Her grave patience with the little one did more to open her father's heart to her than did even her own wonderful beauty, which gratified his paternal pride of authorship, or than her efforts after docility to himself—efforts that would have been creditable to any one, and that with her were heroic. For Mr. Dundas, being of those clinging, clasping natures which must love some one, had taken poor madame's child into his affections in the wholesale manner so emphatically his own, now in these first days of his new paternity seeming to live only for the little Fina, and never happy but when he had her with him. It was the first time that he felt he had had a child of his own; and he gave her the love which would have been Leam's had Pepita been less of a savage than she was, and more discreet in the matter of doll-dressing.

The little round, fair-haired creature, with her picturesque Gainsborough head and rose-red lips, pretty, pleasant, facile, easily amused if easily made cross, divertible from her purpose if she was but coaxed and caressed, and if the substitute offered was to her liking—without tenacity, fluid, floating on the surface of things and born of their froth; loving only those who ministered to her pleasure and were in sight; forgetting yesterday's joys as though they had never been, and her dearest the moment they were absent—a child deliciously caressing because sensual by temperament and instinctively diplomatic, with no latent greatness to be developed as time went on and the flower set into the fruit. Epitomizing the characteristics of the class of which her mother had been a typical example, she was the pleasantest thing of his life to a man who cared mainly to be amused, and who liked with a woman's liking to be loved.

The strong love of children inherent in him, which had never been satisfied till now, seemed now to have gathered tenfold strength, and the love of the man, who had never cared for his own, for this his little daughter by adoption was almost a passion. If Leam could have been jealous where she did not love, she would have been jealous of her father and Fina. But she was not. On the contrary, it seemed to soften some of the bitterness of her self-reproach, and she was glad that madame's motherless child was not deserted, but had found a substitute for the protection which she had taken from her; for Leam, criminal, was not ignoble.

A few days after the meeting on the moor between Learn and Edgar, Mr. Dundas drove to the Hill, carrying Fina with him. Leam had a fit of shyness and refused to go: thus Sebastian had the child to himself, and was not sorry to be without his elder and less congenial daughter. He owned to himself that she was good, very good indeed, and a great deal better than he ever expected she would be; yet for all that, with her more than Oriental gravity and reserve, and that look of tragedy haunting her face, she was not an amusing companion, and the little one was.

Mr. Dundas had begun to take up his old habits again with the Harrowbys. He found the patient constancy of his friend Josephine not a disagreeable salve for a wounded heart and broken life; albeit poor dear Joseph was getting stout and matronly, and took off the keen edge of courtship by a willingness too manifest for wisdom. Sebastian liked to be loved, but he did not like to be bored by being made overmuch love to. The things are different, and most men resent the latter, how much soever they desire the former.

Edgar was in the drawing-room when Mr. Dundas was announced. He was booted and spurred, waiting his horse to be brought round. "What a pretty little girl!" he said after a time. True to his type, he was fond of children and animals, and children and animals liked him. "Come and speak to me," he continued, holding out his hand to Fina.—"Whose child is she?" vaguely to the company in general.

"Mine," said Mr. Dundas emphatically—"my youngest daughter, Fina Dundas."

Edgar knew what he meant. He had often heard the story from his sisters, and since his return home he had had Adelaide Birkett's comments thereon. He looked then with even more interest on the pretty little creature in dark-blue velvet and swansdown, careless, unconscious, happy, as the child of a mystery and a tragedy in one.

"Ah!" he said sympathetically. "Come to me, little one," again, coaxingly.

Fina, with her finger in her mouth, went up to him half shyly, half boldly, and wholly prettily. She let him take her on his knee and kiss her without remonstrance. She was of the kind to like being taken on knees and kissed—especially by gentlemen who were strong and matronly women who were soft—and she soon made friends. Not many minutes elapsed before, kneeling upon his knees, she was stroking his tawny beard and plaiting it in threes, pulling his long moustache, playing with his watch-guard, and laughing in his face with the pretty audacity of six.

"What a dear little puss!" cried Edgar, caressing her. "Very like you, Joseph, I should think, when you were her age, judging by your picture. Is she not, mother?"

"They say so, but I do not see it," answered Mrs. Harrowby primly.

She did not like to hear about this resemblance. There was something in it that annoyed her intensely, she scarcely knew why, and the more so because it was true.

"Poor madame used to say so: she saw it from the first, when Fina was quite a little baby," said Josephine in a low voice.

She was kneeling by her brother's side caressing Fina. She always made love to the little girl: it was one of her methods of making love to the father.

"Is she like her mother?" asked Edgar in the same low tones, looking at the child critically.

"A little," answered Josephine—"not much. It is odd, is it not, that she should be more like me?"

Just then Fina laid her fresh sweet lips against Edgar's, and he kissed her with a strange thrill of tenderness.

"Why, Edgar, I never saw you take so to a child before," cried Mrs. Harrowby, not quite pleasantly; and on Sebastian adding with his nervous little laugh, which meant the thing it assumed only to play at, "I declare I shall be quite jealous, Edgar, if you make love to my little girl like this." Edgar, who had the Englishman's dislike to observation, save when he offered himself for personal admiration, laughed too and put Fina away.

But the child had taken a fancy to him, and could scarcely be induced to leave him. She clung to his hand still, and went reluctantly when her stepfather called her. It was a very little matter, but men being weak in certain directions, it delighted Edgar and annoyed Sebastian beyond measure.

"I hope your elder daughter is well," then said Edgar, emphasizing the adjective, the vision of Leam as he first saw her, breasting the wind, filling his eyes with a strange light.

"Leam? Quite well, thanks. But how do you know anything about her?" was Sebastian's reply.

"I met her yesterday on the moor, and Rover introduced us," answered Edgar laughing.

"How close she is!" said her father fretfully. "She never told me a word about it."

"Perhaps she thought the incident too trifling," suggested Edgar, a little chagrined.

"Oh no, not at all! In a place like North Aston the least thing counts as an adventure; and meeting for the first time one of the neighbors is not an incident to be forgotten as if it were of no more value than meeting a flock of sheep."

Mr. Dundas spoke peevishly. To a man who liked to be amused and who lived on crumbs this reserved companionship was disappointing and tiresome.

"Leam is at home making music," said Fina disdainfully. She had caught the displeased accent of her adopted father, and echoed it.

"Does she make much music?" asked Edgar with his hand under her chin, turning up her face.

The child shrugged her little shoulders. "She makes a noise," she said; and those who heard her laughed.

"That is not a very polite way of putting it," said Edgar a little gravely.

"No," said Josephine.

"You should speak nicely of your sister, my little one," put in Sebastian.

Fina looked up into his face reproachfully. "You called it a noise yourself, papa," she said, pouting. "You made her leave off yesterday as soon as you came in, because you said she made your head ache with her noise, and set your teeth—something, I don't know what."

"Did I, dear?" he repeated carelessly. "Well, we need not discuss the subject. I dare say it amuses her to make music, as you call it, and so we need say no more about it."

"But you did say it was a noise," persisted Fina, climbing on to his knees and putting her arms round his neck. "And I think it a noise too."

"Poor Leam's music cannot be very first-rate," remarked Maria, who was a proficient and played almost as well as a "professional." "Four years ago she did not know her notes, and four years' practice cannot be expected to make a perfect pianiste."

"But a person may play very sweetly and yet not be what you call perfect," said Edgar.

"Do you think so?" Maria answered with a frosty smile. "I do not." Of what use to have toiled for thirty years early and late at scales and thorough-bass if a stupid girl like Leam could be allowed to play sweetly after four years' desultory practice? "Adelaide Birkett, if you will, plays well," she added; "but Leam, poor child! how should she?"

"I hope I shall have an opportunity of judging for myself," said Edgar with his company manner.—"When will you come and dine here, Dundas?—to-morrow? You and your elder daughter: we shall be very glad to see you."

He looked to his mother. Mrs. Harrowby had drawn her lips tight, and wore an injured air doing its best to be resigned. This was Edgar's first essay in domestic mastership, and it pained her, not unnaturally.

"Thanks," said Sebastian. "Willingly, if—" looking to Mrs. Harrowby.

"I have no engagement, and Edgar is master now," said that lady.

"And mind that Leam comes too," said Josephine, sharing her favorite brother's action by design.

"And me," cried Fina.

Whereat they all laughed, which made Fina cry, to be consoled only by some sweetmeats which Josephine found in her work-basket.

It was agreed, then, that the next day Leam and her father should dine at the Hill.

"Only ourselves," Edgar said, wanting the excuse of her "being the only lady" to devote himself to Leam. It was strange that he should be so anxious to see her nearer, and in company with his sisters and mother; for after all, why should he? What was she to him, either near or afar off, alone or in the inner circle of his family?

But when the next day came Mr. Dundas appeared alone. Leam had been taken with a fit of shyness, pride—who shall say?—and refused to accept her share of the invitation. Her father made the stereotyped excuse of "headache;" but headaches occur too opportunely to be always real, and Leam's to-night was set down to the fancy side of the account, and not believed in by the hearers any more than by the bearer.

