shoulders. 'You'll go and tell her so, Merrin.'

'But had you not better speak a word to her yourself, and have done with it? She'll not believe me,' pleaded Mrs. John.

'Not a syllable,' declined the Captain absolutely. How am I to have done with it, if she is to get speech of me every time she walks in from Sandycroft?'

This aince,' urged the deputy faintly, as the knock she was expecting-not a loud knock, but a sedate, prolonged knock, like what a sedate, tenacious woman would give-nearly made Mrs. John Ord jump from her seat a second time.

'I tell you I'll do no such thing,' resisted the Captain, fuming, and his brown face becoming a copper colour. Have her greeting and flyting by turn? I know their tricks; I will not. If you do not like to dismiss her, Mrs. John Ord, I'll step out at the back door and wait till she lifts; and if she's very long about it, I'll send a policeman to warn her, or any other troublesome party, off the premises. But I'll know then who cares for my peace and credit, and I'll flit my traps within the hour, and never darken the door again, though I was willing to be a friend to Jock's widow and bairns. I think I have shown that. There's where it is; and these are my last words,' with his hands in his pockets, and his back against the wall.

'Oh! dear, dear, Captain, I'll do your bidding,' Mrs. John cried. But tell me what I'm to say. I could not tell a respectable woman like Suffie Quhair, though she has forgotten herself in coming after you here to-day, we would have the police come after her. I declare, Tammas,' besought Mrs. John in an agony, 'I would fall through my own floor before I said that.'

'Say nothing of the kind, you idiot,' retorted the Captain, savagely

VOL. LXXVII.-NO. CCCCLXII.

for so cordial a man; 'say it is all over with her and me. Say there is to be no more of that kind of thing at this time of the day. I wish her well; and if she's reasonable, I'll mind her with a shawl or a gown tail, but I'll have nothing to do with her for a wife. A wife, indeed! a blacked, plucked, common, old-fashioned old maid! a fell like wife for a grand gentleman; the woman must be in a frenzy to think of it, or she does not know that I have made my fortune, and may cope with the best man in the land. You can surely say that, Merrin ?'

She could certainly say that, and she crept out at a snail's pace to say it, as Suffie renewed her appli

cation for admittance.

But cowards must pay the penalty of their cowardice. Mrs. John Ord's gaping lips whitened, her voice quavered, the strings of her cap fluttered with the nervous vibration of her head, as she went through a feint of just having heard Miss Suffie's knock; hailed the visitor with an exaggeration of civility, and with a muttered word of the other room's being 'taken up,' showed her into the little matted kitchen, and sank on a chair, collapsing into more of a heap than Miss Suffie, who refused to sit down opposite her hostess, but stood, stiff and erect, before her, saying, plainly, 'It's not you I'm come to see, Mrs. John. I've not walked in about the milk and the butter the night; I've come to have a word with Tammas.' She did not call him Captain Ord, or even Tammas Ord, but the simple Christian name, as one whose words could not be mistaken, and who had an undoubted title to use such intimate familiarity. I know he's in,' she added, quietly, 'for I saw him at the window.'

Na, na, Suffie, that cannot be, now,' stammered Mrs. John, struggling to put her lesson in practice;

31

'you maun think no more of Tammas; you maun see yourself that a great distance has arisen between you. Not that it is me that is keeping you from him; ye ken yourself I never put a stone between you all these years.' Mrs. John stopped abruptly; there was a creak from the floor of the next room; could the big captain be stealing across it? could he be mean enough to hearken in the ill-deafened house to the circumstances of Suffie's dismissal, in order to discover how far his ally was faithful or false to him? 'What do you mean, Mrs. John Ord?' demanded Suffie, like a woman who did not hear, and then going on dogmatically, You know I'm engaged in marriage to Tammas; I have been engaged to him this fifteen year.'

"That is true, Miss Suffie,' granted Mrs. John, soothingly; 'I dinna think to dispute it, after what I've seen and heard- She arrested herself in terror. But your lots are altered: you are not a fitting match for him as you used to be.'

'Woman,' cried Suffie, with more emotion than she had yet shown, 'would you have another woman flung aside like a pair of auld shoon?'

'It is not my wyte. Dinna blame me. How can I help it, Suffie Quhair?' rambled Mrs. John, in disjointed fragments of apology, holding both the strings of her cap at arms' length, in the distraction of her spirit. But you would not be happy, Suffic, if you had your will, no more than the bairns when they have theirs. How would it set you to be a fine lady? You would not care for his finery, forby; you could not give in to his ways; you could not be crossed, a woman come to your age, as he would cross you; you could not be fashed with idleset -you would want some work to do; you could not bear to be parted from Miss Eelen and Miss Jean, the Aikenheads, all your folk and old

friends.' Mrs. John put the matter craftily, coaxingly.

