The Watch.

        In one spot only was the solemn monotony of the plain broken. Near the centre a small

solitary "kopje" rose. Alone it lay there, a heap of round ironstones piled one upon another, as over some giant's grave. Here and there a few tufts of grass or small succulent plants had sprung up among its stones, and on the very summit a clump of prickly-pears lifted their thorny arms, and reflected, as from mirrors, the moonlight on their broad fleshy leaves. At the foot of the "kopje" lay the homestead. First, the stone-walled "sheep kraals" and Kaffir huts; beyond them the dwelling-house--a square, red-brick building with thatched roof. Even on its bare red walls, and the wooden ladder that led up to the loft, the moonlight cast a kind of dreamy beauty, and quite etherealized the low brick wall that ran before the house, and which enclosed a bare patch of sand and two straggling sun-flowers. On the zinc roof of the great open waggon-house, on the roofs of the outbuildings that jutted from its side, the moonlight glinted with a quite peculiar brightness, till it seemed

that every rib in the metal was of burnished silver.

        Sleep ruled everywhere, and the homestead was not less quiet than the solitary plain.

        In the farm-house, on her great wooden bedstead, Tant' Sannie, the Boer-woman, rolled heavily in her sleep.

        She had gone to bed, as she always did, in her clothes, and the night was warm and the room close, and she dreamed bad dreams. Not of the ghosts and devils that so haunted her waking thoughts; not of her second husband, the consumptive Englishman, whose grave lay away beyond the ostrich-camps, nor of her first, the young Boer; but only of the sheep's trotters she had eaten for supper that night. She dreamed that one stuck fast in her throat, and she rolled her huge form from side to side, and snorted horribly.

        In the next room, where the maid had forgotten to close the shutter, the white moonlight fell in in a flood, and made it light as day.

There were two small beds against the wall. In one lay a yellow-haired child, with a low forehead and a face of freckles; but the loving moonlight hid defects here as elsewhere, and showed only the innocent face of a child in its first sweet sleep.

        The figure in the companion bed belonged of right to the moonlight, for it was of quite elfin-like beauty. The child had dropped her cover on the floor, and the moonlight looked in at the naked little limbs. Presently she opened her eyes and looked at the moonlight that was bathing her.

        "Em!" she called to the sleeper in the other bed; but received no answer. Then she drew the cover from the floor, turned her pillow, and pulling the sheet over her head, went to sleep again.

        Only in one of the outbuildings that jutted from the waggon-house there was some one who was not asleep. The room was dark; door and

shutter were closed; not a ray of light entered anywhere. The German overseer, to whom the room belonged, lay sleeping soundly on his bed in the corner, his great arms folded, and his bushy grey and black beard rising and falling on his breast. But one in the room was not asleep. Two large eyes looked about in the darkness, and two small hands were smoothing the patchwork quilt. The boy, who slept on a box under the window, had just awakened from his first sleep. He drew the quilt up to his chin, so that little peered above it but a great head of silky black curls and the two black eyes. He stared about in the darkness. Nothing was visible, not even the outline of one worm-eaten rafter, nor of the deal table, on which lay the Bible from which his father had read before they went to bed. No one could tell where the tool-box was, and where the fire-place. There was something very impressive to the child in the complete darkness.

        At the head of his father's bed hung a great

silver hunting watch. It ticked loudly. The boy listened to it, and began mechanically to count. Tick--tick--tick! one, two, three, four! He lost count presently, and only listened. Tick--tick--tick--tick!

        It never waited; it went on inexorably; and every time it ticked a man died! He raised himself a little on his elbow and listened. He wished it would leave off.

        How many times had it ticked since he came to lie down? A thousand times, a million times, perhaps.

        He tried to count again, and sat up to listen better.

        "Dying, dying, dying!" said the watch; "dying, dying, dying!"

        He heard it distinctly. Where were they going to, all those people?

        He lay down quickly, and pulled the cover up over his head: but presently the silky curls reappeared.

        "Dying, dying, dying!" said the watch; "dying, dying, dying!"

        He thought of the words his father had read that evening--"For wide is the gate, and broad is the way, that leadeth to destruction and many there be which go in thereat."

        "Many, many, many!" said the watch.

        "Because strait is the gate, and narrow is the way, that leadeth unto life, and few there be that find it."

        "Few, few, few!" said the watch.

        The boy lay with his eyes wide open. He saw before him a long stream of people, a great dark multitude, that moved in one direction; then they came to the dark edge of the world and went over. He saw them passing on before him, and there was nothing that could stop them. He thought of how that stream had rolled on through all the long ages of the past--how the old Greeks and Romans had gone over; the countless millions of China and India, they were

going over now. Since he had come to bed, how many had gone!

        And the watch said, "Eternity, eternity, eternity!"

        "Stop them! stop them!" cried the child.

        And all the while the watch kept ticking on; just like God's will, that never changes or alters, you may do what you please.

        Great beads of perspiration stood on the boy's forehead. He climbed out of bed and lay with his face turned to the mud floor.

        "Oh, God, God! save them!" he cried in agony. "Only some, only a few! Only for each moment I am praying here one!" He folded his little hands upon his head. "God! God! save them!"

        He grovelled on the floor.

        Oh, the long, long ages of the past, in which they had gone over! Oh, the long, long future, in which they would pass away! Oh,

God! the long, long, long eternity, which has no end!

        The child wept; and crept closer to the ground.

The Sacrifice.

before the door, out-stared by the sun, drooped their brazen faces to the sand; and the little cicada-like insects cried aloud among the stones of the "kopje."

        The Boer-woman, seen by daylight, was even less lovely than, when, in bed, she rolled and dreamed. She sat on a chair in the great front room, with her feet on a wooden stove, and wiped her flat face with the corner of her apron, and drank coffee, and in Cape Dutch swore that the beloved weather was damned. Less lovely, too, by daylight was the dead Englishman's child, her little step-daughter, upon whose freckles and low, wrinkled forehead the sunlight had no mercy.

        "Lyndall," the child said to her little orphan cousin, who sat with her on the floor threading beads, "how is it your beads never fall off your needle?"

        "I try," said the little one gravely, moistening her tiny finger. "That is why."

        The overseer, seen by daylight, was a huge German, wearing a shabby suit, and with a childish habit of rubbing his hands and nodding his head prodigiously when pleased at anything. He stood out at the kraals in the blazing sun, explaining to two Kaffer boys the approaching end of the world. The boys, as they cut the cakes of dung, winked at each other, and worked as slowly as they possibly could; but the German never saw it.

