Is away, he r received a tell him that Miss Martial desired to speak to house three hundred yards gratuitous sixpence, and departed. Mary stood ་ Now,' he said, 'I take this kind of you-I take it very kind.' "Hiram' said little Mary, looking up at him appealingly, with one outstretched hand set towards him. He took the hand and shook it gravely, repeating that he took it very kind of her.Hiram,' she said dejectedly, aren't you going to kiss me?' Her lips pouted and trembled a little, like cherries that Kiss each other on a shaken branch. 'Cert'nly!', said Hiram, and did it with solemn alacrity. Why don't you meet me as you used to? she asked tremulously. Waal, my Pretty,' said Hiram, in the words of the immortal bard, Scotland stands not wheer it did.' 'I don't know what you mean, with an air of assumed disdain. true-hearted, Hiram.' she answered "You're not Mebbe I ain't,' said the accused; but I fancy I am.' Then,' said she with irresistible logic, why didn't you put your arm round my waist? The relation of this history has sometimes made the mention of large sums compulsory, and King Croesus himself could not treat millions with greater sang-froid than the present writer. But I am not steeled by this familiarity with vast fortunes against a sense of the manifold values of even so small a fortune as five thousand pounds. Imagine, then, how glorious it glowed' this snug little shining heap of money, in the eyes of certain unattached small gentry of the borough. At an interest of five per cent. that snug little shining heap would yield an unappreciable fraction over four pounds sixteen shillings and a penny-three-farthings per week, for every week of the fifty-two in a year, the principal remaining untouched-a metallic goose which could go on laying its hebdomadal golden egg for ever. The chief butcher of the place for not alone were the smaller gentry interested-was a rosy-faced, red-whiskered young bachelor who did a great trade, and sometimes rode to hounds, when even the swells of the meet would nod and say: 'How d'ye do, Banister?' Now he looked on that little fortune in the lump, and had visions of plate-glass in the up-stairs windows, and a new slaughter-house, The cornchandler, who was a bachelor also, turned it over in his mind, and saw a new frontage for his High Street premises. Captain Staggers, who him. Captain Staggers, who boasted himself a cadet of the house of Windgall -the Earl of Windgall's seat, as all the world knows, is Shouldershott Castle, in the northCaptain Staggers, who had once held a commission in the county militia, and whose title stuck to him, seedy and shaky and disreputable as he was, saw, when he thought of that snug little sum, a perfect vista of barmaids serving drinks to a perfect vista of rehabilitated Captain Staggerses. Mr Quill, the lately-imported Irish solicitor, saw a larger house; and his mother, Mrs Croke, a second time widowed, had a beatific vision of new window curtains and an Axminster carpet. Little Mary, unwitting of these fancies, sat in the car, drawn a little off the road in the shade, and waited for Hiram Search. The driver, though he was a discreet man, and by not so much as a wink betrayed himself, knew all about it, and had the clearest understanding of the situation. Returning after an absence of ten minutes, he stated that Hiram would follow by-and-by; and hinting in a conversational manner that the day was dry, that in the coming interview itud be awkward to have a fool like him a-lookin' on,' and that there was a public My dear,' said Hiram, serpentining his long arm about her, I'd always rather be asked into a man's house than be kicked out of it. I take this very kind of you, and very loyal an true-hearted, my little dear. He looked down at her with his queer sallow face beaming. ain't sp'iled by fortune,' he said. Are you?? Hiram!' cried Mary again, and made an indignant pretence of tearing herself away from him. How could you think it of me?" You 'I didn't,' said Hiram. Look at me. Is this here cheek of mine grown pale with care? Is my beamin' eye grown dim with hidden tears? Is there any sign in my hull anatomy of the gnawin' of the canker-worm? No, my dear. I ain't been fretting, not an atom. I've just been waiting for you to come, and say: "Hiram, your pretty loving little gal ain't changed." And now you come and say it, don't you?'-She said she did; and indeed, as she nestled to him and gazed up at him, it looked as if she meant it.