quarrel between his parents-had not passed over her heart. Standing there, then, in her mood of thoughtful melancholy, her soul far away in the dismal camp by the Black Seain the tents of men who were friends and comrades of the husband who had renounced her-the light flitting forwards of Effie was not at first perceived. But the young girl laid her little hand on the startled arm, and whispered breathlessly-"Oh, forgive my coming! but such joy has happened to me; I wanted so sore to tell you! I've rowed across the lake in the coble alone, just to say to you the words of the song, 'He's comin' again.' Papa's coming! He's to be back directly, and I'm to go from the New Mill to Torrieburn! Oh! I could dance for joy! I'll not be frightened when I sleep under the same roof again with papa. It's all joy, joy, joy, now, for ever!" CHAPTER LXIII. KENNETH COMES BACK. BUT it was not joy. Kenneth returned a drunken wreck; overwhelmed with debts he had no means of discharging ; baffled and laughed at by the Spanish wife he had no means of controlling or punishing; ruined in health by systematic and habitual intemperance. He seemed, even to his anxious little daughter, a strange frightful vision of his former self. His handsome face was either flushed with the purple and unwholesome flush of extreme excess, or pallid almost to death with exhaustion. He wept for slight emotion; he raved and swore on slight provocation; he fainted and sank after slight fatigue. He was a ruined man! The first, second, and third consultation on the subject of his affairs only confirmed the lawyer's and agent's opinion that he must sell Torrieburn, if he desired to live on any income, or pay a single debt. It was a bitter Sell Torrieburn! pill to swallow; but it must be taken. Torrieburn was advertised. Torrieburn was to be disposed of by "public roup." The morning of that disastrous day Kenneth was saved from much pain by being partially unconscious of the business that was transacting. He had been drinking for days, and when that daythat fatal day-dawned, he was still sitting in his chair, never having been to bed all night, his hair tangled and matted, his eyes bloodshot, his face as pale as ashes. With a gloomy 'effort at recollection, he looked round at Effie, who was crouched in a corner of the room watching him, like a young fawn among the bracken. "Do you remember what day it is, child?" he said, in a harsh, hoarse voice. "Oh, Papa!" said the little maiden, "do not think of sorrowful things. Come away; come out over the hills, and think no more of what is to happen here. Come away." To the last, in spite of all his foul offences against that generous heart, Kenneth had somehow dreamed he would be rescued at the worst by his uncle. He was not rescued. But at the eleventh hour there came an order from Sir Douglas that Torrie burn was to be bought in-bought at the extreme price that might be bid for it, and settled on Kenneth's daughter and her heirs by entail. He "Come away!" said the plaintive young voice, and Kenneth left the house that had been his own and his father's, and went out a stripped and homeless man over the hills. His head. did not get better: it got worse. swayed to and fro as he climbed the hills; he pressed onward with the gait of a staggering, drunken, delirious wretch, as he was. He looked back from the hill, at Torrieburn smiling in the late autumnal sun, and wept as Boabdil wept, when he looked back at the fair lost city of Granada! No taunting voice upbraided his tears; no proud virago spoke, like Boabdil's mother, of the weakness that had wrecked him, or the folly that made all, irrevocable loss, irrevocable despair. The gentle child of his reckless marriage followed with her light footsteps as he strode still upwards and upwards. Panting and weary, she crouched down by his side when at length he flung himself, face downwards, on the earth. The slender little fingers touched his hot forehead with their pitying touch. The small cool lips pressed his burning cheek and hot eyelids with tiny kisses of consolation. "Oh! Papa, come home again, or come to the new mill; to Grandmamma Maggie! You are tired; you are cold; don't stay here on the hills; come to the New Mill; come!" But Kenneth heeded her not. With a wild delirious laugh, he spoke and muttered to himself: sang, shouted, and blasphemed; blasphemed, shouted, and sang. The little girl looked despairingly around her, as the cold mist settled on the fading mountains, clothing all in a ghost-like veil. "Come away, Papa!" was still her vain earnest cry. "Come away, and sit by the good fire at the New Mill. Don't stay here!" In vain! The mist grew thicker and yet more chill, but Kenneth sat rocking himself backwards and forwards, taking from time to time long draughts from his whiskey-flask, and