Edgar raged against her in his heart, and decided that she was not worth a second thought, while the ladies said in an undertone from each to each, "How rude!" Maria adding, "How like Leam!" the chain of condemnation receiving no break till it came to Josephine, whose patient soul refrained from wrath, and gave as her link, "Poor Leam! perhaps she is shy or has really a headache."

In spite of his decision that she was not worth a second thought, the impression which Leam had made on Edgar deepened with his disappointment, and he became restless and unpleasant in his temper, casting about for means whereby he might see her again. He cast about in vain. This fit of shyness, pride, reluctance—who knows what?—continued with Leam for many days after this. If she went out at all, she went where she knew she should not be met; and if Edgar called at Ford House, she was not to be found. She mainly devoted herself to Fina and some books lent her by Alick, and kept the house with strange persistency. Perhaps this was because the weather was bad, for Leam, who could bear wind and frost and noonday sun, could not bear wet. When it rained she shut herself up in her own room, and pitied herself for the ungenial skies as she had pitied herself for some other things before now.

Sitting thus reading one miserably dark, cold, misty day, the child Fina came in to her with her lessons, which she repeated well. They were very small and insignificant little lessons, for Leam had a fellow-feeling for the troubles of ignorance, and laid but a light hand on the frothy mind inside that curly head. When they were finished the little one said coaxingly, "Now play with me, Leam! You never play with me."

"What can I do, Fina?" poor Leam replied.

She had never learnt to play when she was a child: she had never built towers and towns, made railway trains and coaches with the sofa and chairs, played at giants through the dark passages and screamed when she was caught. She had only sat still when mamma was asleep, or when she was awake played on the zambomba, or listened to her when she told her of the things of Spain, and made up stories with her dolls that were less edifying than those of Mother Bunch. She could scarcely, however, unpack that old box full of waxen puppets, with the one dressed in scarlet and black, with fishbone horns and a worsted tail, and a queer clumped kind of foot made of folds of leather, cleft in the middle, that used to go by the name of "El senor papa." What could she do?

"Shall I tell you a story?" she then said in a mild fit of desperation, for story-telling was as little in her way as anything else.

"Yes, yes, tell me a story!" Fina clapped her chubby hands together and climbed up into Leam's lap.

"What shall it be about—bears or tigers, or what?" asked Leam dutifully.

"Tell me about mamma, my own mamma, not Aunty Birkett," said Fina.

Leam shuddered from head to foot. This was the first time the little girl had mentioned her mother's name to her. Indeed, she did not know that she had ever heard of her at all—ever known that she had had a mother; but the servants had talked, and the child's curiosity was aroused. The dead mother is as much a matter of wondering inquiry as the angels and the stars; and Fina's imagination was beginning to bestir itself on the mysteries of childish life.

"I have nothing to tell you about her," said Leam, controlling herself, though she still shivered.

"Yes, you have—everything," insisted Fina. "Was mamma pretty?" playing with a corner of her sister's ribbon.

"People said so," answered Leam.

"As pretty as Cousin Addy?" she asked.

"About," said Leam, who thought neither supreme.

"Prettier than you?"

"I don't know: how can I tell?" she answered a little impatiently.

The mother's blood that ran in her, the mother's mould in which she had been formed, forbade her to put herself below madame in anything; but, as she was neither vain nor conscious, she found Fina's question difficult to answer.

"Oh," cried Fina, in a tone of disappointment, "then she could not have been very pretty."

"I dare say she was, but I do not know," returned Leam.

"And she died?" continued Fina, yawning in a childishly indifferent manner.

"Yes, she died."

"Why? Who killed her? Did papa?" asked Fina.

Leam's face was very white: "No, not papa."

"Did God?"

"I cannot tell you, Fina," said Leam, to whom falsehoods were abhorrent and the truth impossible.

"Did you?" persisted Fina with childish obstinacy.

"Now go," said Leam, putting her off her lap and rising from her chair in strange disorder. "You are troublesome and ask too many questions."

Fina began to cry loudly, and Mr. Dundas, from his library below, heard her. He came up stairs with his fussy, restless kindness, and opened the door of the room where his two daughters, of nature and by adoption, were.

"Heyday! what's all this about?" he cried. "What's the matter, my little Fina? what are you crying for? Tut, tut! you should not cry like this, darling; and, Leam," severely, "you should really keep the child better amused and happy. She is as good as gold with me: with you there is always something wrong."

Fina ran into his arms sobbing. "Leam is cross," she said. "She will not tell me who killed mamma."

The man's ruddy face, reddened and roughened with travel, grew white and pitiful. "God took her away, my darling," he said with a sob. "She was too good for me, and He took her to live with the angels in heaven,"

"And Leam's mamma? Is she in heaven too with the angels?" asked Fina, opening her eyes wide through their tears,

"I hope so," Sebastian answered in an altered voice.

Leam covered her face in her hands; then lifting it up, she said imploringly, "Papa, do not talk to her of mamma. It is sacrilege."

"I agree with you, Leam," said Mr, Dundas in a steady voice. "We meet at the same point, but perhaps by different methods."

[TO BE CONTINUED.]



LETTERS FROM SOUTH AFRICA

BY LADY BARKER.

CAPE TOWN, October 16, 1875.

Safe, safe at last, after twenty-four days of nothing but sea and sky, of white-crested waves—which made no secret of their intention of coming on board whenever they could or of tossing the good ship Edinburgh Castle hither and thither like a child's plaything—and of more deceitful sluggish rolling billows, looking tolerably calm to the unseafaring eye, but containing a vast amount of heaving power beneath their slow, undulating water-hills and valleys. Sometimes sky and sea have been steeped in dazzling haze of golden glare, sometimes brightened to blue of a sapphire depth. Again, a sudden change of wind has driven up serried clouds from the south and east, and all has been gray and cold and restful to eyes wearied with radiance and glitter of sun and sparkling water.

Never has there been such exceptional weather, although the weather of my acquaintance invariably is exceptional. No sooner had the outlines of Madeira melted and blended into the soft darkness of a summer night than we appeared to sail straight into tropic heat and a sluggish vapor, brooding on the water like steam from a giant geyser. This simmering, oily, exhausting temperature carried us close to the line. "What is before us," we asked each other languidly, "if it be hotter than this? How can mortal man, woman, still less child, endure existence?" Vain alarms! Yet another shift of the light wind, another degree passed, and we are all shivering in winter wraps. The line was crossed in greatcoats and shawls, and the only people whose complexion did not resemble a purple plum were those lucky ones who had strength of mind and steadiness of body to lurch up and down the deck all day enjoying a strange method of movement which they called walking.

The exceptional weather pursued us right into the very dock. Table Mountain ought to be seen—and very often is seen—seventy miles away. I am told it looks a fine bold bluff at that distance, Yesterday we had blown off our last pound of steam and were safe under its lee before we could tell there was a mountain there at all, still less an almost perpendicular cliff more than three thousand feet high. Robben Island looked like a dun-colored hillock as we shot past it within a short distance, and a more forlorn and discouraging islet I don't think I have ever beheld. When I expressed something of this impression to a cheery fellow-voyager, he could only urge in its defence that there were a great many rabbits on it. If he had thrown the lighthouse into the bargain, I think he would have summed up all its attractive features. Unless Langalibalele is of a singularly unimpressionable nature, he must have found his sojourn on it somewhat monotonous, but he always says he was very comfortable there.

And now for the land. We are close alongside of a wharf, and still a capital and faithful copy of a Scotch mist wraps houses, trees and sloping uplands in a fibry fantastic veil, and the cold drizzle seems to curdle the spirits and energies of the few listless Malays and half-caste boys and men who are lounging about. Here come hansom cabs rattling up one after the other, all with black drivers in gay and fantastic head and shoulder gear; but their hearts seem precisely as the hearts of their London brethren, and they single out new-comers at a glance, and shout offers to drive them a hundred yards or so for exorbitant sums, or yell laudatory recommendations of sundry hotels. You must bear in mind that in a colony every pot-house is a hotel, and generally rejoices in a name much too imposing to fit across its frontage. These hansoms are all painted white with the name of some ship in bright letters on the side, and are a great deal cleaner, roomier and more comfortable than their London "forbears." The horses are small and shabby, but rattle along at a good pace; and soon each cab has its load of happy home-comers and swings rapidly away to make room for fresh arrivals hurrying up for fares. Hospitable suggestions come pouring in, and it is as though it were altogether a new experience when one steps cautiously on the land, half expecting it to dip away playfully from under one's feet. A little boy puts my thoughts into words when he exclaims, "How steady the ground is!" and becomes a still more faithful interpreter of a wave-worn voyager's sensations when, a couple of hours later, he demands permission to get out of his delicious little white bed that he may have the pleasure of getting into it again. The evening is cold and raw and the new picture is all blurred and soft and indistinct, and nothing seems plain except the kindly grace of our welcome and the never-before-sufficiently-appreciated delights of space and silence.

OCTOBER 17.

