bosom of her shirt and thrust him against her naked breast. The touch of the stiff unyielding little body sent a rending shiver through her frame. It was like a slab of marble against the warmth of her flesh. She sank on to the stool again and rocked herself backwards and forwards. She began to moan in a low despairing voice. Suddenly she felt a spasmodic jerk in the tiny limbs against her breast, the head turned sideways and the icy cheek was pressed against her heart. Eagerly she snatched the cloak away and looked at Ivanushka again. But the little face was just as gray and still and terrifying.

Outside the window a little group of people had gathered. Her sisters-in-law who had fled at her coming had spread the news of it in the village. were afraid to enter and they tried to peep into the interior of the cottage.

They

The door opened and somebody came in. It was Ivan. He stood behind her silently and she did not look at him.

"You have let your child die. God will curse you," she said to him in a strange, passionless voice.

He did not answer, but he frowned suddenly. There was a look of sullen pain and fear in his eyes, and he tore and plucked convulsively at the sheepskin cap he held.

"The Mother of God will turn from you. Your father would have cursed you had he lived," said Annushka again.

"I walked seven versts to get milk for him when there was none in the village," Ivan said, huskily. "I've carried him all night when he was ailing."

He stood motionless, but his broad shoulders seemed to shrink suddenly together, and his head was bowed and sunk between them like that of a culprit pleading guilty and awaiting sentence.

"You let him freeze because you were too lazy to get wood."

LIVING AGE. VOL. XLVI. 2428

"You drank the money I sent for him. Did you think I meant it for your tipsy louts of brothers and their devilish wives?"

"What can one do but drink in such a life as this?" Ivan said hoarsely. He stood up straight and his eyes shone with anger. "What life do I have? No peace. No joy. It's like a madhouse here."

Annushka said nothing. She began to rock herself and moan and sob again. Ivan went to the window and stood looking out into the courtyard. The sound of Annushka's sobbing filled the room. He raised one hand and pressed it to his eyes. Then he dropped it again and clenched his fists. He strode back savagely to his wife and struck her a blow on her bowed head.

"Don't madden me, woman, with your whining," he shouted, and rushed out of the cottage, his face wild and distorted like that of one insane.

There came the sound of a sledge bell which drew near and ceased. Voices began to speak eagerly outside the door. Annushka did not move. Her head was bowed nearly to her knees. She had scarcely felt the blow upon it. She clasped the little body of Ivanushka close against her heart. The door opened again and a delicious fragrance floated into the cottage with the frosty air. Somebody knelt upon the floor beside her and put an arm around her, and there was a sweep of soft fur against her cheek. It did not seem at all strange to her that the barina should appear suddenly at her side. She was beginning to be exhausted by the intensity of her grief. A voice whispered in her ear,

"Let us see him, Annushka."

She raised her head and saw that there was a strange gentleman in the room. He had come in with the barina. She dragged her cloak around her, tightly. The light of mad fear leapt into her eyes.

"You shall never touch him," she said, hoarsely.

The barina still knelt by her side with a hand upon her shoulder, and she said:

"We have not come to take him from you. We do not wish to harm him. The barin is a doctor, and if anything can be done to save Ivanushka he will know what to do. Annushka! if he can be saved, the barin will save him."

The

With gentle persuasion she induced the mother to lay the little body across her knee for the doctor to examine it. The upturned eyes and little open mouth seemed to reproach them timidly; to ask why they, who should have sheltered him, had let him suffer. lady's tears began to fall. It seemed shameful to her that she should stand in his presence dressed in her rich clothes and furs. It was as if she had deliberately used her wealth and power to destroy this tiny creature who was so helpless and so poor.

"It is too late," the doctor said, and gently lifted the little body from the mother's knee. "He is dead."

Annushka leapt to her feet with a shriek at the word, and flung aside the barina's restraining hand. She began to scream hysterical curses upon those who had caused the baby's death. Her eries were heard outside the cottage, and the neighbors ran from all sides and joined the awestruck group near the window. She tore her hair and struck herself wildly on the breast in the abandonment of desperation. The barina stood pale and frightened. She had never seen anything so terrible. Annushka sank, gasping and exhausted upon the wooden bench, and laid her

head upon the table. Her body heaved with strangling sobs.

When she at last grew quiet the barina leant over her and said to her gently:

"Come back with me, Annushka. You have nothing to do here now. We will take Ivanushka and go back together, and I will look after you all your life. I will send for your hus

band. Let me make what amends I can to you for losing the poor little baby."

The doctor went outside to commission the neighbors to make a little coffin for Ivanushka, and they set about it very willingly. They silently made way when Annushka came out of the cottage and took her seat in the sledge. She had pulled her shawl over her face. and she spoke to nobody, and did not look up. The rough-hewn little box which held Ivanushka's body was placed in her lap. The neighbors crowded round to perform what little friendly services they might, and refused to take money for the little coffin.

And so Ivanushka travelled to St. Petersburg; and he was given a funeral such as no peasant baby had ever had before. The little rough box made by the peasants was exchanged for a sumptuous little white coffin which was dragged to the churchyard by four white horses in a hearse of pure white. Three mutes in new white robes and streamers walked on either side of the hearse, and the three priests who followed it in gold-colored vestments and with flowing hair might have been especially chosen for their air of sanctity and prosperity.

Perhaps this was a consolation to Annusbka. Nevertheless, the "barchuk's" digestion was upset for a long while because of the violence of her grief. She still lives in the barin's household, and perhaps she will live

there till she is an old woman, and be nurse to the "barchuk's" children. When inquiries were made after Ivan in the village it appeared that he had left it and had not returned, and so far he has not been heard of.

