as Rachel was, her life already had its duties. She had but lately lost her father, and she counted herself happy in being able to aid her mother by daily teaching in a family who lived across the river. Mrs. Day might sigh, and suggest that crossing the ferry would be cold in winter time; but Rachel said what a pleasant trip it was through the summer! And to the young, winter is but a very short season. With them, it is late autumn until it is early spring.

"I have been reading a delightful story lately," said Cecily. She always told Rachel about the new books she read, for Rachel had to be content with old ones. "It is about a beautiful young girl living in a quiet farm-house. She is more refined than any of the people about her, and so her life is rather dull and lonely. A stranger hires himself as her father's ploughman. He does all the work about the farm, but she can see that he is very different from a common labourer. In fact, it is because he had fallen in love with her, that he had hired himself as her father's man. He is really the son of the absentee squire, only he feared that if he declared himself in his own character, the maiden might accept him for his rank and wealth, without truly loving him."

Rachel Day often found Cecily's spun-out stories neatly packed up in some old song or proverb!

"But she falls in love with him," pursued Cecily, "and when her parents are angry with her, and send him away, she will marry no one else; and so at last, he is satisfied of her true love, and returns and marries her. It is a pretty idea, isn't it?"

"Yes," assented Rachel, musing. "And it is odd how in all literature of every age and country, there is this story of the prince in disguise, and of those who saw what he really was, and those who only saw what he seemed. I'm always afraid I should have been among those who did not know him!"

"Oh! I don't fear that," said bright Cecily.

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"I'm afraid of making the same mistake as other people," admitted Rachel. "You know in these stories there are many who are wrong for one who is right.” Cecily laughed gaily. "Oh, one could not be wrong!" she said. 'Now, for instance, one would always know that Arthur Foljambe is a gentleman, let him go where he may and do what he will." Her fair face flushed as she made the assertion. Arthur Foljambe was the only son of the family where Rachel Day taught the little girls. He had a well-cut face, and a winning manner, and the finest tenor voice in the district. He was an universal favourite-s e-so popular, that it was hard to say where his own favour fell. Some people thought it was towards Cecily. Cecily thought so herself.

Rachel Day said nothing. Perhaps, as his little sister's teacher, she saw a less fascinating side of Arthur's character. Perhaps Fate had decided that Rachel should have full opportunity of seeing people "the other way about," as it had been her childish delight to turn her toys. At this very moment, she was carrying out her whim with the idea before her, and wondering whether anybody had ever written a story about a beggar who got into a prince's place, and was generally mistaken for one, and of what befel those who saw through that disguise? While she was reflecting over this, the path broadened, and they stepped out of the wood, upon the road, with the river at their feet.

Cecily Conroy now gave a low exclamation of annoyance. Somebody else was waiting for the ferry. A young man sat on the seat placed for intending passengers. When he saw the girls, he rose and walked to the landing-place and leaned over the railing. They both knew him. This was plain John White-son of a worthy man who had long been the Deering carpenter. After his death his wife kept a little shop, and even went out "nursing" and "cleaning up," till she too died, when her boy was about fourteen. John's industry at school, and his duti fulness to his mother, had commended him to the notice of a neighbour, who had a chemist's shop in the town of Deerham, into which he took the lad and made him useful according to his capacities, so that from sweeping out the shop and dining with the maidservant, he had come to sit with the apprentices, and to serve behind the counter. But though the week days of his life were thus spent in Deerham, its Sundays and holidays had always been passed in Deering village. Not that he had many friends there; but he liked to go to the familiar church, and sit where he had sat beside his dear mother, and he liked to visit her truest friend, a poor bedridden old body, the only person in the world with whom he could talk about her and the hard happy days that were no more. Everybody said that John White was a most deserving lad. Everybody sent commissions into Deerham by him, knowing his memory and care would never fail. The matrons and the elderly men gave him a nod of careless patronage. And nobody gave a thought to what might be passing in the heart, or amissing from the life of plain John White. Who can be interested in a village shop-keeper's dutiful son, who is now putting money in the Post-office Savings Bank, who goes to tea with an old almswoman, and carries about with him a faint smell of the drugs he deals in? These are such quaint aspects of filial devotion, of self-restraint, of faithful loyalty to friendship and to duty, that few men can recognise them. That is left to God and His angels.

"That's the worst of this ferry," quoth Cecily Conroy. "One never knows with whom one may have to travel. It can be so unpleasant!"