How pleasant is the process familiarly known as "looking about one," particularly when performed under exceptionally favorable circumstances! A long and happy day commenced with a stroll through the botanic gardens, parallel with which runs, on one side, a splendid oak avenue just now in all the vivid freshness of its young spring leaves. The gardens are beautifully kept, and are valuable as affording a sort of experimental nursery in which new plants and trees can be brought up on trial and their adaptability to the soil and climate ascertained. For instance, the first thing that caught my eye was the gigantic trunk of an Australian blue-gum tree, which had attained to a girth and height not often seen in its own land. The flora of the Cape Colony is exceptionally varied and beautiful, but one peculiarity incidentally alluded to by my charming guide struck me as very noticeable. It is that in this dry climate and porous soil all the efforts of uncultivated nature are devoted to the stems of the vegetation: on their sap-retaining power depends the life of the plant, so blossom and leaf, though exquisitely indicated, are fragile and incomplete compared to the solidity and bulbous appearance of the stalk. Everything is sacrificed to the practical principle of keeping life together, and it is not until these stout-stemmed plants are cultivated and duly sheltered and watered, and can grow, as it were, with confidence, that they are able to do justice to the inherent beauty of penciled petal and veined leaf. Then the stem contracts to ordinary dimensions, and leaf and blossom expand into things which may well be a joy to the botanist's eye. A thousand times during that shady saunter did I envy my companions their scientific acquaintance with the beautiful green things of earth, and that intimate knowledge of a subject which enhances one's appreciation of its charms as much as bringing a lamp into a darkened picture-gallery. There are the treasures of form and color, but from ignorant eyes more than half their charms and wonders are held back.

A few steps beyond the garden stand the library and natural history museum. The former is truly a credit to the Colony. Spacious, handsome, rich in literary treasures, It would bear comparison with similar institutions in far older and wealthier places. But I have often noticed in colonies how much importance is attached to the possession of a good public library, and how fond, as a rule, colonists are of books. In a new settlement other shops may be ill supplied, but there is always a good bookseller's, and all books are to be bought there at pretty nearly the same prices as in England. Here each volume costs precisely the same as it would in London, and it would puzzle ever so greedy a reader to name a book which would not be instantly handed to him.

The museum is well worth a visit of many more hours than we could afford minutes, and, as might be expected, contains numerous specimens of the Bok family, whose tapering horns and slender legs are to be seen at every turn of one's head. Models are there also of the largest diamonds, and especially well copied is the famous "Star of South Africa," a magnificent brilliant of purest water, sold here originally for something like twelve thousand pounds, and resold for double that sum three or four years back. In these few hours I perceive, or think I perceive, a certain soreness, if one may use the word, on the part of the Cape Colonists about the unappreciativeness of the English public toward their produce and possessions. For Instance, an enormous quantity of wine is annually exported, which reaches London by a devious route and fetches a high price, as it is fairly entitled to do from its excellence. If that same wine were sent direct to a London merchant and boldly sold as Cape wine, it is said that the profit on it would be a very different affair. The same prejudice exists against Cape diamonds. Of course, as in other things, a large proportion of inferior stones are forced into the market and serve to give the diamonds that bad name which we all know is so fatal to a dog. But it is only necessary to pretend that a really fine Cape diamond has come from Brazil to ensure its fetching a handsome price, and in that way even jewelers themselves have been known to buy and give a good round sum, too, for stones they would otherwise have looked upon with suspicion. Already I have seen a straw-colored diamond from "Du Zoit's pan" in the diamond-fields cut in Amsterdam and set in London, which could hold its own for purity, radiance and color against any other stone of the same rare tint, without fear or favor; but of course such gems are not common, and fairly good diamonds cost as much here as in any other part of the world.

The light morning mists from that dampness of yesterday have rolled gradually away as the beautiful sunshine dried the atmosphere, and by midday the table-cloth, as the colonists affectionately call the white, fleece-like vapor which so often rests on their pet mountain, has been folded up and laid aside in Cloudland for future use. I don't know what picture other people may have made to their own minds of the shape and size of Table Mountain, but it was quite a surprise and the least little bit in the world of a disappointment to me to find that it cuts the sky (and what a beautiful sky it is!) with a perfectly straight and level line. A gentle, undulating foreground broken into ravines, where patches of green velts or fields, clumps of trees and early settlers' houses nestle cosily down, guides the eye half-way up the mountain. There the rounder forms abruptly cease, and great granite cliffs rise, bare and straight, up to the level line stretching ever so far along. "It is so characteristic," and "You grow to be so fond of that mountain," are observations I have heard made in reply to the carping criticisms of travelers, and already I begin to understand the meaning of the phrases. But you need to see the mountain from various points of view and under different influences of sun and cloud before you can take in its striking and peculiar charms.

On each side of the straight line which is emphatically Table Mountain, but actually forming part of it, is a bold headland of the shape one is usually accustomed to in mountains. The "Devil's Peak" is uncompromising enough for any one's taste, whilst the "Lion's Head" charms the eye by its bluff form and deep purple fissures. These grand promontories are not, however, half so beloved by Cape Colonists as their own Table Mountain, and it is curious and amusing to notice how the influence of this odd straight ridge, ever before their eyes, has unconsciously guided and influenced their architectural tastes. All the roofs of the houses are straight—straight as the mountain; a gable is almost unknown, and even the few steeples are dwarfed to an imperceptible departure from the prevailing straight line. The very trees which shade the Parade-ground and border the road in places have their tops blown absolutely straight and flat, as though giant shears had trimmed them; but I must confess, in spite of a natural anxiety to carry out my theory, that the violent "sou'-easters" are the "straighteners" in their case.

Cape Town is so straggling that it is difficult to form any idea of its real size, but the low houses are neat and the streets are well kept and look quaint and lively enough to my new eyes this morning. There are plenty of people moving about with a sociable, business-like air; lots of different shades of black and brown Malays, with pointed hats on the men's heads: the women encircle their dusky, smiling faces with a gay cotton handkerchief and throw another of a still brighter hue over their shoulders. When you add to this that they wear a full, flowing, stiffly-starched cotton gown of a third bright color, you can perhaps form some idea of how they enliven the streets. Swarms of children everywhere, romping and laughing and showing their white teeth in broadest of grins. The white children strike me at once as looking marvelously well—such chubby cheeks, such sturdy fat legs—and all, black or white, with that amazing air of independence peculiar to baby-colonists. Nobody seems to mind them and nothing seems to harm them. Here are half a dozen tiny boys shouting and laughing at one side of the road, and half a dozen baby-girls at the other (they all seem to play separately): they are all driving each other, for "horses" is the one game here. By the side of a pond sit two toddles of about three years old, in one garment apiece and pointed hats: they are very busy with string and a pin; but who is taking care of them and why don't they tumble in? They are as fat as ortolans and grin at us in the most friendly fashion.

We must remember that this chances to be the very best moment of the whole year in which to see the Cape and the dwellers thereat. The cold weather has left its bright roses on the children's cheeks, and the winter rains exceptionally having this year made every blade of grass and leaf of tree to laugh and sing in freshest green. After the dry, windy summer I am assured there is hardly a leaf and never a blade of grass to be seen in Cape Town, and only a little straggling verdure under the shelter of the mountain. The great want of this place is water. No river, scarcely a brook, refreshes one's eye for many and many a league inward. The necessary water for the use of the town is brought down by pipes from the numerous springs which trickle out of the granite cliffs of Table Mountain, but there is never a sufficiency to spare for watering roads or grassplots. This scarcity is a double loss to residents and visitors, for one misses it both for use and beauty.

Everybody who comes here rides or drives round the "Kloof." That may be; but what I maintain is that very few do it so delightfully as I did this sunny afternoon with a companion who knew and loved every turn of the romantic road, who could tell me the name of every bush or flower, of every distant stretch of hills, and helped me to make a map in my head of the stretching landscape and curving bay. Ah! how delicious it was, the winding, climbing road, at whose every angle a fresh fair landscape fell away from beneath our feet or a shining stretch of sea, whose transparent green and purple shadows broke in a fringe of feathery spray at the foot of bold, rocky cliffs, or crept up to a smooth expanse of silver sand in a soft curling line of foam! "Kloof" means simply cleft, and is the pass between the Table Mountain and the Lion's Head, The road first rises, rises, rises, until one seems half-way up the great mountain, and the little straight—roofed white houses, the green velts or fields and the parallel lines of the vineyards have sunk below one's feet far, far away. The mountain gains in grandeur as one approaches it, for the undulating spurs which run from it down to the sea-shore take away from the height looking upward. But when these are left beneath, the perpendicular Walls of granite, rising sheer and straight up to the bold sky-line, and the rugged, massive strength of the buttress-like cliffs, begin to gain something of their true value to the stranger's eye. The most beautiful part of the road, however, to my taste, is the descent, when the shining expanse of Camp's Bay lies shimmering in the warm afternoon haze with a thousand lights and shadows from cloud and cliff touching and passing over the crisp water-surface. By many a steep zigzag we round the Lion's Head, and drop once more on a level road running parallel to the sea-shore, and so home in the balmy and yet bracing twilight. The midday sun is hot and scorching even at this time of year, but it is always cool in the shade, and no sooner do the afternoon shadows grow to any length than the air freshens into sharpness, and by sundown one is glad of a good warm shawl.

OCTOBER 18.

Another bright, ideal day, and the morning passed in a delicious flower-filled room looking over old books and records and listening to odd, quaint little scraps from the old Dutch records. But directly after luncheon (and how hungry we all are, and how delicious everything tastes on shore!) the open break with four capital horses comes to the door, and we start for a long, lovely drive. Half a mile or so takes us out on a flat red road with Table Mountain rising straight up before it, but on the left stretches away a most enchanting panorama. It is all so soft in coloring and tone, distinct and yet not hard, and exquisitely beautiful!

