took place in the gloamings, to take such a serious business into consideration; some expressing their fears and inward doun-sinking, while others cheered them up with a fillip of pleasant consolation. Scarcely a word of the matter for which they were summoned together by the town offisher-and which was about the mending of the old bell rope-was discussed by any of them. So after a sowd of toddy was swallowed, with the hopes of making them brave men, and good soldiers of the magistracy, they all plucked up a proud spirit, and, do or die, determined to march in a body up to the gate, and forward to the table of his lordship.

My uncle, who had been one of the ringleaders of the chicken-hearted, crap away up among the rest, with his new blue coat on, shining fresh from the ironing of the goose, but keeping well among the thick, to be as little kenspeckle as possible; for all the folk of the town were at their doors and windows to witness the great occasion of the town-council, going away up like gentlemen of rank to take their dinner with his lordship. That it was a terrible trial to all cannot be for a moment denied; yet some of them behaved themselves decently; and if we confess that others trembled in the knees as if they were marching to a field of battle, it was all in the course of human nature.

Yet ye would wonder how they came on by degrees; and, to cut a long tale short, at length found themselves in a great big room, like a palace in a fairy tale, full of grand pictures with gold frames, and looking-glasses like the side of a house, where they could see down to their very shoes. For a while they were like men in a dream, perfectly dazzled and dumfoundered; and it was five minutes before they could either see a seat or think of sitting down. With the reflection of the looking-glasses, one of the bailies was so possessed within himself, that he tried to chair himself where chair was none, and landed, not very softly, on the carpet; while another of the deacons, a fat and dumpy man, as he was trying to make a bow, and throw out his leg behind him, tramped on a favourite Newfoundland dog's tail, that, wakening out of its slumbers with a yell that made the roof ring, played drive against my uncle, who was standing abaft, and wheeled him like a butterflee, side foremost, against a table with a heap o' flowers on't, where, in trying to kep himself, he drove his head like a battering-ram through a looking-glass, and bleached back on his hands and feet on the carpet.

Seeing what had happened, they were all frightened; but his lordship, after laughing heartily, was politer, and kent better about manners than all that; so bidding the flunkies hurry away with the fragments of the china jugs and jars, they found themselves sweating with terror and vexation, ranged along silk settees, cracking about the weather and other wonderfuls.

Such a dinner! the fume of it went round about their hearts like myrrh and frankincense. The landlord took the head of the table, the bailies the right and left of him; the deacons and councillors were ranged along the sides, like files of sodgers; and the chaplain, at the foot, said grace. It is entirely out of the power of man to set doun on paper all that they got to eat and drink; and such was the effect of French cookery, that they did not ken fish from flesh. Howsoever, for all that, they laid their lugs in everything that lay before them, and what they could not eat with forks they supped with spoons; so it was all to one purpose.

When the dishes were removing, each had a large blue glass bowl full of water, and a clean calendered damask towel, put down by a smart flunky before him; and many of them that had not helped themselves well to the wine, while they were eating their steaks and French frigassees, were now vexed to death on that score, imagining that nothing remained for them but to dight their nebs and flee up.

Ignorant folk should not judge rashly, and the worthy town-council were here in error: for their surmises, however feasible, did the landlord wrong. In a minute they had fresh wine decanters ranged down before them, filled with liquors of all variety of colours, red, green, and blue; and the table was covered with dishes full of jargonelles and pippins, raisins and almonds, shell-walnuts, and plumdamases, and nut-crackers, and everything they could think of eating; so that after drinking "The King, and long life to him," and "The constitution of the country at home and abroad," and "Success to trade," and "A good harvest," and "May ne'er waur be among us," and "Botheration to the French," and "Corny toes and short shoes to the foes of old Scotland," and so on, their tongues began at length not to be so tacked; and the weight of their own dignity, that had taken flight before his lordship, came back and rested on their shoulders.

