Hilda, you would perhaps become fatally conscious when it was too late. Roman justice, above all things, is a byword. What have you to do with it? Leave all such thoughts aside! Yet, Hilda, I would not have you keep my secret imprisoned in your heart if it tries to leap out, and stings you, like a wild, venomous thing, when you thrust it back again. Have you no other friend, now that you have been forced to give me up?”

"No other," answered Hilda, sadly.

"Yes; Kenyon!" rejoined Miriam.

"He cannot be my friend," said Hilda, "because-because I have fancied that he sought to be something more.” "Fear nothing!" replied Miriam, shaking her head, with a strange smile. "This story will frighten his new-born love out of its little life, if that be what you wish. Tell him the secret, then, and take his wise and honorable counsel as to what should next be done. I know not what else to say."

"I never dreamed," said Hilda,-"how could you think it?-of betraying you to justice. But I see how it is, Miriam. I must keep your secret, and die of it, unless God sends me some relief by methods which are now beyond my power to Ah! now I understand how imagine. It is very dreadful. the sins of generations past have created an atmosphere of sin for those that follow. While there is a single guilty person in the universe, each innocent one must feel his innocence tortured by that guilt. Your deed, Miriam, has darkened the whole sky!"

[The selections from Nathaniel Hawthorne's works are used by special permission of, and by special arrangement with the authorized publishers, Houghton, Mifflin & Co.]

HERMAN MELVILLE.

IN spite of a wide popularity in his time as a writer of travels and of sea-stories, Herman Melville is but little read to-day. He was born in New York in 1819. At the age of eighteen he shipped before the mast and cruised about, visiting many strange lands, until the year 1844, when he returned to Boston. He had lived for a time among cannibals in one of the Marquesas Islands, and embodied his remarkable experiences in his first book, "Typee," published in 1846. The book had an immediate success, and in the next year he issued a sequel, entitled "Omoo." Among other works published later are "White Jacket, Moby Dick," "Redburn," and two volumes of poems entitled "Battle Pieces." For many years Melville held a position in the custom-house at New York. He died in 1891. He possessed a dashing, racy style, and understood well how to relate the romance of adventure.

BEMBO RESCUED FROM THE CREW.
(From "Omoo.")

THE purpose of Bembo had been made known to the men generally by the watch; and now that our salvation was certain, by an instinctive impulse they raised a cry, and rushed toward him.

Just before liberated by Dunk and the steward, he was standing doggedly by the mizzen-mast; and, as the infuriated sailors came on, his blood-shot eye rolled, and his sheathknife glittered over his head.

"Down with him!" "Strike him down!" "Hang him at the main-yard!" such were the shouts now raised. But he stood unmoved, and, for a single instant, they absolutely faltered.

"Cowards!" cried Salem, and he flung himself upon him. The steel descended like a ray of light, but did no harm, for the sailor's heart was beating against the Mowree's before he

was aware.

They both fell to the deck, when the knife was instantly seized, and Bembo secured.

"For'ard! for'ard with him!" was again the cry; "give him a sea-toss!" "overboard with him!" and he was dragged along the deck, struggling and fighting with tooth and nail.

All this uproar immediately over the mate's head at last roused him from his drunken nap, and he came staggering on deck.

"What's this?" he shouted, running right in among them. "It's the Mowree, zur; they are going to murder him, zur," here sobbed poor Rope Yarn, crawling close up to him.

'Avast! avast!" roared Jermin, making a spring toward Bembo, and dashing two or three of the sailors aside. At this moment the wretch was partly flung over the bulwarks, which shook with his frantic struggles. In vain the doctor and others tried to save him: the men listened to nothing.

"Murder and mutiny, by the salt sea!" shouted the mate; and dashing his arms right and left, he planted his iron hand upon the Mowree's shoulder.

"There are two of us now; and as you serve him, you serve me," he cried, turning fiercely round.

"Over with them together, then," exclaimed the carpenter, springing forward; but the rest fell back before the courageous front of Jermin, and, with the speed of thought, Bembo, unharmed, stood upon deck.