"Everybody I have ever crossed with has been clean and civil," said Rachel Day.

"Of

"Oh, I don't mean that," answered Cecily. course, one does not mind the poor folk. I'm not afraid of Irish reapers, or London hopping people. But it's these people who are neither one thing nor the other, whose names and histories one knows, and to whom one has always had to speak without any ceremony of introduction. Now here is this John White, for example! It is so awkward."

"Well, John White will not trouble you again," said Rachel, quietly, "for he is going away."

"Going away from his situation!" echoed Cecily, carelessly. Has he not been giving satisfaction?

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"O yes," replied Rachel. "His master is very sorry to part from him; they are the best of friends." "Where is he going?" asked Cecily, indifferently. "I don't know," said Rachel; "he and his master came up to Dr. Foljambe's, and had a long talk with him the other day."

"I suppose, then, he has been saying 'good-bye' at the almshouse," was Cecily's comment.

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"Doubtless," answered Rachel, thinking of the long tramp from Deerham which he must have already taken that morning; and having a womanly feeling that there might at times be something cruel in the custom which dictated that he must vacate the seat for them, just fresh from the breakfast-tables of their pleasant homes. The seat was made to hold three, but Cecily sat down at her ease; and though Rachel sat up closely to her, there was not room left for another; and she felt sure that John White would not have come back to it if there had been.

"What shall we do, Rachel ?" fumed Cecily. "Out of his master's shop, or at any rate outside Deering Church door, we have no right to know even who he is, or anything about him.”

"I can't divide my memory and my consciousness into two," said Rachel. “I always understood that when they could be so divided, there was something wrong with the brain," she added mischievously. "Don't tease me !" fretted Cecily: "the point is, shall you recognise him?”

"If I think he would like it," returned Rachel, quietly.

At that moment, the ferry boat bumped the steps. John White had sprung in, and had gone to the farther end, the waterman remaining to help in the other passengers. These were only Cecily and Rachel. They sat down demurely. The young man did not seem to see them. No fear of John White forgetting his place! Rachel stole a glance at him. He looked pale and sad, and worn; and she saw him intently watching the sweet scene around him as those may who wish to fix a dear picture for ever in their minds. It seemed such a sorrowful, lonely goingaway, leaving nothing behind but his mother's quiet grave, and the old friend, bed-bound in the almshouse. And the Burrow waters made a low accompaniment to her plaintive thoughts.

The river was crossed. John White sprang out first, and offered his hand to aid their landing. Cecily barely touched it, with downcast eyes and an in

audible "Thank you." But Rachel, following, let her kind heart out. She gave him her hand in a frank grasp, and said, in a sweet little flutter

"Thank you, Mr. White-and good-bye. I wish you all success-but don't quite forget Deering."

John White never knew what he answered. In fact, he answered nothing at all, and yet, with his face shining before her, Rachel could not doubt whether her kindly impulse had been understood and appreciated. She hastened on after Cecily, and never knew that John White stepped back into the boat to pick up a little pansy-a pansy which had dropped from the bunch she wore at her throat.

"Don't quite forget Deering," he repeated deliriously, "she need not have said that!"

That all happened years ago.

Deerham town and Deering village are places which do not change. Kingdoms rise and fall, countries change their boundaries, and prairies blossom into big capitals, while the Burrow still whispers along between the same alders, and scarcely reflects the image of one new red roof. But in places which do not change, things and people do !

It is long since Cecily Conroy married Arthur Foljambe, and now, worse than widowed, the deserted wife of a disgraced man-she has found a home in the white house by the church where her old friend Rachel Day keeps a flourishing school. Alas! for the love which goes no deeper than a handsome face, a winning manner, and a musical voice! Superficial charms are these, and ephemeral too, unless they have some of the strong virtues to guard and preserve them. It was long since Cecily's husband had left off his singing, and she well knew that nobody who saw him now called him handsome or attractive -nay, before he had left her altogether, she had heard that whisper, the most bitter to the loving pride which dies so hard in a wife's bosom

"What could she ever have seen in him?"

