the fate of those who had come with confidence to settle on his territory, and to place themselves under his protection.

For the last month, the fear of having allured them to destruction, when he had only sought their happiness, had never left him a moment's rest. Now he was released from terrible anxiety, and breathed freely.

This common danger had more closely united the citizens. All classes had been brought nearer to each other, and knew themselves brothers, animated with the same feelings, and affected by the same interests. A new sensation had sprung up in the heart of all. Henceforward the inhabitants had a strong feeling of patriotism for Frankville. They had feared, they had suffered for their town, and now they knew how much they loved it.

The material results of having placed it in a state of defence were also to the advantage of the city. Their strength was known. They felt more sure of themselves, and would now be ready for whatever the future might bring.

The prospects of Doctor Sarrasin's work had never appeared more brilliant; and (a rare thing) no ingratitude was shown towards Max. Although the safety of the population had not been his work, public thanks were voted to the young engineer, as to the organiser of the defence, the man to whose devotion the town would have owed its safety, had the plans of Herr Schultz succeeded.

Max, however, did not regard his part as finished. The mystery surrounding Stahlstadt might still, he thought, conceal danger. He could not rest satisfied until he had thrown complete light into the very midst of the darkness which still enveloped the City

of Steel.

He resolved, therefore, to return to Stahlstadt, and to stop at nothing until he had probed the last secret to its depths.

Doctor Sarrasin represented to him that the enterprise would be difficult, that it would bristle with dangers, that he knew not what mines might spring beneath his feet, and that, in fact, it would resemble a descent into the lower regions. Herr Schultz, such as he had been described to him, was not a man to disappear with impunity to others, or to bury himself alone beneath the ruin of all his hopes. They had every reason to fear the last desperate design of such a man. It would be like the terrible dying agony of a shark!

'My dear doctor, it is just because I think all you imagine possible that I believe it my duty to go to Stahlstadt," answered Max. "The place may be compared to a shell from which I must snatch the match before it bursts, and I will even ask your permission to take Otto with me."

"Otto!" exclaimed the doctor.

"Yes! He is now a fine fellow, who may be relied on; and I assure you that this excursion will do him a great deal of good!"

"May God protect you both!" returned the old man, fervently grasping his hand.

The next morning ariage drove through the deserted villages, and deposited Max and Otto at the gate of Stahlstadt.

Both were well equipped, well armed, and very determined not to come back until they had cleared up the mystery.

They walked side by side along the outer road which led round the fortifications, and the truth,

which Max till then had persisted in doubting, now lay before them.

It was evident that the place was completely deserted. From the lonely road, which he now trod with Otto, he could formerly have seen within the town flaring gas, or the flash of a sentinel's bayonet, and many other signs of life. The windows of the different sections would have been illuminated and dazzling. Now all was dark and silent. Death seemed to hover over the city, its tall chimneys standing up like skeletons. The footfalls of Max and his companion alone aroused the echoes of the place. The sensation of solitude and desolation was so strong that Otto could not help remarking:

"It is singular, but I have never felt silence similar to this! We might suppose ourselves in a cemetery!"

It was seven o'clock when Max and Otto reached the edge of the moat, opposite to the principal gate of Stahlstadt. Not a living creature appeared on the crest of the wall, and of the sentinels who formerly had stood at equal distances all round, like so many human posts, not one remained. The drawbridge was raised, leaving before the gate a gulf from five to six yards in width.

It took them more than an hour before they could succeed in fastening the end of a stout rope, by throwing it with all their might, so as to catch over one of the beams. After much trouble, Max managed it, and Otto going first, drew himself up hand over hand to the top of the gate. Max passed up to him their arms and ammunition, and then he himself took the same way.

They now carried their rope to the other side of the wall, let down all their impedimenta, and finally slid down themselves.

The two young men were now on the round way which Max remembered having followed the first day he entered Stahlstadt. Complete silence and solitude were all around. Before them rose, black and dumb, the imposing mass of buildings which glared with their thousand glass windows at the intruders, as if to say:

"Be off! You have no business to attempt the penetration of our secrets!" Max and Otto consulted.

