thought of rushing out madly into the storm and hiding in the woods came across her. Surely it was better to fall into the hands of God than into the hands of man. But the wind

"I shall never forget you," he said; "I will remember you till the hour of my death. One day I hope to see you again. Good-by!"

Queen wished that she could tell him how much he had been to her; how he had opened a new world, new thoughts, new views of life. How dull and bare and colorless existence would be now to her in that lonely house! She felt it all, but she could not put it into words. She could only falter, "I am sorry-so sorry you must go."

Then she looked after the solitary figure as he turned into the road, where the rain-drops already began to crawl in the yellow dust, with an aching heart and a sudden burst of sobs. The interest and the charm of life were over. For to such fine natures as this young girl's there is always a craving for something to do or bear. It was of such stuff the martyrs were made who stood jubilant in the flame, knowing it for a chariot of fire sent to bear them to their waiting Lord.

When she felt the cold drops pattering on her forehead she turned to the kitchen and stood watching Maum Rina in a dreary way as on that first night. She looked thinner and paler, for she had been using up her vitality at a rapid rate since then. Some sudden hunger for the affection she had never received from father or mother made her cry out, "Do you love me, Maum Rina ?"

"Sakes alive!" said Rina, in a startled kind of way; "Inussed yer, an it stans to nature dat I tinks a heap on yer. But lovin! Ye sce, chile, I'se been de mudder ob six livin chilen, an ebbery one ob dem cept Sip bin done sole away from me. God didn't took em, Miss Queen. He gin em to me; He lef em in my hans-but Marse Bevil wanted money. I tell ye, honey, ebbery one dat was took gin me a blow-a blow right on de heart, chile-so dat now dis poor old heart hain't got no life in it; 'tain't gwine to set itself on yethly tings agin. Tank de Lord it's sot on Him, what can't be sole or took away."

So Queen turned away comfortless and went and sat in her mother's room, for a distant thunderous roll crept slowly nearer, and a sudden zigzag stream of light tore open the bosom of a violet-cloud. There was light and a cheerful fire at least; for Mrs. Ward shivered even on this July night, and liked to look at the blaze. She shivered with something more than cold to night, and said once in a while,

"Your father's coming, Queen."

Queen knew it well, and the thought vibrated through her gloomy reverie like the thunder through the glooming sky. The hour of reckoning was drawing on, and she must give an account of her stewardship. Sometimes a weak VOL. XXXII.-No. 192.-3 F

clamorous hands, that it seemed some condemned spirit was abroad-some lost one that the lightning pursued with vengeful glance, that the thunder called after with terrific voice. So she shrank nearer the cheerful fire again, and took up one of her mother's books, while the slow moments ticked on.

At last a door crashed open, and a wind warm and strong swept in and put out the light.

Queen stood up: he was coming now, she knew, with a stumbling, unsteady step. He had fortified himself against the stormy night with some sort of liquid poison, and it was raging in his veins now. She knew it, yet she stood up palefaced, shining-eyed to meet her fate. Some muttered oaths shivered the silence in the pauses of the storm. How long he was in coming! Queen had time to light the candle again at the dying embers that she might look at his face.

A pale fixed face had Bevil Ward, framed in half curled locks of iron-gray hair. He did not flush with drink like other men, but grew pallid and fierce. His wife half rose to meet him, but he never touched her hand or met her eye. He took Queen's shoulder in a grasp that felt like an iron vice, and asked "Where is Sip ?"

He did not wait for an answer, but went on with an oath, "I can tell you; he's with the Yankees. That is what brought me home. Riding on my horse, they told me, with dispatches from a Yankee captain sick at my house. One of our spies brought the news. Did you know it, girl?"

"Yes, I knew it," said Queen, quietly.

There was no need for explanation now. The man's face grew almost livid in his rage.

"What! you dare to own it!—a daughter of mine! such a traitor, such a daring devil as that! Where is your Yankee Captain? Where have you hidden him?"

"He is not hidden; he is gone," faltered Queen, trembling in her father's grasp. "Then go after him!" yelled the infuriated man as he hurried her out to the door.

