into more than his usual reserve and taci- come back. And oh! Dick, I would so like turnity. you to be happy."

Agnes faltered-stopped; her heart was full. almost miraculous. Richard replied not a word.

"I think it is time you married, Richard; I do really. Hitherto I knew you could not afford it; but now there is only me, and I shall cost you very little; I can live any where. You would be perfectly safe, even if Maurice did

"Oh, Richard! I didn't mean it. Forgive me." And she hung upon his shoulder as she had never done before in all her days. "Do just as you like, and God bless you wherever you go."

CHAPTER V.

then bent down, clasping her hands and stooping her head upon them; low down, as people are prone to do when some heavy wave of misery or sharp recollection breaks over them. "Oh my darling, my darling!"

Not a word more, nor a sob. Years had smoothed down and softened all things, all except the love which was absolute, sole, and undying. Some women have had such loves, quenched so far as earthly fulfillment goes, in . earliest girlhood; yet surviving in another form to the very close of life-consecrated by death, or confirmed by total separation into a bond which, in the absence of any other, becomes as strong almost as marriage, being in truth the real marriage of the soul.

MISS RAEBURN was sitting alone in the very handsome drawing-room of her very handsome house in Blythswood Square. It was dark, and the fire-light danced on her black velvet dress— she almost always wore black: ill-natured people said, because it made her look so "interesting." But these remarks were always made behind her back, and people well knew she would not have cared one pin, or altered either her mind or her costume one whit, even had she heard them. She had that self-possessed dignity which is very indifferent to public opinion on trivial matters, where indeed public opinion has no right to busy itself at all. She went on her way calmly: accustomed even from her teens to be sole mistress in her uncle's house,sink to the reality of any of the excellent Glaswhere she had now quietly become independent mistress of her own.

Young as she was, she had settled at once into the busy responsible life of a woman of property, who had evidently no intention of changing her condition by marriage. To the natural influence of wealth she added a personal influence very considerable, though exercised in a sweet and womanly way. All Glasgow knew her name well;-in charity, in society, in every good and generous work, Miss Raeburn was always sought for, and always easy to find. And it would be idle to say she did not enjoy her position-she did. A lonely woman must fill her heart and her time with something: Jessie accepted the lot which Providence had assigned to her, and made the best of it; bravely and cheerfully. It had its pleasures. She loved her independence, her power of doing good unquestioned and uncontrolled. Without being in the least ungentle or unlovely, she was already, in a degree, "old - maidish”—that is, she had sufficient strength of character to stand alone. Though barely eight-and-twenty, it never seemed to enter into her own head or that of any one else that she needed either protection or guidance. She was just Miss Raeburn, of Blythswood Square and Woodhouselea; and the idea of her ever becoming Mrs. Anybody seemed far distant, and very improbable, if not quite impossible.

She sat waiting for her carriage to be announced, reading by a small lamp the daily newspaper: until, her eye being caught by the date of it, she laid it down abruptly, and remained with her head sunk between her hands, gazing mournfully into the fire. No wonder, for the paper was dated 1st October: seven years since that first of October when she and her cousins had stood watching for Maurice along the mountain-road, and he never came. "Seven years." She repeated the words, and

It might have been a great mistake-many wise, good, and loving persons may consider it so-that any woman should thus waste her life upon a mere dream: which, if she could have ended it, were far best ended. Yet people are but as they are made: and Jessie could no more have resigned her worshiped ideal of what Maurice was, and what he might have become, to

gow gentlemen whom she was in the habit of meeting; could no more have exchanged that first and last love-kiss-young, passionate, mutual love-for the touch of any mortal lips, than a maid betrothed with all her heart to one man could ever put another man's ring on her finger, or pass as a bride into another man's home. It was not merely unnatural; it was impossible.

Yet no one could call Jessie Raeburn an unhappy or disappointed woman. Hers was no unrequited, misplaced, or unworthy attachment: from first to last it had been wholly sacred and wholly her own. Not one pang of bitterness, or remorse, or humiliation had mingled with its sorrow. Hardly like a regret, though full of the tenderest, most passionate remembrance, were the words, "My darling, my darling!" And then the momentary outburst passed: she sat, quietly and meditatively, waiting for the hour when she had to fulfill her evening engagement. For Miss Raeburn did not shut herself out of the world, but moved therein-playing her part well

yet letting the world peer neither smilingly nor pityingly into her inner life, which was, and ever had been, solely her own.

When the door opened she rose, gathering her rich Indian shawl round her, and moving in her usual composed graceful way across the floor, thinking it was the announcement of her carriage. But it was a visitor so unexpected that she quite started at the sight of him-pale, travel-stained, and agitated Richard Wyvill.

He fixed his eyes upon the little figure before him-the velvet gown,, the dainty lace, the glittering diamonds; it had been Uncle Raeburn's delight to load his niece with diamonds. And Richard said, in his roughest manner: "Don't let me intrude. You were going out to dinner?"