"We will assail the O gate, as that is the one with which I am best acquainted," said Max.

They bent their steps westward, and soon arrived before the monumental arch, which bore on its front the letter O. The two massive oaken doors, full of great iron nails, were closed. Max approached, and struck them several times with a large stone taken from the road.

The echo alone resounded.

"Come to work!" he cried to Otto.

They had now to recommence the troublesome work of throwing their rope over the door, until it met with some obstacle on which it would firmly catch. This was difficult, but they succeeded at last, and Max and Otto surmounted the wall, and found themselves in section O.

"What a nuisance!" exclaimed Otto, looking round; "where is the use of all our trouble? We have made but little progress! No sooner have we got over one wall, than we find another before us!"

"Silence in the ranks!" returned Max. "Here we are in my old workshop. I am not sory to see it again, that we may possess ourselves of certain

tools which we shall be sure to need, not forgetting a few packets of dynamite."

As he spoke they entered the great casting-hall to which the young Alsacian had been admitted on his arrival at the factory.

How dismal it now looked, with its furnaces extinguished, its rails rusted, its dusty cranes extending their gaunt arms in the air like so many gallows. All this struck a chill to the heart, and Max felt that some diversion to their ideas would be pleasant. "Here is a workshop which will interest you more," he observed, leading the way to the canteen.

They first had to lay bare the foot of the wall, then introduce a lever between two stones, loosen one, and finally, with a drill, pierce several little parallel trenches. By ten o'clock all was prepared, the dynamite in its place, and the match lighted.

Max knew that it would burn for five minutes, and as he had noticed that the canteen was underground, and was a regular stone-vaulted cellar, he took refuge there with Otto.

Suddenly every building, and even the cellar, were shaken as if by an earthquake. Then, almost immediately, a tremendous roar, resembling the sound of three or four batteries thundering at once, rent the air.

he was to the terrific effects of an explosion, Max was perfectly astonished at the results of this one. Half of the section had been blown up, and the dismantled walls of all the neighbouring workshops resembled those of a bombarded town.

On all sides the ground was strewed with heaps of rubbish and

settling down, fell like snow on the ruins.

Seeing that Otto was now refreshed and rested, Max went with him to the end of the road which formed the axis of the section, up to the foot of the huge freestone wall. "What say you to attempting a blast here?" he asked. "Shall we pierce the wall and lay a train of lynamite?"

"It will be haril work, but we are not afraid of that!" replied Ott, ready to attempt anything.

Otto and Max hastened to the inner wall. From fifteen to twenty feet of it had been thrown down, and on the other side of the breach the exdraughtsman of the Central Block could see the wellknown hall where he had passed so many hours. As the place was no longer guarded, it was soon entered.

Still the same silence everywhere.

Max passed in review the studies, where formerly his comrades admired his diagrams. In one corner he discovered the very half-sketched drawing of a steam-engine on which he had been engaged when Herr Schultz summoned him to the park.

ANECDOTE OF COUNT VON MOLTKE.-At the moment when war was declared by France the great general was seriously indisposed. On learning the news at an advanced hour in the evening the king went to consult Count von Moltke, and had him aroused. War is declared," said the king. "With whom?" asked the general. "With France," was the reply. "The third portfolio on the left," was, it is said, all the count vouchsafed to say, and he fell asleep immediately. Even if this little tale be not quite correct in every particular, it points a moral, nevertheless, and shows how thoroughly Count von Moltke's reputation for coolness and readiness is appreciated even by those who have least cause to love him.