singing defiant snatches of songs he had sung with boon-companions long ago. At length he seemed to get weary: weary, and drowsy; and Effie, fainting with fatigue, laid her poor little dishevelled head down on his breast, and sank into a comfortless slumber. Both lay resting on the shelterless hills; that drunken wretched man, and the innocent girl-child. And the pale moon 'struggled through the mist, and tinged the faces of the sleepers with a yet more pallid light. So they lay till morning; and when morning broke, the mist was thicker yet on lake and mountain. You could not have seen through its icy veil, no, not the distance of a few inches. Effie woke, chilled to the very marrow of her bones. Her weak voice echoed the tones of the night before, with tearful earnest ness. "Oh, Papa, come home! or come to the good fire burning at the New Mill. Oh, Papa, come home-come home!" As she passionately reiterated the request, she once more pressed her fervent lips to the sleeping drunkard's cheek. What vague terror was it, that thrilled her soul at that familiar contact? What was there, in the stiff, half-open mouth, the eyes that saw no light, the ear that heard no sound, that even to that innocent creature who had never seen death, spoke of its unknown mystery, and paralysed her soul with fear? A wild cry-such as might be given by a wounded animal-burst from Effie's throat; and she turned to flee from the half-understood dread, to seek assistance for her father, her arms outspread before her, plunging through the mist down the hill they had toiled to ascend the night before. As she staggered forward through the thick cold cloud, she was conscious of the approach of something meeting her; panting heavily, as she was herself breathing; struggling upwards, as she was struggling downwards; it might be a hind-or a wild stag—or a human being-but at all events it was LIFE, and behind was DEATH,-so Effie still plunged on! She met the ascending form; her faint eyes saw, as in a holy vision, the earnest beautiful face of Neil, strained with wonder and excitement; and with a repetition of the wild cry she had before given, she sank into his suddenly clasping arms in a deadly swoon of exhaustion and terror. The keeper was with Neil. He found Kenneth where he lay; lifted the handsome head, and looked in the glazed eye. "Gang hame, sir, and send assistance," was all he said. "Will I help ye to carry wee Missie ?" "No-no. No," exclaimed Neil, as he wound his strenuous young arms round the slender fairy form of his wretched little cousin. "Trust me, I'll get Effie safe down to Torrieburn, and I'll send men up to help Cousin Kenneth to come down too. Is he very drunk?" "Gude save us, sir; ye'll need to send twa 'stout hearts for a stour brae;' for I'm thinking Mr. Kenneth's seen the last o' the hills. Ye'll need just to send men to fetch THE BODY." And with this dreadful sentence beat ing in his ears, Neil made his way as best he could, with lithe activity, down the well-known slopes of the mountain, clasping ever closer and closer to his boyish breast the light figure with long, damp dishevelled hair of his poor little cousin Effie. To be continued. IN THE SHADOW. HERE I am with my head dropped low on your grave; the sky Over the face of all, like the passionless, blankly dead Feel the slow slight shudder of growing grass at my ear My blood makes shuddering leaps, as alone in my dark I think Passionate outstretched arms of mine, ye may sink and drop Your white weight down on his grave, for he cannot feel you strain; Wild beat against the impassable barrier to clasp him again. Smite down your weary light, O sun; and, O thirsty rain, Strike as you will, but never, oh never more may ope The gate that my own hand closed, the crystal gate of hope. My darling, my own lost darling! I loved you, I loved you, I say. Of death rolls heavily in between your soul and me, And my fireful words are drowned in the roar of its waves, and she Who utters them fails and sinks with her garments weighted with spray, And scarce dare hope that the tide will ebb out at the breaking of day. All through I loved you, dear heart! Oh, had I but told you so, Nor turned away my eyes, and left the devils to grin O'er the grand young fallen soul, that they waited to drag below, Were you so utterly vile that I smote away your kiss In scorn, as a thing unclean, from these proud red lips of mine? A slip, and I might have raised, and helped you to be divine. Alas! my beloved, my beloved! that I left you to sink in the mire Were you living and erring, how I would gird up my garments, and leap And no more may the lips make moan, and no more may the eyeballs weep! ESSAYS AT ODD TIMES. BY ROBERT HAYNES CAVE, M.A. XV. OF EDUCATION. Of course the world at large is a school. To some