In the course of the evening his lordship whispered to one of the flunkies to bring in some things-they could not hear what-as

the company might like them. The wise ones thought within themselves that the best aye comes hindmost; so in brushed a powdered valet, with three dishes on his arm of twisted black things just like sticks of Gibraltar-rock, but different in the colour.

Bailie Bowie helped himself to a jargonelle, and Deacon Purvis to a wheen raisins; and my uncle, to show that he was not frighted, and kent what he was about, helped himself to one of the long black things, which without much ceremony he shoved into his mouth, and began to. Two or three more, seeing that my uncle was up to trap, followed his example, and chewed away like nine-year olds.

Instead of the curious-looking black thing being sweet as honey-for so they expected they soon found they had catched a Tartar; for it had a confounded bitter tobacco-taste. Manners, however, forbade them laying them down again, more especially as his lordship, like a man dumfoundered, was aye keeping his eye on them. So away they chewed, and better chewed, and whammelled them round in their mouths, first in one cheek and then in the other, taking now and then a mouthful of drink to wash the trash down, then chewing away again, and syne another whammel from one cheek to the other, and syne another mouthful, while the whole time their een were staring in their heads like mad, and the faces they made may be imagined, but cannot be described. His lordship gave his eyes a rub, and thought he was dreaming, but no-there they were bodily, chewing and whammelling, and making faces; so no wonder that, in keeping in his laugh, he sprung a button from his waistcoat, and was like to drop down from his chair through the floor, in an ecstasy of astonishment, seeing they were all growing sea-sick, and pale as stucco-images.

Frightened out of his wits at last, that he would be the death of the whole council, and that more, of them would pushion themselves, he took up one of the segars-every one knows segars now, for they are fashionable among the very sweeps-which he lighted at the candle, and commenced puffing like a tobaccopipe.

My uncle and the rest, if they were ill before, were worse now, so when they got to the open air, instead of growing better they grew sicker and sicker, till they were waggling from side to side like ships in a storm; and, no kenning whether their heels or heads were uppermost, went spinning round about like pieries.

"A little spark may make muckle wark."

It is perfectly wonderful what great events spring out of trifles, or what seem to common eyes but trifles. I do not allude to the nine days' deadly sickness, that was the legacy of every one that ate his segar, but to the awful truth, that, at the next election of councillors, my poor uncle Jamie was completely blackballed-a general spite having been taken to him in the town-hall, on account of having led the magistracy wrong, by doing what he ought to have let alone, thereby making himself and the rest a topic of amusement to the world at large, for many and many a month.

Others, to be sure, it becomes me to make mention, have another version of the story, and impute the cause of his having been turned out to the implacable wrath of old Bailie Bogie, whose best black coat, square in the tails, that he had worn only on the Sundays for nine year, was totally spoiled on their way home in the dark from his lordship's, by a tremendous blash, that my unfortunate uncle happened, in the course of nature, to let flee in the frenzy of a deadly upthrowing.

THE INNER LIFE.

BY JAMES HEDDERWICK.

From tender thinkings to the eye's fine lid
A dew comes sweetly. Unforgotten sights,
Escapes of travel, chance-spent glorious nights
With those whose memory like a pyramid
Is broadly based and higher than all mists,
Our daily lot of fortune or of wrong,
We tell in fearless prose though the world lists.
But all have secrets which, like griefs in song,
Disguised are utter'd or kept always hid.
Some early cross or long-repented sin
Cowers in the heart, of daylight eyes afraid;
Some life-aim miss'd, or failure bitter made
By jeering tongues; some grovelling shame of kin
Draining mute drops; some haunting form and face
More precious than the spoils of many books;—
All these we lock as, in a secret place,
The letters of dead loves, for aching looks
When clouds of loneliness make gloom within.

But even the silent treasury of the breast,
By pride lone-sentinell'd, has a secret spring
Which lays it open. Music's sorrowing,
Through echo of some voice long years at rest,
May touch it groping in the tearful dark.
Some tale which has a mystery of truth
May on a sudden hit the invisible mark,
And charm the cloister'd memories of youth
To tears which but to weep is to be blest,

THE DAUGHTER OF THE CHATEAU.

