indeed, have been better if we had loved each other as a boy and girl, and forgotten it? Undisciplined heart, reply!

How the time wears, I know not; until I am recalled by my child-wife’s old companion. More restless than he was, he crawls out of his house, and looks at me, and wanders to the door, and whines to go up- stairs.

“Not to-night, Jip! Not to-night!”

He comes very slowly back to me, licks my hands, and lifts his dim eyes to my face.

“Oh Jip! It may be, never again!”

He lies down at my feet, stretches himself out as if to sleep, and with a plaintive cry, is dead.

“Oh Agnes! Look, look, here!”

That face, so full of pity and of grief, that rain of tears, that awful mute appeal to me, that solemn hand upraised towards Heaven!

“Agnes?”

It is over. Darkness comes before my eyes; and, for a time, all things are blotted out of my remembrance.