The Blue-Berg range of mountains stretch beyond the great bay, which, unless a "sou'-easter" is tearing over it, lies glowing in tranquil richness. This afternoon it is colored like an Italian lake. Here are lines of chrysoprase, green-fringed, white with little waves, and beyond lie dark, translucent, purple depths, which change with every passing cloud. Beyond these amethystic shoals again stretches the deep blue water, and again beyond, and bluer still, rise the five ranges of "Hottentots' Holland," which encircle and complete the landscape, bringing the eye round again to the nearer cliffs of the Devil's Peak. When the Dutch came here some two hundred years ago, they seized upon this part of the coast and called it Holland, driving the Hottentots beyond the neighboring range and telling them that was to be their Holland—a name it keeps to this day. Their consciences must have troubled them after this arbitrary division of the soil, for up the highest accessible spurs of their own mountain they took the trouble to build several queer little square houses called "block-houses," from which they could keep a sharp look-out for foes coming over the hills from Hottentots' Holland. The foes never came, however, and the roofs and walls of the block-houses have gradually tumbled in, and the gun-carriages—for they managed to drag heavy ordnance up the steep hill-side—have rotted away, whilst the old-fashioned cannon lie, grim and rusty, amid a tangled profusion of wild geranium, heath and lilies, I scrambled up to one of the nearest block-houses, and found the date on the dismounted gun to be more than a hundred years old. The view was beautiful and the air fresh and fragrant with scent of flowers.

But to return to our drive. I could gaze and gaze for ever at this lovely panorama, but am told this is the ugliest part of the road. The road itself is certainly not pretty just here, and is cloudy with a fine red dust, but this view of sea and distant hills is enchanting. Soon we get under the lee of the great mountain, and then its sheltering arms show their protective power; for splendid oak avenues begin to border the road all the way, and miniature forests of straight-stemmed pines and shimmering belts of the ghostly silver tree run up all the mountain-clefts. Stem and leaf of the silver tree are all of purest white; and when one gets a gleam of sunlight on a distant patch of these trees, the effect is quite indescribable, contrasting, as they do, with green of field and vineyard. The vines all about here and towards Constantia, thirteen miles off, are dwarf-plants, and only grow to the height of gooseberry-bushes. It is a particular species, which is found to answer best as requiring less labor to train and cultivate, and is less likely to be blown out of the ground by the violent "sou'-easters" which come sweeping over the mountain. These gales are evidently the greatest annoyance which Cape Colonists have to endure; and although everybody kindly suggests that I ought to see one, just to understand what it is like, I am profoundly thankful that I only know it from their description and my own distinct recollection of the New Zealand "nor'-westers." Those were hot winds, scorching and curling up everything, whereas this is rather a cold breeze, although it blows chiefly in summer. It whirls along clouds of dust from the red clay roads and fields which penetrates and clings to everything in the most extraordinary manner. All along the road the stems and lower branches of the trees are dyed a deep brick-dust color, and I hear moving and pathetic stories of how it ruins clothes, not only utterly spoiling black silk dresses, but staining white petticoats and children's frocks and pinafores with a border of color exactly like the ruddle with which sheep are branded. Especially is it the terror of sailors, rendering the navigation along the coast dangerous and difficult; for it blends land and water into one indistinct whirl of vaporous cloud, confusing and blurring everything until one cannot distinguish shore from sea.

The vineyards of Constantia originally took their pretty name from the fair daughter of one of the early Dutch governors, but now it has grown into a generic word, and you see "Cloete's Constantia," "Von Reybeck Constantia," written upon great stone gateways leading by long avenues into the various vine-growing plantations. It was to the former of these constantias, which was also the farthest off, that we were bound that pleasant summer afternoon, and from the time we got out of the carriage until the moment we re-entered it—all too soon, but it is a long drive back in the short cold twilight—I felt as though I had stepped through a magic portal into the scene of one of Washington Irving's stories. It was all so simple and homely, so quaint and so inexpressibly picturesque. The house had stood there for a couple of hundred years, and looks as though it might last for ever, with its air of cool, leisurely repose and comfort and strength.

In the flagged hall stands a huge stalactite some ten feet high, brought a hundred years ago from caves far away in the distant ranges. It is shaped something like a Malay's hat, only the peak tapers to a point about eight feet high. The drawing-room—though it seems a profanation to call that venerable stately room by so flippant and modern a name—is large, ceiled with great beams of cedar, and lighted by lofty windows, which must contain many scores of small panes of glass. There were treasures of rarest old china and delfware, and curious old carved stands for fragile dishes. A wealth of swinging-baskets of flowers and ferns and bright girl-faces lighted up the solemn, shady old room, in which we must not linger, for there is much to see outside. First to the cellar, as it is called, though it is far from being under ground, and is, in fact, a spacious stone building with an elaborately-carved pediment. Here are rows and rows of giant casks, stretching on either hand into avenues in the black distance, but these are mere children in the nursery, compared to those we are going to see. First we must pause in a middle room full of quaintest odds and ends—crossbows, long whips of hippopotamus hide, strange rusty old swords and firearms—to look at a map of South Africa drawn somewhere about 1640. It hangs on the wall and is hardly to be touched, for the paint and varnish crack and peel off at a breath. It is a marvel of accurate geographical knowledge, and is far better filled in than the maps of yesterday. All poor Livingstone's great geographical discoveries are marked on it as being—perhaps only from description—known or guessed at all that long time ago. It was found impossible to photograph it on account of the dark shade which age has laid over the original yellow varnish, but a careful tracing has been made and, I believe, sent home to the Geographical Society. It is in the long corridor beyond this that the "stuck-vats" live—puncheons which hold easily some thousand gallons or so, and are of a solemn rotundity calculated to strike awe into the beholder's heart. Here is white constantia, red constantia, young constantia, middle-aged constantia, and constantia so old as to be a liqueur almost beyond price. When it has been kept all these years, the sweetness by which it is distinguished becomes so absorbed and blended as to be hardly perceptible.

Presently one of the party throws a door suddenly open, and, behold, we are standing right over a wild wooded glen with a streamlet running through it, and black washerwomen beating heaps of white clothes on the strips of shingle. Turtle-doves are cooing, and one might almost fancy one was back again on the wild Scotch west coast, until some one else says calmly, "Look at the ostriches!" Here they come, with a sort of dancing step, twisting their long necks and snake-like heads from side to side in search of a tempting pebble or trifle of hardware. Their wings are slightly raised, and the long fringe of white feathers rustles softly as they trot easily and gracefully past us. They are young male birds, and in a few months more their plumage, which now resembles that of a turkey-cock, will be jet black, except the wing-feathers. A few drops of rain are falling, so we hurry back to where the carriage is standing under some splendid oak trees, swallow a sort of stirrup-cup of delicious hot tea, and so home again as fast as we can go.

OCTOBER 19.

It is decided that I must take a drive in a Cape cart; so directly after breakfast a smart workman-like-looking vehicle, drawn by a pair of well-bred iron-gray cobs, dashes up under the portico. There are capital horses here, but they fetch a good price, and such a pair as these would easily find purchasers at one hundred and fifty pounds. The cart itself is very trim and smart, with a framework sort of head, which falls back at pleasure, and it holds four people easily. It is a capital vehicle, light and strong and uncommonly comfortable, but I am warned not to imagine that all Cape carts are as easy as this one. Away we go at a fine pace through the delicious sparkling morning sunshine and crisp air, soon turning off the red high-road into a sandy, marshy flat with a sort of brackish back-water standing in pools here and there. We are going to call on Langalibalele, and his son, Malambuli, who are located at Uitvlugt on the Cape downs, about four miles from the town. It is a sort of farm-residence; and considering that the chief has hitherto lived in a reed hut, he is not badly off, for he has plenty of room out of doors as well as a good house over his head. We bump over some strange and rough bits of sandy road and climb up and down steep banks in a manner seldom done on wheels. There is a wealth of lovely flowers blooming around, but I can't help fixing my eyes on the pole of the cart, which is sometimes sticking straight up in the air, its silver hook shining merrily in the sun, or else it has disappeared altogether, and I can only see the horses' haunches. That is when we are going down hill, and I think it is a more terrible sensation than when we are playfully scrambling up some sandy hillock as a cat might.

Here is the location at last, thank Heaven! and there is Langalibalele sitting in the verandah stoep (pronounced "stoup") on his haunches on a brick. He looks as comfortable as if he were in an arm-chair, but it must be a difficult thing to do if you think seriously of it. The etiquette seems to be to take no notice of him as we pass into the parlor, where we present our pass and the people in authority satisfy themselves that we are quite in rule. Then the old chief walks quietly in, takes off his soft felt hat and sits himself down in a Windsor arm-chair with grave deliberation. He is uncommonly ugly; but when one remembers that he is nearly seventy years of age, it is astonishing to see how young he looks. Langalibalele is not a true Kafir at all: he is a Fingor, a half-caste tribe contemptuously christened by the Kafirs "dogs." His wool grows in distinct and separate clumps like hassocks of grass all over his head. He is a large and powerful man and looks the picture of sleek contentment, as well he may. Only one of his sons, a good-natured, fine young man, black as ebony, is with him, and the chief's one expressed grievance is that none of his wives will come to him. In vain he sends commands and entreaties to these dusky ladies to come and share his solitude. They return for answer that "they are working for somebody else;" for, alas! the only reason their presence is desired is that they may cultivate some of the large extent of ground placed at the old chief's disposal. Neither he nor his stalwart son would dream for a moment of touching spade or hoe; but if the ladies of the family could only be made to see their duty, an honest penny might easily be turned by oats or rye. I gave him a large packet of sugar-plums, which he seized with childish delight and hid away exactly like the big monkeys at the Zoo.