[Henrietta Keddie ("Sarah Tytler"), born at Cupar, Fife, 1827. Novelist and miscellaneous writer. Her principal works are: Nut Brown Maids; Papers for Thoughtful Girls; Citoyenne Jacqueline; The Old Masters: Lady Bell, &c. There is pictorial power in her sketches of scenery, delicacy and clearness in her portrayal of character, good sense and a kindly nature apparent in her reflections; and she possesses the historic insight which enables her to reproduce the scenes and people of the past with remarkable spirit and fidelity.]

I.

One April day, in a year of grace now long gone by, a French peasant woman, with a girl of eleven years old, left the village of Saulecourt, and walked up the grass-grown road, which led through the neglected grounds to a chateau, such as used to be perched above every French village.

This middle-aged, short, brown-faced woman in the costume of a well-to-do peasant-striped petticoat, grass-green apron, and white cap, with long lappets shading gold ear-rings-was Madelinette of the mill. She had been intrusted with the sole care of a daughter of the chateau during the terrors of the great Revolution, and of the subsequent stormy, political years, when the count and his family had been in exile. The girl was dressed in the same style as her nurse, peasant-like and quaint in her short petticoat-red, white, and blue, after the fashion of the tricolour with her buff apron, its bib fastened over her white boddice, and her cap without a border, fitting closely to her round curly black head and serving as a frame to her irregular, dimpled face. Though she had been suffered thus far to grow up in obscurity, she was a real demoiselle, and was now clamping in her wooden shoes on her way to her mother and her aunt, the members of her family who had at last returned to the chateau. The Revolution had formed a gulf which had cut the girl clean asunder from her family, so that the very name by which she had been christened-Angeline Ursule-and by which she was known at the chateau, had been rusticized by her foster-mother, Madelinette, into simple Urlurette.

Urlurette would not have recognized father or mother, brother or sister, had she met any of them by chance.

"Thou wilt be good, my pippin, and do credit to my training," counselled Madelinette, with a quaver in her voice; "assuredly I shall see thee when thou drivest past in the coach

with the mules, as Madame the Countess was wont to take her airing."

"Without doubt thou shalt see me and hear me also, my mother," cried Urlurette, giving a little spring over a rough bit of the pathway, in order to lend emphasis to her purpose; "for I shall alight every time, and bring no end of nice things to thee, and my father, and Jeannot. The red wool for which thou hadst the great wish to knit the socks for my brother, the new bridle my father coveted for Sacristain. Who knows?"

"Softly, my child!" exclaimed Madelinette, as she furtively wiped the troublesome moisture from her brown eyes with her apron. "Thou must not tease the countess for gifts to us.

"But of what value is love without deeds?" insisted Urlurette, not troubling herself to make a loud show of her affection. How could she be supposed to do otherwise than love her father, mother, and brother?

"Hein! I don't want deeds," persisted Madelinette, disinterestedly; and deeds which are not wanted are no better than plaguey midges;" and, suiting the action to the word, she brushed aside an early swarm. "I shall be only too proud to see my bibiche sitting in the coach among silks and furs, and looking out of glass, gilding, and coats-of-arms."

"But I don't think I shall like that very well myself," said Urlurette, reflectively. "Thou knowest that I have such a great inclination to walk, run, and jump, my mother." And Urlurette looked very much as if she were about to give an example of her tastes, which must have contrasted oddly with her old woman's dress.

"Great ladies don't often walk, and never run," communicated Madelinette; "at least, they were not wont to do so. They may have learned these tricks, with others, when they were put to hard shifts, and discovered that they were flesh and blood. No shame to them for not knowing it. How could they guess it? But all the troubles are over, and we have kept our chateau." Madelinette looked round her proudly, but a little deprecatingly, at the changes produced by ten years' absenteeism and confiscation to the state.

