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Did you never hear of Effie Duncan, the poor girl who wandered away from Scotland, in search of her lover, and finally in despair at her fruitless search drowned herself?" "Never."

"It was ten years ago this summer, I think, that her body was picked up by a steamboat inward bound. It had floated, they thought, from the mouth of the river; for a wreath of rushes was plaited in her hair, and a branch of osiers fastened to her gown. On that very boat, her lover came. He told the tale, after the first great horror and grief had passed.

"They were betrothed, but were poor. He came to America, and in two years had prospered so he sent for her to come to him. He received her answer, telling the time at which she should start. The season was stormy, and the boat in which she sailed never reached land.

"The poor fellow waited and waited in New York, hoping against hope until it failed him entirely, and then, discouraged and broken in spirit, he wandered from one city to another, restless, dissatisfied, moody, and fitful, working a little here and there as his fancy led, until, on the boat that day, he found her dead body, transported, as it seemed to his cracked brain, from the stormy waves of the Atlantic to the calm lake. He died in a madhouse, two years later."

"Ruth Bates, it's well for Galena's curiosity you finished that story before I came;" and the girls were startled by John's sudden apparition, a strong, tall, healthy one, with rich color and sparkling eyes.

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Why, eavesdropper?"

Because passing by all your insinnations not spoken-you've no right to be telling such hobgoblin tales on such a charming day."

. "Reserve your criticisms, if you please. The question is what are you here for?"

"Not to fish up dead horrors, Ruthie; but for a stretch of sunlight and a breath of air and a scolding from you."

"How did you know we were here?" "Never mind; undue curiosity isn't a pretty trait. Put on your hats; I've a

boat down here, fishing tackle, and plenty of ready-made bait."

A trim little row-boat was ready for them, and the girls seated themselves in it, while John sculled them off from the bluffy shore. The breeze off the lake was just fresh enough to require all the mus cular strength of John's arms to keep the boat from running upon shore with the tide. His cheeks flushed with the exertion, his eyes sparkled, he enjoyed it, this free, pure life. I am sure the dryads and naiads, peeping out upon him, knew him, every elf of them, for a man pure, true, earnest, childlike yet.

He was happy, too, in his love.

With such a man love is a motive power, a one passion. All minor affections- the effervescent heats of youthful warmth-only purify the soul of such for the abiding-place of a life-long love.

This had come to him. He asked no questions, only opened his heart to it, as to an angel visitant that should sanctify the house.

He couldn't have told you why he loved this woman-what particular qualities of mind, or heart, or person, had drawn his soul to hers; he never thought of that; he may hardly have known the color of her eyes; but he knew he loved her. It is such love as few men give, perfect, pure.

Did she deserve it? I don't know; few women can; but he never asked that, nor did Christ, when he said to the cruci fied thief, "This day shalt thou be with me in paradise!"

Further up a bay opened beyond the bluffs into the prairie, with a white sand beach and calm waters. Here John anchored his craft and cast his lines. The fresh breeze swayed the lines, and the fish caught up the tempting baits as fast as they were thrown almost.

The run of luck was exhilarating. Ruth exclaimed and laughed at the antics, and bemoaned the agonies of her victims, at each succeeding breath. Galena, drawn into the magnetic influence of the hour, was excited, expectant, joyous, and John overflowing with gayety.

The long June day was growing into the duskiness of eight o'clock before the

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The fair face he had seen that evening after the death of Grant's child flashed full before him now as the gas-light had revealed it to him then,-Galena's.

She loved that man Benton, it seemed, and he had broken her heart.

He ground his teeth; he clinched his hands; his eyes gleamed with a fierce light. I don't know but all his good angels would have hidden their eyes for weeping, had he met Edward Benton then and there.

Mrs. Gurnsey waited her tea, but in vain. He was walking past the doctor's

cottage, where he had seen her sweet face so often, past the schoolhouse, where he would have been one of the meanest of her pupils, to catch her smile.

His foreman met him, and signalled "all right;" but I question if he saw it.

He passed the foundries with their furnace-mouths puffing smoke from smouldering fires, the railroad depots hurried and noisy, past the packing-houses, and shanties of the laborers, out into the quiet of the prairie.

Who can tell what devils, born into his boy-soul with this life-disappointment, hissed their hellish proposals into his ear? What fiends of despair gloated over this new victim? What wordless agonies danced like deathyard witches in this newly-tried soul?

The waves came swelling under the stiff breeze, and crashed against the bluffs just above the Inlet.

The sound awoke him to normal sight. Before him lay the lake under a strong wind. Out toward the horizon he descried the white sails of the ships standing out against the leaden sky, like motionless phantoms. From the north, a black object lay on the water, with red smoke following in its wake.

What did these mean?
Commerce.