She had not heeded much, during the days when Arthur Foljambe was courting her, and the first rumours came to Deering, that, in a remote town, with strenuous thrift and labour, John White was striving to attain the ambition of his life, entrance to the medical profession. Even when the Deerham newspaper had proudly chronicled that its townsman, Mr. John White, had won certain honours, she had only smiled and alluded to that old odour of drugs, and wondered if his patients would think their doctor a dandy! But as time wore on, and the Deerham folk heard of him doing good work in his profession, Cecily Conroy-Cecily Foljambe by that date, and growing more sober and wiser under divers experiences-had spoken of him with more respect. He was abroad in India, when his old friend in the almshouse died, and then it came out that Dr. White had wished to remove her to a cottage for herself, but that she had refused to leave her old room, and that he had made every arrangement for her comfort; and when the news of her death reached him, he sent gracious remembrances to those who had been

kind to her after he went away, and a handsome gift to the charity which had sheltered her friendless

ness.

"John White is a fine fellow!" cried Deerham. A thorough gentleman," admitted Cecily. "A good man!" said Rachel Day.

Then, in a distant land, came a time of trial to the British name and rule. The reckless selfishness of generations culminated in giant forms of Famine and Pestilence, in whose shadows stalked discontent and rebellion. Good men, who had not shared the sin, stepped forth from their accustomed places to share the burden of the suffering. There was one whose voice had been heard in warning, while rulers had been lapped in security. He had been unheeded then. But because his warnings had come true, he was heeded now. And his name was Dr. John White.

And for weeks, there was scarcely a British newspaper which did not have his name printed somewhere on it-now in a startling telegram, now in an interesting paragraph, now in temperate criticismthen in unmeasured praise! At last, the work was done. Thousands of innocent lives were saved: desolate homes were thriving, hearts were burning with love and loyalty instead of with bitterness and hate. Dr. John White, still in early middle age, was free to go home to rest and honour.

Not too much rest at first, because there was so much honour; a knighthood was offered him, but he hesitated. "I should like to die plain John White," he said. "And yet, if I were queen, I would like to honour a servant who seemed to have done his best for my people, so it would be churlish to refuse what I should like to give. Besides," he added, with a strange, quiet smile, "I think Deerham will like it." And so he was Sir John White.

Cecily Conroy lies on her couch by the window of the White House, and she and Rachel Day are watching for Sir John's carriage as it drives him to Deering Court, where he is to stay, while he visits his native village.

What would Rachel's pupils think, if they knew what their governess and her old friend speak about as they sit together in the sunset?

"I wonder if he remembers that morning he went away," said Cecily, "and how we crossed the ferry with him."

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"He may not remember us," answered Rachel, 'but be sure he does not forget that morning." "And do you remember what we two had been, talking about?" asked Cecily.

Rachel smiled, "About knights and princes in disguise," she said. "I have not even forgotten that." "Nor I," returned Cecily. "Do you know, I found that old story-book yesterday? Oh, what a trifling silly girl I was in those days."

"I hope we all grow wiser," said Rachel. "But you were far wiser than me then," answered Cecily. "Do you know, Rachel, that all to-day I have been thinking that it needs the true princess to recognise the true prince-God's lady to know God's knight."

She spoke slowly and almost sadly. Did Rachel hear her? For Rachel half rose from her chair, and a sudden flush overspread her face. "There go the carriages," she said; "but one stopped, and somebody got out. Two people. way; they are at our gate. and Sir John himself!"

They are coming this Cecily! It is the Squire

How young looked Rachel Day in the soft evening light. She had to go down and receive her guests. But Cecily lay still, with eyes closed to hide the tears which would gather. But Cecily had truly grown wiser and better, for she was saying to herself

"It may be rather too late to recognise the true prince when he comes with his crown on, but one duty still remains to me-it is not to regret nor to envy, but to rejoice!"

Wedding chimes sound sweetly in Deering Woods when Deering bells shake them out on a summer morning. And if it was a queer fancy in Sir John White to take his bride down the Ferry Way, and to cross the Burrow in the ferry boat, and enter their carriage on the other side, it was a very pretty fancy, especially to those who, like Cecily, knew the secret of it!

one or two parable lessons from the scene before us. We are on the south coast, and immediately in front of us runs out a long timbered structure called a groyne, the farthest piles of which, as they discover themselves from beneath the heaving waters, are silvered by the moon. The purpose of this structure is not to break the "league-long roller," as is commonly supposed, but rather to supposed, but rather to collect the shifting sand and pebbles as they are drifted eastwards

by the waves. Let us consider for a moment this interesting phenomenon. Each particular pebble in shallow water is subject to perpetual motion, not only from the ebbing and flowing of the tide, but also from the action of the waves, which roll parallel to the shore under the action of the wind. Westerly winds alternate of course with easterly, and so each pebble is driven, now in one direction, now in the opposite; but on the whole, as the average duration of the west winds, at the place where we are staying, is the greater, the resultant movement is towards the east. Thus it comes to pass that, though often rolled back again, there is an ultimate steady shifting towards the latter quarter; and the effect of the groyne is to intercept the travelling shingle, and to heap it up as a breakwater against the encroaching sea.

