nter afternoon, died down,
And in the hush of twilight, one by one,
Like maidens leaning from high balconies,
The early stars looked forth with lustrous eyes.

Then came the moon like a deserted queen,
In blanched weed and pensive loneliness;
Not as she rises in midsummer green,
Hailed by a festal world in gala dress,
With thin sweet incense swung from buds and leaves,
And strident minstrelsy of August eves;

But treading in cold calm the frozen plain,
With bare white feet and argent torch aloft,
Unheralded through all her drear domain,
Save where the cricket sang in sheltered croft,
And, faintly heard in fitful monotone,
A solitary owl made shuddering moan.

Charles Lotin Hildreth.

THE LION'S SHARE.

By Mrs. Clark Waring.

CHAPTER I.

SUKEY IN THE MEADOW.

"Where's that cow?"

The speaker was old Farmer Creecy. He was coming up the back steps,
and his words were addressed to his wife, who was manipulating an
archaic churn on the back porch.

"What cow?" sharply retorted Mrs. Creecy, startled out of all
knowledge of four-footed beasts by the unexpectedness of the
question.

"_What cow!_ Look here, now, Alvirey, have you got any sense at all?
How many cows have we got? Can't you count that far? Don't you know
how many?"

Alvirey did. Looking like a sheep being led to the slaughter, and
feeling worse than two sheep under such circumstances, she hung her
head low, and answered, meekly:

"One cow."

"Then I ask you, again, where is that cow?"

"And why do you ask me that, Jacob Creecy? You know as well as I do
where she is. She's down in the meadow."

"And where's Mell?"

"Down there, too. They ain't nobody else to keep Sukey out the corn."

"Ain't, hey? Ha! ha! ha! That's all you know about it! Where does you
keep your senses, anyhow, Alvirey? Out o' doors? Because, I ain't
never had the good luck to find any of 'em at home, yet, as often as
I've called! This very minute there's somebody else down in the meadow
long side o' Mell."

"Why, who, Jacob? Who can it be?"

"You wouldn't guess in a month o' Sundays, Alvirey. Not you! Guessing
to the point ain't in your line. It's that chap what's staying over at
the Guv'ner's, who looks like he had the title-deeds of the American
continent stuffed loose in his vest-pocket."

"You don't say