        Away, beyond the "kopje," Waldo his son herded the ewes and lambs--a small and dusty herd--powdered all over from head to foot with red sand, wearing a ragged coat and shoes of undressed leather, through whose holes the toes looked out. His hat was too large, and had sunk down to his eyes, concealing completely the silky black curls. It was a curious small figure. His flock gave him little trouble. It was too hot for them to move far; they gathered round every little milk-bush, as though they

hoped to find shade, and stood there motionless in clumps. He himself crept under a shelving rock that lay at the foot of the "kopje," stretched himself on his stomach, and waved his dilapidated little shoes in the air.

        Soon, from the blue bag where he kept his dinner, he produced a fragment of slate, an arithmetic, and a pencil. Proceeding to put down a sum with solemn and earnest demeanour, he began to add it up aloud: "Six and two is eight--and four is twelve--and two is fourteen--and four is eighteen." Here he paused. "And four is eighteen--and--four--is--eighteen." The last was very much drawled. Slowly the pencil slipped from his fingers, and the slate followed it into the sand. For a while he lay motionless, then began muttering to himself, folded his little arms, laid his head down upon them, and might have been asleep, but for the muttering sound that from time to time proceeded from him. A curious old ewe came to sniff at him; but it was

long before he raised his head. When he did, he looked at the far-off hills with his heavy eyes.

        "Ye shall receive--ye shall receive--shall, shall, shall," he muttered.

        He sat up then. Slowly the dulness and heaviness melted from his face; it became radiant. Mid-day had come now, and the sun's rays were poured down vertically; the earth throbbed before the eye.

        The boy stood up quickly, and cleared a small space from the bushes which covered it. Looking carefully, he found twelve small stones of somewhat the same size; kneeling down, he arranged them carefully on the cleared space in a square pile, in shape like an altar. Then he walked to the bag where his dinner was kept; in it was a mutton chop and a large slice of brown bread. The boy took them out and turned the bread over in his hand, deeply considering it. Finally he threw it away and walked to the altar with the meat, and laid it down on

the stones. Close by in the red sand he knelt down. Sure, never since the beginning of the world was there so ragged and so small a priest. He took off his great hat and placed it solemnly on the ground, then closed his eyes and folded his hands. He prayed aloud.

        "Oh, God, my Father, I have made Thee a sacrifice. I have only twopence, so I cannot buy a lamb. If the lambs were mine, I would give Thee one; but now I have only this meat; it is my dinner-meat. Please, my Father, send fire down from heaven to burn it. Thou hast said, Whosoever shall say unto this mountain, Be thou cast into the sea, nothing doubting, it shall be done. I ask for the sake of Jesus Christ. Amen."

        He knelt down with his face upon the ground, and he folded his hands upon his curls. The fierce sun poured down its heat upon his head and upon his altar. When he looked up he knew what he should see--the glory of God! For fear his very heart stood still, his breath

came heavily; he was half suffocated. He dared not look up. Then at last he raised himself. Above him was the quiet blue sky, about him the red earth; there were the clumps of silent ewes and his altar--that was all.

        He looked up--nothing broke the intense stillness of the blue overhead. He looked round in astonishment, then he bowed again, and this time longer than before.

        When he raised himself the second time all was unaltered. Only the sun had melted the fat of the little mutton chop, and it ran down upon the stones.

        Then, the third time he bowed himself. When at last he looked up, some ants had come to the meat on the altar. He stood up and drove them away. Then he put his hat on his hot curls, and sat in the shade. He clasped his hands about his knees. He sat to watch what would come to pass. The glory of the Lord God Almighty! He knew he should see it.

        "My dear God is trying me," he said; and he sat there through the fierce heat of the afternoon. Still he watched and waited when the sun began to slope, and when it neared the horizon and the sheep began to cast long shadows across the karro, he still sat there. He hoped when the first rays touched the hills till the sun dipped behind them and was gone. Then he called his ewes together, and broke down the altar, and threw the meat far, far away into the field.

        He walked home behind his flock. His heart was heavy. He reasoned so: "God cannot lie. I had faith. No fire came. I am like Cain--I am not His. He will not hear my prayer. God hates me."

        The boy's heart was heavy. When he reached the "kraal" gate the two girls met him.

        "Come," said the yellow-haired Em, "let us play 'coop.' There is still time before it gets quite dark. You, Waldo, go and hide on the

'kopje'; Lyndall and I will shut eyes here, and we will not look."

        The girls hid their faces in the stone wall of the sheep-kraal, and the boy clambered half way up the "kopje." He crouched down between two stones and gave the call. Just then the milk-herd came walking out of the cow-kraal with two pails. He was an ill-looking Kaffir.

        "Ah!" thought the boy, "perhaps he will die to-night, and go to hell! I must pray for him, I must pray!"

        Then he thought--"Where am I going to?" and he prayed desperately.

        "Ah! this is not right at all," little Em said, peeping between the stones, and finding him in a very curious posture. "What are you doing Waldo? It is not the play, you know. You should run out when we come to the white stone. Ah, you do not play nicely."

        "I--I will play nicely now," said the boy,

coming out and standing sheepishly before them; "I--I only forgot; I will play now."

        "He has been to sleep," said freckled Em.

        "No," said beautiful little Lyndall, looking curiously at him; "he has been crying."

        She never made a mistake.

The Confession.

        He turned up the brim of his great hat and looked at the moon, but most at the leaves of the prickly pear that grew just before him. They glinted, and glinted, and glinted, just

like his own heart--cold, so hard, and very wicked. His physical heart had pain also; it seemed full of little bits of glass, that hurt. He had sat there for half an hour, and he dared not go back to the close house.

        He felt horribly lonely. There was not one thing so wicked as he in all the world, and he knew it. He folded his arms and began to cry--not aloud; he sobbed without making any sound, and his tears left scorched marks where they fell. He could not pray; he had prayed night and day for so many months; and to-night he could not pray. When he left off crying, he held his aching head with his brown hands. If one might have gone up to him and touched him kindly, poor, ugly little thing! I think his heart was well nigh broken.

        With his swollen eyes he sat there on a flat stone at the very top of the "kopje"; and the tree, with every one of its wicked leaves, blinked, and blinked, and blinked at him.

Presently he began to cry again, and then stopped his crying to look at it. He was quiet for a long while, then he knelt up slowly and bent forward. There was a secret he had carried in his heart for a year. He had not dared to look at it; he had not whispered it to himself, but for a year he had carried it. "I hate God!" he said. The wind took the words and ran away with them, among the stones, and through the leaves of the prickly pear. He thought it died away half down the "kopje." He had told it now!