—That's all right, pursued Hiram. Don't you see now, I couldn't come to you and say: You took me when you was poor, and you'll have to stick to me now you're wealthy." I couldn't even seem to mean that. I won't say you'd have broke my heart, if you hadn't come. My heart's a tolerable tough old muscle, and it'd take a deal of breakin'. I won't say it wouldn't have ached. I think it would; but there's a margin between achin' and breakin', ain't there?'-Mary supposed so, laughing at his quaintly serious face, and holding his gaunt hand in both hers. But now,' resursl Hiram, there's no such thing as a clean hank as 'll run five minutes without ravelling in this Journal 'Don't you be scared,' said Hiram. Nothing much. But you can see I'm bound to the boss for awhile to come, anyhow. Now, it stands to nature you want to get married, and so do I. And it stands to reason that a young lady with a fortune can't have her husband acting in my present capacity. In any other man's service, I should feel the present capacity mean. I own up to that; I should feel it a derogation from an American citizen's privileges and proper feelings. But not with Gerard Lumby, Esquire. No. Well now, you see, I don't want to scratch a sore place, but he's had a great deal of trouble, and I am kind of sorry for him and attached to him. He's got used to me, just as you have, my dear; and if I went away just now, he'd miss me. He's mending. I can't make it out; but from the night Mrs Strange died, he's that changed I hardly know him.' T 'How is he changed?' asked Mary, speaking rather because Hiram paused than for any other reason. She could not blame Hiram's unselfish devotion; but you may be sure that she looked forward to the waiting it promised with no great rejoicing. 'He used to be just as hard and cold,' said Hiram, 'as a frozen anvil. He wa'n't like a man after you three went away together. And now he's as sweet and mild with everybody as a roarin' democrat receivin' a British Prince. He's sad sometimes that mournful, it'd melt the innards of a Bengal tiger only to look at him. But it ain't the same kind o' sadness; and him and Valentine Strange was arm in arm walking up and down this road two mortal hours the day afore yesterday. He paused after that statement, as if he expected to be told that it was incredible. Mary received it with an astonishment which justified his expectation. 'Arm in arm' she said. 'Mr Strange and Mr Lumby Mr Gerard?' 'Arm in arm,' he said. 'And looking as friendly as a pair of rival actors. Only it was plain they meant the friendliness, and the rival actors pretty gen'ally don't.' At this moment, a step sounded in the lane, and Mary escaping from his arm, peeped round the corner of the moss-grown wall. The driver's coming back,' she whispered. 'Kiss me quick, my honey!' said Hiram, 'I shall see you soon. Likely as not, drop in and ask you for a cup of tea this evenin'. The driver appeared; and Mary, with a final shake-hands, as if no tenderer farewell had just been taken, entered the car. Hiram, with mighty gravity of demeanour, watched her driven away, walked back along the gravelled drive, entered the house, and marched straight into the presence of his master. 'Well, Search,' said Gerard, 'what is it?' Can you spare me this afternoon and evenin'?' Hiram asked. Yes,' said Gerard, looking up from a book which lay on the table before him.-'Search,' he said suddenly, and with a little smile, I have been neglecting your affairs very sadly. Are you going to Brierham?' 'Well,' said Hiram, 'there was reasons, good reasons.' 'No trouble, I hope?' said Gerard. 'None in the world,' said Hiram. 'When do you think of getting married?' asked Gerard. I suppose I shall lose you soon?' 'No; you won't,' said Hiram. We ain't in any hurry.' Very well,' said Gerard quietly. 'She's living with old Mrs Norton, I think-isn't she, in Brierham High Street?-Ah, I thought so. Will you tell somebody to saddle Roland and bring him round? I shan't want you again to-day.' Thank you,' said Hiram, and went away on his errand. 'No train for two hours,' said Gerard to himself with a sad little smile. I can do it in an hour easily.' Ten minutes later, he was at the hall door in attire for the saddle. A groom led Roland round; and the young fellow, mounting, rode away, straight into Brierham town, and dismounting at the hotel, walked across the quiet sunny street and rang at Mrs Norton's bell. It happened at that moment that Mary was in converse with Mrs Norton. Your feminine lover seeks a confidante as a duck seeks the water. This, like other generalisations, may be disputed by singular examples; but Mary was not a very exceptional young woman, and Mrs Norton knew how the land lay; whilst the butcher and the cornchandler, and the seedy captain and the Irish Quill, and hoc genus omne, surveyed it wrongly, and their judgment of its qualities was all awry. At the statement that a gentleman was in the parlour and wished to see her, the old lady bustled down, and was amazed to find Mr Gerard Lumby standing there. 