be nearly dry by this time. If they haven't let the fire out, the blockheads."

"Is this the house with the poplars," asked Philip.

"Yes, and a precious good job for you Mr. Aldair is not at home to-night. A pretty piece of work; we should have had him swearing, Miss Emily fainting, and you dripping all over the house."

"Is she better-the young lady?"

"Never you mind the young lady.'

Philip thought it best to be silent, and the fat man took the opportunity to pour more wine down his throat, and helped himself to a quantity, in a water glass.

"At least I may ask to whom I owe my life?"

"Hally,' the miller's dog, dragged you out; he's always dragging somebody or other out. It's my belief a man couldn't drown himself within a mile of the mill for that dog. There's always boys tumbling in, just for aggravation and to get off going to school, and that dog is sure to drag them out on our side, just to give me the bother of rubbing them down. It's just my luck. I'll shoot that dog some of these days. Feel better? Have a glass of wine?"

Philip was protesting that he had had too much already, when there came a violent ring at the bell.

"There! there! that's master's bell. He'll go mad if I am not at his elbow. The servant will bring you your clothes; dress and slip out quietly, and take care not to play us this trick again, or, by Heaven, I'll pitch you in again, and that horrid dog along with you, with a grindstone round his neck. Help yourself to wine."

In half-an-hour a servant was conducting Philip on tiptoe out of the house by a side door.

Turn to the right when you get to the front of the house and take the path through the shrubbery-that will take you to the road."

Philip thanked him, and crept away.

CHAPTER XXXI.

WHAT THE MOON SAW.

WHEN Philip was groping his way through the shrubbery a dark figure glided out of the deep shadows to his side. It was very dark, but Philip recognized her immediately-so keen are lovers eyes.

She did not speak, but laid her soft warm hand on his, and sobbed.

Emily-Miss Aldair!" he exclaimed.

"Yes, yes, don't speak loud. I came to thank you forfor trying to save my hat. Oh! I am so glad!"

"Not so glad as I am to

hear you say so-to stand again a moment by your side and hear your voice."

Emily did not answer and Philip continued

"Miss Aldair, I hope you will acquit me of all dishonourable intentions in this intrusion. I assure you I had no hope of ever seeing you again. Yet, since we have met, permit me to tell you something that I most earnestly wished you to know. I am no longer the penniless lad you knew me. I shall soon be what you English call worth many thousands of pounds. I know that you will think neither better nor worse of me for that, only my love can no longer be a disgrace to you."

"Oh! Philip, you know I never cared for your poverty," cried Emily reproachfully.

"I do know it."

After a long silence, so silent that he thought he could hear the beating of the fluttering heart, as she clung to his arm, he said, earnestly.

"Emily, we shall never be happy till you break through this silly conventionality you call duty. True duty may consist in that of sacrificing your own pleasures and desires, your very God-given instincts, for the gratification of others; but remember you owe no more to them than you do to me. A child should owe nothing to its parents but the love they have shown it. What love has your father ever given to you? If he loved you, he would seek your happiness, and he only seeks

his own. Your Bible and mine, though I interpret some of its sacred teachings differently, the Bible teaches us to love others as we love ourselves. Weigh your own happiness. against your father's, and if you have any doubt throw mine into the scale. Are not our two young lives, with all their years, to be made a curse or a blessing by your present irrevocable decision, more to be considered than the remnants of a sordid life, that has been spent in the gratification of his own. desires at the expense of those who should have had its care and love?"

66

"Oh, what would you have me do?

"Be a woman, fly with me!" said Philip earnestly. Emily hastily drew her hand away.

66

"As you love me, Philip, do not tempt me to that," she cried, with a sudden terror. I cannot reason, I can only act as I have been taught. My dearest mother gave her life up to the wishes of a parent whom God's word taught her to obey. She believed it her duty and I think it mine. Forgive me, Philip, the wrong I have done you. The pleasure of your companionship was so great that I did not know it was wrong then. But now I have had time to think and pray. Oh! it cannot be that our Father in Heaven has let me come to a wrong decision. I left it in His hands. Surely He hears us when we pray?"

"And you think it is His will that you should marry this Mr. Moss, Emily?"