PROTOPLASM.-This substance has been called by Professor Huxley the physical basis of life." Wherever there is life, from its lowest to its highest manifestations, there is protoplasm; wherever there is protoplasm, there too is life. Thus co-extensive with the whole of organic nature-every vital act being referable to some mode or property of protoplasm-it becomes to the biologist what the ether is to the physicist; only that, instead of being a hypothetical conception, accepted as a reality from its adequacy in the explanation of phenomena, it is a tangible and visible reality, which the chemist may analyse in his laboratory, the biologist scrutinise beneath his microscope and his dissecting-needle. The chemical composition of protoplasm is very complex, and has not been exactly determined. It may, however, be stated that protoplasm is essentially a combination of albuminoid bodies, and that its principal elements are, therefore, oxygen, carbon, hydrogen, and nitrogen. In its typical state it presents the condition of a semi-fluid substance -a tenacious, glairy liquid, with a consistence somewhat like that of the white of an unboiled egg. While we watch it beneath the microscope movements are set up in it; waves traverse its surface, or it may be seen to flow away in streams, either broad and attaining but a slight distance from the main mass, or else stretching away far from their source, as narrow liquid threads, which may continue simple, or may divide into branches, each following its own independent course; or the streams may flow one into the other, as streamlets would flow into rivulets and rivulets into rivers, and this not only where gravity would carry them, but in a direction diametrically opposed to gravitation; now we see it spreading itself out on all sides into a thin liquid stratum, and again drawing itself together within the narrow limits which had at first confined it, and all this without any obvious impulse from without which would send the ripples over its surface or set the streams flowing from its margin. Though it is certain that all these phenomena are in response to some stimulus exerted on it by the outer world, they are such as we never meet with in a simply physical fluid they are spontaneous movements resulting from its proper irritability, from its essential constitution as living matter. Examine it closer, bring to bear on it the highest powers of your microscope-you will probably find disseminated through it countless multitudes of exceedingly minute granules; but you may also find it absolutely homogeneous, and whether containing granules or not, it is certain that you will find nothing to which the term organisation can be applied. You have before you a glairy, tenacious fluid, which, if not absolutely homogeneous, is yet totally destitute of structure. And yet no one who contemplates this spontaneously moving matter can deny that it is alive. Liquid as it is, it is a living liquid; organless and structureless as it is, it manifests the essential phenomena of life.-Professor Allman.

THE BISHOP OF MANCHESTER ON PROTOPLASM.-In a sermon on the Sunday after the address of Professor Allman at Sheffield, the Bishop of Manchester said he had read with such attention and interest as his small intelligence would command -for many of the thoughts went far beyond the compass of his ittle learning the inaugural address delivered by the president of the British Association. No doubt it was highly interesting to note the progress and development of protoplasm. No doubt it was a matter of profound interest to be told that down in the depths of the sea there was a tenacious, glairy fluid, out of which every living being was formed, and which was the basis of all physical life. So said Dr. Allman. They remembered how the world was startled a few years ago by that presidential address at Belfast, which told them that in matter they must discern the potency of every form of life. Dr. Allman said he simply meant physical or material life, he did

not speak of consciousness. He did not say that protoplasm was the author of our hopes, our fears, our thoughts, or our aspirations; it was not the seat of our will, our affections, our reverence, or our faith. Protoplasm, then, did not help him (the bishop) much in fighting the battle of life; it might be well to know that he was compounded of that tenacious, glairy fluid which was originally found at the bottom of the sea, but he did not see that it helped him to fight the battle of life, or to cope with the evil and wickedness which were to be met with in the streets of Bolton or Manchester. He was rejoiced to read, however-and he would quote his own words-the remarks of Dr. Allman: "The properties of consciousness belong to a category absolutely distinct from the properties of matter; one which presents not a trace of connection with any of those which physicists have agreed in assigning to matter." When he (the bishop) read Professor Tyndall's address on this ques tion he thought if we accepted the professor's premises, and followed them out to his conclusions, we should have to acknow ledge that there was nothing in the universe but matter and force. But Dr. Allman said that we were not forced to that conclusion. Perchance in that great impassable and unreach able domain which Dr. Allman told us lay beyond that extreme point which telescopes and microscopes were unable to detect, there might be something other than matter and force, but at all events there was room for God and for the human soul, and given those two things-God and the human soul-they had the problem, or the elements of the problem, of Christianity. Dr. Allman further said, "Mind as well as body is travelling on• wards through higher and still higher phases." He himself believed it, and that was the Christian faith and doctrine. There was to be a glorified God and a sanctified spirit, and this was the doctrine of the evolution of the Church of Christ.

