selves in the pleasant land.

"Pulling down the old house, are you?" said the keeper, leaning idly on
the gate, which was already flanked by a new fence.

"Yes," replied the Maine man, pausing; "it was only an old shell, just
ready to tumble on our heads. You're the keeper over yonder, an't you?"
(He already knew everybody within a circle of five miles.)

"Yes. I think I should like those vines if you have no use for them,"
said Rodman, pointing to the uprooted greenery that once screened the
old piazza.

"Wuth about twenty-five cents, I guess," said the Maine man, handing
them over.

SISTER ST. LUKE.

She lived shut in by flowers and trees,
And shade of gentle bigotries;
On this side lay the trackless sea,
On that the great world's mystery;
But, all unseen and all unguessed,
They could not break upon her rest.
The world's far glories flamed and flashed,
Afar the wild seas roared and dashed;
But in her small dull paradise,
Safe housed from rapture or surprise,
Nor day nor night had power to fright
The peace of God within her eyes.

JOHN HAY.

They found her there. "This is more than I expected," said Carrington as
they landed--"seven pairs of Spanish eyes at once."

"Three pairs," answered Keith, fastening the statement to fact and the
boat to a rock in his calm way; "and one if not two of the pairs are
Minorcan."

The two friends crossed the broad white beach toward the little stone
house of the light-keeper, who sat in the doorway, having spent the
morning watching their sail cross over from Pelican reef, tacking lazily
east and west--an event of more than enough importance in his isolated
life to have kept him there, gazing and contented, all day. Behind the
broad shoulders of swarthy Pedro stood a little figure clothed in black;
and as the man lifted himself at last and came down to meet them, and
his wife stepped briskly forward, they saw that the third person was a
nun--a large-eyed, fragile little creature, promptly introduced by
Melvyna, the keeper's wife, as "Sister St. Luke." For the keeper's
wife, in spite of her black eyes, was not a Minorcan; not even a
Southerner. Melvyna Sawyer was born in Vermont, and, by one of the
strange chances of this vast, many-raced, motley country of ours, she
had traveled south as nurse--and a very good, energetic nurse too,
albeit somewhat sharp-voiced--to a delicate young wife, who had died in
the