boy. “And you may leave the flail to your | She stooped where the cool spring bubbled up, sons now, father," said the eldest. "You And filled for him her small tin cup, may hold the plough still, for you draw a And blushed as she gave it, looking down straighter furrow than any of us; but hard On her feet so bare, and her tattered gown. work for young sinews; and you may sit now oftener in your arm-chair by the ingle. You "Thanks!" said the judge, "a sweeter draught will not need to rise now in the dark, cold, From a fairer hand was never quaff'd." and snowy winter mornings, and keep threshing He spoke of the grass, and flowers, and trees, corn in the barn for hours by candle-light, be- Of the singing birds and the humming bees; fore the late dawning." Then talked of the haying, and wondered whether The cloud in the west would bring foul weather. And Maud forgot her briar-torn gown, And her graceful ankles bare and brown; And listened, while a pleased surprise Looked from her long-lashed hazel eyes. Seeks a vain excuse, he rode away. At last, like one who for delay

There was silence, gladness, and sorrow, and but little sleep in Moss-side, between the rising and the setting of the stars, that were now out in thousands, clear, bright, and sparkling over the unclouded sky. Those who had lain down for an hour or two in bed could scarcely be said to have slept; and when about morning little Margaret awoke, an altered creature, pale, languid, and unable to turn herself on her lowly bed, but with meaning in her eyes, memory in her mind, affection in her heart, and coolness in all her veins, a happy group were watching the first faint smile that broke over her features; and never did one who stood there forget that Sabbath morning, on which she seemed to look round upon them all with a gaze of fair and sweet bewilderment, like one half conscious of having been rescued from the power of the grave.

MAUD MÜLLER.

BY J. G. WHITTIER.

Maud Müller, on a summer's day,
Raked the meadows sweet with hay.

Beneath her torn hat glowed the wealth
Of simple beauty and rustic health.
Singing, she wrought, and a merry glee
The mock-bird echoed from his tree.

But when she glanced to the far-off town,
White from its hill-slope looking down,
The sweet song died, and a vague unrest
And a nameless longing filled her breast-
A wish, that she hardly dared to own,
For something better than she had known.
The judge rode slowly down the lane,
Smoothing his horse's chestnut mane;
He drew his bridle in the shade

Of the apple-trees, to greet the maid,

And ask a draught from the spring that flowed
Through the meadows across the road.

Maud Müller looked and sighed: "Ah, me!
That I the judge's bride might be!
"He would dress me up in silks so fine,
And praise and toast me at his wine.
"My father should wear a broad-cloth coat:
My brother should sail a painted boat.
"I'd dress my mother so grand and gay,
And the baby should have a new toy each day.
"And I'd feed the hungry and clothe the poor;
And all should bless me who left our door."

The judge looked back as he climbed the hill,
And saw Maud Müller standing still.

66 A form more fair, a face more sweet,
Ne'er hath it been my lot to meet.

"And her modest answer and graceful air,
Show her wise and good as she is fair.

"Would she were mine, and I to-day
Like her a harvester of hay:

"No doubtful balance of rights and wrongs,

And weary lawyers with endless tongues;

But low of cattle and song of birds,
And health of quiet and loving words."
But he thought of his sisters, proud and cold,
And his mother, vain of her rank and gold.
So, closing his heart, the judge rode on,
And Maud was left in the field alone.
But the lawyers smiled that afternoon,
When he hummed in court an old love-tune;

And the young girl mused beside the well,
Till the rain on the unraked clover fell.