A quick thrust into the darkness, and she heard the bolts crash in their places, and felt the rain falling chill on her face. How horrible it all was! Some terrible dream, perhaps, from which she could wake to find herself in her own snug little bed. But that thunder was real enough, and made her cower to the very ground; and the flash of lightning that followed showed her the trees all dripping and shining with the rain, the paths turned to brooks, and a night full of black shadows and solitude. She looked up to a sky that was all darkness, save when it was rent with angry flame, for some helper in time of need, and some of old Rina's verses came to her: "Though I pass through the deep waters." She took courage, and waded through the miry

straw.

When she woke again she thought it must be a dream, for she lay in her own little bed. Storm and wind and rain were past, and a warm sun stretched its golden fingers of light upon her bed to meet her own. But how transparent her hands were, and why did her mother sit there in a black dress? Which was the dream? she wondered.

"Oh, my Lord He makes a way,
Oh, my Jesus makes a way,
Out ob trubbles into glory;
Out ob de darkness into day!"

KATE.

HE sat at the piano practicing an aria, her

S feath

But when Maum Rina came in she whispered, faintly, “Why does mamma sit there? Am I dreaming?"

Then Mrs. Ward seemed to put her handkerchief to her face and go out.

"Yes, chile, pears as ef it's best ye should know all, an I'se studyin de right way to tell yer. Yer par he wasn't lamb-like never, an he was blazin dat night-never mind, ye recollect! He was ridin like mad arter de Yankee captain before light next day-I tought ye was lost for sure, and yer mar tuk on mighty; but I foun ye by de Lord's help-yes, I foun ye, but ye was ragin wid fever, an ye's jist come to. Yer ma's done watched ye tender, and she loves yer I reckon."

It was a great comfort to poor Queen to hear this. But she found it to be true, only she wondered why her mother cried so much.

A few days after, Rina said, "We isn't Secesh no more. We swears by the Stripes an Stars now, for de Yanks hab got de place."

"And my father?" said Queen, with a still sinking heart.

"Well, honey, some falls in ebery battle; he was a brave man was Marse Bevil."

Queen knew the full meaning of the word was. She knew that her father had forever passed from armed ranks, that he had fought his last battle, and could never be a part of the busy moving world again. "He was;" that was all.

"We's free colored folks now," continued Rina, with an important air; "but I'se too ole to larn new tricks. I'se sarved de Wards allers, an I reckon I can sarve de Lord in ole Virginny as well as anywhar."

"And Sip?" asked Queen, with a wondering fright about what they would do without servants

or money.

"Oh Sip, he's free, ye know, an has a right to hisself; but he's a mighty good-principled nigga. He say he gwine hire out an gin half his wage to Miss Clara, now Massa gone. I put dem ar principles in Sip, an he done keep em well."

ering into the merest echoes of sweet sound, till the gamut seemed like nothing so much as a Jacob's ladder over which angels ascended and descended.

"I should think it was a lark, if it weren't Kate," said Hector, who had been listening some minutes unperceived. She ceased in the midst of a trill, such as the brown thrush extemporizes all summer long, as if he could never order it to his mind.

"There, you've broken the spell," said she; "I've been playing hide-and-seek with that trill the whole morning; now I haven't breath enough left to follow it up."

"If you had succeeded," he answered, “you would have wept, like Alexander, because there were no more trills to conquer."

"I should have turned myself to conquering circumstances, in that ease."

"Which ones in particular?"

"Mrs. Dewitt has been giving me a lesson in propriety," said Kate, laughing, with one hand still wandering mutely over the key-board, as if in search of some eluding harmony. "She says

she says the most absurd things, Hector; she says if I stay here it must be as-as-"

"My wife." The color blossomed on his check, the sober brown eyes put on a smile, the lips bent to her forehead.

"I am ready, Kate," he murmured. "But, Hector, I do not love you," she replied, looking up in perplexity; "do I?"

He held her hand a breathing space, while the color drifted away like a sunset flame. "I should think not," he said, slowly; "we must arrange some other way."