'Mrs Norton,' said Gerard, shaking hands with her, how do you do? I am here as a conspirator, and I want you to be another.' 'Lawkamussy, Mr Lumby!' said the old lady, quite flustered. Gerard explained. 'I want to see two people happy, Mrs Norton. One of them is the young person now residing under your protection, and the other is'- He paused. 'I hope it's the right man, sir,' said the old lady, smiling nervously. I think it is,' said Gerard. 'Do you know who the right man is?-Very well. If I am wrong, correct me. I think the right man, who is in a position very much below his worth, wants to put off the marriage because he is attached to his employer, and because he thinks his employer cannot spare him.' It's like a dream, your saying so, Mr Lumby,' the old lady cried out. She's just been telling me them very words up-stairs.' 'Very well, Mrs Norton,' said Gerard. 'I thought it was so, and I wanted to be sure of it.' 'She's a dear nice girl,' said Mrs Norton doubtfully. Do you think, sir, as he's worthy of her?' My dear lady,' said Gerard, Mr Search is a pearl among men. The woman who marries him is to be envied, if she has only the sense to know his value. And whatever you may think of his position, he is just as well-to-do as she is. But I forgot. That's a secret. Don't say a word about it till they're married.' So he shook hands, and rode away again, leaving the old lady almost bursting with her secret. (To be concluded next month.) COUNTRY PLEASURES. To outsiders, country-life often seems dull; and it must necessarily be so to some extent, as compared with life in town, unless there is not only a keen and perceptive love of nature, but also a considerable variety of taste. A man must be able to find not only an ever-varying and enduring charm in the sublime grandeur of lake and mountain, but also an attraction sufficiently engrossing to amuse him amid such commonplace scenes as the moist bank of a shady lane, or the tangled luxuriance of a hedgerow or wayside thicket. began to expect, and then to hail with rapture the first notes of the blackbird and thrush, those sweet and gladsome heralds of the spring. Mr Milner first heard their welcome notes at the close of a wet week in February. A wet week in February!' you exclaim; can anything be more dreary?' Dreary enough, no doubt, to many. But to the observant eye, those dim and rain-suffused skies, with which we are so familiar, have a soft and gracious charm of their own. He has still much to learn in country pleasures who has never observed what a variety and beauty there often is in rainy weather; not only in those sudden showers where the sun sparkles through the gleaming raindrops with a fitful radiance, but even in the slow-falling misty rain, with little or no wind to blow it about, and no shaft of sunlight to illumine the masses of soft gray cloud and vapour. It is, of course, very possible to have too much of such a thing; and it is somewhat difficult always to remember, as we look at the drenched, water-soaked land, that it is to our moist skies that we owe the fresh colouring of our woods, and the vivid green of our meadows and grass-lands. Then there is always the delight of the fine morning or evening after the rain to look forward to, when the heavy skies burst asunder as if with a supreme effort; and the sun shines out warm and bright, and the cold moist earth basks in his smile; and the joyous breezes rustling through the leafless trees, seem already sweet with the scent of flowers. It was on such an evening, glorious and hope-inspiring, when the waning sunset faintly touched with its parting radiance the pointed gables of the ancient house, that Mr Milner heard his first thrush. A gush of melody clear and silvery rose flute-like and sweet into the darkening sky, and he knew that the birds were beginning to mate, and that the first nest-another landmark in the advancing year-might soon be looked for. A stranger looking down on the brown Lanca shire landscape that surrounded our author, Mr Milner, when he began with the year his rambles, which have been charmingly described in his book, entitled, Country Pleasures (London: Longmans & Co.), would have pronounced the prospect tame and uninviting in the last degree. But to the initiated eye it was full of interest; each hidden dell among the breezy uplands held a secret treasure-trove. He knew each sequestered wood where the catkins of the hazel were already beginning to swell; each nook where the broad wrinkled leaves of the primrose were already pushing up through the moss to meet the genial breath of the advancing spring. Even in the sombre winter hue of the landscape, there was beauty-the beauty of shifting light and shade; when the sunlight breaking through First, however, came Shrovetide, dear to the the heavy clouds, would light up for a moment children's hearts, with its great bonfire of faded the brown dales and leafless trees, making of the Christmas holly, and its pancakes tossed by undesolate scene a picture of evanescent but glowing familiar hands. 