He wedded a wife of richest dower,
Who lived for fashion, as he for power.

yachting round the coast from June until | ropes and canvas were bedded in ice, and the November?

ship was settling two feet by the head with the weight of the frozen spray about her, so that the first thing for the pilot to do was to put her about as best he could, and run for the Gulf Stream, and melt her out, and wait for a south wind, and come up a week after, if, indeed, he ever came up at all-why, then, if I had seen such sights as these, and lived through the seeing, I might have said that I had known what danger was. Yet they were in reality the scenes of Bert's everyday life, in our climate, where half the year it is foul weather, and where, storm or shine, Bert's boat must be upon the spot. But as I never had seen anything of the kind, the upshot of it was that I didn't take heed to myself that there was anything of the kind, and thought Bert, upon the whole, had a much easier time of it than I was like to have; and if he was exposed to storm, why, I should be caught out in the rain sometimes; and I took up my life as happy as any chirruping cricket, and certainly as selfishly disposed as anybody that has been petted and cosseted all the early days is like to be.

I hardly ever gave the thing a thought, though, whether it was pleasant or not, all the time whether it was safe as a rocking-chair or otherwise-I believed so thoroughly in Bert's skill. But I should have been a greater fool than I was if I had not known that it was really dangerous; for once I was out with Bert and his mates, and it came on to blow in the wildest manner. He brought the boat to anchor under lee of an island, took in every stitch of sail, and was for keeping me below; but I wouldn't be kept, because if I was going to be drowned at all I wanted to be drowned in the open sea, and not in the cabin; so he made me secure and comfortable, and we rode it out, the sun shining just as clear as ever an October sun shone in the bluest of blue skies-skies like burnished steel; but the screaming and roaring wind raging over us in mighty gasps, the boat plunging bowsprit under with every shudder, and throwing the water up around us in great and real rainbows. It was frightful, but the sunshine made it splendid. That was a storm, I thought. Well, Bert knew what to do, it was evident-just down with his sails We went to housekeeping immediately upon and out with his anchors, and wait till it blew our marriage, for mother said she despised over. And Bert let me think I had actually these boarding people; she went to housekeepbeen in the worst kind of danger, which it ing when she was married, and she meant all might have been, indeed, if he had been heed- her children should do the same; and if their less or unskilful-let me think so because he husbands weren't able to go to housekeeping, knew, by that time, that I cared for him a then they weren't able to be husbands, and good deal, and he didn't want me to be quiver- there was an end of it; and no two people, she ing at home with fright whenever the wind said, brought up in different fashions, could blew. But if I had seen some great ship in unite their lives into one without some jarring, the distance, union down, and signalling for a and a third party was sure to turn that jar pilot, and had seen Bert, in his stout boat-rig, into an earthquake; and if there were fewer jump with the keeper into the canoe, and fly third parties, half the trouble would be done after her like a petrel, half in, half under, the away with; for she believed half the divorces water powdering over them, uncertain should and separations and quarrels in the State were they reach the ship, unable to return, drawn brought about by boarding-house intimacies up at last with bowlines tossed out to them-with third parties. So to housekeeping, as I lines into whose noose they thrust their legs while holding on with their hands above-the canoe sinking under them, as it thumped against the ship's side, while they swung over those black gulfs of death, and were dragged up out of a watery grave into perhaps a worse one

the ship just back from a three-years' voyage, and her best bow-anchor gone, so that she would drag ashore in spite of the others, and must be taken up to still water through all the boiling channel-ways between ledges and rocks and shallows, come what might; or had it been a month later, and in the wintry weather, high seas, and every bucketful of water freezing as it fell on deck, till anchors and chains and

said, we went-though I knew that by-and-by I should just perish with loneliness, and in the very pleasantest house I am sure that the whole city had to offer, if it was the smallest

the bay-window of the sunny little parlour looking out upon the water, so that we could see everything that came up the harbour, and, from my bird's-nest of a room above, with the glass that Bert mounted there, I could sweep the bay, and see Bert's boat when it was miles away.