        "I love Jesus Christ, but I hate God."

        The wind carried away that sound as it had done the first. Then he got up and buttoned his old coat about him. He knew he was certainly lost now; he did not care. If half the world were to be lost, why not he too? He would not pray for mercy any more. Better so--better to know certainly. It was ended now. Better so.

        He began scrambling down the sides of the "kopje" to go home.

        Better so!--But oh, the loneliness, the agonized pain! for that night, and for nights on nights to come! The anguish that sleeps all day on the heart like a heavy worm, and wakes up at night to feed!

        There are some of us who in after years say to Fate, "Now deal us your hardest blow, give us what you will; but let us never again suffer as we suffered when we were children."

        The barb in the arrow of childhood's suffering is this--its intense loneliness, its intense agony.

CHAPTER II.

PLANS AND BUSHMAN-PAINTINGS.

and only the milk-bushes, like old hags, pointed their shrivelled fingers heavenward, praying for the rain that never came.

        It was on an afternoon of a long day in that thirsty summer, that on the side of the "kopje" furthest from the homestead the two girls sat. They were somewhat grown since the days when they played hide-and-seek there, but they were mere children still.

        Their dress was of dark coarse stuff; their common blue pinafores reached to their ankles, and on their feet they wore home-made "vel-schoen."

        They sat under a shelving rock, on the surface of which were still visible some old Bushman paintings, their red and black pigments having been preserved through long years from wind and rain by the overhanging ledge; grotesque oxen, elephants, rhinoceroses, and a one-horned beast, such as no man ever has seen or ever shall.

        The girls sat with their backs to the paintings. In their laps were a few fern and ice-plant leaves, which by dint of much searching they had gathered under the rocks.

        Em took off her big brown kappje and began vigorously to fan her red face with it; but her companion bent low over the leaves in her lap, and at last took up an ice-plant leaf and fastened it on to the front of her blue pinafore with a pin.

        "Diamonds must look as these drops do," she said, carefully bending over the leaf, and crushing one crystal drop with her delicate little finger. "When I," she said, "am grown up, I shall wear real diamonds, exactly like these in my hair."

        Her companion opened her eyes and wrinkled her low forehead.

        "Where will you find them, Lyndall? The stones are only crystals that we picked up yesterday. Old Otto says so."

        "And you think that I am going to stay here always?"

        The lip trembled scornfully.

        "Ah, no," said her companion. "I suppose some day we shall go somewhere; but now we are only twelve, and we cannot marry till we are seventeen. Four years, five--that is a long time to wait. And we might not have diamonds if we did marry."

        "And you think that I am going to stay here till then?"

        "Well, where are you going?" asked her companion.

        The girl crushed an ice-plant leaf between her fingers.

        "Tant' Sannie is a miserable old woman," she said. "Your father married her when he was dying, because he thought she would take better care of the farm, and of us, than an Englishwoman. He said we should be taught and sent to school. Now she saves every

farthing for herself, buys us not even one old book. She does not ill-use us--why? Because she is afraid of your father's ghost. Only this morning she told her Hottentot that she would have beaten you for breaking the plate, but that three nights ago she heard a rustling and a grunting behind the pantry door, and knew it was your father coming to 'spook' her. She is a miserable old woman," said the girl, throwing the leaf from her; "but I intend to go to school."

        "And if she won't let you?"

        "I shall make her."

        "How?"

        The child took not the slightest notice of the last question, and folded her small arms across her knees.

        "Why do you want to go, Lyndall?"

        "There is nothing helps in this world," said the child slowly, "but to be very wise, and to know everything--to be clever."

        "But I should not like to go to school!" persisted the small freckled face.

        "And you do not need to. When you are seventeen this Boer-woman will go; you will have this farm and everything that is upon it for your own; but I," said Lyndall, "will have nothing. I must learn."

        "Oh, Lyndall! I will give you some of my sheep," said Em, with a sudden burst of pitying generosity.

        "I do not want your sheep," said the girl slowly; "I want things of my own. When I am grown up," she added, the flush on her delicate features deepening at every word, "there will be nothing that I do not know. I shall be rich, very rich; and I shall wear, not only for best, but every day, a pure white silk, and little rose-buds, like the lady in Tant' Sannie's bedroom, and my petticoats will be embroidered, not only at the bottom, but all through."

        The lady in Tant' Sannie's bedroom was a gorgeous creature from a fashion-sheet, which the Boer-woman, somewhere obtaining, had pasted up at the foot of her bed, to be profoundly admired by the children.

        "It would be very nice," said Em; but it seemed a dream of quite too transcendent a glory ever to be realized.

        At this instant there appeared at the foot of the "kopje" two figures--the one, a dog, white and sleek, one yellow ear hanging down over his left eye; the other, his master, a lad of fourteen, and no other than the boy Waldo, grown into a heavy, slouching youth of fourteen. The dog mounted the "kopje" quickly, his master followed slowly. He wore an aged jacket much too large for him, and rolled up at the wrists, and, as of old, a pair of dilapidated "vel-schoens" and a felt hat. He stood before the two girls at last.

        "What have you been doing to-day?" asked

Lyndall, lifting her eyes to his face.

        "Looking after ewes and lambs below the dam. Here!" he said, holding out his hand awkwardly, "I brought them for you."

        There were a few green blades of tender grass.

        "Where did you find them?"

        "On the dam wall."

        She fastened them beside the leaf on her blue pinafore.

        "They look nice there," said the boy, awkwardly rubbing his great hands and watching her.

        "Yes; but the pinafore spoils it all; it is not pretty."

        He looked at it closely.

        "Yes, the squares are ugly; but it looks nice upon you--beautiful."

        He now stood silent before them, his great hands hanging loosely at either side.

        "Some one has come to-day," he mumbled out suddenly, when the idea struck him.

        "Who?" asked both girls.

        "An Englishman on foot."

        "What does he look like?" asked Em.

        "I did not notice; but he has a very large nose," said the boy slowly. "He asked the way to the house."

        "Didn't he tell you his name?"

        "Yes--Bonaparte Blenkins."

        "Bonaparte!" said Em, "why that is like the reel Hottentot Hans plays on the violin--

'Bonaparte, Bonaparte, my wife is sick;
In the middle of the week, but Sundays not,
I give her rice and beans for soup'--

        "There was a living man called Bonaparte once," said she of the great eyes.

        "Ah yes, I know," said Em--"the poor prophet whom the lions ate. I am always so sorry for him."

        Her companion cast a quiet glance upon her.

        "He was the greatest man who ever lived," she said--"the man I like best."