'There is wisdom,' Mr Milner brightness. Then his garden-a green silvan thinks, 'in breaking the dead monotony of modern inclosure, with sufficient space in it for wild-existence by observing, especially for the sake of flowers to grow in the tangled profusion of their native glades and woods-was a constant source of delight to him. Like all flower-lovers, he knew each several plant-each blossom was an intimate and particular friend. He noted the slightest change that occurred in them, and during the tardy, trying days of spring, hailed each new leaf that uncurled to the cold north wind. Winter went and came again, as is its fashion in our uncertain climate; but in his garden he had, what many garden-loving folks sigh for in vain, a particular and highly-favoured corner-where we always get out of the sharp wind, where there are a yellow jasmine and a few rose-bushes, and a shapely thorn with a seat under it. Round this is a little Dutch garden, in which the tulips and crocuses will first be seen.' It was quite an era in his homely calendar when the faint February sunshine began to lend a little warmth to the cold moist air, and the delicate green tips of the snowdrop and crocus could be observed breaking through the halffrozen soil. Next for the true lover of the country is always more or less a naturalist-he the young, such simple festivals as yet remain in vogue;' and so Shrovetide was observed with all its peculiar honours of hissing pan and savoury cakes. In the beginning of April came the throstle's nest. This particular bird was a thrush with an evident taste for letters, for she had inwoven with the grass and slender twigs of her nest a scrap of a London newspaper, and had fixed her little dwelling snugly and comfortably beneath the overhanging leaves of some ivy that covered a garden summer-house. A day or two later,' says Mr Milner, it had been plastered with mud, and it was also lined-as a piece of luxury, I suppose with the soft fibres of some decaying wood. Yesterday, I found that the first little blue egg had been dropped into the nest, which the prescient bird had finished three days before. And here too was beauty, the little regarded beauty of the bird's egg, beauty of form and of colour, perfect elementary form, and delicately simple colour lavished upon a corner where no eye might ever have seen it, where, probably, by no other eye than my own will it ever be seen. This bird, Journal like others, became very familiar with its observer, and allowed him to come close to her nest without showing any signs of fear. Spring in her full flush and glory was now abroad in the land; the delicate leafage of the beech was in all its first silky freshness; the orchard-trees were in bloom; the cattle in the flowery meadows were deep in grass; the pigeons were sunning themselves on the farmhouse roofs, and the first early swallows were twittering under their eaves. 得 This beauty, home-like and familiar, Mr Milner was fond of contrasting with the vast moors that sweep desolate and brown around the huge 'buttress of Kinderscout in Derbyshire. These were easily reached by train; and the very mode of transit, swift and noisy, an apt embodiment of the untiring energy of the nineteenth century, enhanced to the lonely beholder their solitude and immobility. Having once,' he says, 'climbed to the tableland of these moors, you are in an isolation of solitude which can only be compared with that of mid-ocean.' Their heathy expanse is a world by itself, set apart and consecrated to solitude, but yet a world full of beauty. The keen bracing air is permeated by the scent of the gorse and wild-thyme; masses of cloud drift along the breezy sky, now casting deep shadows on the sombre sweep of heathland, and the next moment parting asunder to dart a gleam of brilliant windblown sunshine on the emerald strips of moss, the clumps of brown and green fern, and the gray weather-beaten crags that rise like landmarks from the deep-toned umber hue of the heath, The moor-birds rise from beside the path with a wild and piercing cry. The glimmer of the sunshine becomes more unfrequent; the hurrying clouds drift up into more compact masses; everything