Bert staid up with great contentment for a week or ten days, pottering and tinkering about the house, and finding little odd jobs to attend to, where he had thought everything perfect

taken from the earnings, that was about all there was left to the men. And I ought to have had the sense to understand matters; yet when did a girl of seventeen ever have any sense? But Bert had enough for both of us; and so he kept the boat snapping, and never lost a fee for want of being on the ground-if that is what you can call it when there isn't a bit of ground to be found for fathoms.

till experience proved the contrary, planting | by anything; for, with the running expenses morning-glories and scarlet-beans round the basement to run up over the bay-window, and a prairie-rose and a basalt for the lattice of the door, setting out a cherry-tree and a dwarf pear, and trimming up a grape-vine in the little yard, and arranging all manner of convenient contrivances in all manner of corners. Then when dark came we would light the drop-lamp, and have a little wood-fire on the hearth; for we were just beginning the cool May nights, and then we would draw round it-I with my worsteds, and he with the evening paper; and he would look at me over the paper, and lay it down, and draw a long breath of pleasure, and say that if we had been married nearly a year we could not be more comfortable. When we had been married nearly a year we were not half so comfortable.

But before a fortnight of our new life I could see that Bert began to be restless. He had been on the water ever since he was a child, and a long spell of shore always seemed to dry and warp him a little, he said. He began to grumble about being ashamed to be seen lubbering round so, and to declare that now he had a family to provide for, he must be up and doing. And so I had no business to be surprised when one day, long before the end of the regulation honey-moon, a steamer having been telegraphed from Halifax, Bert kissed, me, and swung his cloak over his arm, and was off down the bay to find his boat, and be running a bee-line to meet the steamer east of the Cape, and ahead of all the other boats.

Now you may be very sure this was not particularly pleasing. Married a fortnight and tired of me already, I said to myself. I ate no dinner that day, and long before dark I shut the shutters, and locked up the house, and went to bed; and after lying awake, thinking I heard thieves, and smelled fire, and saw ghosts, and was totally deserted and dreadfully abused, at last I was crying myself to sleep, when click went a latch-key, and in stalked Bert, blazing up the gas, and tossing down his cloak in a heap, and crying out that it served him right for leaving the dearest little wife in the world. And I can't say that I was sorry one bit to hear that, coming across a miserable little dirty collier, he had been obliged to take her in, and Tom Holliday's boat got the big steamer after all.

But Bert's penitence was brief-for, you see, he wasn't the fool that I was, and knew business must be attended to-and presently he was off again. A thousand a year, you see, was far too little for people to live on and lay

Of course, then, I was left very much to my self. It was unavoidable. And the worst of it was that I wouldn't see that it was unavoidable. And, of course, I was miserably lonely; and, by-and-by, when I was really feeling wretched, my once-cheerful little home, still as death now from morning to night, seemed to me to be an actual grave. Mother couldn't come and visit me, for she had married again herself, a few years since, and had a young brood to attend to; and she couldn't spare me any of the children, for she wanted Netty to see after Nanny, and Neddy wouldn't go to school unless Natty went to keep off the big boys; and I didn't like to leave home and visit her, and Bert didn't like to have me, lest I should be away when he chanced to come unannounced, as he always did come-she living four miles off now, in one of the suburbs, for the sake of a garden-and so I was left to weather it out; and when Bert came up I used to cry every time, I was so glad to see him.

Bert couldn't understand that, of coursehe so strong and bluff and hearty, and I so sick and childish and weak. All my nerves seemed to be on the string too. I was as petulant as a porcupine, and so fractious that I wonder the very bird and cat didn't reproach me-for Bert had brought me a mocking-bird to conquer the stillness; and a wandering cat, seeing that we were two poor young people sadly in need of a guardian, had adopted us. when I looked over at Bert, at some time when he happened to be at home, and thought that he would be off again directly, then the tears and sobs used to burst right out, and astound him and perplex him, so that I can see his great, good, wondering eyes now, and he would be alarmed and vexed enough to make him wish he hadn't come home at all.

And

I hadn't any appetite when he was away, and wanted nothing to eat myself; and sometimes, if you'll believe it, I would lie in bed all day, and there wouldn't be a morsel of any thing cooked in the house at all when Bert ran in, and if he hadn't been the best-tempered fellow on the bay or off of it, he certainly would have staid away altogether. I used to cry half