Annushka lives like a queen. Her slightest wish is gratified, and she is The English Review.

treated with the utmost consideration and tenderness by the barina. But she would cast her easy life to the winds, and go joyfully back to poverty and hardship if it could but be brightened for her by the smile of the little lost Ivanushka.

J. Saturin.

It must be regretfully allowed by the most enthusiastic of gardeners that there are too many days in our English winter when the garden is quite the last place in which they should choose to take their walks. At times when the snow, smutched with long lying, buries all the lower plants under vague mounds, and the taller sorts stand like skeletons with warped stems and frost-pinched leaves, or when the paths shine in pools of swampy thaw, almost every sort of walking-ground is better than that within the precincts. Out in the lanes and woods there may be quite tolerable going among the bracken, or the drifted leaves, or on turf still frozen on the shady side of the hedge; there, at least, if one hits upon a piece of deep ground, will footsteps leave no serious damage behind them. In the open country the underwood and hedge-growths stand undauntedly among the snow; the primrose tufts, the celandines, and foxgloves, half buried or thawed out, have an air of knowing their own business and taking unconcernedly all that comes. But within the cultivated ground, the impracticable paths and the visible discomfort of the civilized growths discourage strolling. We will wait until the gravel dries up a little, and the wallflowers hang less disconsolately limp and sodden, and the laurels hold up their nipped fingers again.

But such dismal hours as these for

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tunately come but now and then. most modern winters we are offered quite as many chances of enjoying a garden as we are generally ready to take advantage of; and even when the conditions overhead and underfoot are by nature unfavorable, they may often be made something more than endurable by the following of some simple precautions in the matter of shelter and paving. Without some experiment upon varying aspects, and the effect of walks and wind screens, it is not easy to appreciate the differences of climate which may be obtained within the radius of half-a-minute's walk. We feel at times as we turn out of the sting of the east wind round a corner of the house and step into a sudden lull ou the sheltered side that we have gone a thousand miles nearer to the sun; but we seldom take the thought needful for providing garden-walks with this artificial clemency on almost any day in the winter when the sun shines. Masonry, of course, makes the most effective bulwark; and where there are fairly high fruit walls with exposure to the west and south, a very little trouble should suffice to arrange a walk and even sitting-places which will be out of range of all the most unkindly blasts between north and south-east. Hedges and shrubberies make a useful screen if they stand thick and close; a snow-wind will drive through holly, and even through yew, unless it be

for a single passenger, if no more can be allowed, running the length of every path; it enables the gardener to do his inspection and transport at times when he is too often condemned to picking the dead leaves off the store geraniums or turning the thrice-turned composts in the potting shed. Only the practical worker knows the economy of time and toil and temper in the possession of a track practicable for a wheelbarrow in all states of the ground. And on æsthetic grounds alone, every garden ought to have a paved pathway leading from the house to the sheltered corner which is meant for pacings to and fro in gleams of winter sun, in breaks of stormy weather, and in the bright but bitter mornings of a March wind. Such a communication will double the opportunities of taking the air, of saunterings in meditative review of the crops, of observations, as one's hobby leads, of the ways of the birds, of clouds, sunsets, the evening stars.

In

The nook intended to catch the better humors of winter days should, of course, be furnished with all that there is room for in the way of ornament and interest. In southern corners the gap between the seasons is materially shortened: the first aconites of January will flower where the latest chrysanthemums and China roses held out. against December's frost and fog. favorable soils and latitudes, Iris stylosa and Christmas roses will begin to show flower in the dark days. Snowdrops should be planted in masses somewhere near the winter walk; and crocus, he patica, and the primrose tribe will carry on the succession through the inevitable cold spells of spring. If there be walls about the sheltered place, room should be found on them-if pears and peaches do not monopolize the whole surface-for the winter-flowering Jasminum nudiflorum, and perhaps for the vivid scarlet berries of the

thorn commonly called pyracantha. Shrubbery coverts give plenty of scope for ornament in the choice of evergreens; the range is large, and the planter may safely be left to the guidance of the catalogues, if he have some notion of the value of breadth and know the difference between variety and motley. A word may perhaps be allowed in recommendation of the bay and laurustinus as alternative to the common laurel, too frequent in its hacked and trimmed form, and too rarely granted space for its true development as a tree. Some of the earliest of the flowering shrubs, such as ribes, Forsythia, mezereon, should have a place among the evergreens, on the sunny side.

Upon the wider prospects from the winter quarters the gardener as a rule has not much power. In choosing a garden ready-made, or a site for a new one, few people sufficiently consider the part in the picture of the view beyond the garden bounds. Yet the difference made in a pleasure ground by a horizon of neighborly windows and chimney. pots, or by a sweep of woodland and far-off hills, can be both subtle and potent. In making or adapting a winter corner such as we have been discussing, a position on a southern slope with an unobstructed outlook to the sun should of course be chosen before ground that is low, shut in or shaded by timber or buildings. Trees on the north or east are very desirable; not only do they break the wind, and produce a local mildness of climate in their lee, but they give to the place a dignity and largeness of scale not to be had by any other means. A spreading cedar, a group of old firs, a line of elms, even a poplar-clump, makes an unforgettable background for garden perambulations. In the course of time the sound of the wind in the boughs becomes the familiar voice of the garden; the light that changes upon them hourly, the signs of spring and fall, the