Fanshawe, Lady. By JAMES HUTTON Four-footed Friends, My. By the Rev. M. G. WATKINS. Game of the Celts, The. By R. R. MACGREGOR Great Tropical Fallacy, The. By J. ARBUTHNOT WILSON COLLINS: Part I. Chap. I. Her Child's Cry. By RICHARD DOWLING Homes and Haunts of the Italian Poets: VI. Michelangelo Buonarroti. By T. ADOLPHUS TROLLOPE Knights of the Garter. By W. GRENVILLE-MURRAY. Loves of Alonzo Fitz Clarence and Rosannah Ethelton, The. By MARK 153 333 Parisian Salons, The, of the Republic and the Restoration. By H. BARTON Pastoral in Dresden China, A. By EDMUND W. GOSSE Patient Kitty. By JAMES PAYN Premature Burials. By G. ERIC MACKAY Racine at St. Cyr. By CHARLES HERVEY PAGE 307 95 474 Return of the Native, The. By THOMAS HARDY: Bk. I. Chap. VIII. Those who are found where there is said to be IX. Love leads a Shrewd Man into Strategy x. A Desperate Attempt at Persuasion XI. The Dishonesty of an Honest Woman Bk. II. Chap. 1. Tidings of the Comer II. The People at Blooms-End make ready III. How a Little Sound produced a Great Dream v. Through the Moonlight to the Object of Regard VII. A Coalition between Beauty and Oddness Bk. III. Chap. I. 'My Mind to me a Kingdom is'. Stage Properties. II. The New Course causes Disappointment III. The First Act in a Timeworn Drama IV. An Hour of Bliss and many Hours of Sadness Summer Songs. By W. C. BENNETT Travelling in Japan. By H. F. ABELL Turkish Slave Stories, Some. By F. E. A.: A Slave who is no Slave A Destined Bride A Tragedy The Boy Aâli The Fortunate Laundry-maid A. Hopkins Frontispiece To face p. 114 138 BELGRAVIA MARCH 1878. The Return of the Native. BY THOMAS HARDY. BOOK I.-CHAPTER VIII. THOSE WHO ARE FOUND WHERE THERE IS SAID TO BE NOBODY. S soon as the sad little boy had withdrawn from the fire, he As clasped the money tight in the palm of his hand, as if thereby to fortify his courage, and began to run. There was really little danger in allowing a child to go home alone on this part of Egdon Heath. The distance to the boy's house was not more than three-eighths of a mile, his father's cottage, and one other a few yards further on, forming part of the small hamlet of Mistover Knap: the third and only remaining house was that of Captain Drew and Eustacia, which stood quite away from the small cottages, and was the loneliest of lonely houses on these sparsely populated slopes. He ran until he was out of breath, and then, appearing to become more courageous, walked leisurely along, singing in an old voice a little song about a sailor-boy and a fair one, and bright gold in store. In the middle of this the child stopped: from a pit under the hill ahead of him shone a light, whence proceeded a cloud of floating dust and a smacking noise. Only unusual sights and sounds frightened the boy. The shrivelled voice of the heath did not alarm him, for that was familiar. The thorn-bushes which arose in his path from time to time were less satisfactory, for they whistled gloomily, and had a ghastly habit after dark of putting on the shapes of jumping madmen, sprawling giants, and hideous cripples. Lights were not uncommon this evening, but the nature of all of them was different from this. Discretion rather than terror prompted the boy to turn back instead of passing the light, with a view of asking Miss Eustacia Vye to accompany him home, VOL. XXXV. NO. CXXXVII. B When the boy had reascended to the top of the valley he found the fire to be still burning on the bank, though lower than before. Beside it, instead of Eustacia's solitary form, he saw two persons, the second being a man. The boy crept along under the bank to ascertain from the nature of the proceedings if it would be prudent to interrupt so splendid a creature as Miss Eustacia on his trivial account. poor After listening under the bank for some minutes, he turned in a perplexed and doubting manner and began to withdraw as silently as he had come. That he did not, upon the whole, think it advisable to interrupt her conversation with Wildeve, without being prepared to bear the whole weight of her displeasure, was obvious. Here was a Scyllo-Charybdean position for a poor boy. Pausing awhile when again safe from discovery, he finally decided to face the pit phenomenon as the lesser evil. With a heavy sigh, he retraced the slope, and followed the path he had followed before. The light had gone, the rising dust had disappeared—he hoped for ever. He marched resolutely along, and found nothing to alarm him till, coming within a few yards of the sand-pit, he heard a slight noise in front, which led him to pause. The pause was but momentary, for the noise resolved itself into the steady bites of two animals grazing. 'Two he'th-croppers down here,' he said aloud. I have never known 'em come down so far afore.' The animals were in the direct line of his path, but that the child thought little of; he had played round the fetlocks of horses from his infancy. On coming nearer, however, the boy was somewhat surprised to find that the little creatures did not run off, and that each wore a clog to prevent his going astray; this signified that they had been broken in. He could now see the interior of the pit, which, being in the side of the hill, had a level entrance. In the innermost corner the square outline of a van appeared, with its back towards him. A light came from the interior, and threw a moving shadow upon the vertical face of gravel at the further side of the pit into which the vehicle faced. The child assumed that this was the cart of a gipsy, and his dread of those wanderers reached but to that mild pitch which titillates rather than pains. Only a few inches of mud wall kept him and his family from being gipsies themselves. He skirted the gravel-pit at a respectful distance, ascended the slope, and came forward the brow, in order to look into the upon of the van and see the original of the shadow. open door The picture terribly alarmed the boy. By a little stove inside the van sat a figure red from head to heels-the reddleman who had been Thomasin's friend. He was darning a stocking, which |