prudent gendarme reloads; and Tom marches down the hill, the gendarme following, with his bayonet disagreeably near the small of Tom's back.

"Don't stumble ! Look out for the stones, or you'll 'nave that skewer through me!"

"So! Der Herr speaks German like a native," says the gendarme, civilly. "It is certainly der Palmerston," thinks ne, "his manners are so polite."

Once at the crater edge, and able to see into the pit, the mystery is, in part at least, explained: for there stand not only Stangrave and Bursch number two, but a second gendarme, two elderly gentlemen, two ladies, and a black boy.

One is Lieutenant D * * * by his white moustache. He is lecturing the Bursch, who looks sufficiently foolish. The other is a portly and awful-looking personage in uniform, evidently the Polizeirath of those parts, armed with the just terrors of the law: but Justice has, if not her eyes bandaged, at least her hands tied; for on his arm hangs Sabina, smiling, chatting, entreating. The Polizeirath smiles, bows, ogles, evidently a willing captive. Venus had disarmed Rhadamanthus, as she has Mars so often; and the sword of justice must rust in its scabbard.

Some distance behind them is Stangrave, talking in a low voice, earnestly, passionately,-to whom but to Marie?

And lastly, opposite each other, and like two dogs who are uncertain whether to make friends or fight, are a gendarme and Sabina's black boy: the gendarme, with shouldered musket, is trying to look as stiff and cross as possible, being scandalised by his superior officer's defection from the path of duty; and still more by the irreverence of the black boy, who is dancing, grinning, snapping his fingers, in delight at having discovered and prevented the coming tragedy.

Tom descends, bowing courteously, apologises for having been absent when the highly distinguished gentleman arrived; and turning to the Bursch, begs him to transmit to his friend who has run away his apologies for the absurd mistake which led him to, &c. &c.

The Polizeirath looks at him with much the same blank astonishment as the gendarme had done; and at last ends by lifting up his hands, and bursting into an enormous German laugh; and no one on earth can laugh as a German can, so genially and lovingly, and with such intense self-enjoyment.

66

Oh, you English! you English! You are all mad, I think! Nothing can shame you, and nothing can frighten you! Potz! I believe when your Guards at Alma walked into that battery, the other day every one of them was whistling your Jim Crow.

even after he was shot dead!" And the jolly Polizeirath laughed at his own joke, till the mountain rang. "But you must leave the country, Sir; indeed you must. We cannot permit such conduct here-I am very sorry."

"I entreat you not to apologise, Sir. In any case, I was going to Alf by eight o'clock, to meet the steamer for Treves. I am on my way to the war in the East, viâ Marseilles. If you would, therefore, be so kind as to allow the gendarme to return me that second revolver, which also belongs to me-"

"Potz!

"Give him his pistol!" shouted the magistrate. Let us be rid of him at any cost, and live in peace, like honest Germans. Ah, poor Queen Victoria! What a lot! To have the government of five-and-twenty million such !"

"Not five-and-twenty millions," says Sabina. "That would include the ladies; and we are not mad too, surely, your Excellency?"

The Polizeirath likes to be called your Excellency, of course, or any other mighty title which does or does not belong to him; and that Sabina knows full well.

"Ah, my dear madam, how do I know that? The English ladies do every day here what no other dames would dare or dream-what then, must you be at home? Ach! your poor husbands!"

"Mr. Thurnall!" calls Marie, from behind. “Mr. Thurnall!" Tom comes, with a quaint, dogged smile on his face.

"You see him, Mr. Stangrave! You see the man who risked for me liberty, life, who rescued me from slavery, shame, suicide, who was to me a brother, a father, for years!-without whose disinterested heroism you would never have set eyes on the face which you pretend to love. And you repay him by suspicion-insult-Apologise to him, Sir! Ask his pardon now, here, utterly, humbly: or never speak to Marie Lavington again!

Tom looked first at her, and then at Stangrave. Marie was convulsed with excitement; her thin cheeks were crimson, her eyes flashed very flame. Stangrave was pale-calm outwardly, but evidently not within. He was looking on the ground, in thought so intense that he hardly seemed to hear Marie. Poor fellow! he had heard enough in the last ten minutes to bewilder any brain.

At last he seemed to have strung himself for an effort, and spoke, without looking up.

"Mr. Thurnall!"

"Sir?"

"I have done you a great wrong!"

"We will say no more about it, Sir. It was a mistake, and

I do not wish to complicate the question. My true ground of quarrel with you is your conduct to Miss Lavington. She seems to have told you her true name, so I shall call her by it."

"What I have done, I have undone!" said Stangrave, looking up. "If I have wronged her, I have offered to right her ; if I have left her, I have sought her again; and if I left her when I knew nothing, now that I know all, I ask her here, before you, to become my wife!"

Tom looked inquiringly at Marie.

"Yes; I have told him all-all!" and she hid her face in her hands.

