learn by enquiry what had been the effect of my flight, upon papa; he learned that all was going on quietly, mama was well, papa had been as usual acting as magistrate, and seemed at least none the worse in health. Richard came back and told me this, and I began to recover from the sudden fear which had seized me, that I might have been the cause of illness to one whom I loved more dearly than anyone next to my husband. Richard, as you know, had a yearly allowance of £300 from his father; and we had both made quite sure in our own minds that although he would no doubt be very angry on hearing of his son's secret marriage, yet that, having never been a favourite son of Mr. Osborne's, although kindly treated by him, the latter would not take it very much to heart, especially as he had often declared himself prepared for any mad freak on Richard's part. A few days after we had been settled in the lodgings near Morestead, and when I had thrown off all remorse-I do not excuse myself in the least, Kate-a few days after, then, to our great astonishment, a hackney coach drove up to the door, and-Mr. Osborne entered!"

CHAPTER III.

"A FREEZING bow to me, and a 'Mrs. Richard Osborne, I presume;' and then Mr. Osborne turned to R chard, who had risen from his seat with a comical expression of dismay, which at any other time would have made me laugh. A pretty kettle of fish you've cooked for yourself, Mr. Richard; don't attempt to excuse yourself, sir; 1 can't talk to you about this ridiculous business in your wife's presence, unless she is prepared to hear some unpleasant truths.'

"Go, darling,' said Richard, turning on me a look full of tenderness. I passed behind him, and he lightly kissed my forehead, and whispered, 'Never fear, it must have come, sooner or later;' and I went. I never knew what passed between father and son, but presently the bell rang, the door of the house slammed violently to, and my husband came to me with an angry and flushed face, and excited manner.

"It's all up, Maggie; the old wretch has turned us adrift!"

"Hush, Richard, he is your father, and mine too.'

"Nothing of the kind, Maggie! he de clines the honour-will have nothing to do with us; he has just tossed me some bank. notes, and washed his hands of me! It went sorely against me to take the money, I can tell you, my dear one! but I dared not refuse, or we should have been beg. gars.' He looked straight at me, Kate, and I smiled, and told him we should have to be as careful and saving as his old aunt, Mrs. Milman, and with better cause. He bit his lips, but by degrees I coaxed him into a happy humour, and we forgot our troubles. He set himself then to look for work of some kind, and was so energetic, yet so gentle and tender with me, that when my father's words recurred to my memory, 'I know Richard Osborne's father, and Richard is a great deal too much like his father to be a fit husband for you,' I only thought of them as meaningless. My happiness did not last long. Richard sought some employment, but sought in vain. He had not been educated for any definite pursuit; and there were many other young men who, like himself, were seeking situations, and were far more fit for work than he. Weeks went by: we had been two months at the lodgings, and still no prospect of any employment which might afford us means of living. I had never been taught to be economical, for you know that at the Hall there was an abundance of everything, and I enjoyed every luxury that money could procure; and though the greater part of Mr. Osborne's gift remained untouched, still we were spending it surely, and with nothing to look to when that should be exhausted. We removed from Morestead to London, in order that Richard might be in the way of procuring some employment; and we went into smaller lodgings. Dark and dirty they looked; London lodgings must be dark, and generally are dirty, if the means to pay for them be but small. And now, Kate, I must tell you the source of one of the bitterest trials of my life. Little by little, whether from perpetual

worry of mind and harass, or from illness of body, Richard became feverish and excited in manner, and hasty in temper. The first outbreak came on an occasion so trivial that I cannot now recal it; but I know that I got angry, and did not restrain myself; and we had a violent quarrel, which was at its height when I taunted Richard with having lured me away from a happy and luxurious home to make me his slave. Richard replied that he was deceived in me, that he was only now be ginning to know me and my vile temper; and we went on with such mutual recriminations as I should be ashamed to repeat. Oh, Kate! had you een us then, you would have thought indeed that God had given us up to the punishment we deserved. I was far more to blame than Richard; I had sat and brooded over my changed fortune, laying all the odium of my present unhappiness on Richard's father and on mine; the foriner of whom had cast off his son and refused support to that son's wife, and the latter gave no sign of for. giveness to his only child. I upbraided myself; I was seized with pangs of remorse, which seemed to eat into my very heart, but I did not in the midst of my unhappiness acknowledge that my sin lay in the deception practised upon my parents, or, indeed, that I had committed any sin at all. It seemed to me that I had a right to marry Richard if I pleased, but I chafed at the separation from my father, and was too selfish to be happy under the loss of worldly wealth and esteem.