To Urlurette the chateau, bringing with it no recollection of its former glories, was very grand indeed. There was to her no desolation in the long grass and reedy waste. She shrewdly suspected there would be plovers' eggs there, and tiny balls of curlews hopping thickly in the season. The king-cups, marshmallows, and moon-daisies were already colour

ing the rough pasture amber, golden, and silvery-white. Urlurette was not so old as to be above a lurking weakness for the catkins on the willows and silver poplars, which, to her eyes, were quite as good as acacias and walnut-trees. Those willows and silver poplars drooped so prettily that there were natural bowers among them in which she should rejoice to receive her village companions, Margot, the little Jeanne, and Honorine, and where they might have the most delightful games of hide-and-seek when their brothers joined them after the field and shop work was done, | and the feeding of the horses and cows was

over.

"Dost thou not think, my princess," began Madelinette persuasively, "that thou shouldest leave off saying father, mother, and brother to us at the mill, now that thy own mother and thy aunt have come home, and have summoned thee?"

Urlurette started, and her somewhat prominent lips seemed to pout of themselves, as she looked reproachfully and a little defiantly at her foster-mother.

"And where should I have been had I possessed none save my true friends, I pray thee tell me that, my mother Madelinette?"

"Oh, hush, hush!" implored Madelinette, much disconcerted, "thou knowest thou wast the bébi when the count and the countess fled with the rest. They could not carry thee with them. I am afraid thou art wicked to reflect on them for what the poor people could not help," said Madelinette, striving to be severe for the young girl's good.

"I do not reflect on them for leaving me behind," Urlurette asserted, almost stamping her foot indignantly; "thou knowest better than that. Nor do I mind so much their not seeking after me all the while that I was growing a great girl, though they might have managed to do that;" and Urlurette swelled out her limited proportions ostentatiously and rebelliously. "There is no good in contradicting

me.

II.

In an uncomfortable mood Madelinette and Urlurette climbed up the flights of stairs to the overgrown, moss-stained terrace, where the orange-tubs had long ago been overturned, and the almond-trees cut down, but where hardy budding syringa and lilac bushes had intruded and replaced more courtly favourites. A glass door opened from the terrace, at which Madelinette knocked. It was opened by a plough-boy in gray, as it seemed to Madelinette. He was gruff, and only acknowledged her greeting by growling a few words in a strange tongue. They were, although the newcomers did not comprehend them, "So, this is the miss; a young farm wench!" The plough-boy handed the couple over to a full-fleshed, highcoloured young woman, in a gown and boddice of the same material and colour,-a huge ruff, like the rays of the sun, surrounding her face. She said, "Lawk!" in a tone of entire disapprobation, tossed her head, and next shook it impatiently in rejection of Madelinette's proffered explanation. She conducted the pair up a wide, bare staircase, and with a "Here they are, mums," unintelligible to Madelinette and Urlurette, she ushered them into the first of a darkened suite of rooms, and shut the door behind them.

Luckily Madelinette had a faint recollection of the locality, and as she ejaculated, "Sainte Madeleine service has changed, like everything else!" groped her way over the inlaid wooden floor, past piled-up. claw-footed, and griffin-legged furniture, which had not yet been taken down and put in order, drew aside one moth-eaten cloth curtain after another, and entered the third and last room, where the air was hot from a wood fire on the hearth, and heavy with perfume.

The first token of the presence of strangers being perceived was given by a short, faint scream coming from a white figure, which looked like a waif stretched on an immense

bed. It was one of two figures. The other was in a dark dress, and sat leaning back in a great arm-chair, by the side of the bed. Both figures were dimly discernible by the smoulder

All that poor Madelinette had gained by her over-much anxiety for the proprieties was to put Urlurette into a dubious temper, to damp her sanguine anticipations, to stir up old grievances, and, finally, to provoke her to the very unbecoming impropriety of crying on the eve of the family reunion.

which penetrated the shut jalousies. Madelinette and Urlurette, at the sound of the scream, stopped short in alarm. At the same time the figure in the chair rose to its full height, and showed a tall, gaunt lady, in rustling black brocade, and wearing a tocque or formidable head-dress, intended to resemble a soldier's small casque surmounted by a nod