Is not the life of each one of us acted upon in the same manner, now by adverse, now by propitious influences? Do not men in their spiritual condition advance and recede-advance as they obey the good influence from on high, recede as they give way beneath the temptations of the world? And the net result of the conflict, is not this as surely known and recorded? A good resolution, it may be, carries us forward; but it spends its force and is exhausted, and then perhaps we lose ground a little, and are conscious of a decline. "The Father," says St. Peter, "judgeth according to every man's work," not only will judge, but sums up, as it were day by day, and hour by hour, our progress in well-doing. Should not this thought make us alarmed at our unstableness, and cause us to seek the heavenly trade-winds which blow constantly in one direction -to enter the warm gulf-stream of Divine grace, which flows in undeviating course towards the islands of rest?

Here I have before me a pebble picked up yesterday from the beach; and, lying close beside it, a piece of blackened sea-weed. How wondrously round and smooth is the pebble! Had it lain in the brook before David, he would surely have chosen it amongst his five smooth stones when he went forth against Goliath. By the way, what a wonderful combination of faith and prudence that was on the part of David, going forth in simple reliance upon God's help, but making provision against the first stone failing!

But this pebble was not always round and smooth. Doubtless it was once a rugged piece of cliff, violently torn off by the sea on some stormy night. But the gentle waves in after-time have lapped round it, and its fellow boulders have rubbed their edges against it, and so it has gradually been polished into beautiful symmetry according to God's will. Meanwhile the ragged hole in the cliff from which it was torn has been filled up by the washing rains, and covered in

with a green mantle of herbage. Very wonderful to reflect upon is this constant tendency towards beauty in the working of nature. The argument from beauty is a most worthy sister to the argument from design, reminding us that in the physical world and in the spiritual it is God's purpose to make "the crooked straight, and the rough places plain."

And now look at this sea-weed. Great heaps of it lie everywhere on the sea-shore; and what more exact symbol can be found of a ruined, wasted life? Vilior algú ("more worthless than sea-weed") was, indeed, a Latin proverb, showing how the ancients regarded it, viz., as mere refuse of the great ocean, which utilises all else besides, but which casts up, as it were disdainfully, this limp and lifeless mass, useless even for burning. But is any life, though profitless, alas! to the wilfully degraded possessor, altogether profitless to the world? This sea-weed contains iodine, one of the most beneficent gifts of modern chemistry; and surely all lives have a meaning, nay, consciously or unconsciously, have beneficent purpose for those around. The alchemy of God's grace turns even the wicked to His purposes, and good is made to issue even from the worthless and the corrupt.

The next worse thing to an evil life is one that is utterly vain and frivolous, and a remarkable symbol of this latter state caught my attention the other day when sailing in a boat a mile or two from the shore.

A white butterfly (and the boatman told me it was quite a common occurrence) was floating in the sea on a piece of weed, basking in the sun with open wings, and quite unconscious of the yawning gulf beneath it. It had drifted from the shore, and was going nowhither, so I captured it, and have it there safely in a box. How many a giddy votary of fashion makes the voyage of life like this butterfly, floating carelessly on the wide sea of circumstance, heedless, in the present sunshine, of the unfathomable deep!

But the contrast between a vain life and a life full of purpose is seen, perhaps, more strikingly as we look towards the horizon. "There go the ships," says the Psalmist, using the simplest and most poetical word that can be applied to them. Yes, and in what different manner, and on what various errands! Yonder is the long, straight trail of a steamer, which yesterday completed her equipment, arranged her compasses, and, with head pointed accurately for her destination, will swerve neither to the right hand nor to the left until she reaches her desired haven. And yonder are the pleasure yachts standing off and on, animated with no purpose but that of enjoyment, changing their anchorage ground merely from a desire of change. The biographies of all great men are illustrated by the former, whilst the latter present as in a picture the triflers and the indolent