And thus Kate went to live with Mrs. Dewitt, and Hector sailed captain of the Coquette.

Fourteen years before, Hector's mother, Mrs. Holland, had taken a child of six from the workhouse, to run errands and do little odd trifles, intending to bring her up as a model servant. But Providence had ordained her for other things. One morning, after dusting the parlor, she lingered, loth to retire to the kitchen, for whose

"With you, any where," said the child, a heart-welcome shining in her eyes, and a great

ens; above all, the sweet-faced lady, pictured such a vivid contrast to the scullery, brightened only by pewter and fresh paint, redolent of boil

Then, too, she reflected that she was not act

Perhaps if Mr. Holland had lived a few years longer he would have extricated himself from his embarrassments, and his estate would, without doubt, have been divided between Kate and Hector; but his sudden death, on the brink of a great financial earthquake, developed other events.

The home to which Kate went was as comfortable and far gayer than that she had left, but she soon began to feel that it was not her own. Somehow of other the hands of friendship are colder than those of love; the blood doesn't seem to travel to the fingers' ends often enough. She had been taken so unreservedly into the hearts of her dead friends that, till now, she had been at a loss to know the odds between ownership or adoption; here, it was sufficiently manifested. Mrs. Dewitt had daughters of her own, and though she was never unkind or grudging, still there was a strange want of tact in all she said or did. Kate missed Mr. Holland's kind consideration, she missed being "the person of the house," she missed entire freedom, and, if the truth must be told, she missed Hector. Above all, Hector's words puzzled her; they repeated themselves at most extraordinary moments, "I am ready, Kate." When she sang, they pushed out the original lines of the ballad, and only an effort of will prevented her from uttering them; sometimes occurring to her in seasons of sadness, they never failed to impart a warmth and thrill like that of spring: it was an Ave which she breathed silently to exorcise discontent. What if he really did love her, and it was no fable with which she amused herself? What if he had not meant merely to sacrifice himself, because she had offered herself to him? Those were queries worth solving; worth going to Delphi to consult the oracle upon. But then she had-it was undeniable that she had-in a manner provoked his response, and she questioned if his words were any other than the situation of things would have called forth from any generous and gallant gentleman; still, his air had not been that of a martyr, though she knew that there are noble souls who carry all their own sacrifices to your credit account. How many hours she vexed herself over these things; and how reluctantly she came to the conclusion, that she must needs prove to him that her offer was involuntary by making sure of not loving him! Oh, very fine, my lady Kate; but how to make sure? Positively the Ideal was more a myth than ever; for the more heroic and unselfish Hector appears to her the more must he demand of her heart.

her in throwing her a second time upon the world. It was spiritless in her to sit still and eat the bread of dependence; she ought to be up and stirring: consequently, she moped. One day, having mentioned something of the kind to Mrs. Dewitt, "Why, Kate," said that lady a little touched, and not a little indelicately, "you are no more dependent here than at Mr. Holland's, and there you were happy enough."

"Yes," said Kate, "but-"

"If it would make you feel easier," continued Mrs. Dewitt, "you are well taught, why not take a singing-school?" feeling certain that in such a discordant element she would soon come to terms. So she busied herself among her acquaintances; but Mrs. Rich's daughters thought themselves already wise; Mrs. Best's were under the tuition of Signor Schamnoni; the Miss Styles had been taught in Europe, and the little Prattlers hadn't any voices; "As if,” cried one, behind the applicant's back—“ as if a girl picked out of the gutter is a suitable person to instruct my children!" "Give some folks an inch and they'll take an ell," remarked Mrs. Best, who had always taken care to provoke no one to such an extremity by never offering an inch or any thing else. So there was an end of it. But Kate could not rest here: a primary school falling vacant, she made haste to apply for it, and, directly, her drudgery began. Slave of the bell, if not of the ring: under the thumb of infantile mischief-makers; at the beck and call of a-b, abs; beset by interrogation notes-an octave at once, but without ever striking a true chord; and left without time to count four. Generalissima of the Pythagorean battalions, and repelling the enemy at the point of the ferule, or, more strictly, giving them a broadside; hampered with parallels, but allowed little latitude, unless it were geographical; and yet without freeing herself from the yoke of dependence, merely defraying the expenses of a limited wardrobe. The constant strain upon her nerves kept her on the edge of a fever; the necessity for having her eyes every where at once made her head feel more like a top than any thing besides; while the continual stream of words demanded, in order to enforce, explain, and persuade, threatened her with a serious difficulty of the throat.

