'It drew me to them, almost irresistibly,' said the Earl. 'But she is a better looking little fairy than you, Ada, much; so do not you grow conceited. Of course you please me, darling, and your mother also.'

'Of course I do, Papa-much more, really, than any picture; and I do not care about the good looks; the pictures may keep them all. She is a dear little girl, only she makes me cry when she looks so very sad, all by herself.'

'She has lost herself in the wood, poor little girl, and it may be getting dark. How would you like to be there all night quite alone?'

She

'Not at all, Papa; but why does she like it in the other picture? has put on quite a different face, and yet it is the same dear little girl. Perhaps that is before she gets tired of the flowers.'

'She is listening to the birds, perhaps,' suggested the Countess.

'She is listening, but not to the birds; and it is the second picture, after she has been looking so unhappy.'

'What say you, Dr. Longford, to the story of the pictures?'

'Nothing, Lady Pendyne, because I know it. The few words in the catalogue only are needed in explanation.'

'And here they are for you, love-only you should have been clever, and have made out the case for yourself. They were called, in the prevailing talk about them at the first opening, 'Lost and Found,' or 'Lost and Saved.' They are thus described in the catalogue: 'LostAll silent;' and the second,'Saved-Voices.' Look first at this hopeless attitude, and could anyone but Easdale give that fullness of expression? Oh, if I were but a painter, that I might describe that which, though not a painter, I can feel. To my mind, that picture is perfect.'

'So is the other,' observed the Countess. 'They are both entirely charming. I am so very greatly pleased to have them, Clement. Thank you again and again.'

'Ah! but I need no thanks, love; you must not say it. But they tell their story, do they not? Does not that sweet smile explain to you that the "voices" are the voices of those she loves?'

'Perfectly. They are both poems and pictures. The wood scenes, too, are matchless. I wish we could have Easdale to take some of our views here.'

'My love! Our taste will be more dangerous than if it were for jewels.'

'Papa, I wish you would find the little girl for me,' said Adela. 'I must run away from you again, then, at once.'

'Oh, not now-never, if it is to take you away.'

'Very well, pet, then we must content ourselves without her for the present. But I should like to see the child, I own,' continued Lord Pendyne, turning towards his guest. Such resemblances are to be seen running through a family often, but are rarely otherwise to be found. You may observe them here,' added the Earl, pointing towards the family portraits, but more amongst the elders than the young of our ancestry.

Would you like to look round?' seeing that Dr. Longford's gaze was now wandering amongst the family pictures.

'Not to detain you here longer now,' replied Dr. Longford. 'But I should delight in a future study of these fine old portraits, if time will allow. I see the look you mention. That is a curious dissatisfied face in the dark corner.'

'That one! Cromwell's man! Do not speak of him. We hide him as well as we can. Though probably he saved the Castle for us. The "illwind" of his existence may have brought to his descendants that "good.” 'A very real good in the estimation of some.'

"Of a good many.

But he does look dissatisfied, as if with his more respectable neighbours, or more properly with himself."

'I observe that your little daughter's eyes are blue, varying from the usual type here, marble complexions and dark eyes, until the former has been bronzed by travel, or exposure possibly in fighting times.'

'My wife's eyes are blue. Here is another fair lady of the same typetwo hundred years ago, nearly-one of Sir Peter's; and her son, you may perceive, has blue, very blue eyes likewise; but they seem as if they could not be persuaded to remain in this Celtic family.'

They turned from the pictures at last. This is our summer diningroom,' remarked the Earl, 'when the Castle is full.'

'Charming,' returned Dr. Longford in reply.

And the party then quitted the hall. Lady Pendyne gave a fond lingering look towards the new pictures. The Earl did not know it, but there had been a few silent tears while the two gentlemen were discoursing together.

(To be continued.)

BERANGER'S CRADLE SONG.

SEE, friends, this little fragile boat,
Just launched upon life's breaking sea;

Its pretty passenger to float,

Take up the oars with me!
The waters lift it more and more,
It slips quite softly from the shore;

Let us, who see the anchor weigh,
Amid the ripples sing and pray.

The sails are swelling to the breeze;
While Hope among the tackling kneels,

And promises calm starlight seas,

As the soft wind she feels.

Fly, fly, ye birds of omen dark,
To Love belongs this tiny bark;

Let us, who see the anchor weigh,
Amid the ripples sing and pray.

Sweet garlands, twined of fairest wreaths,
Are trailing up the slender mast;
While Innocence pure incense breathes,
Love at the helm sits fast;

Joy carols yonder on the strand,
His sister, Pleasure, holds his hand.
Let us, who see the anchor weigh,
Amid the ripples sing and pray.

A stranger lingers on the beach,
'Tis Sorrow with her face divine;
Her silent benison may reach

Further than yours or mine.

But all these hopes, and all these fears,
Are heard, no doubt, by wiser ears;
Let us, who see the anchor weigh,
Amid the ripples sing and pray.

THE CAGED LION.

CHAPTER XIII.

THE RING AND THE EMPTY THRONE.

No one knows how great a tree has been till it has fallen; nor how large a space a mighty man has occupied till he is removed.

King Henry V. left his friends and foes alike almost dizzy, as in place of his great figure they found a blank; instead of the hand, whose force they had constantly felt, mere emptiness!

