside.

And when they were drawn, and she could see the great gaunt ruin
frowning blackly above the slopes of the shadow-checkered hillside, she
cried out suddenly, "I'm going there among them, Rastus! Oh, dear, hold
me!" And with that she passed.

FOOTNOTES:

[P] Fairies.

[Q] Melancholy, forlorn.

GIFTS AND AWARDS.

"TWO bonnier babes," said the grey old midwife, bending thoughtfully
over them, "I never before assisted into the world."

The mother, lying wan in her bed, smiled happily.

"So bonny are they," said the wrinkled beldame, "that I will