'That's my business,' answered Suffie shortly and sullenly.

'Suffie, woman, take my advice,' entreated Mrs. John, not unkindly and not without sincerity; dinna force a man to do you the clearest justice under heaven; it's hard work, and ill paid, and a great mistake in the end. I can tell you, the Captain may be torn with wild horses, but he'll not be spoken over, or walked round, or wheedled out of his resolve, at no hand, by no woman breathing; and if a woman could do it, I would not be her, Suffie, for a braw handsel. Make the best of a bad business; yield to the Captain; he'll maybe do something for you some gate yet. Think of it, Suffie, lass; it will be a hantle better than battling with a strong, stour, rich man for the gift of his hand, which he will not hold out to you of his own will now. He would as lief thrust it into the fire, you see, because the Captain has his temper, like my lost John, and is grown a gentleman, and maun have his will, as his right. You might have more pride, Suffie; you've surely not lived so long in the world without learning that men and manners change.'

'And what becomes of women and of men's troth? Are they made the ane to be trodden upon and the other to be forsworn?' asked Suffie huskily.

'Hout! Miss Suffie, women are fickle too, when they can get the chance.' Mrs. John had recovered so much spirit as to approach to a jeer. 'You are not altogether clean handed yourself. That landlouper, you ken, the English grieve, More

did he go about Sandycroft for you or for Miss Jean, when Tam Ord had been a good wheen years at the sea, and his letters were no longer as thick as black berries? Would you have waited for your bare word, mem? Would you have

turned the cold shoulder to More had he not proved a landlouper? Answer me that, Miss Suffie; for Oatness folk were geyan uncertain whether it was you or whether it was Miss Jean that was the object. There may be wee birdies that alight on tall ships' masts, and carry tales to captains far at sea.'

This distortion of the truth, in an accusation for which there was no foundation save in a passing weakness of Miss Jean's, inflicted the most cruel cut of all. Suffie disdained to defend herself. 'Men and fashions may change as men like,' she declared, almost fiercely, 'but I have Tammas Ord's promise and his letters. I'll not give them up for either bribes or taunts. I'll not give them up for less than they are worth. Let him go and speer another lass's price, be she ever so young, bonnie, and grand, at his cost. You may tell him that from me, if you will.' And she walked past Mrs. John Ord's offered hand without touching it, in proclamation of war to the knife.

Poor

Suffie! galled and outraged out of her douce, modest self, without a glance at the great popular traitor peeping out of the window after her,

she took her way back in the heat and the drought to Sandycroft.

All hope and expectation were at an end. There were to be no more narrow but soberly cheerful and mildly elated dreams of a husband and a home of her own, and wealth which, though she would not abuse it, hardly use it, the world would envy. There were to be no more womanly plans of taking a house and supplying its plenishing, of sewing at wedding clothes, and dwelling for ever after in case and plenty-an ample abundance, which should flow in a tributary stream to fertilise and brighten the sister lives of Miss Eelen and Miss Jean at Sandycroft. There was only a scorned, spurned, weary woman, in her shabby merino gown and poor white ribands, returning to Sandycroft. What wonder though a tear gathered in Suffie's eye, which she brushed off hastily with her hand, as if she would hide the token from herself; she would not suffer it to trickle and fall with a splash on her bonnet strings, or her shawl. To greet like a petted wean' was not a luxury for a woman of Suffie's age and degree.

THE

HE study of history shows us that the life of a nation closely resembles that of an individual, and that both are subject to the same laws. Youth, prime, decay, and death, are common to both. În the long course of past ages we can see that people have succeeded people and race supplanted race in Western Europe, as easily as we can trace the ownership of any estate here in England. The historical record, however, in France, Germany, and Britain, is not more than two thousand years old; and the earliest inhabitants it describes in those countries were in a comparatively high state of civilisation, possessed of many of the useful arts, and capable of carrying on war on equal terms with the Roman legions, backed though they were by all the science that Greece, Rome, or Egypt, could offer. But where history is silent, archæology speaks concerning the past which is far beyond the reach of history. It tells us how race succeeded race in Northern and Western Europe; and it takes us step by step from the border land of history back to the epoch when Britain formed part of the main land of Europe, and the lion and the bear, the hairy elephant and the hippopotamus, dwelt in our woodlands, and bathed in our rivers. It almost proves to us that all the useful arts and sciences, all those things that now make life worth the living, but which we, from our never having felt their want, cannot estimate at their true value, were painfully wrested from nature one by one, and that precisely the same material progress can be traced in the story of the human race which it reveals, as in the history of

