lings
toward his wife, accusing of being the source of all his misfortunes
the poor little woman who was loving and longing so sincerely for him.
But when illness came he could hold out no longer. "I made up my mind
then," said he, "that if ever I got hum agin, I'd go deown on my knees
an' ax pardin' o' my Sairy."

But she had never been angry, and was now only too thankful that Jim
and his friends had escaped safely.

"Ah!" said Jim in telling his adventures, "we hed a clus run on 't,
Sairy, but thee'd better believe that air British navy's a fust-rate
place fur larnin' a feller ter know when he's well off. An' Sairy,
when I longed so fur thee an' mother, an' thought o' what a wretch I
was to speak so ter the dearest little woman in the world, I c'u'd see
that I hadn't knowed when I was well off."

Jim's was not an unselfish kind of repentance, but it was the best it
was in his nature to offer, and Sarah had long ago learned that her
Jim was not the saint and hero she had once dreamed, but only a weak
and common-place man; and she asked for nothing higher from him. To
his best she had a right, and with that she was content, smiling on
her husband with eyes full of a love as tender and true as when in the
old days she had gazed down upon her lover from the cliff-head, while
the mother laid her hand softly on his scanty hair, and said solemnly,
"May God keep thee thus, my son!" adding, after a moment's pause,
"But I wish thy fayther was here to see." And a tender silence for
the memory of the rough but kindly-natured old man fell over them all;
while the baby, reconciled to the stranger, poked her little fingers
in the marks on his face, and cried because she could not get them
off.

ETHEL C. GALE.

AT THE OLD PLANTATION.

TWO PAPERS.--II.

The eastern sky is just beginning to assume that strange neutral tint
which tells of the approaching dawn when we open the heavy hall door
and step out into the crisp, frosty air. No moonlight hunting for me,
with the cold, deceitful light making phantom pools of every white
sand-patch in the road, and ghostly logs and boulders of every
wavering shadow. You are always gathering up your reins for leaps
over imaginary fence-panels, which your horse goes through like a
nightmare, and always unprepared for the real ones, which he clears
when you are least expecting it. If the cry bears down on you, and you
rein up for a view, the fox is sure to dodge by invisibly under c