By way of a joke, Malambuli pretended to want to take them away, and the chattering and laughing which followed was almost deafening. But by and by a gentleman of the party presented a big parcel of the best tobacco, and the chuckling old chief made over at once all my sweetmeats "jintly" to his son, and proceeded to hide away his new treasure. He was dressed exactly like a dissenting minister, and declared through the interpreter he was perfectly comfortable. The impression here seems to be that he is a restless, intriguing and mischief-making old man, who may consider himself as having come out of the hornets' nest he tried to stir up uncommonly well.

We don't want to bump up and down the sandy plain again, so a lively conversation goes on in Dutch about the road between one of my gentlemen and somebody who looks like a "stuck-vat" upon short legs. The dialogue is fluent and lively, beginning with "Ja, ja!" and ending with "All right!" but it leads to our hitting off the right track exactly, and coming out at a lovely little cottage-villa under the mountain, where we rest and lunch and then stroll about up the hill spurs, through myrtle hedges and shady oak avenues. Then, before the afternoon shadows grow too long, we drive off to "Groote Schuur," the ancient granary of the first settlers, which is now turned into a roomy, comfortable country-house, perfect as a summer residence, and securely sheltered from the "sou'-easters." We approach it through a double avenue of tall Italian pines, and after a little while go out once more for a ramble up some quaint old brick steps, and so through a beautiful glen all fringed and feathered with fresh young fronds of maiden-hair ferns, and masses of hydrangea bushes, which must be beautiful as a poet's dream when they are covered with their great bunches of pale blue blossom. That will not be until Christmas-tide, and, alas! I shall not be here to see, for already my three halcyon days of grace are ended and over, and this very evening we must steam away from a great deal yet unvisited of what is interesting and picturesque, and from friends who three days ago were strangers, but who have made every moment since we landed stand out as a bright and pleasant landmark on life's highway.



ON SANKOTA HEAD.

"Yay, Jim, there ain't no doubt but Sairy Macy's a mighty nice gal, but, thee sees, what I'm a-contendin' fur is that she's tew nice fur thee—that is, not tew nice egzackly, but a leetle tew fine-feathered. No, not that egzackly, nuther; but she's a leetle tew fine in the feelin's, an' I don't b'lieve that in the long run thee an' she'll sort well tugether. Shell git eout o' conceit with thy ways—thee ain't the pootiest-mannered feller a gal ever see—an' thee'll git eout o' conceit with hern. Thee'll think she's a-gittin' stuck up, an' she'll think thee's a-gittin'low-minded. Neow, Jim, my 'dvice is good; an' ef thee'll take it, an' not go on with this thing no furder, thee'll both be glad on it arterwa'ds. 'Spesh'ly 's she ain't very rugged, an' sickly gals had oughter hev rich husbands."

"But, father, Sairy an' me loves o' 'nother."

"Oh, wal, then it's tew late ter say nothin'," said the old man with a mingled sigh and smile as, raising his basket of quahaugs to his shoulder, he walked off, pressing his bare feet into the yielding sand with the firm but clumsy tread of vigorous old age. The rough hat of plaited straw was pushed back from a brow that with a cultivated nature would have been considered as evidence of considerable intellectual power, but, as it was, only showed the probable truth of the opinion of his neighbors, that "Stephen Starbuck was a shrewd, common-sense ole feller."

Jim was of a little finer grade than his father, having inherited some of the traits of his gentle mother, but the young Hercules could by no means have been mistaken for an Apollo; neither did his somewhat heavy features bear the expression of unselfish loyalty which would have given better promise than any mere refinement of features or manner for the future happiness of Sarah Macy. But she found nothing wanting in her lover as she stood on the cliff-head gazing down upon him. Sarah knew that the man she loved was not considered her equal, but because she loved him she believed him capable of becoming all that she or others could desire. There is in the world no faith so absolute as that of a woman in the possibilities of the man she loves. Had Sarah read of Sir Galahad—but this was in 1779, and the fame of the search for the Holy Grail had not reached the popular ear—she would have said to herself, "My Jim is just so pure and holy." Had "her Jim" been a Royalist during the English Revolution, Prince Rupert's laurels would not have been unshared. Had Jim been a Puritan—though the little Quaker maiden did not love Puritans over well, and did not fancy her Jim as fighting on that side—England's Protector would not have borne the name of Cromwell. Or if Jim were not one of the peace-loving Friends, and would enlist in the present struggle for liberty, the fame of Commodore James Starbuck should soon eclipse that of Paul Jones.

Not for the world would Sarah have given voice to the heretical desire, but in her inmost heart was even now a wish that her dear Jim held religious opinions that would not interfere with his showing to the country how talented, noble and valiant he was; while the fair-haired, sunburnt, indolent young Hercules idly gazing out to sea was fired with no higher ambition for himself than to be able soon to erect on the Head another small house like that of his father, to which he might bring "the sweet little girl who loved him, so much." For Sarah had committed the common mistake of loving women, and had let Jim see how dear he was to her. So now, instead of dwelling on his love for her and scheming how he might be worthy of her heart, he was fully satisfied with himself, and inclined to grumble at Fortune for not at once bestowing the trifle he asked at her hands.

"Jim, how long's thee goin' ter stan' there? If the water is pretty, thee can see it any day, so 't ain't worth while to look at it all day ter a time."

As, the sweet tones floated down the cliff Jim turned lazily to smile up at the speaker, and, raising his heavy basket of quahaugs, came leisurely up the steep sand-path, which seemed to shrink from his weight at every step: "Wal', Sairy, I wa'n't a-thinkin' much o' the water: I was a-thinkin' o' thee, an' o' what fayther said a little spell ago."

"What was that, Jim?" Sarah's tone was a little anxious, for she knew that there was a jealousy among some of the islanders of the facts that her father had brought with him a few heavy articles of "real mahogany furnitur," and that her stepmother had always been able to hire others to do her spinning and weaving, and even to "help her at odd spells with the heft o' the housework."

"Oh, nothin'," replied Jim, passing his free arm carelessly round the girl's waist—"othin', undly th' old story 'beout heow we'd best not merry, 'cause by'm-by thee'll git ter feelin' better nor me."

"But thee don't believe him, Jim? Thee knows better. Thee knows," adding this with the sweet and sincere but often sadly mistaken humility of love—"thee knows thou art better than me. Thou art so grand and so noble! If folks only knew thee better they would wonder at thee fur puttin' up wi' me. I wish I could make thee a better wife. But, Jim, if I ain't very strong, I'm pretty good at contrivin', an' I don't believe but what I can manage so's to git along a'most as well as them that's tougher."

"Git along? O' course thee'll git along," answered Jim patronizingly. "I telled mother th'other day that I didn't cafe ef thee wa'n't 's strong as Mary Allen: thee was a good deal smarter, an' I'd be willin' tu resk but what I'd hev as little waitin' on ter dew fur thee 's fur her. Besides"—and here a gleam of real if shallow affection sprang from Jim's eyes as he looked down at the loving creature by his side—"besides, I'd like to take care o' thee, Sairy—I would indeed."

It is said that the sky has no color of its own—that the deep blue we think so beautiful is only owing to the atmosphere through which we view it. To Sarah this very slight expression of her lover's care for her bore more weight than the most passionate protestations of affection could have done to a colder nature, for it was colored by the glowing tints of her own warm love; and when the two parted that day she carried with her a sweet, satisfying sense of being beloved by the "best man on the earth" even as she loved him; while he whistled cheerily over his net-mending, thinking "what a sweet little thing it was!" "how pretty its eyes were!" and "how kitten-like its ways!" and only checked his whistling once in a while to wonder whether the day would ever really come when "Sairy would feel herself better than him," and to think it also a little hard that old Thomas Macy was "so sot agin' the match" that he would give his daughter no portion but an outfit of clothes and household linen. "He might jest's well's not," reasoned Jim to himself, "give us a little lift: I guess he would if Sairy's own mother was alive; but them step-mothers never wants to give nothin' ter the fust wives' childern." In which opinion Jim did the second Mrs. Macy much injustice, for it was owing solely to her influence that Sarah's father had consented to provide his daughter with even a new dress in which to be married to "that big, lazy boy o'old Steve Starbuck's."

Meantime, sad, gentle old Mrs. Starbuck had been turning over many things in her mind. She felt her son's defects; she knew that warm-hearted, imaginative Sarah Macy would be doing a foolish thing to marry Jim—as foolish a thing as in her inmost heart she felt, rather than acknowledged, that she herself had done when she married Jim's father. But the mother-heart longed that her son should grow to be what she desired (and what poor Sarah thought he already was), and she hoped much from the elevating influence of so good a wife.