men, indeed, the world is mainly a shop--a place of merchandise; to others a theatre-a place of amusement merely; to a few happy souls, a temple, in which to worship and be glad. But to all alike, whether they will or no, it is a school. And I know that in this great school the oldest boys have occasionally to suffer from rods which have been made out of their own pleasant vices. For, either voluntarily or involuntarily, men are always learning. It has been said, indeed, that a character is formed in every man by the time he is twenty-five, which is to last him through eternity. And the maxim embodies one of those halftruths which seem so consistent, and are so dogmatic. But even a slight experience of the world disproves the axiom. Humanity is not inelastic. The body and soul of every man are in a constant state of flux and reflux, of growth and of decay; for human life is a system of repair. I have known men whose whole character has apparently changed for the worse at fifty, under the pressure, certainly, of great change in external circumstances; though such circum stances may, after all, have only shown the character, and not made it. And I have known men of violent tempers and passions to have gradually disciplined themselves into gentleness and wisdom with advancing age. Happy old age which leaves the passions mastered, and the intellect and the affections vigorous still! But yet we must not run into an opposite extreme, and because the fruits of early training are not always gathered, and habits supposed to have been fixed by early custom, happen to be now and then changed, therefore deny the necessity of early training in good habits. A good education is never wasted upon man or beast; and education is nothing but the calling into play powers which lie dormant in every human being, and developing them into habits by exercise. Indeed, I do not know any stronger testimony to the advantage of good early training than that afforded by the common consent of language, which declares that a man's morals are simply his mores or habits; that his past actions form the mainspring of the motives upon which he will be likely to act in the future. If this be so, then it will be said, virtue and goodness are undoubtedly, in all cases, and under all circumstances, teachable. You have but to train up the child in the way he should go; you have only to train your children in virtuous habits from the very first, in order to make them virtuous and good. But then, unfortunately, experience comes in and ruthlessly shatters our educational theory. Solomon, if I mistake not, was himself a very glaring exception to his own rule. The reader may, perhaps, remember in the Platonic Dialogues a fragment on the subject of virtue, which, though it may have passed through the mint of Plato, is undoubtedly true Socratic gold. It is the report of a talk which took place in Simon the currier's shop, and which was probably written down by Simon himself, and in a very excellent Boswellian style too, as it flowed from the lips of Socrates the Thinker. The question debated was, Does virtue 66 stance, a good man and a wise, who "had his son Cleophantus taught all "sorts of accomplishments-to ride, for "instance, so that the young man could "stand upon his horse's back whilst "it galloped at full speed, and cast his javelin. But was this Cleophantus a good and wise man, like his father?" "I believe not," is the reply. "Well, "do you think that Themistocles, who, "of course, as a good man would wish "to make his son good too, would have “left him, after all, no better than his 66 66 neighbours, if virtue and wisdom "could be taught? And so of Pericles, "who had his sons trained to be good "musicians and wrestlers, but could "not teach them to be good men,-if "virtue were teachable, would he not, "think you, by all means, have had "them made as virtuous as himself? "But then," continues Socrates, "if "virtue be not teachable, does it come "by natural disposition? Yet if this were so, men would surely have "found out some test or touchstone by "which to tell the good disposition "from the bad, in order that they might "restrain the one and encourage the "other; just as there are judges of "horseflesh, who will pick you out a "horse with good points and spirit in a 66 moment, because these points are the "natural inheritance of certain breeds "of horses. No:" such was the conclusion at which heathen morality arrived two thousand years ago; men are not good either by education or by natural disposition. "Neither nature nor training," said Socrates, "make a man good and virtuous, but only a divine destiny, a sort of inspira"tion,-in fact, the grace of God." Then, why educate at all? And, indeed, my friend, of so-called education-that is to say, of direct teaching, 66 can |