        "And what did he do?" asked Em, conscious that she had made a mistake, and that her prophet was not the man.

        "He was one man, only one," said her little companion slowly, "yet all the people in the world feared him. He was not born great, he was common as we are; yet he was master of the world at last. Once he was only a little child, then he was a lieutenant, then he was a general, then he was an emperor. When he said a thing to himself he never forgot it. He waited, and waited, and waited, and it came at last."

        "He must have been very happy," said Em.

        "I do not know," said Lyndall; "but he had what he said he would have, and that is better than being happy. He was their master, and all the people were white with fear of him. They joined together to fight him. He was

one and they were many, and they got him down at last. They were like the wild cats when their teeth are fast in a great dog, like cowardly wild cats," said the child, "they would not let him go. There were many; he was only one. They sent him to an island on the sea, a lonely island, and kept him there fast. He was one man, and they were many, and they were terrified at him. It was glorious!" said the child.

        "And what then?" said Em.

        "Then he was alone there in that island with men to watch him always," said her companion, slowly and quietly, "and in the long lonely nights he used to lie awake and think of the things he had done in the old days, and the things he would do if they let him go again. In the day when he walked near the shore it seemed to him that the sea all around him was a cold chain about his body pressing him to death."

        "And then?" said Em, much interested.

        "He died there in that island; he never got away."

        "It is rather a nice story," said Em; "but the end is sad."

        "It is a terrible, hateful ending," said the little teller of the story, leaning forward on her folded arms; "and the worst is, it is true. I have noticed," added the child very deliberately, "that it is only the made-up stories that end nicely; the true ones all end so."

        As she spoke the boy's dark, heavy eyes rested on her face.

        "You have read it, have you not?"

        He nodded. "Yes; but the brown history tells only what he did, not what he thought."

        "It was in the brown history that I read of him," said the girl; "but I know what he thought. Books do not tell everything."

        "No," said the boy, slowly drawing nearer to her and sitting down at her feet. "What you want to know they never tell."

        Then the children fell into silence, till Doss, the dog, growing uneasy at its long continuance, sniffed at one and the other, and his master broke forth suddenly,--

        "If they could talk, if they could tell us now!" he said, moving his hand out over the surrounding objects--"then we would know something. This 'kopje,' if it could tell us how it came here! The 'Physical Geography' says," he went on most rapidly and confusedly, "that what were dry lands now were once lakes; and what I think is this--these low hills were once the shores of a lake; this "kopje" is some of the stones that were at the bottom, rolled together by the water. But there is this--how did the water come to make one heap here alone, in the centre of the plain?" It was a ponderous question; no one volunteered an answer. "When I was small," said the boy, "I always looked at it and wondered, and I thought a great giant was buried under it.

Now I know the water must have done it; but how? It is very wonderful. Did one little stone come first, and stop the others as they rolled?" said the boy with earnestness, in a low voice, more as speaking to himself than to them.

        "Oh, Waldo, God put the little 'kopje' here," said Em with solemnity.

        "But how did He put it here?"

        "By wanting."

        "But how did the wanting bring it here?"

        "Because it did."

        The last words were uttered with the air of one who produces a clinching argument. What effect it had on the questioner was not evident, for he made no reply, and turned away from her.

        Drawing closer to Lyndall's feet, he said after a while, in a low voice,--

        "Lyndall, has it never seemed to you that the stones were talking with you? Sometimes," he added in a yet lower tone, "I lie under there

with my sheep, and it seems that the stones are really speaking--speaking of the old things, of the time when the strange fishes and animals lived that are turned into stone now, and the lakes were here; and then of the time when the little Bushmen lived here, so small and so ugly, and used to sleep in the wild dog holes, and in the 'sloots,' and eat snakes, and shoot the bucks with their poisoned arrows. It was one of them, one of these old wild Bushmen, that painted those," said the boy, nodding toward the pictures--"one who was different from the rest. He did not know why, but he wanted to make something beautiful--he wanted to make something, so he made these. He worked hard, very hard, to find the juice to make the paint; and then he found this place where the rocks hang over, and he painted them. To us they are only strange things, that make us laugh; but to him they were very beautiful."

        The children had turned round and looked at the pictures.

        "He used to kneel here naked, painting, painting, painting; and he wondered at the things he made himself," said the boy, rising and moving his hand in deep excitement. "Now the Boers have shot them all, so that we never see a little yellow face peeping out among the stones; and the wild bucks have gone, and those days, and we are here. But we will be gone soon, and only the stones will be on here, looking at everything like they look now. Of course I know," the fellow added slowly, "that it is I who am thinking, not they who are talking; but it seems as though it were them. Has it never seemed to you that things that do not live are talkig to you, Lyndall?"

        "No, it never seems so to me," she answered.

        The sun had dipped now below the hills, and the boy, suddenly remembering the ewes and lambs, started to his feet.

        "Let us also go to the house and see who has come," said Em, as the boy shuffled away to rejoin his flock, while Doss ran at his heels, snapping at the ends of the torn trousers as they fluttered in the wind.

CHAPTER III.

I WAS A STRANGER, AND YE TOOK ME IN.

        On the door-step stood the Boer-woman, a hand on each hip, her face red and fiery, her head nodding fiercely. At her feet sat the yellow Hottentot maid, her satellite, and around stood the black Kaffir maids, with blankets twisted round their half-naked figures. Two, who stamped mealies in a wooden block, held the great stampers in their hands, and stared stupidly at the object of attraction. It certainly was not to look at the old German overseer,

who stood in the centre of the group, that they had all gathered together. His salt-and-pepper suit, grizzly black beard, and grey eyes were as familiar to every one on the farm as the red gables of the homestead itself; but beside him stood the stranger, and on him all eyes were fixed. Ever and anon the new-comer cast a glance over his pendulous red nose to the spot where the Boer-woman stood, and smiled faintly.

        "I'm not a child," cried the Boer-woman, in low Cape Dutch, "and I wasn't born yesterday. No, by the Lord, no! You can't take me in! My mother didn't wean me on Monday. One wink of my eye, and I see the whole thing. I'll have no tramps sleeping on my farm," cried Tant' Sannie blowing. "No, by the Devil, no! not though he had sixty-times-six red noses."

        There the German overseer mildly interposed that the man was not a tramp, but a highly

respectable individual, whose horse had died by an accident three days before.

        "Don't tell me," cried the Boer-woman; "the man isn't born that can take me in. If he'd had money wouldn't he have bought a horse? Men who walk are thieves, liars, murderers, Rome's priests, seducers! I see the Devil in his nose!" cried Tant' Sannie shaking her fist at him; "and to come walking into the house of this Boer's child, and shaking hands as though he came on horseback! Oh, no, no!"