“Yes, yes. I did not think so once, but I think so now. Do not ask me why. There are things I cannot, I cannot-I dare not speak of. Oh, Philip, if you only knew!"

Philip had read enough to know that it was vain to reason with such impressions as these. When a pure-hearted weak woman puts her trust in God, and believes her thoughts. to be His voice, her weakness becomes her strength, and, right or wrong, she walks her unswerving course-then most unswerving when it leads through the martyr's fire. It was hopeless, yet he pleaded still, as a hero fights in scorn. of fate when he knows that life and victory are lost. He took her hands in his, and spoke with all the passion and earnestness of his heart.

"Emily, this is the last opportunity you will have. In a few

days you will be pledged to a life of sorrow and regret. While there is yet time prevent it, fly with me to Italy where I have kind friends who will welcome you, and we shall be happy as Petrarch and Laura, or Dante and Beatrice might have been. Remain here, and we shall be miserable as they were."

He felt the hot tears falling on his hands. She was trembling, too, as, he raised her drooping head. He bent over her and kissed her forehead. She was sobbing too much to speak; he drew her arm within his own and slowly led her back to the house. When the confines of the shrubbery were reached he halted.

"You have not given me an answer, Emily. Shall we be happy?"

"No, Philip, never-never."

"Good bye, dear. Yet-may I-once, and once only?" There was one long maddening kiss, one last long passionate embrace, then Emily tore herself from his arms, and blinded and reeling ran towards the house.

Philip listened to her hurrying footsteps till the door opened and closed in the darkness, then he hurried away.

Soon he reached a bend in the road where the river lay black and calm at his side. It was dark now, for clouds had partly overspread the moon and were threatening a storm. There was only sufficient light to show the outline of the great desolate ridge rising, steeply from the water's edge, and the white wilderness of gravestones surrounding the almost invisible church on the hill slope. Away, up the river, the only light in all the landscape shone in the bay-window of the Greyhound.

It was near midnight when he passed the churchyard gate, and picked his way through the graves to the old church porch. He sat down and listened to the dull, hollow sound that the wind made in the aisles and arches of the ruinous old building.

"Strange," he thought, "I should be horrified to sit alone in a churchyard at midnight at any other time, in any other place, but here, and now, I do not mind it. Perhaps because my mother's grave is near, and her spirit takes all terror from the place. Oh! mother, mother! would I, too, were dead!" In the excitement of his conflicting emotions he un

consciously uttered the cry aloud, and the tones of his own voice came wailing back in ghostly mimicry, dead! dead! dead!

The lonely echoes frightened him from the place. He hesitated, turned and grouped his way among the graves, deciphering as best he could by the moonlight the names written on the tombstones, and the texts of scripture and verses below.

At length he came to a lonely corner of the graveyard, where the grass grew long and dank over the unbroken sward. There, just inside the confines of the sacred ground, nearly hidden by the grass and weeds, lay a grey granite slab. So obscured was it that Philip stumbled on it in the darkness. He knelt trembling over it, and, reading the name it commemorated, he kissed the cold marble with his feverish lips, while the unrestrained tears came thick and fast, blinding him to all but love and sorrow.

Ah! if she who owned the poor clay that slept in that lonely grave, beneath the weeds, as if forgotten of the living and the dead, could only speak to him now, and tell her own story of kindred sorrow and love, so that she should not seem so alone in death, he so alone in life.

Yet had not the living utterly forgotten her, for the faded relics of a wreath of flowers were lying at the head of the stone. The blossoms were withered, but their fragrance was yet fresh. It reached the young pilgrim through the darkness. He groped for it, grasped it, and kissed it. Then, sweeping up the fallen petals from the stone he wrapped them carefully in a letter, and placed it reverently near his heart. An hour he lingered, and when he resumed his walk his footsteps were heavy, and his head was bowed; yet his spirit was lightened of a heavy load.

CHAPTER XXXII.

PEARL SAYS FAREwell.

TIRED by travel, and still more by the incessant attention of Mrs. Dunder, Pearl at last consented to go to bed. She knew Philip's wayward nature, and endeavoured to persuade

VOL XXXVI.

X