ted, but have fallen short of the characteristics I have had to
deal with.

D. Christie Murray.

Rochefort, Belgium, December, 1885.

AUNT RACHEL.

A Rustic Sentimental Comedy.

CHAPTER I.

A quartette party--three violins and a 'cello--sat in summer evening
weather in a garden. This garden was full of bloom and odor, and was
shut in by high walls of ripe old brick. Here and there were large-sized
plaster casts--Venus, Minerva, Mercury, a goat-hoofed Pan with his
pipes, a Silence with a finger at her lips. They were all sylvan
green and crumbled with exposure to the weather, so that, in spite of
cheapness, they gave the place a certain Old-world and stately aspect
to an observer who was disposed to think so and did not care to look at
them too curiously. A square deal table with bare top and painted legs
was set on the grass-plot beneath a gnarled apple-tree whose branches
were thick with green fruit, and the quartette party sat about this
table, each player with his music spread out before him on a portable
little folding stand.

Three of the players were old, stout, gray, and spectacled. The fourth
was young and handsome, with dreamy gray-blue eyes and a mass of
chestnut-colored hair. There was an audience of two--an old man and a
girl. The old man stood at the back of the chair of the youngest player,
turning his music for him, and beating time with one foot upon the
grass. The girl, with twined fingers, leaned both palms on the trunk of
the apple-tree, and reposed a clear-colored cheek on her rounded arm,
looking downward with a listening air. The youngest player never glanced
at the sheets which the old man so assiduously turned for him, but
looked straight forward at the girl, his eyes brightening or dreaming
at the music. The three seniors ploughed away business-like, with intent
frownings, and the man who played the 'cello counted beneath his breath,
"One, two, three, four--one, two, three, four," inhaling his breath on
one set of figures and blowing on the next.

The movement closed, and the three seniors looked at each other like men
who were satisfied with themselves and their companions.

"Lads," said the man with the 'cello, in a fat and comfortable voice,
"that was proper! He's a pretty writer, this here Bee-thoven. Rewben,
the hallygro's a twister, I can tell thee. Thee hadst better grease thy
elbow afore we start on it. Ruth, fetch a jug o' beer, theer's a good
wench. I'm as dry a