"I was, but-oh cousin!" And a sudden agony of expectation, not dulled after even all

perhaps a little glad to resume some shadow of the former familiar cousinly ways.

"Thank you," Jessie answered, glad too. "He says he'll no speak to onybody but the mistress," interposed the old butler, who looked rather strange and perplexed.

"Any thing else?" asked Richard, in a low, awe-struck voice. "Banes.

A wheen banes."

So the mystery was cleared up at last; and they knew that in this world they would never

"Then show him up here. My cousin and I see Maurice more. will see him together."

The an entered, and hung at the drawingroom door, staring about him with bleary eyes; and when Richard asked him his name, he answered, somewhat hesitatingly, that he was "Diarmid M'Diarmid-Diarmid Beg, ye ken." "Indeed I don't," Richard was answering sharply, when he saw Jessie spring forward. "The man-you remember-whom Maurice met, who last saw Maurice."

"Ay, my leddy—just mysel'. And it's about him I come-the puir laddie. Ye'll no hae heard?"

Richard glanced at Jessie, who stood listening with lips apart, white and rigid as a stone statue. At once, by a sort of revelation, he knew why she had never loved him.

For an instant his human nature recoiled, and then the nobler half of the man conquered. To find his rival in his brother-his own dearly beloved and passionately regretted brother—this of all blows would be easiest to bear. Ay, even if Maurice came back and won her.

"What about him-is he alive?" "Truly I canna weel say," replied the Highlander, "but, I fear me, na. Do ye no ken this, Sir?"

Jessie and Richard clasped hands and looked at one another, wistfully and long. Then both the man as well as the woman-lifted up their voices and wept.

After a little while Richard sent Diarmid away down stairs, made Jessie sit down, and, kneeling beside her, opened, in the way they both well remembered, the concealed spring. Inside the case, and from its substantial workmanship most wonderfully preserved, was a little book, which must have been placed thereMaurice must have placed it himself—in the interval between his fall and his dissolution-as the slender and only chance of ever conveying information to his kindred of who he was, or how he died. For, carefully examined, it proved to be a psalm-book of Jessie's, which Jessie well remembered his carrying from church for her that Sunday. One of the mouldy leaves was still turned down at the 121st Psalm :

"I to the hills will lift mine eyes."

He had remembered them, then, in his last hour, and left this token for them, in the only way he could think of. He, the poor boy to whom had come no "aid;" whom "He that keeps Israel" had not kept, but, in the awful mystery of Omnipotent will, had suffered to perish here alone-the handsome, happy, loving, and beloved lad-to be found, after an interval of seven years, "a wheen banes."

And Diarmid unfolded from out his plaid, slowly, like a fearsome thing that he was half afraid to handle, something-it was not easy at first to detect what, so covered was it with mil- Jessie sat dumb reading and repeating with dew, and damp, and moss. But on closer in- soundless lips the words of the psalm, which spection the cousins recognized it as being a seemed at first such a ghastly mockery. But strong tin case, fastening with a spring, which slowly, with that agony of belief which forces itMaurice had had made to contain his botanical self upon the heart, not the reason, at an hour or entomological specimens: he was very fond like this, when all the anchors of faith seem of collecting both. Outside, on a silver plate, torn up, and the soul is ready to drift out blindhe had had engraved-and it was legible still-ly upon a Godless sea, there came into hers a his name and address: "Maurice Wyvill, Wy- miraculous comfort--the comfort that, for all vill Court, Yorkshire." they knew, he might also have had, dying for"Where did you find that? Tell us quick-lorn and alone on the bleak mountain side. ly!" cried Richard.

And then M'Diarmid explained--not quick, ly, but they understood him somehow-that a few days since he had been belated on the mountains, in a spot that was seldom traversed-not once in several years, being very dangerous on account of the numerous holes, fissures in the rocks, narrow chasms so overhung with heather that a man might easily step upon it, and be plunged in a moment to the depths below. He, Diarmid, had done this-only, with the Providence which they say guards drunkards and young children, he had managed to crawl out, bruised and sobered, but still alive.

"It was

just the Lord's mercy that I wasna kilt, like mony a better man; for at the bottom I found this, ye ken"—and he pointed to the tin

case.

And the more she dwelt on it the clearer this comfort grew. If during the few minutes or hours-thank God, they could not have been many!-that elapsed before consciousness left him, Maurice had had strength and courage to do this—to think of them all at home, to send them his last message, as it were-though he died, he had died nobly, calmly, in a manner not unworthy of their Maurice. And though, humanly viewed, it was a death so miserable that they dared not suffer their imaginations to dwell upon it, but passed at once to the thought of Maurice in heaven, with his sufferings ended, his new life begun-still, man's impotence is God's omnipotence. It might have been-and indeed appeared most likely, from the position in which the remains were found-that he died so peacefully that death felt to him no more

than falling asleep, with the Everlasting Arms | afterward, another stone was erected by Jessie underneath him, and his head pillowed on the bosom of Everlasting Love.