"Aft with ye!" cried his deliverer; and he pushed him right among the men, taking care to follow him up close. Giving the sailors no time to recover, he pushed the Mowree before him, till they came to the cabin scuttle, when he drew the slide over him, and stood still. Throughout, Bembo never spoke one word.

"Now for❜ard where ye belong!" cried the mate, addressing the seamen, who by this time, rallying again, had no idea of losing their victim.

"The Mowree! the Mowree!" they shouted.

Here the doctor, in answer to the mate's repeated questions, stepped forward, and related what Bembo had been doing; a matter which the mate but dimly understood from the violent threatenings he had been hearing.

For a moment he seemed to waver; but at last, turning the key in the padlock of the slide, he breathed through his set teeth-"Ye can't have him; I'll hand him over to the consul, so for'ard with ye, I say: when there's any drowning to be done, I'll pass the word; so away with ye, ye bloodthirsty pirates!"

It was to no purpose that they begged or threatened: Jermin, although by no means sober, stood his ground manfully, and before long they dispersed, soon to forget everything that had happened.

JOHN PENDLETON KENNEDY.

JOHN PENDLETON KENNEDY was chiefly concerned in politics and matters of state, yet a vigorous essayist, a fluent and forceful writer, and an accurate portrayer of life in the Old Dominion. He was born in Baltimore in 1795, and was admitted to the bar in 1816. He served as Representative in Congress for several terms and was one of the recognized leaders of the Whig party. His "Swallow Barn," published in 1832, consisted of pleasant sketches of rural life in Virginia. Three years later appeared his best known book, "Horse-Shoe Robinson," a tale of the Revolutionary War in the South. In 1852 Kennedy was appointed Secretary of the Navy. When he retired from politics in 1855 he made several visits to Europe, where he became intimate with Thackeray and wrote for him a chapter of "The Virginians." He died in 1870. Among his works, besides those mentioned, are "Annals of Quodlibet," "Rob of the Bowl," and "Memoirs of William Wirt."

A BOY SOLDIER.

(From "Horse-Shoe Robinson.")

HORSE-SHOE loaded the fire-arms, and having slung the pouch across his body, he put the pistol into the hands of the boy; then shouldering his rifle, he and his young ally left the room. Even on this occasion, serious as it might be deemed, the sergeant did not depart without giving some manifestation of that light-heartedness which no difficulties ever seemed to have power to conquer. He thrust his

head back into the room, after he had crossed the threshold, and said with an encouraging laugh, "Andy and me will teach them, Mistress Ramsay, Pat's point of war-we will surround the ragamuffins."

"Now, Andy, my lad," said Horse Shoe, after he had mounted Captain Peter, "you must get up behind me. Turn the lock of your pistol down," he continued, as the boy sprang upon the horse's rump, "and cover it with the flap of your jacket, to keep the rain off. It won't do to hang fire at such a time as this."

The lad did as he was directed, and Horse Shoe, having secured his rifle in the same way, put his horse up to a gallop and took the road in the direction that had been pursued by the soldiers.

As soon as our adventurers had gained a wood, at a distance of about half a mile, the sergeant relaxed his speed and advanced at a pace but little above a walk.

"Andy," he said, "we have got rather a ticklish sort of a job before us-so I must give you your lesson, which you will understand better by knowing something of my plan. As soon as your mother told me that these thieving villains had left her house about fifteen minutes before the rain came on, and that they had gone along upon this road, I remembered the old field up here, and the little log hut in the middle of it; and it was natural to suppose that they had just got about near that hut when this rain came up,-and then it was the most supposable case in the world, that they would naturally go into it as the driest place they could find. So now you see it's my calculation that the whole batch is there at this very point of time. We will go slowly along until we get to the other end of this wood, in sight of the old field-and then, if there is no one on the look-out, we will open our first trench:-you know what that means, Andy?"

"It means, I s'pose, that we'll go right smack at them," replied Andy.

"But listen to me.

"Pretty exactly," said the sergeant. Just at the edge of the woods you will have to get down, and put yourself behind a tree. I'll ride forward, as if I had a whole troop at my heels,-and if I catch them, as I expect,