betokens the coming tempest. A few minutes more, and the moorlands, with their shifting lights and shadows, will be wrapped in a cloud of swirling mist and rain. With summer comes the hay-harvest in the beginning of July, the hottest time of the year; when, if the season be beneficent, we have bountiful outbursts of sunshine, and the scents of the rose-garden mingle with the fragrant breath of the new-mown hay. The most handsome wildflower of July is the foxglove. Its favourite habitat is the face of a steep ravine, where the bank is too precipitous to afford a footing to the birch and hazel that clothe its lower declivities. There, on the shallow soil, or in clefts of the outcropping rock, multitudes of foxgloves flourish, their pendent bells of purple waving in the breeze, or reflected in the still pools of the streamlet far below. There is no monotony in this blaze of purple beauty, which blends in admirably with the rich hues of the glen, with the fern and hazels, and the silvery stems of the birch-trees, and the tangle of wild-flowers about their roots, woodruff and wild-mint, and the gay willow-herb, and the humble little yellow tormentil. Towards the end of July, the birds, whose domestic duties are finished, and whose families are comfortably established in the world, cease to sing. The woods henceforth are comparatively mute, until the robin begins his autumn song; and from his Lancashire garden Mr Milner moved to the coast of Arran, and noted with some surprise that its northerly shores, which, he had supposed to be sterile, produced abundance of flowers. At the edge of a wood only a few yards from the water, and where the salt spray itself must often fall, I found,' he says, diminutive rose-bushes covered with ripe berries; the wild chrysanthemum, the purple vetch; the woodruff, tiny in size, but sweet as ever; and even the dainty forget-me-not; while the woodbine festoons the trees, climbing to a height of twenty feet.' t But more beautiful even than the flowers are the effects of sea and mountain. The sea, which is always in the foreground of the picture, is full of surprises, of infinite varieties, which often strike the beholder as inconceivably beautiful. Every change of the changeful weather has its own peculiar charm; and the soft gray September skies of Arran often brighten at sunset into stretches of lambent gold, resting on a bank of bright crimson, which passes on the far horizon into dusky purple;, and beneath that imperial pall, the heaving expanse of water, and the shallow pools left on the shore by the receding tide, gleam out as if touched with molten gold. The colouring is almost too intense to be steadily looked at. The grass and the shore-plants, and the weather-worn rocks, and the hills with their wild peaks standing out against the sky, all glow with a deep and yet subdued intensity of shade, which brightens the rose-red glimmer of the rock-pool at your feet. Up among the hills at the mouth of Glen Sannox, particularly towards twilight, the atmospheric changes are often very fine. Sheets of mist sweep around the peaks of Goatfell and its sister heights, which, like the sentinels of an enchanted land, loom, through the masses of gray vapour, indistinct, vast, and threatening. The gloom of night is beginning to overspread the landscape; but the sun has not yet set; and suddenly, as if by the touch of a magician's wand, the veil of mist is swept aside from the broad brow of Suidhe Fergus; a soft subdued glow of saffron suffuses the darkening landscape, brightening gradually into a full gush of sunlight. The slopes and gullies with which the sides of the hills are seamed are distinctly seen for a moment, brought prominently out by the flood of light. Then the gleam of sunshine fades as quickly as it came, the clouds gather thick and fast. over the shifting canvas, the wild west wind rushes down the gorge, hurrying mists efface the glowing picture, and far behind, strange sounds rushing down the unseen gullies with an almost human cadence,' bid the adventurous traveller a stormy good-night. Autumn in the Lancashire garden had its own peculiar pleasures. There were plentiful stores of fruit to be gathered in, and clumps of woodland that rivalled, with their purple and russetred and gold, the gayest hues of the parterre; and from amid the leafless boughs of a giant elm was heard the sweetest, most cheery sound which autumn has to give the clear whistle of the robin.' Halloween was kept as Shrovetide had been, by the youngsters of the family, with its own appropriate ceremonies. Chief among these was a great pail of water, which was set in the middle of the kitchen floor and filled with apples-' the