MR. GLADSTONE AT ST. PANCRAS WORKHOUSE.-We cannet recall an instance in which a statesman who has filled the highest place in the councils of the Sovereign ever delivered an address to an audience like that which lately listened to the Right Hon. W. E. Gladstone in St. Pancras Workhouse. One of the guardians of that parish had given some six hundred of the inmates of the workhouse a substantial dinner, when Mr. Gladstone spoke as an aged Christian man (he is within three months of seventy years old) to aged men and women, of the common nature, common duties, and common responsibilities The right honourable gentleman remarked that it was good for those who belonged to the wealthier classes to be brought inte contact with poverty, and to remember how entirely and abs lutely they all stood upon one level in the face of One greater than themselves, for they lived in an age when most of them had forgotten that the gospel of their Saviour Christ, which He came to preach, and the sanction of which He sealed with His blood, in addition to all else, besides scattering blessings over every class of the community, was, above all, the gospel of the poor; that the lot of the poor was that which He chose for Himself; that from the ranks of the poor He selected His apostles, whe went forth into the world to found the most glorious kingdom ever exhibited to the eyes of men, and that from His own mouth proceeded the words which showed us that, in reference to te poral circumstances, a time would come when many of the first would be last, and many of the last first. Whilst the rich were blessed if they confronted the many and subtle tempta tions of the life they had to live, the poor also were blessed who accepted with cheerfulness the limited circumstances and conditions in which they had to pass these few fleeting years, and were content to look forward to the hope that was beyond the grave, and to the brightness of the light which shines upon the farther shore of the dark river of death. Mr. Gladster closed his address with the following words: "May the rec lection of this day, my friends and contemporaries-as I may truly call you-may the recollection of this day serve to chee: many a future day for every one of you, to be a source of thank fulness for the past, and an indication that there lies before you in the future, unless it be by your own fault-your ow unhappy fault-the hope of days brighter far than this, whe your lot will be relieved from every burden laid upon adverse circumstances, and when you may well hope to be, through the merits of Him who has lived and died for us. brought into the enjoyment of a happiness that shall nent again be disturbed. I heartily wish you well, one and all, Dow and in the remainder of your lives-now, and in the other and more important life which is to follow."

STRAIGHT TO THE MARK.

BY THE AUTHOR OF "BOY AND MAN," "LOMBARDY COURT," ETC.
CHAPTER XXXV.-A DREARY RETROSPECT.
My way of life

Is fall'n into the sear, the yellow leaf:
And that which should accompany old age,
As honour, love, obedience, troops of friends,
I must not look to have.-Shakespeare.

VERY bitter were the thoughts which passed through
Mr. Strafford's mind after he had dismissed his ser-
No. 1453.-NOVEMBER 1, 1879.

vant from the room, and had fallen back in his chair, as described in our last chapter. Old, old, old! The same unwelcome truth forced upon him again and again; the same reproach, for such it seemed to be, cast at him from all sides. A life wasted; its opportunities gone; time passing quickly and the end not far off. "If a man live many years, and rejoice in them all; yet let him remember the days of darkness; for they shall be many." Mr. Strafford had rot rejoiced in the many years of his past life; no

PRICE ONE PENNY.

keeper. He would not have been sorry to hear that she had left the house, and feared to ring the bell lest she should appear. He opened the door and slowly and silently groped his way upstairs to his bedroom.

His thoughts went back to the wife whom he had laid to rest in the churchyard, and whose grave he had visited often after her death, though he had not been near it now for many years. She was the only woman he had ever loved; an accomplished, highminded lady, devoted to him, as he to her, the sunshine of his life, by whose early loss the whole of his remaining existence had been overshadowed. As long as that good wife was by his side the base and miserly dispositions of his heart had been kept in subjection, the better nature had been fostered and strengthened. She had been in every way a helpmeet for him, and by her gentle influence had upheld him-almost without his knowing it against his greatest and, perhaps at that time, only enemy-himself. Then, too, he had had other things to think of besides getting and saving, living breathing objects to engage his affections instead of only money and land. Why had she been taken from him? Why had this good angel, to whom he owed so much, on whose tender guardianship so much depended-why had she been snatched from his home? and that, too, while his only child-her child-was yet in his infancy?

