the better; there'd be something to laugh at him about.

"Now, Tom, you can't credit what I am going to tell you; that fellow began to relate his own experience; beginning with the prayers and hymns his mother taught him, and which he gradually lost the recollection of after she died, and as he grew older; then he described and, by Jove, he did it well-his past downward steps, as he called them (I think that expression is open to discussion, Tom), the temptations of his youth, the gradual searing of conscience, and Satan's final triumph, when he cast off all restraint, and acknowledged no law but the domination of his own mad passions. Then he described his life at that point, our life-(I wonder if he saw me there?) he spoke of the occasional twinges of conscience, growing fainter, fainter, and at last dying out altogether.

"Then came his waking up from that long trance of sin, our meeting with that old lady in the street(you remember, Tom), and the tearful look which she bent on him, when in reply to some remark of mine, he exclaimed,

"Jesus Christ!'

"Then, how that look had haunted him, tortured him, by day and night; how it had wakened to new life all the buried memories of childhood-his mother's prayers and tears, and dying words; and how, after wrestling with it, through deeper depths of sin than

any into which he had yet plunged, he had yielded to the holy spell, and that 'Jesus Christ' had now become to him, with penitential utterance, 'My Lord and my God.'

"Tom-there was not a dry eye in that church when Jack got through, no-not even mine, for I caught the infection (I might as well own it); I felt as wicked as old King Herod; and all day to-day—it is a rainy day, though, and I suppose, when the sun shines out, I shall feel better, I have not been able to get that sermon out of my mind. I don't believe in it, of course not; hang me if I know what does ails me; I am inclined to think it is a bad fit of indigestion. I must have a game at billiards. Write me.

"Yours,

"FINELS."

CHAPTER LXIV.

"How you grow, Charley," said John, tossing him up on his shoulder, and walking up to the lookingglass. "It seems but yesterday that you lay wrapped up in your blanket a-board Captain Lucas' ship with your thumb in your mouth (that unfailing sign of a good-natured baby), thinking of nothing at all; and now here you are six years' old to-day-think of that man? and I dare say you expect a birth-day present." "Yes, if you please," said Charley.

"There, now; that is to the point. I like an honest boy. What will you have, Charley ?"

"Something pretty for my mamma," said the loving little heart.

Better still," said John; "but mamma won't take presents. I have tried her a great many times. There is one I want very much to make her, but she always

says No." And John glanced at Gertrude.

"Mind what you say," whispered his sister. "He might chance to repeat it to his mother."

"So much the better, Gertrude. Then she will be sure to think of me at least one minute.

"But, Charley, tell me what you want. I would like to get you something for yourself."

"I want my papa," said Charley, resolutely. "Tommy Fritz keeps saying that I haven't got any papa.' Haven't I got a papa, cousin John ?"

"You have a Father in heaven," said John, kissing Charley as he evaded the earnest question.

"When did he die? I want you to tell me all about him, cousin John, because Tommy Fritz sits next me at school and teases me so about not having any papa."

"Fritz?" repeated John, turning to Gertrude; "Fritz?-the name sounds familiar. Where could I have heard it? Fritz?" and John paced up and down the room, trying to remember.

"Yes, Tommy Fritz," repeated Charley; "and Tommy's big brother comes to school with him some days, and he saw me, and told Tommy that I had n't any papa."

"Did you say any thing to your mamma about it ?” asked John.

"No," said Charley, with a very resolute shake of the head, "because it always makes mamma look 'so sad when I talk to her about papa; but I don't want Tommy to plague me any more. Is it bad not to have a papa, cousin John ?"

"There are a great many little boys whose papas are dead," said John. "Yes, it is bad for them, because they feel lonesome without them, just as you do."

Charley looked very earnestly in John's face, as if he were not satisfied with his answer, and yet as if he did not know how better to make himself understood. Looking thoughtfully on the ground a few moments, he said

"Was my papa good, cousin John ?"

John drew Charley closer to his breast. "I did not know your papa, my dear, but your mamma loves him very much, and she is so good herself that I think she would not love him so were he not a good man.”

'

"I'm so glad!" exclaimed Charley, with sparkling eyes. 'May I tell Tommy Fritz that ?" he asked, with the caution acquired by too early an acquaintance with

sorrow.

"Certainly," said John, secretly resolving to inquire into this Fritz matter himself.

"Your mother is calling you, Charley," said Gertrude. "Poor little fellow," she added, as he ran nimbly out of the room. "Just think of a child with such a frank outspoken nature, burying such a corroding mystery in his own loving little heart, rather than pain his mother by asking for a solution. Poor Rose-the haunting specter which her prophet-eye discerned in her child's future, has assumed shape sooner than even she dreamed. Who can this 'big Fritz' be, John? and where could he have known Rose ?"

"I have it," exclaimed John, stopping suddenly before his sister, with a deep red flush upon his face.