        The stranger took off his hat, a tall, battered chimney-pot, and disclosed a bald head, at the back of which was a little fringe of curled white hair; and he bowed to Tant' Sannie.

        "What does she remark, my friend?" he inquired, turning his cross-wise looking eyes on the old German.

        The German rubbed his old hands and hesitated.

        "Ah--well--ah--the--Dutch--you know--

do not like people who walk--in this country--ah!"

        "My dear friend," said the stranger, laying his hand on the German's arm, "I should have bought myself another horse, but crossing, five days ago, a full river, I lost my purse--a purse with five hundred pounds in it. I spent five days on the bank of the river trying to find it--couldn't. Paid a Kaffir nine pounds to go in and look for it at the risk of his life--couldn't find it."

        The German would have translated this information, but the Boer-woman gave no ear.

        "No, no; he goes to-night. See how he looks at me--a poor unprotected female! If he wrongs me, who is to do me right?" cried Tant' Sannie.

        "I think," said the German in an undertone, "if you didn't look at her quite so much it might be advisable. She--ah--she--might--imagine that you liked her too well,--in fact--ah--"

        "Certainly, my dear friend, certainly," said the stranger. "I shall not look at her."

        Saying this, he turned his nose full upon a small Kaffir of two years old. That small naked Kaffir became instantly so terrified that he fled to his mother's blanket for protection, howling horribly.

        Upon this the new-comer fixed his eyes pensively on the stamp-block, folding his hands on the head of his cane. His boots were broken, but he still had the cane of a gentleman.

        "Yo vaggabonds se Engelschman!" said Tant' Sannie, looking straight at him.

        This was a near approach to plain English; but the man contemplated the block abstractedly, wholly unconscious that any antagonism was being displayed toward him.

        "You might not be a Scotchman, or anything of that kind, might you?" suggested the German. "It is the English that she hates."

        "My dear friend," said the stranger, "I am

Irish every inch of me--father Irish, mother Irish. I've not a drop of English blood in my veins."

        "And you might not be married, might you?" persisted the German. "If you had a wife and children, now? Dutch people do not like those who are not married."

        "Ah," said the stranger, looking tenderly at the block, "I have a dear wife and three sweet little children--two lovely girls and a noble boy."

        This information having been conveyed to the Boer-woman, she, after some further conversation, appeared slightly mollified; but remained firm to her conviction that the man's designs were evil.

        "For, dear Lord!" she cried; "all Englishmen are ugly; but was there ever such a red-rag-nosed thing with broken boots and crooked eyes before. Take him to your room," she cried to the German; "but all the sin he does I lay at your door."

        The German having told him how matters were arranged, the stranger made a profound bow to Tant' Sannie and followed his host, who led the way to his own little room.

        "I thought she would come to her better self soon," the German said joyously. "Tant' Sannie is not wholly bad, far from it, far." Then seeing his companion cast a furtive glance at him, which he mistook for one of surprise, he added quickly, "Ah, yes, yes; we are all a primitive people here--not very lofty. We deal not in titles. Every one is Tanta and Oom--aunt and uncle. This may be my room," he said, opening the door. "It is rough, the room is rough; not a palace--not quite. But it may be better than the fields, a little better," he said, glancing round at his companion. "Come in, come in. There is something to eat--a mouthful: not the fare of emperors and kings; but we do not starve, not yet," he said, rubbing his hands together and looking

round with a pleased, half-nervous smile on his old face.

        "My friend, my dear friend," said the stranger, seizing him by the hand, "may the Lord bless you, the Lord bless and reward you--the God of the fatherless and the stranger. But for you I would this night have slept in the fields, with the dews of heaven upon my head."

        Late that evening Lyndall came down to the cabin with the German's rations. Through the tiny square window the light streamed forth, and without knocking she raised the latch and entered. There was a fire burning on the hearth, and it cast its ruddy glow over the little dingy room, with its worm-eaten rafters and mud floor, and broken white-washed walls. A curious little place, filled with all manner of articles. Next to the fire was a great tool-box; beyond that the little bookshelf with its well-worn books; beyond that, in the corner, a heap

of filled and empty grain-bags. From the rafters hung down straps, "reims," old boots, bits of harness, and a string of onions. The bed was in another corner, covered by a patchwork quilt of faded red lions, and divided from the rest of the room by a blue curtain, now drawn back. On the mantelshelf was an endless assortment of little bags and stones; and on the wall hung a map of South Germany, with a red line drawn through it to show where the German had wandered. This place was the one home the girls had known for many a year. The house where Tant' Sannie lived and ruled was a place to sleep in, to eat in, not to be happy in. It was in vain she told them they were grown too old to go there; every morning and evening found them there. Were there not too many golden memories hanging about the old place for them to leave it?

        Long winter nights, when they had sat round the fire and roasted potatoes, and asked riddles,

and the old man had told of the little German village, where, fifty years before, a little German boy had played at snowballs, and had carried home the knitted stockings of a little girl who afterward became Waldo's mother; did they not seem to see the German peasant girls walking about with their wooden shoes and yellow, braided hair, and the little children eating their suppers out of little wooden bowls when the good mothers called them in to have their milk and potatoes?

        And were there not yet better times than these? Moonlight nights, when they romped about the door, with the old man, yet more a child than any of them, and laughed, till the old roof of the waggon-house rang.

        Or, best of all, were there not warm, dark, starlight nights, when they sat together on the door-step, holding each other's hands, singing German hymns, their voices rising clear in the still night air--till the German would draw

away his hand suddenly to wipe quickly a tear the children must not see? Would they not sit looking up at the stars and talking of them--of the dear Southern Cross, red, fiery Mars, Orion, with his belt, and the Seven Mysterious Sisters--and fall to speculating over them? How old were they? Who dwelt in them? And the old German would say that perhaps the souls we loved lived in them; there, in that little twinkling point was perhaps the little girl whose stockings he had carried home; and the children would look up at it lovingly, and call it "Old Otto's star." Then they would fall to deeper speculations--of the times and seasons wherein the heavens shall be rolled together as a scroll, and the stars shall fall as a fig-tree casteth her untimely figs, and there shall be time no longer; "when the Son of man shall come in His glory, and all His holy angels with Him." In lower and lower tones they would talk, till at last they fell into whispers; then they would

wish good night softly, and walk home hushed and quiet.

