brought her precious parcel to the messenger who was so very opportunely at hand, and the young man was proud to be intrusted with it.

"It will be no trouble to you," said Elizabeth. "I have written all the directions in this letter, and all you will have to do is to hand it to the jeweller."

After the decisive step was taken she came home in great fear and agitation, and almost regretting what she had done.

"If only," she said to herself over and over again-"if only I have helped him, so that he will not need to sell Howdinglen." For in Miss Rachel's garden Alan had told her of his home and of his love for it, and Elizabeth remembered every word he had said, and how, as he talked, he had picked her a red rose, and before giving it to her had stripped off the thorns, with words and looks she had treasured ever since.

And although Elizabeth's own memory of these things was so excellent, it never once occurred to her that Mr Rutherfurd might remember the jewel she wore round her neck on the day she jogged with him across the Diridh in the farmer's

cart.

Had she known it, Miss Elizabeth's pity for Mr Rutherfurd's poverty was somewhat in excess of the circumstances. Rumour and Miss Rachel had considerably exaggerated it, and, although it was true that old Howdinglen had lost a great deal of his money shortly before his death, it was not true that Alan had found himself in such

dire straits as had been represented. He had his troubles, indeed, his father's death above all, for the two had been strongly attached to each other. Then, instead of finding himself a rich man he found his affairs so embarrassed that for a short time it almost seemed that he might have to sell Howdinglen. When that proved to be unnecessary, he was 80 relieved that the prospect of some years of hard work and strict economy did not much daunt him. Since his ill-starred love affair he was in no mood for play. Yet though he was plucky enough to bear up hardily in his misfortunes, life was for him a grey enough business in these days. He had more cares on his mind than had the joyous - hearted poet who, not a year agone, had mowed the farmer's hay.

Elizabeth, as I have said, did not know exactly how things were, and she sent her precious trinket on an errand into the dark. After it was despatched she went back to the routine of tending on her father, who grew every day more peevish and impatient. His broken bones being healed, he now lay during the daytime on a couch in his bedroom, but he was still quite helpless and unable to move. His daughter had a hard life with him, and seeing his impatience to be up and about again, she dreaded the day when he must be told that what he waited for with such eagerness would never be. It was her one comfort that, despite his frequent ill-humour, he showed more

affection for her than he had ever done when he was hale and healthy. She had little time now for idling in the garden or sitting with her work upon the terrace, as she and Amabel had often done, and as the spring unfolded into early summer she grew weary enough. The days were hot, and a light haze floated over the glen. The river murmured pleasantly, and trout and salmon leaped in its pools. Bees drowsed in the garden, and a scent of wallflowers came in through the windows.

One day Sir Ronald, lying on his couch, caught the sound of a horse's hoofs on the road below the house, and he sent Elizabeth to the window to give him news of the rider. But the rider was out of sight below the garden wall, and Sir Ronald, who was impatient over trifles, must have his daughter go below to see whether the stranger had halted or gone by. Elizabeth went down the stair, and ere she made her inquiries was tempted by an open door to take a breath of air upon the terrace. She shaded her eyes with her hand and looked up the white road, and as she did so footsteps came behind her, and, turning quickly, there beside her stood Alan Rutherfurd. She cried his name, and he took her hands in his and kissed them.

"You are not displeased that I have come?" he questioned.

seat and ask pardon for having startled her.

"You will not send me away again," he said; and Elizabeth, after the fashion of the period, answered him with tears, and had she been sprinkled with the waters of Lethe could not have forgotten more completely that her father lay fuming on his couch waiting to hear who the stranger was who rode down the Glen.

"I am not a rich man," said Alan after a time, "but I have enough for you and me to be happy on, Elizabeth."

He

Elizabeth started and changed colour, and made as though to speak, but Alan began to tell her of all that had befallen him, and she could not but listen. told her of his father's death and of his unexpected poverty, and how at one time he had feared that he must sell Howdinglen.

"When things were at the worst," he went on, "I had a great surprise-some one came to my help in a way I had not dreamed of, and I took heart again."

