as divers do for pearls. And Fleance, who pleased him, in whom his sister was so much interested, was quite certain to affect him more deeply, if he remained long near her.

But his sister's thoughts were not in this direction. She had no apprehension of any result. She was ambitious for her brother, in spite of all she knew of the world, or probably just because she knew so much of it. She may, confiding in her influence as a generally binding law upon him, from sheer habit of trusting it in all things, have ceased to particularize instances and effects. May have forgotten that the very warmth and generosity of his love for her, for it was love more generous than weak, was in itself a proof that his affections were his life, and that, wanting in coolness and deliberation of thought, a time might come when there would be a revolt among them. I can only account for her oversight thus - that she was too wearied by the disappointments she herself had met, too chilled by her intercourse with the world, to think much of this exposure, when the arms of so devout a love were around her. It satisfied her far too well to admit it willingly as the occasion of new speculations, and further prophesyings. She cared not to prove her skill in discernment in a direction where the life was so near, so dear to her.

Among the men now working in the quarry to which Kruger returned, were some of his old associates in labor. In the house of one of these he lodged. There was not a man of them but sympathized with him in his losses; and the more deeply, it may be said, because of the composure with which he bore them, the cheerfulness, the quietness. No man ventured to make an exhibition of this sympathy. They all knew him so well as to understand that it would be no acceptable offering to him; but it was evinced in ways he could but feel, that led him to express the gratitude he felt for their sympathy and welcome. He stood in his old position, filling it, however, with an increase of dignity. It was a vacant place; no man had held it since he went away years ago, and in his return to it not a man but felt that he was worthier of a better.

He had always been the pride of the quarrymen's hearts, and was as much so now in his adversity, as he had been when he advanced from their ranks to a seeming prosperity. Benjamin Kruger was equal to the task of beginning life anew with determination, and with cheerfulness, for experience had enriched him. He was changed somewhat in his bearing toward others since his experience of village life; he had learned many things of love, and joy, and sorrow. These experiences had not made him selfish, but more thoughtful and careful of all in proportion as he became so of one life. Though never jovial or familiar, nor one whit lessened, but instead established, in his personal dignity, he had more to say to his fellows than he had once, he had more in common with them, he understood them better, he was not so abstracted, he found a new and an increasing interest in entering into the hidden lives of his toiling companions. His hope had made him a prisoner, and for all his brethren in bondage his heart was full of tender

ness.

It was not much that he ever said of Fleance; it did not suit him to

be garrulous of his love. It was known among the men that he had a child, a daughter; that she was motherless; that she had been placed at school somewhere. These facts were known, but not as points for curiosity or speculation to circle round. Inquiries were sometimes made of her by the woman in whose house he lodged, and by others, but they went no farther than he cared to have them go.

Whenever Kruger wrote to Fleance, he went down with the letters, and himself deposited them in the office for her. He was careful on those occasions to avoid observation; he never went except by night. He had voluntarily dissevered himself from his child; he would not have her know at what a cost he was securing to her the advantages which, to his mind, were above all price. And so he never saw her, only with his heart, only with the tender eyes of loving mental vision, did he behold her as she grew subject to the new influences of her lot. He thought he understood what culture would do for his child.