        To-night, when Lyndall looked in, Waldo sat before the fire watching a pot which simmered there, with his slate and pencil in his hand; his father sat at the table buried in the columns of a three-weeks-old newspaper; and the stranger lay stretched on the bed in the corner, fast asleep, his mouth open, his great limbs stretched out loosely, betokening much weariness. The girl put the rations down upon the table, snuffed the candle, and stood looking at the figure on the bed.

        "Old Otto," she said presently, laying her hand down on the newspaper, and causing the old German to look up over his glasses, "how long did that man say he had been walking?"

        "Since this morning, poor fellow! A gentleman--not accustomed to walking--horse died--poor fellow!" said the German, pushing out his lip and glancing commiseratingly over his

spectacles in the direction of the bed where the stranger lay, with his flabby double chin, and broken boots through which the flesh shone.

        "And do you believe him, Uncle Otto?"

        "Believe him? why of course I do. He himself told me the story three times distinctly."

        "If," said the girl slowly, "he had walked for only one day his boots would not have looked so; and if--"

        "If!" said the German starting up in his chair, irritated that any one should doubt such irrefragable evidence--"if! Why, he told me himself! Look how he lies there," added the German pathetically, "worn out--poor fellow! We have something for him though," pointing with his forefinger over his shoulder to the saucepan that stood on the fire. "We are not cooks--not French cooks, not quite; but it's drinkable, drinkable, I think; better than nothing, I think," he added, nodding his head

in a jocund manner that evinced his high estimation of the contents of the saucepan and his profound satisfaction therein. "Bish! bish! my chicken," he said, as Lyndall tapped her little foot up and down upon the floor. "Bish! bish! my chicken; you will wake him."

        He moved the candle so that his own head might intervene between it and the sleeper's face; and, smoothing his newspaper, he adjusted his spectacles to read.

        The child's grey-black eyes rested on the figure on the bed, then turned to the German, then rested on the figure again.

        "I think he is a liar. Good night, Uncle Otto," she said slowly, turning to the door.

        Long after she had gone the German folded his paper up methodically, and put it in his pocket.

        The stranger had not awakened to partake of the soup, and his son had fallen asleep on the ground. Taking two white sheep-skins from

the heap of sacks in the corner, the old man doubled them up, and lifting the boy's head gently from the slate on which it rested, placed the skins beneath it.

        "Poor lambie, poor lambie!" he said, tenderly patting the great rough head; "tired is he!"

        He threw an overcoat across the boy's feet, and lifted the saucepan from the fire. There was no place where the old man could comfortably lie down himself, so he resumed his seat. Opening a much-worn Bible, he began to read, and as he read pleasant thoughts and visions thronged on him.

        "I was a stranger, and ye took me in," he read.

        He turned again to the bed where the sleeper lay.

        "I was a stranger."

        Very tenderly the old man looked at him. He saw not the bloated body nor the evil face of the man; but, as it were, under deep disguise

and fleshly concealment, the form that long years of dreaming had made very real to him. "Jesus, lover, and is it given to us, weak and sinful, frail and erring, to serve Thee, to take Thee in!" he said softly, as he rose from his seat. Full of joy, he began to pace the little room. Now and again as he walked he sang the lines of a German hymn, or muttered broken words of prayer. The little room was full of light. It appeared to the German that Christ was very near him, and that at almost any moment the thin mist of earthly darkness that clouded his human eyes might be withdrawn, and that made manifest of which the friends at Emmaus, beholding it, said, "It is the Lord!"

        Again, and yet again, through the long hours of that night, as the old man walked he looked up to the roof of his little room, with its blackened rafters, and yet saw them not. His rough, bearded face was illuminated with a radiant gladness; and the night was not shorter

to the dreaming sleepers than to him whose waking dreams brought heaven near.

        So quickly the night fled, that he looked up with surprise when at four o'clock the first grey streaks of summer dawn showed themselves through the little window. Then the old man turned to rake together the few coals that lay under the ashes, and his son, turning on the sheep-skins, muttered sleepily to know if it were time to rise.

        "Lie still, lie still! I would only make a fire," said the old man.

        "Have you been up all night?" asked the boy.

        "Yes; but it has been short, very short. Sleep again, my chicken; it is yet early."

        And he went out to fetch more fuel.

CHAPTER IV.

BLESSED IS HE THAT BELIEVETH.

        Presently he looked out, where, in the afternoon sunshine, a few half-grown ostriches might be seen wandering listlessly about, and then he looked in again at the little white-washed room, and at Lyndall, who sat looking at a book near

the door. Then he raised his chin and tried to adjust an imaginary shirt-collar. Finding none, he smoothed the little grey fringe at the back of his head, and began,--

        "You are a student of history, I perceive, my friend, from the study of these volumes that lie scattered about this apartment; this fact has been made evident to me."

        "Well--a little--perhaps--it may be," said the German meekly.

        "Being a student of history then," said Bonaparte, raising himself loftily, "you will doubtless have heard of my great, of my celebrated kinsman, Napoleon Bonaparte?"

        "Yes, yes," said the German, looking up.

        "I, sir," said Bonaparte, "was born at this hour, on an April afternoon, three-and-fifty years ago. The nurse, sir--she was the same who attended when the Duke of Sutherland was born,--brought me to my mother. 'There is only one name for this child,' she said: 'he has

the nose of his great kinsman;' and so Bonaparte Blenkins became my name--Bonaparte Blenkins. Yes, sir," said Bonaparte, "there is a stream on my maternal side that connects me with a stream on his maternal side."

        The German made a sound of astonishment.

        "The connection," said Bonaparte, "is one which could not be easily comprehended by one unaccustomed to the study of aristocratic pedigrees; but the connection is close."

        "Is it possible!" said the German, pausing in his work with much interest and astonishment. "Napoleon an Irishman!"

        "Yes," said Bonaparte, "on the mother's side, and that is how we are related. There wasn't a man to beat him," said Bonaparte, stretching himself--"not a man except the Duke of Wellington. And it's a strange coincidence," added Bonaparte, bending forward, "but he was a connection of mine. His nephew, the Duke of Wellington's nephew, married a cousin of

mine. She was a woman! See her at one of the court balls--amber-satin--daisies in her hair. Worth going a hundred miles to look at her! Often seen her there myself, sir!"

        The German moved the leather thongs in and out, and thought of the strange vicissitudes of human life, which might bring the kinsman of dukes and emperors to his humble room.

        Bonaparte appeared lost among old memories.

