chance. Every minute's a chance. Don't go, don't go. Stop with me, for heaven's sake, and if we must die, let's die together."

"No, no," Harry answered in a resolute voice. "You've got half an hour's purchase of life better than I have, now, Tennant. For Olga's sake, you must let me go. For Olga's sake, you must try to save yourself."

"Never," Alan cried, firmly and hastily. "Not even for Olga's sake! Never! Never!"

At that moment, a loud shout of inquiry resounded over the mud flats! A noise of men! A glimmer of lanterns! Alan seized his friend, and lifted him in his arms.

"Saved! Saved!" he cried. "Shout, Harry! Shout! Shout, shout, my dear, dear Harry!"

Harry shouted aloud with a long wild cry. It was the despairing cry of a dying man, and it echoed and reëchoed along the undulating mud flats.

Alan lighted the wick, which he had held all this time for dryness in his teeth, and fitted it once more into the crack of the pole. Harry waved it madly about over his head. One moment more of deadly suspense. Then an answering cry told them at last that the men with the lanterns saw them and heard them.

Next instant, the men were on the brink of the mud, and the light of the lanterns poured full upon them.

A voice very different from that of their friend the mud angler shouted aloud in a commanding tone, "Shove off the raft! Look out for your heads there!"

Before they knew exactly what it was that was happening, a great square raft, roughly improvised from two cottage doors, nailed together by crosspieces, floated on the stream full in front of them; and Alan, scrambling on to it with a violent struggle, lifted up the faint and weary Harry in his arms to the dry and solid place of safety.

DINNERS.

BY OWEN MEREDITH.

(From "Lucile.")

O HOUR of all hours, the most blessed upon earth,
Blessed hour of our dinners!

The land of his birth;

The face of his first love; the bills that he owes;
The twaddle of friends and the venom of foes;
The sermon he heard when to church he last went;
The money he borrowed, the money he spent; -
All of these things a man, I believe, may forget
And not be the worse for forgetting; but yet
Never, never, oh never! earth's luckiest sinner
Hath unpunished forgotten the hour of his dinner!
Indigestion, that conscience of every bad stomach,
Shall relentlessly gnaw and pursue him with some ache
Or some pain, and trouble, remorseless, his best ease,
As the Furies once troubled the sleep of Orestes.

We may live without poetry, music, and art;

We

may

live without conscience, and live without heart; We may live without friends; we may live without books; But civilized man cannot live without cooks.

He may live without books, what is knowledge but grieving?
He may live without hope, what is hope but deceiving?
He may live without love, what is passion but pining?
But where is the man that can live without dining?

A DOG OF FLANDERS.

A STORY OF NOËL.

BY OUIDA.

[LOUISE DE LA RAMÉE, whose pen name is Ouida, an English novelist, was born at Bury St. Edmund, in 1840. She is of French extraction, and is a writer of undoubted genius and originality. Her childhood was spent in London, where at an early age she began to contribute articles to periodical literature. She later removed to Italy, and now makes her home in Florence. Her writings, which are very numerous, include: "Granville de Vigne (1863), "Held in Bondage" (1863), “Strathmore" (1865), “Under Two Flags"

(1867), "Puck" (1870), "Pascarel" (1873), "In a Winter City" (1876), "Friendship' (1878), "Moths" (1880), "Princess Napraxine" (1884), “A House Party" (1886), "Don Gesnaldo" (1890), "The New Priesthood" (1893); and " Views and Opinions " (1895), "Wanda" (1896), and "Muriella" (1897).]

NELLO and Patrasche were left all alone in the world.

They were friends in a friendship closer than brotherhood. Nello was a little Ardennois; Patrasche was a big Fleming. They were both of the same age by length of years, yet one was still young, and the other was already old. They had dwelt together almost all their days: both were orphaned and destitute, and owed their lives to the same hand. It had been the beginning of the tie between them, their first bond of sympathy; and it had strengthened day by day, and had grown with their growth, firm and indissoluble, until they loved one another very greatly. . . .

Noël was close at hand.

The weather was very wild and cold. The snow was six feet deep, and the ice was firm enough to bear oxen and men upon it everywhere. At this season the little village was always gay and cheerful. At the poorest dwelling there were possets and cakes, joking and dancing, sugared saints, and gilded Jésus. The merry Flemish bells jingled everywhere on the horses; everywhere within doors some well-filled soup pot sang and smoked over the stove; and everywhere over the snow without laughing maidens pattered in bright kerchiefs and stout kirtles, going to and from the mass. Only in the little hut it was very dark and very cold.

Nello and Patrasche were left utterly alone; for one night in the week before the Christmas Day, Death entered there, and took away from life forever old Jehan Daas, who had never known of life aught save its poverty and its pains. He had long been half dead, incapable of any movement except a feeble gesture, and powerless for anything beyond a gentle word; and yet his loss fell on them both with a great horror in it. They mourned him passionately. He had passed away from them in his sleep, and when in the gray dawn they learned their bereavement, unutterable solitude and desolation seemed to close around them. He had long been only a poor, feeble, paralyzed old man, who could not raise a hand in their defense, but he had loved them well; his smile had always welcomed their return. They mourned for him unceasingly, refusing to