Thus the summer days were wearing on with their influences and results. Fleance at school was her father's child. He was her prevailing conscience. But as we have seen, he was her father with a difference;' not quite that Benjamin Kruger, whom we have seen watching over her so constantly and tenderly, no more than she was now actually the Fleance of his daily care. He was interpreted to Fleance by the light that had come to her through the mind of one who, to all intents, was her present illuminator. He was idealized by this manner of interpretation. In school or out of it, the influence was the same. Miss Kingswood had virtually taken her father's place, but Fleance did not understand it, nor perceive, child that she was, how great an influence the affection which this strong woman lavished on her brother, shaped and modified her own feeling for him. Without thought, without perception, this became true. Her brother was the only person to whom Miss Kingswood's life was opened, as free to his eyes as her own; that he could not decipher all its languages, its signs, was no fault of hers. She hid nothing from him; if he could not read, the fault, or rather loss, was entirely his. She trusted no mortal as she trusted him. Orphaned at an early age, he had since then been under her care. Though guardians, tutors, and governors were over them, all authority and power was at once set aside when she came into conflict with them. She had watched Arthur's growth and development with the jealous eye of love; they had studied and travelled together; the thoughts of neither had ever wandered far or long from the other; the fact that no one coming between them had been able to engross her affections had but rendered him, as years went on, the dearer. When her eyes fell upon him the piercing orbs lost their sharpness of discernment; no cold or scornful or satirical thought was ever passed on him, though men precisely of his stamp had met with not much consideration or mercy at her hands. She could have understood the spirit that actuated Kruger to the banishment he had imposed npon himself for his daughter's sake. Had there been any need for sacrifice or act of this nature on her part for Arthur's sake, she could have rendered it.

Fleance beheld so much of this as must have revealed itself to every loving eye. She knew what it meant when she sat at Miss Kings

wood's feet, and listened while Arthur read to them, and the lady's hand stroked gently the young girl's head; the tenderness of the touch thrilled her, and it told her well the tenderness that was in the sister's eyes as they fixed upon the reader, though Fleance saw them not. She knew also why, when he came into the parlor, whatever work his sister had in hand was laid at once aside, as if, when he were by, all other things were dwarfed in importance. When they stood sometimes, she hanging on his arm, chatting together, or silent before the windows, watching the rain-storms flying down between the mountain-crags, Fleance knew why the voices of the speakers were so soft and low, and if she felt her loneliness the more, and longed the more for the return of her father, who would be to her what Arthur Kingswood was to his sister, what wonder? Was she not thus proved all the worthier? Fleance saw young Kingswood through his sister's eyes; how could she but like one whom the lady loved so well? And beside the gentleman was very kind to her; he imitated his sister in this; though he never of himself invited her to accompany them in their walks and drives, yet, when his sister had done so, he was always certain to enforce the invitation by its repetition.

Miss Kingswood had been talking for a long time of going up to the quarry with her brother some fine day, and one morning Fleance was arrested on her way to the school-room by the lady's voice. Would not she like to take a drive up the mountains, on this fine breezy morning? Fleance's face glowed with pleasure at the prospect; permission of absence had already been obtained for her of the widow, and instead of proceeding to spend the day in the school-room, she ran to her room to make herself ready for the excursion that promised so fair.

The road which led up to the quarry had been travelled these twenty years; but now for a long time it had not been used for the transportation of stone to the world below; the canal which passed at the base of the quarry-mountain, and through the valley, being the mode of communication between the workmen and the market. The road therefore, though still in use, was neither the safest nor the most easily travelled. But our party was in no haste; it was but a pleasant variety to them when compelled to alight, and walk or climb in the midst of scenery so fine, on this transporting day.

Toward noon they came in sight of the cave in the mountain-side, and the pit beneath it from which the stone was taken for the city buildings miles away; and as the road wound higher and higher, they saw the dwellings of the workmen perched among the rocks like the nests of hanging-birds - apparently as inaccessible.

While yet at some distance from the quarry, the little party alighted from the carriage and walked on to the pit; Fleance following Miss Kingswood, as she descended into the place where the men were at work, for toward this point, as having a human interest, the lady first directed her steps. But Fleance only followed in the descent, she did not advance with her from the entrance into the place.

On a block of granite she sat down and looked around her; up at the mountain-peaks, towering so high above her head, and on the depth of the bright blue sky beyond; on the working men's tiny huts; on

the great piles of broken rock, the dark fissures, made by blasting, in the mountain's heart; on the dusty and diligent workmen, many of whom suspended not their toil for an instant even at the unwonted sight of guests in the pit.

But, while she looked on all these points of interest, about which her imagination had been so busy as they came up the road, what was it that suddenly oppressed her as if overcome by that great bodily fatigue which sends faintness and sickness through the frame, lassitude and depression? There, on that granite block, at the termination of the happy drive, she sat, as if exhausted by some fearful labor, or bound by some dread spell. What is it she anticipates? What can she here anticipate, the fair young village-girl in such good company?