ducking and splashing for which were a source November and December, with their long dark nights, and days dim with mist and fog, have a natural affinity with folklore, and Mr Milner tells us that the district around him, lonely and isolated, is still a stronghold of ancient superstitions. There are troops of harmless fairies little men,' as they are called-whom it is sometimes the height of good fortune to meet. Wonderful legends are told of the weary ploughman suddenly confronted on the upturned furrow by a tiny brown figure, who offered him a draught of ale in a nutshell; which the countryman accepting in simple good faith, found to be an earnest of all possible good things. ་ A mountainous country suffers less from the fury of the elements than a landscape whose chief beauty consists in its colouring, in the harmonious blending of wood and valley and meadow. The stormy winds of November had swept away the last lingering splendour of the autumn forests, but Mr Milner found the Lake country still pre-eminently beautiful. In sup port of his admiration of winter among these classical lakes and hills, he quotes an eloquent passage from Wordsworth's Description of the Country of the Lakes in the North of England:' The variety of winter-colouring in the hills is such, and so harmoniously preserved, that it leaves little cause of regret when the splendour of autumn is passed away. The oak coppices upon the sides of the mountain retain russet leaves; the birch stands conspicuous with its silver stem and puce-coloured twigs; the hollies, with green leaves and scarlet berries, have come forth to view from among the deciduous trees, whose summer foliage had concealed them; the ivy is now plentifully apparent upon the stems and boughs of the trees and among the lichencovered rocks. In place of the uniform summer green of the herbage and fern, many rich colours play into each other over the surface of the mountains-tawny green, olive, and brown, beds of withered fern and gray rocks being harmoniously blended together. It is, in fact, a perfect paradise of what painters call low tones,' no bright colours, but the soft subdued green and gray of mosses and lichens, and the faded. browns of grass and ferns in all varieties of shade. where our author found shelter for a few hours, the colour was deeper and warmer; for the crimson light of a frosty sunset filled the air, and harmonised with the cheerful farmyard sounds; the cocks were crowing, the oxen lowed from the courts, and the gladsome voices of women and children broke the wintry stillness. Every one This charming round of Country Pleasures: ends, as is meet, with Christmas and New Year, with plentiful decorations of mistletoe and holly, and plentiful good cheer on the board, and a round of kindly visits to neighbours, rich and poor alike. One of the latter, John the Mower, thus pronounced his eulogium on the happy Christmas-tide Ay, well-ay, to be sure if we could be ever as we are now, full of good meat and drink-meat and drink. The robin on the thorn, who has just had his dinner of crumbs from the window-sill, takes perchance the same materialistic view of Christmas as John the Mower; at all events, he also is happy, and undaunted by the cold, trills out upon the frosty air his clear, cheerful song, in which we hear an earnest and promise of the coming spring. To G. MUIR ESQR. Chief Manager, The humble petition of Ko Youk respectfully o sheweth to represent that have loyally, and various capacities since 1870 during which I invariably earned d the approval, and commende tions of all my superiors. That while several persons are now and then promoted gradually increasing in the subordnate; That in 1880 when I was proposed to station at Moulmein the best European Manager serving in the Moulmein niding and tumbling and getting up district I was selected by the Chief Manager again amid peals of jocund laughter; and far up in a still world of their own, the snows on the higher peaks of the everlasting hills reflected back in a thousand hues of beauty the smile of the sunset. Some blushed rosy red; others caught only a faint pink glow, which quickly faded into spectral blue; while others, again, glistened cold and bright, as if decked out in robes of shining silver. Mr R. S. Jones for the post as Head Clerk at Mr Gregory's Mill and I could act as Manager in any of the mills that are Trading in the Town of Moulmein I understand that my manager is prepared to reconsider the claims of all the subordnate who have not hitherto receive due pro motion in the service I therefore pray that my manager may carefully inquired of my approved past service and can foward my Certificate bound |