"Would you rather hear the truth?" asked the plainspeaking doctor.

There was a minute's silence.

"Well-yes. Yes, sir."

"I am sorry to have to tell it you. You seem to value him; and that's what can't be said, I'll wager, of all the fathers in this place. He will not get well."

"But-what's killing him?" cried Sale, with a pause and a sort of breath-catching."

"I tell you the foul air he has breathed. It must and does affect children; and this one-as I can see at a glance -had not sufficient natural strength to throw off the poison."

THE BETTER HOME.

"And he'll not get well!" repeated the father, who seemed to be unable to take in the fact.

"Jenny says so too. She says I am going to heaven.”

The interruption, quiet as it was, came on them with a start, and they both turned sharply. The child was lying with his eyes wide open, a bluebell in his hand; perhaps had been awake all along. Mr. Whatley bent down to the bed, and Sale held the candle.

"Who is Jenny, my little fellow?" asked he, all his roughness of manner gone, and touching the child as tenderly, speaking as gently, as if he had been lying in a satin cradle.

"She's the Bible-woman, sir," answered the boy, who had caught his father's correct diction. "She comes because I am by myself all day, and reads to me, and tells me pretty stories."

"Stories, eh? About Jack the Giant-killer?" "No, sir; about heaven."

Mr. Whatley rose.

He took a small white paper from his pocket, shot some powder from it into a teacup, and asked for fresh water-if there was such a thing.

Sale brought some, which the doctor smelt and made a face over; and he put it to the powder and gave it the child to drink.

"He won't eat his food, sir," observed Sale.

"I dare say not.

He's getting beyond it."

The boy held up the flower. "When Jenny gave me this she said there'd be prettier bluebells in heaven."

66

Ay, ay," answered the young man, in a tone as though he were lost in some dream. "I'll look in again in the morning," he said to Sale, when the latter went out with him to the unsavoury alley. "Y-ah!" cried he wrathfully, as he sniffed the air.

Sale seemed to want to say something. I've not got the money to pay you now, sir. I'll bring it to you, if you please to trust me, the very first I get."

And the young man, who was a quick reader of his fellowmen, knew it would be brought, though Sale starved himself to save it. "All right," he nodded; "it won't be much. Look here, my man," he stopped to say, willing to administer a grain of comfort in his plain way, "if it were my child I should welcome the change. He'll have a better home than

this."

Sale went in again, to the stifling atmosphere and the dirty walls in the midst of which the child was dying so peacefully. The boy did not seem inclined to sleep now. He lay in bed talking, a dull glazed light in the once feverish eyes. Sale drew the three-legged stool close, and sat down upon it; the lad put his hand into his father's, and the trifling action upset Sale's equanimity, who had been battling in silence with his shock of grief. Very much to his own discomfiture he burst into tears; and he had not done it when his wife died.

"Don't cry, da. Is it for me?"

“It seems hard, Charley," he sobbed.

"The three rest

all taken, and now you; and me to be left alone!" "You'll come next, da. Jenny says so. It's such a

beautiful land music, and flowers, and sweet fresh air. Mother's there, and Bessy, and Jane; Jesus took them home to it because it was better than this, and He's coming for me. Jenny has told it me all."

Sale made no reply. He saw how it was-that others had discerned what he had not: the sure approach of death. And the good Bible-woman had been at her work, preparing, soothing, reconciling even this little child. But it did seem very hard to the father.

"If I could have kept you all in a wholesome lodging, Charley, the illness mightn't have come on-on you or on them. God knows how I've strove to do my best. Things be against us poor, and that's a fact; these horrible tumble

down kennels be against us."

And may

"Never mind, da: it'll be better in heaven." Ah, yes! Yes, it will be better in heaven. God sustain all these unaided ones with that sure and certain hope as they struggle on!

The boy slept at length; but he started continually, sometimes waking up and asking for water, sometimes rambling in speech. Sale sat and watched him through the night-he and his heavy heart.

You may be sure that the dawn could not penetrate quickly into that close place, shut in from the open light and air. It was candlelight there, but getting bright, when the boy started up, a gray look on his wan face, never before seen there.

"What is it, Charley? Water?”

The child looked about him, as if bewildered; then he caught up the bluebell that lay still at hand, and held it out to his father.

"Take it, da: I can see the others up there. They are better than this."

He lay down again, his little face to the wall, and was very still so still that Sale hushed his own breath, lest he should disturb him. The sounds of the day were com

mencing outside: two women had already pitched upon some point of dispute, and were shrieking at each other with shrill voices. By-and-by Sale leaned over to look at the still face, and saw what had happened—that it was still for ever!

MOHAMMED.

MOHAMMED,' the son of Abdallah, was born at Mecca (A.D. 569). Left an orphan in early childhood, he grew up under the care of his uncle, Abu Taleb, and won all hearts by the beauty of his countenance and the eloquence of his tongue. At twenty-five he entered the service of Cadijah, a rich and noble widow, and soon won her hand and fortune. At the age of forty he proclaimed himself a prophet, after spending much time in religious contemplation in the caves and deserts around Mecca. One day, he says, while sunk in despondency, and on the point of destroying himself, he suddenly beheld between heaven and earth the angel Gabriel, who assured him that he was the prophet of God. From that moment Mohammed preached the religion called Islam (surrender), because the duty of ready submission to God's will formed one of its leading tenets. His disciples assumed the name of Moslems or Mussulmans.

The creed of Mohammed is embodied in the Koran,2 a book containing the pretended revelations made by the angel Gabriel to the prophet. The two chief articles of his creed were these: There is but one God, and Mohammed is His prophet. He acknowledged the authority of Moses and our Lord, and asserted that he came to complete their work. He inculcated four great religious duties: pilgrimage, prayer, fasting, and almsgiving. Every Moslem3 is expected to make a pilgrimage to Mecca at least once in his lifetime, but this may be done by proxy. The believer

is encouraged to hope that prayer will carry him half-way to God, fasting will bring him to the door of His palace, and alms will gain him admittance. Five times a day the devout Moslem is directed to turn his face towards Mecca and pray, wherever he may be, or however he may be employed; and as cleanliness is supposed to be "the key to prayer," sundry ablutions are also enjoined as a suitable preparation thereto. A rigid fast is to be observed from sunrise to sunset during the month Rhamadan; pork and wine are prohibited at all times. A tenth of one's income is stated to be the true measure of charity. The prophet also revealed to his disciples the nature of rewards and punishments hereafter. Paradise is reserved for his own faithful Moslems, and they can only reach the golden gates by passing over the sharp and perilous bridge of the Abyss," into which the guilty fall as they attempt with tottering steps to cross. Mohammed paints his paradise as a place of sensual' delights, where the meanest believer will dwell in palaces of marble, clothed in robes of silk and surrounded by every pleasure that can gratify the senses.

When Mohammed had resolved upon assuming the prophetic office, he assembled forty of his kinsmen, and having explained to them the nature of his mission, he exclaimed, "Who among you will be my viziers?" "O prophet," replied the youthful Ali, "I am the man: whoever rises against thee I will dash out his teeth, tear out his eyes, break his legs, and cleave his skull." These words breathe the spirit that long distinguished the disciples of the martial prophet. When Abu Taleb, Ali's father, tried to prevail upon Mohammed to relinquish his design, he replied, "If they should place the sun on my right hand, and the moon on my left, they shall not divert me from my course."

For ten years the new religion made slow and painful progress within the walls of Mecca. A plot was then formed against Mohammed's life. But flight saved the prophet from an assassin's sword, At the dead of night, accom