A sigh of relief-nay, a sob-went up into the drifting snowflakes. It was the question which all had longed and none had dared to ask.

'I fought with him,' said Parson Shaw, 'for reasons which no man shall ever pry into. Enough that I saw disaster coming to a virgin soul, and I tried to stay it, forgetting that God chooses His own instruments.'

Dorothy, her thoughts with the dead man lying yonder, did not realise that Parson Shaw had held her honour dear, that he chose to go to his account without excuse rather than plead the true justification of his deed; and now she told all the folk of Lonesome Heath the secret that she shared with Parson Shaw.

'God help me!' she cried. And we-the dead man there and I-were to have been wedded when the month was out.'

Parson Shaw looked once at her and bowed his head. In all his reckonings no thought had come to him that wild Squire Norton might have meant well this once by the lass of his choice.

There was a pause, broken by the wailing of the wind; and the Parson raised his head, and seemed to murmur something, and fall prone into the grave below him. His broken heart had carried him staunchly so far-carried him through marshes into which a weaker man might have sunk; but its work was done at last.

They lifted him from out the grave; and presently his housekeeper, Janet, was roused by a knocking at the parsonage door. She opened, saw the burden that they carried, and folded her arms quietly on her breast.

'Step in,' she said. 'Nay, never fear to tell me he is dead, for right well I know it. It was to be, neighbours. And haven't I seen the death-grey colour in his face this month or more?' And so they buried him hard by wild Will Norton; and the tale which the fathers have handed down to us is fit excuse, folk say to-day, for the wildness of the winds that blow about the gravestones of St. John in the Wilderness; excuse for the will-o'-thewisps that wander from the moor to play about the graves; excuse for ghostly frets and tumults that stir about this lonely kirkyard on the hill.

They are a shrewd folk, these dwellers upon Lonesome Heath; and the judgment of three generations is summed up in this—that Parson Shaw was a true priest and honest gentleman. Let those who live far off from St. John's in the Wilderness forbear to judge him.

THE JUDGMENT OF CETONE.

BY A DENIZEN.

(It is rumoured that next term every Etonian will have to make his choice between Volunteering, Music, and Handicraft.)

Then to the bower they came;

As to their dress, my modesty refers
The reader back to the original;
But all about their feet the prickly pear,
The pennyroyal and the marjoram,
And elecampane, and other herbs that form
The range of classic Flora, seemed to thrive,
And violets drooped, and roses blushed to see
Their presence, and their absence of attire.

Dear Mother Eton, hear me ere I die!
Then first of all I saw the God of war,
Lord of a hundred battles (though indeed
80 per cent. were drawn, and 20 lost),
Those sparkling eyes and that ambrosial hair
Playing athwart his shoulders, like a god's.
And then he talked of War, and foughten fields,
Efficiency, and concentration camps,
And coffee-coloured tunics, lined with blue.
Dear Mother Eton, hear me ere I die!

So at the first I mark'd not, and at last
Mark'd little. For indeed he seemed to me
To talk like Baden-Powell, though of course
I did not like to say so; but his voice
Came to me dimly, like a gramophone
With some electioneering speech inside.
'We do not fight with bats (applause) or pads,
Or picture-postcards (laughter); what we need
Is soldiers trained to ride and trained to shoot,
Not little Brodricks (laughter, and applause).
In the late war in Africa (applause)

The Imperial Yeomanry (renewed applause)—

The Imperial-(ferment, and renewed applause)—
Have shown how little England can rely

On untrained valour. And I might go on
For ages, till a stop should coincide

By some chance with the ending of a line.'
Dear Mother Eton, hear me ere I die!
He ceased, and I, that long had stood amaz'd,
Held forth to him half-doubtfully the bun,
As who should thus award it; but just then
In tones so musical as to suggest

Some half a dozen lines of simile
Apollo, darling of the Muses, spoke :
Self-harmony, self-unison, and tone,
These three alone make up self-government.
Music alone is mistress, she alone

Hath power to soothe the savage beast (or breast),

And thereby hangs the Music of the Spheres,

The Diapason closing full in Man,

And other catchwords close akin to these

And more obscure. Plump therefore for the lyre;

The lyre in elections always wins.'

Dear Mother Eton, hear me ere I die!

He finished, and a voice in either ear

Cried Phoebus! Phoebus!' but I did not hear,
Or hearing heard not, or unhearing heard.

Dear Mother, hear me yet before I die!
Then stepp'd Hephaestus from the flowering brake,
Much limping on his crutches, slow of foot,
And round his manly breast and brawny arms,
Uncleanly hands and tangled mass of hair,
In dancing symphonies of red and green
The limelight was directed, as he moved.
Then thus he spoke and triumph'd in his speech:
'I am the Labour Party, vote for me!'

Dear Mother, hear me yet before I die!
For ere the traveller upon India's strand
Going to meet an argosy of ships

With rich and curious bales of merchandise,

And greet the long-expected friend from home
That comes from thence to stay with him, has time
To think or say: 'This is Jack Robinson,'

I gave the bun to toiling handicraft.
Those other twain went skyward, and he too
Went far away, as would that he might go,
Dear Mother Eton, far away from thee!
But from that time I am a carpenter,
And I shall carpenter until I leave.

R. A. K

GENERAL ROMER

YOUNGHUSBAND

AND SCINDE.

THE death, last December, of General Romer Younghusband removes one of the last survivors of the first Afghan war of 184042 and of Sir Charles Napier's Scinde campaign of 1843, and while reviewing his life the opportunity may fitly be taken to glance back at the Indian frontier problem as it stood in those long passed days, for my uncle and my father, who likewise was present in both campaigns, and still survives, were engaged in the same great struggle to which we Anglo-Indians of the present day are devoting so much of our energies. It was to strengthen India against Russia that my uncle and father fought over sixty years ago, and it is on the same work that their sons are still engaged.

General Romer Younghusband was born in 1819. He came of a Northumbrian family who had been settled in the neighbourhood of Bamburgh for many centuries, and who, braced by the North Sea air, were remarkable for their longevity. A tombstone in Bamburgh churchyard testifies to his great-great-grandfather having lived to the age of 103. The later generations went bodily into the naval and military forces of the Crown. His grandfather was a captain in the royal navy. Of the next generation the only two sons went, the one into the navy, and the other (the father of General Romer Younghusband) into the Royal Artillery; and of the next generation all five sons entered the army-two to be killed in action, one, Edward, at the siege of Multan in 1848, and the other, George, in the Indian Mutiny; while the remaining three all became general officers.

It had been Romer Younghusband's wish to enter the navy, but his uncle, John Romer, when acting as Governor of Bombay, had been able to secure for him a commission in the East India Company's service, and though he used in his latter days to recall the pang it was to him to go into what then seemed the terrible exile of Indian service, he accepted the nomination rather than be a further burden on his parents. His commission in the Company's service was dated December 1837. Passage to India was in those days a very different thing from what it is now, when the