So, as she sat knitting, while Jim and his father sat, hats on heads and pipes in mouths, mending their nets, old Mrs. Starbuck had "made a plan." "Father," said, she at last, "I've be'n thinkin'—"

"Yay," replied the old man gruffly but not unkindly—"yay, I 'spect so. Thee's pooty nigh allus a-thinkin' o' suthin. What is it neow? Eout with it!"

"I've be'n thinkin' that Jim's all the child we've got—"

"Wal, yay. Hain't had no other—not's I knows on. What o' that?"

"Well, I was a-thinkin' that, that bein' so, an' Jim an' Sairy thinkin' so much o' 'nother, it wa'n't o' no use fur them ter keep waitin' along year eout an' year in fur a chance tu keep house by 'emselves. They'd best git married right off an' come an' live along o' us."

"W'y, ole woman!"

"W'y, mother!"

"Yay; I hear both on ye," said the gentle old mother with a half smile. "I s'posed likely ye'd think strange on't at fust; but ye h'ain't no need ter, fur it's a sens'ble thing ter dew, an' yell see't so when ye've thought on't a spell: see if ye don't."

So well was the proposal liked that very soon the simple ceremony of the Friends made James and Sarah husband and wife; and for a while all seemed happiness in the humble cottage on the cliff—cottage so humble that it scarcely deserved even that lowly name.

Sarah Macy's father owned one of the largest dwellings on Nantucket—a two-story "double house" with two rooms on each side of a broad hall running through the house from front to rear. On one side of this hall was the "best bedroom," ghostly with tightly-closed white shutters and long white dimity curtains to the "four-poster" and shining white sanded floor, and the "best-room," terrible in its grandeur of cold white walls, straight hard sofa, "spider-legged" table, grenadier-like chairs and striped woolen carpet underlaid with straw. In the rear, on the other side of the hall, was the kitchen with its big brick oven, its yawning fireplace overhung with corpulent iron pots or shining copper kettles depending from numerous gallows-like cranes; with its glittering copper, brass and pewter utensils arrayed on snowy-shelves; with its spotless tables, Its freshly-sanded floor and its heavily-beamed, whitewashed ceiling, from which hung many a bunch of savory herbs or string of red pepper-pods or bunch of seed-corn, or perhaps even a round-backed ham, to get a little browner in the smoke that would sometimes pour out from the half-ignited mass of peat. In front of the kitchen was the "living-room," in one corner of which stood a carved high-post bedstead—glory of the Macys and envy of their neighbors—with its curtains of big figured chintz, brown sunflowers sprawling over a white ground, drawn aside in the daytime to display the marvelous patchwork of the quilt beneath. Fuel was scarce even then on the sandy isle; and economy compelled Mr. and Mrs. Macy to make use of this living-room as a bedchamber also, since Thomas Macy confessed to "bein rather tender," and to liking a warm room to sleep In, though his neighbors often insinuated that he was killing himself by the Indulgence. And indeed the heat must have been stifling when we consider the size of the fireplace, nine feet wide by four deep, with a yawning throat, through which the rain poured freely down on stormy nights, putting out the best arranged mass of coals, ashes and peat, and, in spite of the little gutter purposely made round the broad brick hearth, sometimes overflowing and drenching a portion of the neat rag carpet, in which, with true Quaker consistency, no gay-colored fragment had been allowed a place.

In striking contrast to all this magnificence was the lowly home to which James Starbuck brought his happy bride. This little house was "double" also—that Is, it was entered in the centre by a small square passage just big enough for the outer door to swing in. On one side of this entry was a tiny parlor, as dismal as rag carpet, fireless hearth, dingy paper and dark-green paper shades to the small windows could make it. On the other side of the entry was the tiny and cold bedroom of the senior Starbucks. In the centre of the house rose a massive chimney, big enough to retain all the heat from a dozen fires. Across the rear of parlor, chimney and bedroom ran the long, low sunshiny kitchen. At one end of this certain ladder-like stairs conducted to the loft, which had served Jim for a "roosting-place" ever since he had grown big enough to be trusted o' nights so far away from his mother. On Sarah's advent into the family the dismal "best-room" was made habitable by the addition of a "four-poster"—which Mrs. Starbuck senior regretted was only of cherry-wood and not carved—and by sundry little feminine contrivances of Sarah's own.

I said that for a time all seemed to go on happily in this humble home. And the seeming would have been reality had Jim possessed the faith in his wife which she had in him. True, he loved and believed in her after his fashion, and his mother was a strong ally on his wife's side; but Jim had one fatal weakness of character. He resented the slightest look that was anything but simple admiration on the part of his wife. A strong nature is not afraid of censure, but a weak one, pleading sensitiveness, is easily roused to small retaliations, repaying what is good in intention with what is evil. Jim, as his father had truly told him, was "not the pootiest-mannered feller a gal ever see," and in the daily home-life this became apparent to Sarah as it had never been in all the years they had been near neighbors. Naturally, she wished her husband to be pleasing to her father, and at last ventured to hint, as delicately as she could, at various little points in which improvements might be made. At first Jim did not seem very restless under such reproofs, given, as they were, with many a loving kiss and winsome look; but as months went on his wife's caresses were more carelessly received, and her hinted corrections with more of resentment. One evening stately old Thomas Macy had "happened in," and Jim had greatly grieved his wife by his curt, uncivil manner to her father. After he had gone Sarah spoke in a low tone and kindly as always, but with more spirit than she had ever before manifested or felt, of her husband's disrespectful ways to the aged.

For a moment after his wife had ceased, Jim sat with his hat pulled closely over his eyes, fiercely biting into the apple he was eating—biting and throwing the bits into the glowing mass of peat on the hearth. Then he sprang to his feet, exclaiming, "I see! It's all come true, what ev'rybody said. Thee thinks thee an' thy folks is better'n me an' my folks, an' keeps all the time a-naggin' on me. I wish I'd merried Mary Allen! I won't stan' no more o' this talk. If I ain't to be maaster o' my own house I won't stay in't." (The house was his father's, but angry men never think of such trifles.) And waxing pitiful of himself, he continued in a broken and injured tone, "The bed o' the sea's the bes' place fur a man whose own wife's got tew big feelin' ter put up wi' his ways."

With this dignified burst of eloquence the angry fellow flung himself out of the house, letting in at the door as he went a dash of cold, sleety rain and a gust of wind that put out the flickering tallow dip that was enabling Sarah to take the last stitches in the tiny white slip that now fell from her fingers. Too sorely wounded for resentment, too fond of her husband to wish even his parents to see him in the light in which he was now revealed to her, Sarah silently stooped to recover her work, and as she did so her hand was met under the table by a sympathizing pressure from that of her mother-in-law. This was too much, and, laying her head in the elder woman's lap, poor Sarah wept without restraint; while the mother sorrowfully and tenderly stroked her soft brown tresses. The father, quietly puffing at his pipe, seemed to take no notice, only now and then glancing with kindly eye covertly from under his hat-brim at the two grieving women.

Silently, but for the roaring of the wind and surf and fitful dashing of the rain, the hours passed on till the high clock in the kitchen corner sharply struck eleven. This was a late hour for those times, and a faint fear began to come upon them all. Could it be that Jim had really meant what he said? "Had he—" And the two women looked blankly at each other. Not a word had been uttered, but each felt the other's dread.

The father rose and said with a well-affected yawn, "Guess likely Jim's went deown ter Uncle Will'amses, an' they thought as 't's so stormy he'd bes' not come back. So guess I'll jest go eout ter the shed and git some more peat, fur ter keep the fire."

Thus leaving the mother and wife partially reassured, the old father slipped out and down the track, cut deeply in the sand by the one-horse carts, to "Uncle Will'amses," as fast as the storm would permit. But no Jim had been seen there; and still more anxiously the stout old man fought his way back against winds that seemed strong" enough to blow him like a feather over the cliff's edge, and against the spray which shot up from the beach below, smitten by the sounding surf, clear over the high top of Sankota Head.

Reaching his door during a brief lull in the wind, he heard faintly but distinctly the booming of guns fired by a ship in distress. "It mus' be some vessil on the shoals, an' mos' likely Jim's heard her an' got some o' th' other boys, an' 's went off in 's boat ter help her. Poor soul!" With this comforting reflection the father cheered the watchers inside, who had grown fearfully anxious, as the clock had long ago struck for midnight.

"We mus' build a fire on the Head ter light 'em," said the old man. "There hed oughter be a light'us here, but 's there ain't none, we mus' dew the bes' we kin,"

So saying, he harnessed the horse—almost as old as himself—and with the aid of the two women loaded the sled with dry wood and started with it to the cliff, while the mother and daughter followed behind as best they might, struggling to keep alive without being set on fire by the coals in the iron pot which they carried between them. It was a weary half mile, wind, spray and rain all contending against the feeble folk who had come out to help back to land and home the brave fellows who had gone to succor the distressed. They made all the more sure that this was the case, because Jim's new boat, the pride and joy of his life, was not to be found at the spot where he had only that day drawn, it high above the reach of even such a storm as this, ready for building over it on the morrow its winter house of pine-boughs and turf.