civilisation in western Europe during the last twenty centuries. We can scarcely realise the time when the name of the inventor of steamengines will be forgotten; but, just as we take the use of the metals as a matter of course, and do not care much for the people who first invented their use, so, in the remote future, people may be so accustomed to the steam-engine that they cannot realise a time when there was none. Great inventions are, however, to the archæologist what dates are to the historian; by them he divides the folk with whom he has to deal into a succession of races, proving a sequence in point of time. The earliest men known to him are those which were not only unacquainted with the metals, but were ignorant of the art of polishing their stone implements-namely, the Paleolithic races of Sir John Lubbock; secondly, the Neolithic, or those who used polished stones but were ignorant of all metals; thirdly, those who used bronze only; and fourthly, those who used iron. None of the arts of the preceding people were lost by the succeeding; thus in the Iron age, chipped unpolished flints, polished stones, bronze ornaments, were used as well as iron; and therefore the finding of some implement, such as a flint knife or a bronze brooch, would not stamp their ages to be respectively those of Stone or Bronze-a mistake that has frequently been made. There is also another fallacy into which people frequently fall-that of confounding historical with archæological time. History deals with human life summed up in years; archæology with the traces of men left behind on the earth, irrespec

tive of years. For instance, Battle Abbey comes within the province of the historian, because it is connected with the great battle of Senlac, by the results of which the whole English nation was changed, and with it that of the whole world. With the marvellous temple at Abury he has nothing to do, because of the uncertainty as to its date. The archaeologist, on the other hand, simply knows Battle Abbey as one of a series of early Norman and early English structures that were erected before certain other styles of architecture had come into fashion, just as he knows the temple at Abury to have been erected before the making of a certain Roman road, how much before he does not know. In treating of prehistoric men, therefore, we must keep in our minds that we are ignorant first of the length of time that any of the races with which we have to deal dwelt in Europe; secondly, of the length of the interval between any one and any other of them. Throwing time, therefore, to the winds, we can only say of them that they succeeded one another in a definite succession-Palæolithic, Neolithic, Bronze-folk, Iron-folk.

We will plunge at once into the evidence of the condition of the carliest known people, the Flintfolk and the Reindeer-folk, who make up the first of these divisions. The discoveries on the banks of the Somme, as well as in the gravels of many parts of England, and in the bone caves of South Wales, the south of England, and Belgium, prove that man coexisted with a great many of the extinct animals which characterise the latest geological epoch, such as the sabretoothed lion, the gigantic cave bear, the great hairy mammoth, the hippopotamus, and two kinds of rhinoceros. Along with them also, many animals altogether strange to our eyes ranged the forests, and lurked in the woodlands of this country.

There was the great cave lion, which was lingering in the mountains of Thessaly at the time Aristotle wrote his Natural History; the hyana, that had vanished away into South Africa long before; there were musk sheep, now relegated to the high latitudes of North America; the reindeer, now ranging through the Arctic zone; the marmot, now living either in a northern climate or near the inclement tops of high mountains; and the elk, whose massive antlers are now seen only in the forests of Pomerania, Siberia, and North America. There were, however, other animals almost familiar to us: the gigantic wild ox, which Charlemagne hunted in the forests of Aachen, when he was entertaining the ambassadors of France, and which lives now only in our larger domestic cattle; the bison also, that still lingers in the Lithuanian forests, dwarfed in size by its restricted range, saved only from extermination by the severity of a forest law; the horse, that now wanders through the steppes of Central Siberia, and is hunted by the nomad Tartar for food; the wolf and wild boar, still found in France; the fox, badger, wild cat, Alpine and common hare, rabbit, and the common species of voles. Such was the strange assemblage of animals which surrounded the first known man. How was he armed to compete in the race of life with these animals, and how did he differ from them? The implements are evidence that he was a savage of the lowest order. The arrow-heads in Wookey Hole prove him to have been acquainted with the use of the bow, spearheads of flint with the use of spears, ashes with the use of fire, flint awls found on the banks of the Somme show that he knew how to bore holes. All his implements were of the rudest and roughest. Thus scantily was he furnished with means to hold his own against