Secondly," pursued the owl, pronouncing every sentence with deliberation, and keenly watching through his goggle-glasses the effect of his words, "you shall appear with your clipped poll-and no wig, no false tresses, mind you-at the archerymeeting to-morrow, and shoot for the prize as if nothing had happened."

"Every one present would think me crazy!" cried Philomel Lamb.

"Perhaps they might." said her uncle drily, "but not more crazy than I should think myself were I to fling away two thousand pounds on a school. Now for my last condition. You shall never convey a hint, by word or by look, to any one living why you have cut off your curls."

"Uncle Caleb, I know that you are jesting; 1 am sure that you are!" exclaimed Philomel, attempting to laugh off the annoyance and disappointment which she felt.

"I never was more serious in my life," said Caleb Coffin. "I have made you a fair offer, Philomel— a handsome offer, I should call it-golden coin for golden tresses; you keep these, I keep that but I'll never listen to another word, I promise you, about maintaining and endowing that wretched school for the brats of the village."

:

"You never could wish me to make myself the

laughing-stock of the county!" cried Philomel, with an expression of indignation, which painted itself upon her expressive face.

"Wish it—no, certainly I neither wish nor expect you to play the fool!" cried the wily old man. "I only want you not to wish or expect another to make sacrifices which you do not choose to make yourself. But see all the colour has gone from the clouds; it has transferred itself, I think, to your cheeks I never saw them before with such a fine crimson tint; it's mighty becoming, set off by the tresses of gold! You had better return home, Philomel, before it grows dark, namesake though you be to the warbler of night. The nightingale herself, I take it, only chooses to sing in darkness that she may have the field, or rather the bush, all to herself. Go home, Philomel Lamb, go home; the nightingale was never intended to soar to the lofty height which you were attempting just now, she had better keep to her quiet bush and her pleasant song. Be as charitable as you like in a sober, easy, comfortable way, but leave fools and fanatics to follow the example of the eider duck, that to warm others is ready to strip off the very down from her breast!"

ITH wounded feelings and an embittered spirit, Philomel Lamb trod her homeward path in the twilight, averting her eyes as she passed the picturesque village school-house on the edge of the moor. Caleb Coffin, she saw clearly, had been trifling with her. He had craftily found a method of silencing her earnest pleadings for what he was resolved not to grant. The cynic was hugging himself in the comfortable conviction that selfishness is a necessary constituent of solid sense, and that enthusiasm in any cause is but the bubbling up of weaker fluid, easily stirred, easily heated, without form or consistency of its own.

As she hurried on her way the sweet sounds and sights of nature seemed for the time to have lost all attraction for Philomel Lamb. A thought came flitting ever and anon across the mind of the maiden,