Malcolm of Glenuskie, who had been asserting constantly that King Henry was no master of his, and had no rights over him, had nevertheless, for the last year or more, been among those to whom the King's will was the moving spring, fixing the disposal of almost every hour, and making everything dependent thereon.

When the death-hush was broken by the 'Depart, O Christian soul,' and Bedford, with a face white and set like a statue, stood up from his knees, and crossed and kissed the still white brow, it was to Malcolm as if the whole universe had become as nothing. To him there remained only the great God, the heavenly Jerusalem into which the King had

entered, and himself far off the straight way, wandering from his promise and his purpose into what seemed to him a mere hollow painted scene, such as came and went in the midst of a banquet. Or, again, it was the grisly Dance of Death was the only reality; Death had clutched the mightiest in the ring. Whom would he clutch next?

He stood motionless, as one in a dream, or rather as if not knowing which was reality, and which phantom; gazing, gazing on at the bed where the King lay, round which the ecclesiastics were busying themselves, unperceiving that James, Bedford, and the other nobles, had quitted the apartment, till Percy first spoke to him in a whisper, then almost shook him, and led him out of the room. 'I am sent for you,' he said, in a much shaken voice; 'your king says you can be of use.' Then tightening his grasp with the force of intense grief, ‘Oh, what a day! what a day! My father! my father! I never knew mine own father! But he has been all to Harry and to me! Oh, woe worth the day!' And dropping into a window-seat, he covered his face with his hands, and gave way to his grief; pointing, however, to the council-room, where Malcolm found Bedford writing at the table, King James, and a few others, engaged in the same manner.

A few words from James informed him (or would have done so if he could have understood) that the Duke of Bedford, on whom at that terrible moment the weight of two kingdoms and of the war had descended, could not pause to rest, or to grieve, till letters and orders had been sent to the council in England, and to every garrison, every ally in France, to guard against any sudden panic, or faltering in friendship to England and her infant heir. Warwick and Salisbury were already riding post haste to take charge of the army; Robsart was gone to the Queen, Exeter to the Duke of Burgundy; and as the clergy were all engaged with the tendence of the royal corpse, there was scarcely anyone to lessen the Duke's toil. James, knowing Malcolm's pen to be ready, had sent for him to assist him in copying the brief scrolls, addressed to each captain of a fortress or town, announcing the father's death, and commanding him to do his duty to the son-King Harry VI. Each was then to be signed by the Duke, and despatched by men-at-arms, who waited for the purpose.

Like men stunned, the half dozen who sat at the council-table worked on, never daring to glance at the empty chair at the upper end. The only words that passed, were occasional inquiries of, and orders from, Bedford; and these he spoke with a strange alertness and metallic ring in his voice, as though the words were uttered by mechanism; yet in themselves they were as clear and judicious as possible, as if coming from a mind wound up exclusively to the one necessary object; and the facethough flushed at first, and gradually growing paler, with knitted brows and compressed lips-betrayed no sign of emotion.

Hours passed: he wrote, he ordered, he signed, he sealed; he mentioned name after name, of place and officer, never moving or

looking up. And James, who knew from Salisbury that he had neither slept nor eaten since sixty miles off he had met a worse report of his brother, watched him anxiously till, when evening began to fall, he murmured, 'There is the captain of-of-at-but- the pen slipped from his fingers, and he said, 'I can no more!'

The overtaxed powers, strained so long-mind, memory, and all—were giving way under the mere force of excessive fatigue. He rose from his seat, but stumbled, like one blind, as James upheld him, and led him away to the nearest bed-chamber, where, almost while the attendants divested him of the heavy boots and cuirass he had never paused all these hours to remove, he dropped into a sleep of sheer exhaustion.

James, who was likewise wearied out with watching, turned towards his own quarters; but, in so doing, he could not but turn aside to the chapel, where before the altar had been laid all that was left of King Henry. There he lay, his hands clasped over a crucifix, clad in the same rich green and crimson robes in which he had ridden to meet his queen at Vincennes but three short months before; the golden circlet from his helmet was on his head, but it could not give additional majesty to the still and severe sweetness of his grand and pure countenance, so youthful in the lofty power that high aspirations had imprinted on it, yet so intensely calm in its marble rest, more than ever with the look of the avenging unpitying angel. To James, it was chiefly the face of the man whom he had best loved and admired, in spite of their strange connection; but to Malcolm, who had as usual followed him closely, it was verily a look from the invisible world—a look of awful warning and reproof, almost as if the pale set lips were unclosing to demand of him where he was in the valley of shadows, through which the way lay to Jerusalem. If Henry had turned back, and warned him at the gate of the heavenly Sion, surely such would have been his countenance; and Malcolm-when, like James, he had sprinkled the holy-water on the white brow, and crossed himself while the low chant of Psalms from kneeling priests went up around him-clasped his two hands close together, and breathed forth the words, 'Oh, I have wandered far! O great King, I will never leave the straight way again! I will cast aside all worldly aims! O God, and the Saints, help me not to lose my way again!'

He would have tarried on still, in the fascination of that wonderful unearthly countenance, and in the inertness of faculties stunned by fatigue and excitement, but James summoned him by a touch, and he again followed him.

'O Sir!' he began, when they had turned away, 'I repent me of my falling away to the world! I give all up. Let me back to my vows of old.'

'We will talk of that another time,' said James gravely. Neither you nor I, Malcolm, can think reasonably under such a blow as this; and I forbid you rashly to bind yourself.'