At last a fire was kindled; and leaving the women to watch it, old Stephen took several weary trips back to the cottage after fuel, making serious inroads upon a stock at the best not too large to meet the demands of the coming winter. The flame, fanned by the blast even more than dashed by the spray and rain, sprang upward, casting its ruddy lances of light backward over the sandy downs, destitute even then of tree or shrub to break the force of the gale, and forward over the frothing white tops and deep, black troughs of waves that seemed to the excited eyes of the watching women like so many separate fiends leaping upward and stretching out white hands to clutch helpless victims and hurry them to the hell beneath. And all the while the surf thundered at the foot of the trembling cliff. No form could be discovered through the darkness beyond the near neighborhood of the shore; and but for the flash of the gun, which was seen continually, though its sound was but seldom heard above the surf and the wind, the watchers would have thought there was no ship near.

By and by the rain ceased, but there was no moon, and impenetrable wind-clouds still hid the stars. Out through the blackness of the night the flame-light quivered in long, bright streams over the endless lines of ever-advancing waves, but revealed to the watchers no ship, no boat, no tokens even of wreck, only the ceaseless reaching upward of the beckoning white hands; and the wind bore no sound, save at intervals the dull distant boom of the cannon. But ever the solemn surf thundered on the beach below, and the sand-cliff trembled and crumbled beneath its resounding blows.

The old man, who, with a seaman's owl-like eyesight, kneeled intently gazing out through the darkness in the direction of the flash, suddenly exclaimed, "I don't un'erstan' it! That air ship hadn't oughter be in 'stress off where she is. She ain't on no shoal, nor nothin'. She's jest a-lyin' tew. An' I don't see no signs o' no boats nuther; an's fur's I kin see, them folks is a firin' off that air gun jest fur the musicalness on't. Blast 'em! Come, gals: we mought as well be walkin' along hum as ter stop a-yawpin' here in the wind an' spray, a-burnin' up the winter's kindlin' fur folks 'at's a-foolin' on us. 'Spesh'ly as I think she's a Britisher. Blast her!"

The old Quaker was not accustomed to use strong language of any sort, but evidently the human nature in him was so powerful in this instance that he could not help indulging in the most emphatic admissible invective.

But the mother and wife were not so easily satisfied. In their eyes the strange ship and all on board her were not of as much consequence as the unworthy missing Jim, whose fate they associated with it. Jim's boat, they said, was gone. No one could have taken her but Jim himself. He would never have put out on such a night as this save to go to the help of the distressed ship; and if he was on the water, the light burning on Sankota Head would guide him safely back. So, in the midst of spray and wind, the three kneeled on the cliff and kept the blaze alight till the rising dawn made it useless, when, to the dismay of the watchers, the ship hoisted sail and bore away. She showed no colors, but the old islander, once a whaler, declared that she was a British man-o'-war.

But where was Jim? The unanswering surf still boomed at the foot of the cliff, though the height of the waves was rapidly diminishing, and the water was gradually assuming the peculiarly bland expression that often comes after a storm, reminding one of the cat that has "eaten the canary," but there was no sign of incoming boat or men.

Chilled to the bone with the wind and cold sea-spray of the November night, and to the heart with sorrow and disappointment, the three returned to the lonely house. Running to meet them came Mary Allen, breathlessly crying, "Where's Eben and Jim?"

Poor Sarah could not answer, but the brave old mother, a veteran in sorrows, replied with trembling lips, "We don't know anythin' o' thy brother, Mary; an' Jim hain't b'en hum sence las' night. His boat's gone, an' we thought he might ha' went out to help the ship that was a-firin' all night. But she's sailed off this mornin' all right; an' father, he says she was a Britisher an' undly a-firin' ter fool us folks. So I don't know nothin' about it," uttering the last words in a drearily hopeless tone that gave them exceeding pathos.

For a moment Mary stood in dismay; then she cried wildly, "Oh, they're drowned, they're drowned! Jim come deown ter eour heouse las' night a-sayin' he'd heard the firin' o' a ship in 'stress, an' askin' Eb ter go with him an' help him git his boat eout, an' telled me ter run along deown to Zack Tumnaydoo's An' ax Zack an' Ellery ter go with 'em. An' I did, an' that's the las' anybody's seen o' any one on 'em. Oh dear! oh dear!" And wringing her hands, the sobbing girl ran back as quickly as she had come to impart to her mother and sisters the full extent of her evil tidings.

The cold, sad, desolate weeks and months that now rolled slowly on are to this day remembered on Nantucket as those of the "hard winter." Provisions were scarce, fuel was difficult to obtain, the harbor was frozen over, so that few fish could be taken there, and all communication with "the main" was cut off by British cruisers. In January the cherished old horse was killed because there was no longer hay to feed him, and even oats were "too precious to be fed to dumb beasts." In February the stalwart old Stephen lay grimly down to die, saying pityingly, "It's time, gals: I can't dew ye no more good by stayin'; an' I'm so tired."

The day succeeding the silent funeral, where two women had dropped the few tears that were left them to shed, good old Thomas Macy came and took his daughter and her mother to his own home. And in windy, still frozen March the wail of a tiny baby was heard in the house.

Under all the trouble the two brave women made no moan. Silently clinging together, never losing sight of each other for more than a few moments at a time, they yet said nothing of their greatest grief, that Jim should have disappeared with such unworthy words on his lips and thoughts in his heart, until, a few days after the baby's birth, Sarah said to her mother, "I know he's not dead. If he'd ha' died, he'd ha' come back and told me he was sorry. Fur I dew think he'd be sorry. Don't thee, mother?" And the mother nodded assent and smiled through her tears.

But, in truth, they had a more substantial reason than poor Sarah's wistful fancy for thinking that Jim was living. When the ice broke up, his boat was found in a little cove, where it had floated right-side up, without any serious injury except the carrying away of the sails. Of course this discovery roused new hopes in the homes of the missing men. It did not "stand to reason" that four big strong, temperate young fellows, brought up to the hardy, amphibious island-life, had all fallen overboard, any more than it "stood to sense" that the boat had upset and then righted of itself. Besides, "none of the boy's corpuses had ever floated up." So the Tucketers took courage and felt sure that, whatever had become of the missing men, they were not drowned.

But still the slow months came and went, till the summer and autumn and another winter had passed by; and patient old Rachel Starbuck grew daily a little quieter and a little grayer; and the brave young wife grew a little stronger to bear, but not a whit less loving or prone to suffer, and stately old Thomas Macy grew daily more gentle and pitying in his ways as he looked long at the winsome face of the happy, wee grandchild, that throve and crowed and tried to utter sweet little hesitating words as gayly as if the world had never a sin, a sorrow or a weakness in it.

One day Sarah and her mother had carried the baby down to the small cottage at the back of the cliff, whither they went to attend to some little household matter; for, although they did not mention the subject, even to themselves, they still kept all there in readiness against Jim's coming home. Here, in the soft May sunshine, the red-frocked baby was sitting on the green turf step, playing with some "daffies," first of the season, which Sarah had plucked from the little garden in the rear. The mother and daughter were in the house, when both were alarmed by a scream from the usually merry child. A man had it closely clasped in his arms, kissing it and calling it between half-choked sobs his "own pretty, pretty baby." The man was thin, pock-marked, bald, and clad in a ragged uniform of a British sailor, but to the faithful, longing eyes of mother and wife there was no mistaking their Jim.

It was long ere the story could be told, but at last they learned that on that sad November night Jim and his companions had gone out to the relief of the signaling ship. She was, as old Stephen had conjectured, a British man-o'-war. Being short of hands, and having on board as pilot a renegade native of the island, who knew where a ship could "lay-to" in safety, she had taken advantage of the storm to attract strong men within the range of her guns, then to command them to surrender, and thus to impress them into "His Majesty's service" as "able seamen."

For a long time Jim had managed to keep alive his resentful feelings toward his wife, accusing of being the source of all his misfortunes the poor little woman who was loving and longing so sincerely for him. But when illness came he could hold out no longer. "I made up my mind then," said he, "that if ever I got hum agin, I'd go deown on my knees an' ax pardin' o' my Sairy."

But she had never been angry, and was now only too thankful that Jim and his friends had escaped safely.

"Ah!" said Jim in telling his adventures, "we hed a clus run on 't, Sairy, but thee'd better believe that air British navy's a fust-rate place fur larnin' a feller ter know when he's well off. An' Sairy, when I longed so fur thee an' mother, an' thought o' what a wretch I was to speak so ter the dearest little woman in the world, I c'u'd see that I hadn't knowed when I was well off."

Jim's was not an unselfish kind of repentance, but it was the best it was in his nature to offer, and Sarah had long ago learned that her Jim was not the saint and hero she had once dreamed, but only a weak and common-place man; and she asked for nothing higher from him. To his best she had a right, and with that she was content, smiling on her husband with eyes full of a love as tender and true as when in the old days she had gazed down upon her lover from the cliff-head, while the mother laid her hand softly on his scanty hair, and said solemnly, "May God keep thee thus, my son!" adding, after a moment's pause, "But I wish thy fayther was here to see." And a tender silence for the memory of the rough but kindly-natured old man fell over them all; while the baby, reconciled to the stranger, poked her little fingers in the marks on his face, and cried because she could not get them off.

