always looking out there,' and he pointed to the opposite recess. She looked, but saw nothing. 'Don't you know?' he said.

'Edmund?' she asked.

He grasped her hands in both his own. Aye! Ned used to sleep there. I always look for him there.'

'Do you mean that you would rather have another room? I would manage it directly.'

'O no, thank you, I like it for some things. Take the candle-look by the shutter-cut out in the wood.'

The boys' scoring of 'E. M. & G. K. 1846,' was visible there.

·

'Papa has taken all he could of Edmund's,' said Gilbert, but he could not take that! No, I would not have any other room if you were to give me the best in the house. 'I am sure not! But, my dear, considering what Edmund was, surely they should be gentle, happy thoughts that the room should give you.'

He shuddered, and presently said, 'Do you know what? and paused; then said, with an effort, getting tight hold of her hand, 'Just before Edmund died—he lay out there-I lay here he sat up all white in bed, and he called out, quite screaming, "Mamma, Gibbie "-I saw him-and thenhe was dead! And you know Mamma did die-and I'm sure I shall!' He had worked himself into a trembling fit, hid his face and sobbed.

But you

have not died of the fever.'

'Yes-but I know it means that I shall die young! I am sure it does! It was a call! I heard Nurse say it was a call!'

What was to be done with such a superstition? Albinia did not think it would be right to argue it away. It might be in very truth a warning to him to guard his ways-a voice from the twin-brother, to be with him through life. She knelt down by him, and kissed his

forehead.

'Dear Gilbert,' she said, 'we all shall die.'
'Yes, but I shall die young.'

And if you should. Those are happy who die young. How much pain your baby-brother and sisters have missed! How happy Edmund is now !'

'Then you really think it meant that I shall!' he cried, tremblingly. O don't! I can't die !'

'Your brother called on what he loved best,' said Albinia. It may mean nothing. Or rather, it may mean that your dear twin-brother is watching for you, I am sure he is, to have you with him, for what makes your mortal life, however long, seem as nothing. It was a call to you to be as pure on earth as he is in heaven. O Gilbert, how good you should be!'

Gilbert did not know whether it frightened him or soothed him to see his superstition treated with respectneither denied, nor reasoned away. But the ghastliness was not in the mere fear that death might not be far off.

The pillow had turned a little on one side-Albinia tried to smoothe it-the corner of a book peeped out. It was a translation of The Three Musqueteers,' one of the worst and most fascinating of Dumas' romances.

'O Gilbert! Gilbert!' she cried mournfully, 'this is not the way to treat your brother's call. No wonder it preys on you, if this be your means of driving it off.'

'You won't tell papa!' cried Gilbert, raising himself, in far more real and present terror than that which he had previously shown.

How did you get it? Whose is it ?'

'It is my own. I bought it at Elkin's. It is very funny. But you won't tell papa? I never was told not; indeed I was not.'

'Then why are you afraid that papa should know it?' 'Aunt Maria. would make a fuss, but she would not tell papa. I know you are more good-natured. You'll promise?

VOL. 13.

3

PART 73.

'Now, Gilbert dear, will you tell me a few things?

I

do only wish what is good for you. Why don't you wish that papa should hear of this book?'

Gilbert writhed himself.

'You know he would not like it? Then why did you take to reading it?'

'Oh!' cried the boy, 'if you only did know how stupid and how miserable it has been! Dear old Ned gone, and Sophy always glum, and Lucy always plaguing, and Aunt Maria always being a torment, you would not wonder at one's doing anything to forget it!'

'Yes, but why what you knew to be wrong?"

'Nobody told me not."

It

'Disobedience to the spirit, then, if not to the letter. was not the way to be happier, my poor boy, nor nearer your brother and mother.'

Things didn't use to be stupid when Ned was there? sobbed Gilbert, bursting into a fresh flood of tears.

'Ah! Gilbert, I grieved most of all for you when first I heard your story, before I thought I should ever have anything to do with you,' said Albinia, hanging over him fondly, while her tears dropped. 'I always thought it must be so forlorn to be a twin left solitary. But it is sadder still than I knew, if grief has made you put yourself farther from him instead of nearer.'

'I shall be good again now that I have you,' said Gilbert, as he looked up into that sweetest of faces.

'Oh! Gilbert, what happiness to hear you say so ! And you will begin by making a free confession to your father, and giving up the book.'

I don't see what I have to confess. He would be so angry, and he never told me not. Oh! I cannot tell him.'

She felt that this was not the right way to begin a reformation, and yet she feared to press the point, knowing that the one was thought severe, the other timid.

'At least you will give up the book,' she said.

O dear! if you would let me see whether d'Artagnan got to England. I must know that! I'm sure there can't be any harm in that. Do you know what it is about?

'Yes, I do. My brother got it by some mistake among some French books. He read some of the droll unobjectionable parts to my sister and me, but the rest was so bad, that he threw it into the fire.'

'Then you think it funny?'

'To be sure I do.'

'Do you remember the three duels all at once, and the three valets? Oh! what fun it is. But do let me see if d'Artagean got the diamonds.'

'Yes, he did. But will this satisfy you, Gilbert? You know there are some exciting pleasures that we must turn our backs on resolutely. I think this book is one of them. Now you will let me take it? I will tell your father about it in private, and he cannot blame you. Then, if he will give his consent, whenever you can come home as early as you did to-day, come to my dressing-room, out of your sisters' way, and I will read to you the innocent part, so as to get the story out of your brain.'

'Very well,' said Gilbert, slowly. Yes, if you will not let papa be angry with me. And, oh dear! must you go?

'I think you had better dress yourself and come down to tea. There is nothing the matter with you now, is there?

He was delighted with the suggestion, and promised to eone directly; and Albinia carried off her prize, exceedingly hopeful and puzzled, and wondering whether her compromise had been a right one, or a mere tampering. with temptation-delighted with the confidence and affection bestowed on her so freely, but awe-struck by the impression which the boy had avowed, and marvelling

how it should be treated, so as to render it a blessed and salutary restraint, rather than the dim superstitious terror that it was at present. At least, there was hope of influencing him; his heart was affectionate, his will on the side of right, and in consideration of feeble health, and timid character, she would overlook the fact that he had not made one voluntary open confession, and the partial renunciation had been wrung from him as a choice of evils. She could only feel how much he was to be pitied, and how he responded to her affection. She loved him with all her heart, and lay awake to consider for him and to pray for him, realizing this first taste of a mother's hopes and cares.

(To be continued.)

MY THREE AUNTS; OR, LOWMINSTER.
CHAPTER I.

As my story is to be but a short one, I will not trouble myself or the reader with any preface, but simply state that my name was Harriet Harlow, and that my father was the poor vicar of a large poor parish. He and ny mother had married 'for love,' as people say, which means without any regard to prudence, She had nothing of her own, and he had nothing but the vicarage of Lowminster, and I am afraid that they did not sufficiently weigh, before they united their two cyphers, that sapient remark of King Lear's to his daughter Cordelia,

'That nothing can come of nothing.'

In vain Aunt Dorothea urged upon them the miseries of poverty, affection shut out every other consideration, and made them blind to what they hoped might prove delusive evils. Lowminster was a large, straggling old place, once perhaps a town of some consideration, but from which the trade had departed, and left nothing behind it but a wide grass-grown street, every house of which was marked more or less with decay, and showed signs of having known