While she still sat there, bound thus inexplicably, Fleance heard Miss Kingswood speaking to one of the workmen who was hid by a sharp, rocky projection from the child's sight; hearing the voice, Fleance arose, and would have advanced toward the speaker, but the voice of the person who had been addressed arrested her.

In itself, the manner of Miss Kingswood's speaking to the man, was worth considering; it was not after the manner of that vulgar curiosity and impertinence which seem to be considered the prerogative of idle people, who stroll around the world to visit works. Her voice had in it neither rude challenge nor the insult of ignorance and base self-disrespect, but was a kindly human greeting of the good day; a king in his capacity of manhood could not have demanded a better. Haughty as her character may have been, as interpreted by pretenders, there was nothing here that betokened such a trait. Miss Kingswood had not yet seen the face of him she addressed; he was bending over his work; therefore it was not to him individually that the manner of speaking was to be imputed. Not that he admitted no other style of address, but that she who spoke could give no other. It was her voice that attracted Fleance and called her to her feet, I said. But she went not forward; it was the responding voice that staid her; the voice that answered so deep, full, clear; oh! it bound her hand and foot.

What had she heard the workman say? Only a few common words, a response to Miss Kingswood's remark on the wild scenery, and the strange effect of light and shade upon the hills, and something of the pleasant morning. There was nothing in the reply that in itself seemed powerful, either to draw Fleance out from the strange depression and heart-fainting that she felt, and bring her before the speaker, nor any thing to keep her chained to the rock on which she stood, while her face became so pale; nor any thing to send her off when the voice spoke again, and she had listened to its every utterance, to another part of the pit, and presently up out of it, and away along the mountain-side.

There alone, safe at least for the moment, she sat down and tried to forget what she had heard; tried to forget it, but the regular clink of the workmen's tools could not drive it away. She watched the strangely-shaped shadows that strolled like spirits up and down the mountains, that rose abrupt and lofty on the other side of the valley, when the sun was for a moment obscured by the swiftly-flying clouds. She stood up

to see the canal-boat as it passed, drawn by tired horses, far down in the valley. She walked along a path into which she struck unawares, that she might see the road by which the stone was conveyed to the boats. O glorious, shining sun, and heaven far away, and majesty of clouds! miracle of rock, and cliff, and peak, and bald or wooded mountainheight, sweet shadow of the lovely valley; broad fields of sun-light lying between the deep rocky gorges, tree and flower, stone and brook, Treasures so rich for and bird, what were all these things to her? if stored at any other time, or under any other circumstance, memory, drawn in by eager eyes, as the warm, bright breath of spring by the chilled and dying frame, sounds not one of which, at any other hour, A devil and an What were these now to her? had escaped her. angel struggled in her breast, in the brave and gentle heart of Fleance, making an evil coward of the child.

If on earth she has a father and at this moment it would not be a - if he is grief beyond endurance to know that father she had notalive, she has heard his voice; she heard it in the pit. The pit! She heard it speaking to Miss Kingswood. It was his hand that lifted the hammer, and smote the chisel, toiling, without loss of time, over the stone, when Miss Kingswood turned away from him, and when she (did Miss Kingswood see?) turned also, and could hardly stay her steps from flight to that slow movement by which she went from her father. His hand that lifted the tools and went on with the work. For whom working? This, then, was the foreign country! this his land of travel! these the scenes through which he was passing!

Had he been false to her? There might be then some justification in her falseness to him, or at least there was no injury done; they both stood on one footing, mutual deceivers. Eagerly she looked around She was his child. Of old, her, and the consolation was taken away. her vision was like his, and it seemed now the same, as she looked and recognized, faster and faster, as her memory and her thought worked, points on which he had elaborated, scenes before her on which he had exhausted his portraying words, were recognized, identified by her : in a tender, playful mood he had written these descriptions: in an agony of feeling she recalled them. But of this I must speak in another and concluding chapter.