"Well," said Tom, "Mr. Stangrave is a very enviable person; and the match, in a worldly point of view, is a most fortunate one for Miss Lavington; and that stupid rascal of a gendarme has broken my revolver."

"But I have not accepted him," cried Marie; "and I will not, unless you give me leave."

Tom saw Stangrave's brow lower, and pardonably enough, at this.

"My dear Miss Lavington, as I have never been able to settle my own love affairs satisfactorily to myself, I do not feel at all competent to settle other people's. Good-bye! I shall be late for the steamer." And, bowing to Stangrave and Marie, he turned to go.

"Sabina! Stop him!" cried she; "he is going, without even a kind word!"

"Sabina," whispered Tom as he passed her," a bad business -selfish coxcomb; when her beauty goes, won't stand her temper and her flightiness: but I know you and Claude will take care of the poor thing, if anything happens to me." "You're wrong-prejudiced-indeed!"

"Tut, tut, tut!-Good-bye, you sweet little sunbeam. Good morning, gentlemen!"

And Tom hurried up the slope and out of sight, while Marie burst into an agony of weeping.

"Gone, without a kind word!"

Stangrave bit his lip, not in anger, but in manly self-reproach. "It is my fault, Marie! my fault! He knew me too well of old, and had too much reason to despise me! But he shall have reason no longer. He will come back, and find me worthy of you; and all will be forgotten. Again I say it, I accept your quest, for life and death. So help me God above, as I will not fail or falter, till I have won justice for you and for your race Marie?"

He conquered how could he but conquer for he was man

:

and she was woman; and he looked more noble in her eyes, while he was confessing his past weakness, than he had ever done in his proud assertion of strength.

But she spoke no word in answer.

She let him take her hand, pass her arm through his, and lead her away, as one who had a right.

They walked down the hill behind the rest of the party, blest, but silent and pensive; he with the weight of the future, she with that of the past.

"It is very wonderful," she said at last. "Wonderful . . that you can care for me. . . . Oh, if I had known how noble you were, I should have told you all at once."

...

"Perhaps I should have been as ignoble as ever," said Stangrave, "if that young English Viscount had not put me on my mettle by his own nobleness."

"No! no! Do not belie yourself. You know what he does not ;-what I would have died sooner than tell him."

Stangrave drew the arm closer through his, and clasped the hand. Marie did not withdraw it.

Wonderful, wonderful love!" she said, quite humbly. Her theatric passionateness had passed;

"Nothing was left of her,

Now, but pure womanly."

"That you can love me-me, the slave; me, the scourged; the scarred-Oh Stangrave! it is not much-not much really; -only a little mark or two.

"I will prize them," he answered, smiling through tears, "more than all your loveliness. I will see in them God's commandment to me, written not on tables of stone, but on fair, pure, noble flesh. My Marie! You shall have cause even to

rejoice in them!"

"I glory in them now; for, without them, I never should have known all your worth."

*

The next day Stangrave, Marie, and Sabina were hurrying home to England! while Tom Thurnall was hurrying to Marseilles, to vanish Eastward Ho.

He has escaped once more: but his heart is hardened still What will his fall be like ?

AND now two years and more are past and gone; and all whose lot it was have come Westward Ho once more, sadder and wiser men to their lives' end; save one or two, that is, from whom not even Solomon's pestle and mortar discipline would pound out the innate folly.

Frank has come home stouter and browner, as well as heartier and wiser, than he went forth. He is Valencia's husband now, and rector, not curate, of Aberalva town; and Valencia makes him a noble rector's wife.

She, too, has had her sad experiences;—of more than absent love; for when the news of Inkerman arrived, she was sitting by Lucia's death-bed; and when the ghastly list came home, and with it the news of Scoutbush "severely wounded by a musket-ball," she had just taken her last look of the fair face, and seen in fancy the fair spirit greeting in the eternal world the soul of him whom she loved unto the death. She had hurried out to Scutari, to nurse her brother; had seen there many a sight-che best knows what she saw. She sent Scoutbush back to the Crimea, to try his chance once more; and then came home to be a mother to those three orphan children, from whom she vowed never to part. So the children went with Frank and her to Aberalva, and Valencia had learnt half a mother's duties, ere she had a baby of her own.

And thus to her, as to all hearts, has the war brought a discipline from heaven.

Frank shrank at first from returning to Aberalva, when Scoutbush offered him the living on old St. Just's death. But Valencia all but commanded him; so he went: and, behold his return was a triumph.

All was understood now, all forgiven, all forgotten, save his conduct in the cholera, by the loving, honest, brave West-country hearts; and when the new-married pair were rung into the town, amid arches and garlands, flags and bonfires, the first man to welcome Frank into his rectory was old Tardrew.

Not a word of repentance or apology ever passed the old bulidog's lips. He was an Englishman, and kept his opinions to himself. But he had had his lesson like the rest, two years ago, in his young daughter's death; and Frank had thenceforth no faster friend than old Tardrew.

Frank is still as High Church as ever; and likes all pomp and