laugh at; and she bent over the ledger with its hard lines in earnest good-will, through the slow creeping hours of the long day. She noticed that the unfortunate

u," he snarled, while the blind ol

er, had brought

he said, curiously,

feeds it eve

h a covert sneer, watching the cold

lau

ed, then, besides himself. Chickens

he had no fancy for Pi

s foot on the ladder without, he tested it again. He h

der. Adam must have been some such man as he, when the Lord gave hi

, then resumed its quick, cool movem

man was born to rule. Pike will find him harder

oked u

know what you think,-no,-not worth a dollar. Only brains and a soul, and he 's sold them at a high f

erness of scorn. The girl listened with a cool i

er. Herne and Holmes they'll call the firm.

themselves up at auction,-worse than Orleans slaves. Margret laughed to herself at

just then, looked at the story from another point of vie

id one, a burly, farmer-like man,

edit. Just half the

rtue of having spent six months in the South, dropped his r-s, and

in the

y. Good thing for Holmes. 'Stonishin' how he's made his way up. If mon

lighted his cigar

get on, re-markably! Mary Hern

on a barrel,-a clergyman, Vandyke; whom his clerical brothers shook their hea

hesitated with

rhaps, eh? Yet not that, neither," he added, hastily. "We think a sight of him out our way, (self-made, you

ch for stepping-stones in themselv

ing-stones lie low, as my reverend friend suggests; impudence ascends; merit and refinement

this scheme of Knowles's? Every dollar he owns is in this mill, and every doll

e," contemptuously

ave him a look,-after

ng at the attentive face of his listener. "We can't spare old Knowles's brain or heart while he rui

es just then at the clergyman, whom he sus

nity 's broke; and if they're made of the lower mud, they keep going down, down together,-they live to drink and eat, and make themselves as near the brutes as they can. It isn't easy to beli

tations were not exactly his forte, but, as he s

on nodde

hrew in the young doctor, alluding to "serious t

believe,

is days now hunting out the gallows-birds out of the dens in town here, and they're all to be transported into the country to start a new Arcadia. A few men and women like himself,

lisped the doctor. "Blood, Sir. His mother was a half-breed Creek, with all the

's Holmes," he added, after the doctor had started into

sure to be the upper dog in the fight, goin' to marry the best catch," etc., etc.

" wherein that disciple of the meek Teacher invoked, as he did once a week, the curses of the law upon slaveholders, praying the Lord to sweep them immediately from the face of the earth. Which rendering of Christian doctrine was so much relished by Joel, and the other leading members of Mr. Clinche's church, that they hinted to him it might be as well to continue choosing his texts from Moses and the Prophets until the excitement of the day was over. The New Testament was,-well,-hardly suited for the-emergency; did not, somehow, chime in with the lesson of the hour

t grant the prayer, he marked down the stal

dead brick wall. The slow step fell on her brain like the sceptre of her master; if Knowles had looked in her face then, he would have seen bared the secret of her life. Holmes had gone by, unconscious of who was within the door. She had not seen him; it was nothing but a step she heard. Yet a power, the power of the girl's life, shook off all outward masks, all surface cloudy fancies, and stood up in her with a terrible passion at the sound; her blood burned fiercely; her soul looked out, her soul as it was, as God knew it,-God and this man. No longer a cold, clear face; you would have thought, looking at it, what a strong spirit the soul of this woman would be, if set free in heaven or in hell. The man who held it in his gras

heart found it near, cruel. There was not a pain nor a want, from the dumb question in the dog's eyes that passed her on the street, to her father's hopeless fanc

he same countless maze of human faces going day by day through the same monotonous routine. Knowles, passing through the restless crowds, read with keen eye among them strange meanings by this common light of the sun,-meanings such as you and I might read, if our eyes were clear as his,-or morbid, it may be, you think? A commonplace crowd like this in the street without: women with cold, fastidious faces, heavy-brained, bilious men, dapp

ome pain that I dare not tell you of; in his own life, looked into the depths of human loss with a mad desire to set it right. On the very faces of those who sneered at him he found some trace of failure, something that his hear

streets, problems whose end and beginning no eye could read. There were places where it did not shine: down in the fetid cellars, in the slimy cells of the pris

e keen to read in the unpitying sunshine, and bared in those depths the feeble gropings for the right, the loving hope, the unuttered prayer. No kind thought, no pure desire, no weakest faith in a God and heaven somewhere, could be so smothered under guilt that this subtile light did not search it out, glow about it, shine under it, hold it up in full view of God and the angels,-lightin

his girl,-the crimsons and blues. They answered her, somehow. They could speak. There were things in the world that like herself were marred,-did not understand,-were hungry to know: the gray sky, the mud streets, the tawny lichens. She cried sometimes, looking at them, hardly knowing why: she could not help it, with a vague sense of loss. It seemed at those times so dreary for them to be alive,-or for her. Other things her eyes were quicker to see than ours: delicate or grand lines, which she perpetually sought for unconsciously,-in the homeliest things, the very soft curling of the woollen yarn in her fingers, as in the eternal sculpture of the mountains. Was it the disease of her injured brain that made all things alive to her,-that made her watch, in h

the crimson light of early morning, or, in the farms, breathing the blue air trembling up to heaven exultant with the life of bird and forest, she forgot th

ed hills, these colour-dreams, through the faces of dog or man upon the street, to find the God that lay behind. So she saw the world, and its beauty and warmth being divine as near to her, the warmth and beauty became real in her, found their homely reflection in her daily life. So she knew, too, the Master in whom she believed, saw Him in everything that lived, more real than all beside. The waiting earth, the prophetic sky, the very worm in the gutter was but a part of this man, something come to tell her of Him,-she dimly felt; though, as I said, she had no words for such a thought. Yet even more real than this. There was no pain nor temptation down in those dark cellars where she went that He had not borne,-not one. Nor was there the least pleasure came to her or the others, not even a cheerful fire, or kind words, or a warm, hearty laugh, that she did not know He sent it and was glad to do it. S

re going from their work now,-they had time to talk and joke by the way,-stopping, or walking slowly down the cool shadows of the pavement; while here and there a lingering red sunbeam burnished a window, or struck athwart the gray boulder-paved street. From the hou

ap, and go sheepishly down to Jenny Ball's, and the old man would bring his pipe and chair out on the pavement, and his wife would sit on the steps. Most likely they would call Lois down, or come over themselves, for they were the most sociable, cosiest old couple you ever knew. There was a great stopping at Lois's door, as the girls walked past, for a bunch of

Mrs. Polston were on the steps when he came up, they would say, "Good-evening, Mr. Yare," very formally, and go away presently. It hurt Lois more than anything else they could have done. But she bustled about noisily, so that he would not notice it. If they saw the marks of the il

is's faith in him. Whatever the rest did, she believed in him; she always had believed in him, through all the dark years, when he was at home, and in the penitentiary. They were gone now, never to come back. It had come right. If the others wronged him, and it hurt her bitterly that th

y, while she folded up her knitting, it being dark, thinking how happy an ending this was to a happy day. When it grew quiet, she could hear the solemn whisper of the poplars, and sometimes broken strains of music from the cathedral in the city flo

ere was something more in it,-an unknown meaning of a great content that her shattered brain struggled to grasp. She could not. Her heart ached with a wild, restless longing. She had no words for the vague, insatiate hunger to understand. It was because she was ignorant and low, perhaps; others could know. She thought her Master was speaking. She thought that unknown Joy linked all

go down into the gray and cold. Surely, whatever of sorrow or pain may have made darkness in that day for you or me, there were countless openings where we might have seen gli