"I grew more and more wretched. Richard seemed woefully unfortunate, or, I thought, must be woefully stupid, for four months were gone and still he had nothing to do; and sometimes when I sat and sewed at my needlework, mending his clothes and wondering with a fainting spirit whether he would come home this time with better news, my heart died within me when my eager eyes met his and read in them the 'Not yet' which followed from his lips.

CHAPTER IV.

"ONE evening in the month of April, I bad been busy as usual mend.ng my own

clothes (for I strove to hide from Richard's eyes, as far as I could, the outward evidences of our poverty); my hands had dropped on my lap, and I sat idly gazing into the remains of a fire which was smouldering in the grate. I was thinking of my happy girlhood; of my dear father; the Hall; my girlish friends, none of whom had given any sign of remembering me. I thought of my hasty flight from home, and then of all that had passed since that time; I thought too of the many quarrels which of late had rendered our home a very different one from that which I had pictured to myself in the first few weeks of our marriage, and I laid the blame upon Richard's shoulders; and still saw nothing of my sin. In this desponding mood I awaited Richard's coming; the fire had burned out, when steps came up the staircase, the door opened, and a little figure stood in the dim light, and a sweet childish voice said, 'Father, he will not trust us; I have no bread!'

"I did not speak, and the little figure came towards me, and stopped suddenly when close to my chair, saying,

"Dear me, ma'am! I thought-Why this is not our room ?'

666

'Oh! please ma'am don't keep me; father's waiting for his supper, and I must go to him, only-I can't give him any; and what shall I do ?' and the sobs came fast. She was running away again, when I went to the cupboard and gave her from it the half-cut loaf which stood ready for our supper.

"Here, my child, take this to your father, only tell me where you live, and come and see me again.'

"Thank you, thank you! now father will not be awake all night with hunger; and we live at No. 5, Queen's Terrace.'

"And this is No. 4.'

"Then it's only next door; and I'll come again, ma'am, and father 'll come and thank you.' And she came quite close to me and said, 'I did ask God so, as I came

along home, to find some food for father; and I thought He would. Don't you think He made me come in here, somehow? you know if I had not come in here to you by mistake, you wouldn't have known about it, and couldn't have given me the bread. Oh! God is so very good and kind; I shouldn't wonder if He found us something to eat again to-morrow! Good-bye ma'am ;' and the door was shut and she was gone, and I listened to the pattering of the little feet down the stairs. But what had ste left behind? The words of the child rang in my ears; and I sat and wondered-'I did ask God so to find us some food, and i thought He would; and don't you think He made me come in here, somehow ?' The words seemed to flash through my heart and to give birth to I did not know what of strange sensation. I had never heard of any one who asked God simply for something he wanted; and the little one took it for granted that He to whom she had made her request had sent her to me in answer to it. What did it all mean? 'I shouldn't wonder if He found us something to eat again to-morrow,' she said; and would she watch to-morrow too, to see what God would do for her father and her? What a different light was that in which she regarded the God to whom she looked for daily help, to that in which I held the name of God! To me, that sacred name meant a something, or somebody, far away; a somebody about whom I knew nothing, excepting that I had, in years gone by, mumbled some prayers to Him; - vain words, not prayers, to which I hardly attached any meaning, and these prayers had long been discontinued. Surely that God could not be the One of whom this little child spoke so trustingly, and evidently supposed I knew Him too? I sat thinking on, that evening, but the current of my thoughts was turned. I lighted a candle and continued my work, and did not notice how time sped. I mended my dress, and turned to Richard's stockings, of which I had a large pile, and had actually darned most of them, when my eyes chanced to light upon the clock; the hand pointed to ten, and Richard was always home by seven, and often before, having, alas! no

occurrence;

"No, ma'am, I've not seen him; I wish you wouldn't frighten a body out of their senses, I haven't a bit o' breath left in my body; but there's no putting up with the fancies of some folks!' she slammed the door and departed, and I heard her grumbling to herself on the way downstairs. But I did not heed her rough words, what were they to me? my Richard had not come home; what could have happened to him? You may think me very foolish to have been frightened at such a simple but then, you know, Richard had never left me to spend an evening alone since our marriage, and I could not account for his absence now; what could have happened! My heart had just been softened to gentler feelings than it had known for a long time, for I had been gradually growing hard and selfish, and (I must own it) unloving. What if any accident had happened to my husband, whom I had of late so often rendered uncomfortable by my fractious humours! Oh! I felt I loved him still, as much as in the first days of our marriage; but what if something dreadful had happened, and the God that little child had spoken of was going to punish me by some misfortune!

