en out here by the Gunnel we know when spring comes
along."

And I began to hum the old song that children sang in the Islands:

The cuckoo is a pretty bird,
He sings as he flies:
He brings us good tidings.
He tells us no lies:
He sucks the sweet flow-ers
For to make his voice clear,
And when he says "Cuckoo!"
The summer is near.

Bathsheba's eyes were wet for the poor birds, but she took up the
song, crooning it soft-like, and persuading the child to sleep:

O, meeting is a pleasure,
But parting is grief,
An inconstant lover
Is worse than a thief;
For a thief at the worst
Will take all that I have;
But an inconstant lover
Sends me to my grave.

Her hand stole into mine as the boy's eyes closed, and clasped my
fingers, entreating me in silence to look and admire him. Our own
eyes met over him, and I saw by the lantern-light the happy blush
rise and spread over neck and chin and forehead. The flapping of the
birds overhead had almost died away, and we lay still, watching the
lighthouse flash, far down in the empty darkness.

By and by the clasp of her hand slackened. A star shot down the sky,
and I turned. Her eyelids, too, had drooped, and her breath came and
went as softly and regularly as the Atlantic swell around us. And my
child slept in her arms.

Day was breaking before the first cry awoke her. My father had the
breakfast ready, and Old John sang out to hurry. A fair wind went
with them to the Islands--a light south-wester. As the boat dropped
out of sight, I turned and drew a deep breath of it. It was full of
the taste of flowers, and I knew that spring was already at hand, and
coming up that way.

LETTERS FROM TROY.

ADDRESSED TO RASSELAS, PRINCE OF ABBYSSINIA.

I.--THE FIRST PARISH MEETING.

Troy Town,
5 December, 1894.

My Dear Prince,--I feel sure that you, as a sympathetic student of
western politics and manners, must be impatient to hear about our
first Parish Meeting in Troy; and so I am catching the earliest post
to inform you that from a convivial point of view the whole
proceedings were in the highest degree successful. And if
Self-Government by the People can provide a success of the kind in
that dull season when people as a rule are saving up for Christmas, I
hardly