Down on the wharves, he knew eager men- merchants, speculators, hackmen, expressmen, men of all grades were collected, awaiting the mails, the freight, the people.

God, this was life! Care, anxiety, work, to-night, to-morrow, next dayalways; jostle and hurry, no rest, sweet home face for peace out of the world, no home love for benediction!

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The waves dashed against the shore with angry white caps. In such storms, many lives, out of the wrecks of boats, had the fierce waves swallowed! Would they feel a pang the more - those waves

if another wreck might go down to find a peace and quiet under their rayings, if another life should slip quietly from the storm into the calm?

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The moon sailed up the sky between the clouds, a placid moon, round and full and beautiful.

The stars blinked contentedly,-happy stars, white and satisfied.

Was it the calmness and stillness of those upper worlds, running their courses so noiselessly and certainly and continually, that rebuked the mad disorder in this man's veins?

He threw himself upon the ground and wept.

CHAPTER VI.

THE following morning, Bates greeted his men as usual at the foundry, went through the daily routine of his work, examining, giving orders, shipping off finished machinery, reporting at the office. A close observer might have detected, perhaps, a want of the usual nervous vigor, or a slight paleness and compression of the lips, drawing the mobile lines into fixed quietness; but further than that there was no indication that the man had met the greatest temptation of his life, wrestled with and conquered it so lately. Life was before him, stripped of all its household loves and fireside delights; but outside the world stood, the poor old world, asking for men to take the lever of the blind old pagan and pry her out of the ruts of blindness and selfishness and fanaticism.

Bates knew what that lever was, Love.

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"Yes, John."

"Well, then, I have." "And you".

"Drew a blank, that's all. It's nothing more nor less than others do." "I never, never can forgive Galena Redway!

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"Never say that, never think that again, Ruth. If I suffer in loving her, the suffering comes not through her, but myself. She never in word or look, and now I know, in thought, countenanced it. I loved her because I must, as one loves a rose. I was not made to wear roses, you see. Not one other thought of blame to her; she can't help her sweetness, or that others love it."

"O John-John!" and Ruth's evanescent passion was drowned, woman-like, in a shower of tears.

Ruth never held anger, or vindictiveness. As hurt as she felt through John's loss, her generous nature acquitted Galena of blame, yet she never could feel that freshness of confidence in a perfectly frec communion. It was the first real disap

Not the sweet blessedness of wife's, or children's, or friend's affection alone, but the outgushing of the heart of man tow-pointment of her placid existence. Still

ard man.

This man was no poet, and yet I think no poet ever conceived a more touching self-abnegation than John Bates, standing above the dead hope of his manhood, not murmuringly, but contentedly.

Poor little Ruth saw the change in John, and instinctively fathomed the reason. All the quiet little hopes she had cherished for John's home happiness were terribly shocked, and in a passion of sorrowful pity the tender-hearted girl put both her hands in John's one evening, and looking into his eyes with her own fearless, truth-compelling orbs, said,"John Bates, I want you just to tell me what ails you."

she loved Galena as never before, was even more thoughtful, more expressive in affection, as if to atone to her for her momentary injustice, speaking of John as usual, telling of his goodness, his charitable deeds, his self-sacrifices, with no revengeful hope of causing her to feel what a good man she had lost. It was Galena who knew first of Ruth's engagement to Frank Gates, the young merchant, first after John. She told him first, with a deprecating countenance, as if begging pardon for asking or accepting a peaceful home in life when he was debarred one.

He kissed the look away soon enough. "I knew I should lose my little Ruth, when I saw Frank's impetuosity. I wish

her all the joy she deserves, and I think she'll get it."

"You shall have a home with us, Frank says. I told him I wouldn't have him on any other arrangement."

"You're a very foolish little girl. Young people don't want old bachelor brothers around, to turn their sweet cup into a bitter one, by their cynicism and ill-nature."

"You cynical and ill-natured, John!" And Ruth laughed heartily at the idea. "He shall live with us," she told Galena, positively.

But he didn't. He persisted in remaining with the doctor and his wife, telling Ruth it was positively a matter of charity to do so. What would the old people do to be left all alone so suddenly? Ruth did not take it to heart as much as she was at first determined on. Her new household duties, and Frank's presence through the evening, took up her time so completely that she found little chance for fretting over John's wilfulness.

Occasionally, Galena met him there of an evening, when she run over after school-hours to warm herself in Ruth's happy smile.

A grand man, no one could have helped but acknowledge. He was cheerful, yes, happy. In that fierce struggle with his dragon, he had killed whatever was selfish, or small, or weak in his nature. Even the most selfish and hardened of men felt and reverenced it with all that was still good in them. He was growing daily in the respect and esteem of all classes, so that had some modern dyspeptic Diogenes come enough out of his tub to have sought in the market-places of the town for an honest man, he would have been jeered at for not knowing where he might be found any day.