ETHEL C. GALE.



AT THE OLD PLANTATION.

TWO PAPERS.—II.

The eastern sky is just beginning to assume that strange neutral tint which tells of the approaching dawn when we open the heavy hall door and step out into the crisp, frosty air. No moonlight hunting for me, with the cold, deceitful light making phantom pools of every white sand-patch in the road, and ghostly logs and boulders of every wavering shadow. You are always gathering up your reins for leaps over imaginary fence-panels, which your horse goes through like a nightmare, and always unprepared for the real ones, which he clears when you are least expecting it. If the cry bears down on you, and you rein up for a view, the fox is sure to dodge by invisibly under cover of some dark little bay, and you get home too late for a morning nap and too early for the breakfast, which you have been longing after for the last two hours. Then, too, your horse has lost his night's rest, and will be jaded for two days in consequence. No: the time to throw the dogs off for a fox-hunt is that weird hour which the negroes significantly call "gray-day:" it is the surest time to strike a trail, and by the time Reynard begins to dodge and double there will be plenty of light to ride by and to get a good view. If the fox gets away or the cover is drawn without a find, you are always sure of having your spirits raised by the cheerful sunrise: by the time you get home, tired and spattered, the ladies are down stairs ready to make pretty exclamations over the brush or to chaff you pleasantly for your want of success; and then there is just time to get your hair brushed and your clothes changed before the mingled aromas of fried sausage and old Java put the keen edge on your already whetted appetite.

A ride across country after a rattling pack of English hounds on a thoroughbred hunter with a field of red-coated squires is an experience which few hunters on this side of the water have ever enjoyed, but with the incidents of which every reader of English novels is familiar. The chase of the red fox in Maryland or Virginia has some features in common with the British national sport, but that of the gray fox in the more southern States differs materially from both. The latter animal is smaller and possessed of less speed and endurance than his more northern brother, but he is far more common and quite as cunning. He makes shorter runs, but over very different ground, always keeping in the woods and dodging about like a rabbit, so that a different style of horse and a different method of riding are required for his capture. There is no risk of breaking your neck over a five-barred gate or a stone wall, but you may be hung in a grapevine, or knocked out of the saddle by a low limb, or have your knee scraped against a tree-trunk. It is true you may catch your fox in twenty minutes, and three hours is an extraordinary run, but then you may catch four or five between daylight and ten o'clock of an autumn morning.

The horses stretch their necks toward the stables and whinny as they think of the bundles of untasted fodder: the dogs require no notes of the horn to rouse them, for they know the signs and are already capering about in eager merriment, throwing their heads into the air occasionally to utter a long and musical bay. This wakes up the curs about the negro-yard, and their barking stirs up the geese, the combined chorus rousing all the cocks in the various poultry-houses, so that we ride off amid a hub-bub of howling, cackling, neighing and crowing which would awaken the Seven Sleepers. We are first at the meet, and the old woods ring with the mellow, winding notes of our horns—no twanging brass reeds in the mouth-pieces, but honest cow-horn bugles, which none but a true hunter can blow. The hounds grow wild at the cheering sound, and howl through every note of the canine gamut; the echoes catch the strain and fling it from brake to bay; the dying cadence strengthens into an answering blast, and the party is soon increased to half a dozen bold riders and twenty eager dogs. Venus, the beautiful "flag-star of heaven," is just toning her brilliancy into harmony with the pale light which creeps slowly up from the eastern horizon, and some wakeful crow in the pine-thicket gives an answering caw to the goblin laugh of the barred owl in the cypress, as we leap our horses into a field of sedge and cheer on the dogs to their work. For half an hour we ride in silence save the words of encouragement to the hounds, which are snuffing about unsuccessfully and whipping the hoar-frost with their tails from the dry yellow stems of the grass. Now and then some eager young dog opens on the trail of a rabbit which has started from its form, but the crack of a whip restrains him, and the other hounds pay no attention to him. Suddenly a sharp, quick yelp comes from the farthest corner of the field, and the older dogs stop instantly and raise their heads to listen. Hark to old Blucher! There he is again, and the whole pack give tongue and dash off to the call which never deceives them. We catch a glimpse of the old fellow's white throat as he trots about in a zigzag course, poking his tan muzzle into every clump of tall grass and giving tongue occasionally as he sniffs the cold trail. Presently a long, quavering cry comes from old Firefly; again and again Blucher opens more and more eagerly; another and another dog takes it up, and the trot quickens into a lope. The trail grows warmer as they follow the line of fence, and just as we settle ourselves in the saddle for a run it all stops and the dogs are at fault. But Blucher is hard to puzzle and knows every trick of his cunning game. Running a few panels down the fence, he rears up on it and snuffs the top rail, and then, with a yell of triumph, dashes over it into the woods, with the whole pack in full cry at his heels. A ringing cheer announces that the fox has "jumped," and the field scatters in pursuit. Two only, the subscriber being one, follow the dogs with a flying leap. Some dash off in search of a low panel, others to head off the cry through the distant gate, while others stop to pull the rails and make a gap. For ten minutes we keep well behind the hounds, with a tight rein and heads bent to avoid the hanging oak limbs. But the fox has turned and plunged into a brake which no horse can go through, and we draw up and listen to decide where we can head him off with the greatest certainty; then turn in different directions and spur through the young black-jacks. Ah! there he goes, with dragging brush and open mouth, and the pack, running close enough together to be covered by a table-cloth, not sixty yards behind him. I am in at the death this time, for he cannot run a hundred yards farther, and the brush is mine, for there's no one else in sight. With a savage burst the dogs dash after him into the thicket and then—dead silence, not a yelp, as they scatter and run backward and forward, nosing under every dead leaf and up the trunk of every tree. The fault is complete, and the young dogs give it up and lie down panting, while the older hounds try every expedient to puzzle out the trail and take up the scent again. He certainly has not treed, there is neither earth nor hollow to hide him, and yet the scent has gone! And it never came back. If any reader can tell what became of that fox, he is a wiser man than I. Certain it is that we never heard of him again; and for aught I know to the contrary, he may have been that identical Japanese animal which turns into tea-kettles and vanishes in puffs of smoke. It does not take long, however, to make another find, and we go home after a three hours' chase with two fine brushes and appetites which would ruin any hotel-keeper in a week.

After breakfast a walk to the cotton-houses would be in order, for the successful planter is he who trusts nothing to the overseer which can have his personal supervision, and he must excuse himself to such of his guests as prefer a cigar by the library fire to an hour spent in observing the details of plantation work. In the days of which I write horse-power was preferred to steam, and negro-power to both; and few planters of the fine black-seed cotton could be convinced that any "power-gin" could be invented which would not injure the long, silky "staple" or fibre of the lint. The old-time "foot-gins" were used exclusively, and the gin-house was a place of curious interest to all visitors. In one end of the long room was the huge pile of seed-cotton which was to pass through the rollers as the first step toward its preparation for the market. How simply does a sudden stroke of inventive genius solve a problem which wise men have regarded as insoluble! Not much more than a century ago a commission of practical English savans discouraged the cultivation of a textile fabric which "might be useful but for the impossibility of clearing it of the seeds!" But the foot-gin appeared on the scene, and indigo went down before cotton. Ranged along the walls of the room are some twenty rough wooden frames, looking like a compromise between a straw-cutter and a sewing-machine, each furnished with two strong rollers operated by a treadle and acting precisely like those of a clothes-wringer. Behind each of these machines stands a man or woman with one ever-moving foot upon the treadle-board, feeding the seed-cotton from a large bag to the greedy rollers, which seize it and pass the lint in fleecy rolls into another bag prepared for it, while the seed, like shirt-buttons touched by the afore-mentioned wringer, rolls off from the hither side to form a pile upon the floor. Thence it will be carted to the seed-house to be rotted into manure for the next crop, there being no better fertilizer for cotton than a compost of which it forms the base. A portion of it, however, will be reserved to be boiled with cow-peas and fed to the milch-cattle, no food being superior to its rich, oily kernel in milk-producing qualities. The negro mothers use it largely in decoction as a substitute for cocoa, and the white mothers under similar circumstances having it parched and ground like coffee, when it makes an exceedingly palatable and nutritious beverage. The "green-seed" or short-staple variety is far inferior to the black for this purpose, and produces white, sticky, cottony-looking butter; indeed, most dairywomen insist that "you can pick the lint out of it." The ginned cotton is carried to the platforms, where it is "specked" by the women—leaves, dirt and other impurities being picked out by hand—and spread out to dry and bleach in the sun; thence we follow it to the "moting-room," where it is thoroughly and finally overhauled, every minute particle of dirt or other foreign matter and every flock of stained and discolored cotton being picked out. This room is always in the second story, and at one end of it a circular hole is cut in the floor; through this hole hangs the bag of strong, close gunny-cloth, very different from the coarse covering which suffices for the lower grades of "short-staple," supported by a stout iron hoop larger by some inches than the hole in the floor, and to which the end of the bag is securely sewed. The cotton is thrown into this bag and packed with an iron rammer by a man who stands in it, his weight assisting in the packing, each bag being made to contain upward of four hundred pounds.