Now, too, every high wind made her melancholy; its bugle-tones pierced her like daggers. On evenings when the curtains shut out the stormy night, with all its vague terrors; when the cheerfulness within doors annihilated the impetuous voice without; when song and mirth, and the interchange of wit, left no pause for the wild refrain of the elements to touch one other with a sense of desolation, Kate reviewed the pictures of wreck and tempest Hector had sketched for her. She saw angry breakers piling their ghostliness high against the black sky; she felt their stinging breath against her bosom; the voice of deep calling unto deep appalled her soul; she saw hurrying feet trip on the slippery deck,

the eager will of men at the pumps, the utter anguish of despairing faces: the crash of parting timbers shook her; the powdering spray blinded her eyes; till suddenly she became conscious of a lull, and as if from miles away, Mrs. Dewitt called to her,

"Kate, Kate, are you asleep? Don't you hear Mr. Edmonton asking for 'The long, long weary Day?'"

She knew what such days were like, and gave it with such a heart-breaking pathos that the young man bending beside her half-mistrusted it was less for him that she sang than to give utterance to some silent pang.

"You sing con expressione," he said, bending still lower: "if I were that absent lover-" "But you are here, Mr. Edmonton; how could we do without you this dreary evening?"

"Then I should not be missed if the stars were out ?"

Kate laughed softly, and took up the evening paper. As some people strike for the Poet's Corner, so she turned to the Marine News.

and though she had no heart to give in return she put her hand in his and the magical word was spoken. Well, if she had been an angel she wouldn't have been a woman.

Mr. Edmonton returned to the drawing-room merely to say good-evening; Kate beat a hasty retreat into her own room; there, the first thing she did was to turn Hector's portrait to the wall, then she sat down and made an argument for her own persuasion, and cried herself to sleep. "I am delighted!" declared Mrs. Dewitt, when it came to her ears. "Of course, you must marry sooner or later, and that horrid school would wear you out before long."

"Dear me," said Theo, "we must be looking up wedding-presents!"

“Yes,” said Eugenia, with charming simplicity, "there's nothing so delightful as the prospect of a wedding." I don't know as it is necessary to add that she appended to her diary for that day the following item: "Kate is going to marry Mr. Edmonton; Heaven only knows when my turn will come."

The marriage was to take place in the course of a few months, and in the mean while the sew

of its enlivening rat-tat-tat, with nearly as much expedition as Cinderella's godmother had done.

Kate had made up her mind—rather late in the day to be sure-that a thing of this kind must not be done by the halves; that she must make an effort in Mr. Edmonton's behoof: so, in order to effect a beginning, she avoided the marine news, or she would not have been surprised when Theo danced into her room, with:

"The stars are out," said she.

"Oh, Hector!" cried Kate, letting every thing drop.

"The last of me,” repeated Kate, putting her

"Kate, Kate, is it true?" he entreated, mistaking her, "Will you let me love you?" Why not? Was not here a chance to show how little her heart belonged to Hector? how unpremeditated her words had been? If some one loved her should she not be grateful? She was all alone; who else cared for her? And here, too, was freedom from care and dependence. Only one word, and she was rich and respected, with a home and a heart all her own;

"It amounts to that," said Theo, saucily.

"If that's your view of it," Miss Theo, returned Hector, "I'm afraid there'll be some hearts broken, unless we can convert you to the true faith."

Kate looked at him while he spoke. There was the old sparkle in his eyes, like the sun on the sea, and the rich color palpitating across the smooth cheek; and then a great pain smote her, as Theo's coquettish beauty assured her how eas