Alan did not look at her as he spoke, but she started once more and blushed deeply. She thought that her elaborate ruse had succeeded, and that Alan had sold the diamonds, and by so doing had saved Howdinglen. Had she known it, the miniature was at the moment in Mr Rutherfurd's pocket, and even as she thought, "I can never tell him," he was saying to himself, "I shall never tell her until she tells me." Then

DOUBTLESS there are many besides the writer 80 constituted that they find as much pleasure in scrutinising the synthesis of any new thing part by part as in grasping it in its entirety. The characteristio is akin to the dissectional rather than the constructional; it stops one grade short of that of the true artist, who endures a close study of construction only so that he may not be betrayed when he overwhelms form in the fury of composition, and two grades below that of the true scientist to whom components are merely obstructive fences between him and the winningpost of some grand result. With us, we confess, the fences themselves are often the major interest. We look on the canvas of Creation with a preRaphaelistic eye, inquisitorial for detail, and actually unable to perceive the whole of a people or a pebble, as the case may be, until we know the story of its integers and atoms. Thus the present glory of a diamond fascinates less than the overpowering forces which have ennobled it into the apotheosis of matter and light. Pictures, too, greatly as love them, speak less of illusion, of romance, religion, or reminiscence than of the beautiful labour which has produced them. Of them most delight to know when

we

we

they were painted, by what manner of man, with what pigments, under what difficulties, hopes, and fears. Especially is this idiosyncrasy insistent in the case of a country new to us. There we find ourselves even physically uneasy so long as we are unaoquainted with the kaleidoscopic atoms which jerk themselves into the general forms rendered familiar by the history and geography books. Therefore, as we first stood on the brilliant shore of Ceylon, where the surges broke like walls of shivering sapphire under the million green plumes of the palm-trees, we knew that there would be little peace for us until every swarthy passer-by, every strange vehicle, every queer costume, could be deposited, properly labelled, each into its proper compartment, for until then it was certain that the soul of the thing we had come see would be invisible.

Like an emerald drop, suspended from the glittering necklace of Hindostan, Ceylon hangs in the very hollow of Britannia's broad bosom. The eastern seas, though spangled as their midnight skies with spots of delight, lap no gem more lovely or of rarer quality. Her general beauty is discernible afar off. Even before she comes in sight it is said that the mariner becomes aware of

odours borne across the ocean air as if from the groves of Paradise. We ourselves, how ever, were somewhat ludicrously robbed of this romantic foretaste. Climbing sleepily but hopefully to the upper deck at the appointed hour before dawn, surely enough an aroma so heavenly caressed our nostrils that it was nothing but a duty to awaken our friends to receive also the greeting of the promised land. For an hour we snuffed delightedly the scented gale. But the growing light revealed the true source of our pleasure-namely, a cargo of fruit spread out on the forecastle ready for disembarkation ! But soon the violet cone of Adam's Peak climbed into the lemon sky above wreaths of creamy cloud; great slabs of shadow changed slowly into forested mountainsides and walls of planted valleys; an amber shore, orested with peacock-green, rose slowly out of the sea, and the untasted kiss of Ceylon was forgotten in the beauty of her face.

But a mere visitor, sojourning at Colombo between steamer and steamer, or even tripping up-country to Kandy or Nuwara Eliya, will learn little of a country whose most real characteristics have shrunk away behind the ages, far from the neighbourhood of railways and hotels. By lonely tanks, in the humming jungle, on tea

grown peak and spur, amongst fields of rice, terraced from mountain-top to dingle bottom in steps of vivid aquamarine or liquid chocolate, according as the "paddy" is in or out, in rocky shrine beside the snowy dagaba,1 in acres of hoary ruins, in mud-and-wattle hut, in teeming "coolie lines," in shady low-voiced bungalow, in sweltering machan,2 in blessed Rest-House, haunt of the drink, the bath, the drowsy talk which crown the labours of the blazing day, in hidden wallow where the elephant and buffalo lie deep in the warm mud, in jungle glade where pace the leopard, the bear, and the brittle-legged deer, in glassy lagoon, mirror of innumerable palms, in towering surf over which the catamarans and outriggers bound like crazy sticks, in scented patana,3 in vasty valleys above whose swimming haze rock fortresses stick up like islands square and bluff-in all these, and in these alone, does Ceylon enshrine her spirit, the spirit of an isle blessed by God, and as yet unspoilt by man.

The synthesis of Ceylon, topographical and ethnological, is singularly complex for so small a state. From sea-line to summit is a difference of elevation of 8300 feet, up the greater part of which the admirable railway winds and climbs from one astounding view to another; and between