        "Ah, that Duke of Wellington's nephew!" he broke forth suddenly; "many's the joke I've had with him. Often came to visit me at Bonaparte Hall. Grand place I had then--park, conservatory, servants. He had only one fault, that Duke of Wellington's nephew," said Bonaparte, observing that the German was deeply interested in every word: "he was a coward--what you might call a coward. You've never been in Russia, I suppose?" said Bonaparte, fixing his crosswise-looking eyes on the German's face.

        "No, no," said the old man humbly. "France, England, Germany, a little in this country; it is all I have travelled."

        "I, my friend," said Bonaparte, "I have been in every country in the world, and speak every civilized language, excepting only Dutch and German. I wrote a book of my travels--noteworthy incidents. Publisher got it--cheated me out of it. Great rascals those publishers! Upon one occasion the Duke of Wellington's nephew and I were travelling in Russia. All of a sudden one of the horses dropped down dead as a doornail. There we were--cold night--snow four feet thick--great forest--one horse not being able to move the sledge--night coming on--wolves.

        "'Spree!' says the Duke of Wellington's nephew.

        "'Spree, do you call it?' says I. 'Look out.'

        "There, sticking out under a bush, was nothing less than the nose of a bear. The Duke

of Wellington's nephew was up a tree like a shot; I stood quietly on the ground, as cool as I am at this moment, loaded my gun, and climbed up the tree. There was only one bough.

        "'Bon,' said the Duke of Wellington's nephew, 'you'd better sit in front.'

        "'All right,' said I; 'but keep your gun ready. There are more coming.' He'd got his face buried in my back.

        "'How many are there?' said he.

        "'Four,' said I.

        "'How many are there now?' said he.

        "'Eight,' said I.

        "'How many are there now?' said he.

        "'Ten,' said I.

        "'Ten! ten!' said he; and down goes his gun.

        "'Wallie,' I said, 'what have you done? We're dead men now!'

        "'Bon, my old fellow,' said he, 'I couldn't help it; my hands trembled so!'

        "'Wall,' I said, turning round and seizing his hand, 'Wallie, my dear lad, good-bye. I'm not afraid to die. My legs are long--they hang down--the first bear that comes and I don't hit him, off goes my foot. When he takes it I shall give you my gun and go. You may yet be saved; but tell, oh, tell Mary-Ann that I thought of her, that I prayed for her.'

        "'Good-bye, old fellow!' said he.

        "'God bless you!' said I.

        "By this time the bears were sitting in a circle all around the tree. Yes," said Bonaparte impressively, fixing his eyes on the German, "a regular, exact, circle. The marks of their tails were left in the snow, and I measured it afterward; a drawing-master couldn't have done it better. It was that saved me. If they'd rushed on me at once, poor old Bon would never have been here to tell this story. But they came on, sir, systematically, one by one. All the rest sat on their tails and waited. The first fellow came

up, and I shot him; the second fellow--I shot him; the third--I shot him. At last the tenth came; he was the biggest of all--the leader, you may say.

        "'Wal,' I said, 'give me your hand. My fingers are stiff with the cold; there is only one bullet left. I shall miss him. While he is eating me you get down and take your gun; and live, dear friend, live to remember the man who gave his life for you!' By that time the bear was at me. I felt his paw on my trousers.

        "'Oh, Bonnie! Bonnie!' said the Duke of Wellington's nephew. But I just took my gun and put the muzzle to the bear's ear--over he fell--dead!"

        Bonaparte Blenkins waited to observe what effect his story had made. Then he took out a dirty white handkerchief and stroked his forehead, and more especially his eyes.

        "It always affects me to relate that adventure," he remarked, returning the handkerchief to his

pocket. "Ingratitude--base, vile ingratitude--is recalled by it! That man, that man, who but for me would have perished in the pathless wilds of Russia, that man in the hour of my adversity forsook me. Yes," said Bonaparte, "I had money, I had lands; I said to my wife, 'There is Africa, a struggling country; they want capital; they want men of talent; they want men of ability to open up that land. Let us go.'

        "I bought eight thousand pounds' worth of machinery--winnowing, plowing, reaping-machines; I loaded a ship with them. Next steamer I came out--wife, children, all. Got to the Cape. Where is the ship with the things? Lost--gone to the bottom! And the box with the money? Lost--nothing saved!

        "My wife wrote to the Duke of Wellington's nephew; I didn't wish her to; she did it without my knowledge.

        "What did the man whose life I saved do? Did he send me thirty thousand pounds? say, 'Bonaparte, my brother, here is a crumb?' No; he sent me nothing.

        "My wife said, 'Write.' I said, 'Mary Ann, NO. While these hands have power to work, NO. While this frame has power to endure, NO. Never shall it be said that Bonaparte Blenkins asked of any man.'"

        The man's noble independence touched the German.

        "Your case is hard; yes, that is hard," said the German, shaking his head.

        Bonaparte took another draught of the soup, leaned back against the pillows, and sighed deeply.

        "I think," he said after a while, rousing himself, "I shall now wander in the benign air, and taste the gentle cool of evening. The stiffness hovers over me yet; exercise is beneficial."

        So saying, he adjusted his hat carefully on

the bald crown of his head, and moved to the door. After he had gone the German sighed again over his work--

        "Ah, Lord! So it is! Ah!"

        He thought of the ingratitude of the world.

        "Uncle Otto," said the child in the doorway, "did you ever hear of ten bears sitting on their tails in a circle?"

        "Well, not of ten exactly: but bears do attack travellers every day. It is nothing unheard-of," said the German. "A man of such courage too! Terrible experience that!"

        "And how do we know that the story is true, Uncle Otto?"

        The German's ire was roused.

        "That is what I do hate!" he cried. "Know that is true! How do you know that anything is true? Because you are told so. If we begin to question everything, wanting proof, proof, proof, what will we have to believe left? How do you know the angel opened the prison-

door for Peter, except that Peter said so? How do you know that God talked to Moses, except that Moses wrote it? That is what I hate!"

        The girl knit her brows. Perhaps her thoughts made a longer journey than the German dreamed of; for, mark you, the old dream little how their words and lives are texts and studies to the generation that shall succeed them. Not what we are taught, but what we see, makes us, and the child gathers the food on which the adult feeds to the end.

        When the German looked up next there was a look of supreme satisfaction in the little mouth and the beautiful eyes.

        "What dost see, chicken?" he asked.

        The child said nothing, and an agonizing shriek was borne on the afternoon breeze.

        "Oh, God! my God! I am killed!" cried the voice of Bonaparte, as he, with wide open mouth and shaking flesh, fell into the room, followed by

a half-grown ostrich, who put its head in at the door, opened its beak at him, and went away.