"I thought over all the possible causes of his absence; perhaps he had met a friend, and had been tempted to dine and remain with him; but I could not still the beatings of my heart.

"He had gone early in the morning to enquire about a situation of which he had heard; it was in the well-established business of a photographer, and as Richard had always displayed considerable talent for the art, the idea pleased him much, and he was in capital spirits when he set off, and in great hopes that he should at last obtain something to do. But it grew later and later, and I became nearly mad with my forebodings of evil, and at last could no longer remain inactive. I had provided a little treat for supper, and put it close to the fire to keep warm; so putting on my bonnet and shawl, I crept down stairs, and just as I was stepping out of the doorway, Richard himself nearly tumbled over me in his hasty strides to enter; the reaction was too much for me, and I fainted.

(To be continued.)

And He is mine-mine in the daily cross,
Where He reveals Himself in love,
Fitting me for that home above,

For which I count earth's gains and joys but loss.

Mine! in the darkness of grief's blackest night, Leading me onwards through the gloom, Awakening flowers of hope to bloom,

His sympathy doth make the burden light.

Mine! when with pleading voice He cries to me
For sympathy, or love, or care,
Or labour, or unwearied prayer,

For those for whom He died on Calvary.

Mine above all when at His Altar blest,
In Mystery Himself He gives;
When with His life my spirit lives,
And He doth dwell with me as Guest.

Dearer unto me than life's dearest friend, Bound by indissoluble ties,

In sweetest union: lo I rise

From earth to heaven on wings that love doth lend,

Borne upward by the glory and the grace
Of His near Presence. All is mine,
E'en as, O Saviour, all is Thine;

I need no more till I shall see Thy Face.

And I am His! a sheep of His own fold:
His, though the scorning world disowns!
His, though it lures with syren tones!
His, for He loves me with a love untold!

His, when life's day sinks slowly into night,
And I can hold no guiding hand
To lead me to the unknown land;
Then shall He make the darkness light.

His, when this body deathless shall awake
From its drear sojourn in the tomb,
And rescued from the earth's dark womb,
Shall of His Immortality partake.

His, amid all the glorious white-robed throng
Who wake, in joy and peace and rest,
Within Jerusalem the blest,

The endless harmony of that "new song."
A. N. C.

THY blessing with the morning sunshine blending,
That streams in glory on some downcast head,
The skylark's rapturous Te Deum filling,
The decent pause when those sweet words are
said.

Thy blessing speeds us on our daily labour, Our lowly tasks all hallowed by Thy Word;

Our far-off goal the "Well done, faithful servant," Our promised joy the glory of the Lord.

And now once more we come to crave Thy blessing, Soft soothing whisper as the shadows fall, And stars shine out, and song-birds sink to slumber: "Depart in peace, thy Lord forgives thee all." O. V. L.

N a previous number we gave a view of the exterior, as well as the interior, of a Russian church, and we referred 3 to the importance of the Iconostasis, or screen, which is always richly ornamented. In the present number we give an additional illustration, shewing the front view of this Iconostasis, with the numerous pictures hanging upon it. Besides the larger pictures, very many smaller ones are often attached to the screen round the choir. In many of them, while the face is always painted on a flat ground, the drapery is often, to give effect, raised in wood or in metal, it being a mark of peculiarity of the Russian Church, that they allow paintings to any extent in their churches, but no carved images. Indeed, the Russians are devotedly attached to their sacred pictures, which represent, in a rude manner, the Virgin and Child, or one of

the many saints of their calendar, and are hung in a corner of almost every room of their houses. They are regarded in the light of a safeguard against evil of all kinds, and are the first articles sought to be saved in the event of fire, the common Scourge of the country. Small medals, stamped with similar subjects, are also commonly worn around the neck from the earliest childhood.

One point more respecting the Russian Church may be noted, and we quote the words of the writer referred to in our last paper. "In one respect the Russian Church stands on a high vantage ground. It is an institution which has remained unchanged for many ages, possessing the liturgies of the earliest times, and its dogmas are held to be above all question and doubt. It is venerated by the people to an extent hardly known in the West. Its clergy have never