No wonder Galena, sensitive, appreciative, should grow to wonder, in humility and humbleness, how she could have worshipped a man who shrunk to pigmy proportions beside this one here. She could almost smile, now, at the pain of the girl at what had seemed loss, could almost have smiled, but that she knew pain is an abstract feeling which, however trivial the thing that calls it out, is pain still,

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and pain in remembrance. Those memories, now three years old, when they were brought up suddenly before her, touched many bare nerves with an electric shock.

I think one never loses entirely a pain, or a happiness. It was so with this girl.

Clear in her judgments as she was growing, she never named the feeling she had for John Bates. She pushed off all analysis when it intruded, pushed it off with a quick blush and deadly following paleness and faintness, always. Then she would go about her work with even a deeper earnestness, throwing herself out of herself— that is, all self-interest-to overcome the evil of some suspicious, unhealthy mind among her pupils with kind words and gentle deeds, some hasty, passionate nature with sweet smiles, growing less proud, less independent, less self-confident, more loving and tender through it all.

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At home, Aunt Martha grew young in the sunshine, and Biddy the most tidy, respectful, and affectionate of servants. Her father had arisen to become foreman in the Star Foundry, and altogether, the fortunes of the family were increased. "Because of Mister Bates, who wudent let us go to the dogs," Biddy always af firmed; and Galena believed her. It was summer again and June, calm, sweet day. The terrible storm that has since broken in fury over our country, was only then in every mind a transient thunder-gust that would growl and spurt for a while, and then give way to brighter sunshine, to a purer air, and fresher breezes. There were no forebodings of ill to blast a fair June day with blackness; no awful presence of a sorrow that can have no relief to turn the sunshine into darkness.

To be sure, down on the Potomac that patriotic band of seventy-five thousand men - how few now, O God! — pitched their tents with bayonets ready, but as yet their camp letters were full of the beauty of the freedom of such a life, and hopeful promises of "closing up this job" in a few weeks, so that one could take a holiday and find a joy in it, - a joy in the fresh green of the new grass, a music in

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the running brooks, a happy tone in the drum of the waves, as Galena did that day, three years ago.

She brought Evangeline with her again; but she didn't read much. The lake lay a calm mirror; under the bluffs the tiny waves gurgled and sung a monotonous content; the sun threw golden lines between the trees, and the winds blew fresh from the west.

She formed a pretty picture,-quiet face, brown hair, and graceful form, her black circular falling back from her shoulders in the identical sweep the artist has given Evangeline's, her hands folded in the same abandon, her eyes soft and musing, looking out upon the lake, thinking -of what was she not thinking-of Gabriel rowing up the swift waves past the sleeping girl. Had she not been Evangeline herself, and let her Gabriel go up the river,-away, away into a lonely life, leaving her with empty heart, finding too late her true name, Evangeline?

A lady and gentleman sauntered by, arm in arm, evidently part of a company come out for an afternoon's pastime. The woman was tintless, fair-haired, gray-eyed, a dead blonde, colder and harder than ice. Her companion tall, magnificent, on whose face the world had imprinted no softening characters.

She touched his arm and pointed to Galena with one hand. The scene pleased her artistic eyes. "A brownie at rest in the shade."

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Edward Benton-with the cold-souled woman on his arm whom he should call wife, found, even so late, enough soul in him to ache for the heaven he had lost.

Some subtle divination aroused her from her musings. She lifted her eyes and caught their gaze and, at the same time, John Bates's eyes cast full on her face, with a deep gaze, as though to read her inmost soul.

Her eyes lighted-opened straighther face glowed with a glorious and full revelation of the relation of these two men to her.

Edward Benton turned pale, and with his companion retraced his way. John Bates came forward, his face full of a hope new-born, instantaneous. He held out his hands. "Galena," he said. She answered, "John." That was all. The sun glowed, the breeze whispered, the waves drummed on the beach.

Further north, a little way, the city's heart ached with an untold grief; further south, ah, so far it seemed, the seeds of the country's pestilence was maturing; but in these two souls was a promise of love and peace for the future.

HINDOO AMUSEMENT.—The languid and slothful habits of the Hindoo have prescribed even his amusements. They are almost all of the sedentary and inactive kind. The game of pucheess bears a resemblance to chess and draughts, and is played by two natives reclining on their sides, with a small checkered carpet placed between them. Wonderful is the patience and interest with which they watch and plan the evolutions of this languid game. The mind in vacuity droops and pines, where the body is most gratified by repose. When interesting objects seldom occur, the passion for play is a general resource. The Hindoos appear to have been at all times infected with the vices of gaming. This is pronounced unlawful; yet parties may game before an agent of the magistrate, to whom a half of the winnings belongs.Mill's British India.

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