The images and recollections which Mrs. Daunt's proposal brought back to the old man's thoughts were not without a little of that gentle and salutary influence by which his early life had been controlled. He scarcely knew whether he was awake or dreaming as one dear face after another seemed to rise before him: first, the gentle girl whom he had gone a-courting in the heyday of his youth; then the fond wife ruling his house so tenderly and wisely, winning her way into his heart, softening his rugged temper, and rendering him day by day more like herself, even while she seemed to cling to him and depend upon him; and then the infant child which sat upon his knee and put its tiny hand into his own, smiling up at his eyes without any fear or shyness or distrust as yet. Darker visions might have followed, but here the features of that young boy who had lately walked by his side and had shaken hands with him, looking him straight in the face, came in and seemed to fill up a gap in the retrospect. The features did not at all resemble those of his sainted wife, nor of the son whom he had lost. The complexion was different, the profile was different, the colour of the hair was different; but the general expression of the face was wonderfully like; the sparkle of that bright blue eye recalled both wife and son to his memory; when he spoke, when he flashed up with surprise or indignation, when his lip curled, but, above all, when he smiled, the old man had almost felt that those whom he had loved and lost were looking at him through that face.

With a long-drawn, shivering sigh, Mr. Strafford raised himself at length and looked around him. The light out of doors was beginning to fade, and the room was in partial darkness. He felt cold and

Mrs. Daunt had not left the house; she was sitting in the kitchen with her bonnet and shawl on, ready for instant departure, but meant to have another interview with her master before putting her threat into execution, though it may be doubted whether she had really any intention of carrying matters to such an extreme. She heard his footstep on the stairs, and looked after him as he mounted.

"He's that feeble," she said to herself" that feeble, he can hardly lift himself along. There's nobody in the house but me and the girl. He'll ring his bell presently, and then I'll go to him. He may be as proud and angry as he pleases, but he will have to bring himself to it. He'll come round after a bit, and it will be the best thing for him too. could bring an action and get damages enough to live upon comfortable all the rest of my days, but matrimony is more respectable. I shall bo very kind to him, and make him comfortable as long as he lives, poor old gentleman!"

I

Mrs. Daunt sent Betsy to bed, and put a bit more coal upon the kitchen fire, and resolved to sit up for an hour or two, at all events, in case she should be wanted. She put the kettle on and made herself a cup of tea, and, feeling low, as she told herself, brought a bottle out of the cupboard, where it was kept under lock and key, and put a little of the contents into her cup. "He calls it brandy," she said; "but if it is it's British, and I half believe it's only common spirits from the lamp shop. It is better than no more, but we will have something superior to this when I have the ordering of it."

Contrary to Mrs. Daunt's expectation, Mr. Strafford did not ring his bell until the following morning, and then he desired that Mrs. Ayres, the gamekeeper's wife, might be sent for. He was poorly, he said, and did not mean to get up till late in the day. But he could not bear to have Mrs. Daunt to wait upon him, and told her plainly that he thought she had left the house, and the sooner she went the better. Mrs. Daunt concealed her vexation, and persevered in her attentions, to which the squire, feeling himself too ill and feeble for argument or expostulation, was at last fain to submit.

CHAPTER XXXVI.-WHAT WOULD YOU DO WITH IT!
Thou art old;

Thou hast no need of so much gold.
These grains of gold are not grains of wheat;
These bars of silver thou canst not eat;
These jewels and pearls and precious stones
Cannot cure the aches in thy bones,
Nor keep the feet of death one hour
From climbing the stairway of thy tower.

-Longfellow.

WHEN Tom Howard called the next morning, according to his promise, to inquire after Mr. Strafford, he was told that the old gentleman was not up, and could not see any one. Mrs. Daunt, who opened the front door to him after much clattering of chains and bols and bars, was not communicative, and refused to take any message upstairs. "The squire was a-bed," she said; "he had hurt himself with that fall he had yes terday in the yard, and at his time of life it was n. wonder."