        "Shut the door! shut the door! As you value my life, shut the door!" cried Bonaparte, sinking into a chair, his face blue and white, with a greenishness about the mouth. "Ah, my friend," he said tremulously, "eternity has looked me in the face! My life's thread hung upon a cord! The valley of the shadow of death!" said Bonaparte, seizing the German's arm.

        "Dear, dear, dear!" said the German, who had closed the lower half of the door, and stood much concerned beside the stranger, "you have had a fright. I never knew so young a bird to chase before; but they will take dislikes to certain people. I sent a boy away once because a bird would chase him. Ah, dear, dear!"

        "When I looked round," said Bonaparte, "the red and yawning throat was above me, and the reprehensible paw raised to strike me.

My nerves," said Bonaparte, suddenly growing faint, "always delicate--highly strung--are broken--broken! You could not give a little wine, a little brandy my friend?"

        The old German hurried away to the bookshelf, and took from behind the books a small bottle, half of whose contents he poured into a cup. Bonaparte drained it eagerly.

        "How do you feel now?" asked the German, looking at him with much sympathy.

        "A little, slightly, better."

        The German went out to pick up the battered chimney-pot which had fallen before the door.

        "I am sorry you got the fright. The birds are bad things till you know them," he said kindly, as he put the hat down.

        "My friend," said Bonaparte, holding out his hand, "I forgive you; do not be disturbed. Whatever the consequences, I forgive you. I know, I believe, it was with no ill-intent that

you allowed me to go out. Give me your hand. I have no ill-feeling."

        "You are very kind," said the German, taking the extended hand, and feeling suddenly convinced that he was receiving magnanimous forgiveness for some great injury, "you are very kind."

        "Don't mention it," said Bonaparte.

        He knocked out the crown of his caved-in old hat, placed it on the table before him, leaned his elbows on the table and his face in his hands, and contemplated it.

        "Ah, my old friend," he thus apostrophized the hat, "you have served me long, you have served me faithfully, but the last day has come. Never more shall you be borne upon the head of your master. Never more shall you protect his brow from the burning rays of summer or the cutting winds of winter. Henceforth bare-headed must your master go. Good-bye, good-bye, old hat!"

        At the end of this affecting appeal the German rose. He went to the box at the foot of his bed; out of it he took a black hat, which had evidently been seldom worn and carefully preserved.

        "It's not exactly what you may have been accustomed to," he said nervously, putting it down beside the battered chimney-pot, "but it might be of some use--a protection to the head, you know."

        "My friend," said Bonaparte, "you are not following my advice; you are allowing yourself to be reproached on my account. Do not make yourself unhappy. No; I shall go bare-headed."

        "No, no, no!" cried the German energetically. "I have no use for the hat, none at all. It is shut up in the box."

        "Then I will take it, my friend. It is a comfort to one's own mind when you have unintentionally injured any one to make reparation. I know the feeling. The hat may not

be of that refined cut of which the old one was, but it will serve, yes, it will serve. Thank you," said Bonaparte, adjusting it on his head, and then replacing it on the table. "I shall lie down now and take a little repose," he added; "I much fear my appetite for supper will be lost."

        "I hope not, I hope not," said the German, reseating himself at his work, and looking much concerned as Bonaparte stretched himself on the bed and turned the end of the patchwork quilt over his feet.

        "You must not think to make your departure not for many days," said the German presently. "Tant' Sannie gives her consent, and--"

        "My friend," said Bonaparte, closing his eyes sadly, "you are kind; but were it not that to-morrow is the Sabbath, weak and trembling as I lie here, I would proceed on my way. I must seek work; idleness but for a day is

painful. Work, labour--that is the secret of all true happiness!"

        He doubled the pillow under his head, and watched how the German drew the leather thongs in and out.

        After a while Lyndall silently put her book on the shelf and went home, and the German stood up and began to mix some water and meal for roaster-cakes. As he stirred them with his hands he said,--

        "I make always a double supply on Saturday night; the hands are then free as the thoughts for Sunday."

        "The blessed Sabbath," said Bonaparte.

        There was a pause. Bonaparte twisted his eyes without moving his head, to see if supper were already on the fire.

        "You must sorely miss the administration of the Lord's word in this desolate spot," added Bonaparte. "Oh, how love I Thine house, and the place where Thine honour dwelleth!"

        "Well, we do; yes," said the German; "but we do our best. We meet together, and I--well, I say a few words, and perhaps they are not wholly lost, not quite."

        "Strange coincidence," said Bonaparte; "my plan always was the same. Was in the Free State once--solitary farm--one neighbour. Every Sunday I called together friend and neighbour, child and servant, and said, 'Rejoice with me, that we may serve the Lord,' and then I addressed them. Ah, those were blessed times," said Bonaparte; "would they might return."

        The German stirred at the cakes, and stirred, and stirred, and stirred. He could give the stranger his bed, and he could give the stranger his hat, and he could give the stranger his brandy; but his Sunday service!

        After a good while he said,

        "I might speak to Tant' Sannie; I might

arrange; you might take the service in my place, if it--"

        "My friend," said Bonaparte, "it would give me the profoundest felicity, the most unbounded satisfaction; but in these worn-out habiliments, in these deteriorated garments, it would not be possible, it would not be fitting that I should officiate in service of One whom, for respect, we shall not name. No, my friend, I will remain here; and, while you are assembling yourselves together in the presence of the Lord, I, in my solitude, will think of and pray for you. No; I will remain here!"

        It was a touching picture--the solitary man there praying for them. The German cleared his hands from the meal, and went to the chest from which he had taken the black hat. After a little careful feeling about, he produced a black cloth coat, trowsers, and waistcoat, which he laid on the table, smiling knowingly. They

were of new shining cloth, worn twice a year, when he went to the town to "nachtmaal." He looked with great pride at the coat as he unfolded it and held it up.

        "It's not the latest fashion, perhaps, not a West End cut, not exactly; but it might do; it might serve at a push. Try it on, try it on!" he said, his old grey eyes twinkling with pride.

        Bonaparte stood up and tried on the coat. It fitted admirably; the waistcoat could be made to button by ripping up the back, and the trowsers were perfect; but below were the ragged boots. The German was not disconcerted. Going to the beam where a pair of top-boots hung, he took them off, dusted them carefully, and put them down before Bonaparte. The old eyes now fairly brimmed over with sparkling enjoyment.

        "I have only worn them once. They might serve; they might be endured."

        Bonaparte drew them on and stood upright, his head almost touching the beams. The German looked at him with profound admiration. It was wonderful what a difference feathers made in the bird.

CHAPTER V.

SUNDAY SERVICES.