hard work between the two anxieties to keep up heart. She had a lesson set her not easy to be learned by self-reliant capable natures-she had to learn her own powerlessness, and to stand on one side and wait.

A month after Jeffrey's departure, Magdalen and Frances were in the drawing-room one afternoon, each with a book in her hand, neither reading, but busy with thoughts. The day was a mild one, and the windows were open, for the two were of one mind in their liking for fresh air. Frances sat by the window, and looked now out to the distant sea, and now into the room before her. Though small and simple, it had an air both of refinement and comfort. Francis loved this room. She glanced at the bright fire, her piano, and on the sofa the figure of her mother full of nobility and gentleness. Then she thought of her father, how good he was, how dear and loving, how well and happy. How dared she be unhappy when God had given her so much? She must rise above her trouble, and rejoice in all the good that surrounded her. The trouble, after all, was only in her own mind. No one knew anything of it but herself. She could almost persuade herself that it was imaginary.

She would

shake it off; yet in the very act, as she supposed, of doing so, she sighed at a fresh realisation of it.

Her uncle, Dr. She exclaimed just then risen,

By-and-by she looked up, as the click of the garden gate struck on her ear. Russell, was coming up the path. in surprise, and Magdalen, who had came forward to see the cause.

"There is something the matter!" cried Frances, impulsively.

"No, dear, why should there be?" answered Magdalen, in a soothing tone. Frances had grown nervous lately. But the girl scarcely heard; she had sprung up to open the door for her uncle.

The doctor was a man whose sensibilities had become much hardened in the course of years of familiarity with miseries and fatalities, but as he looked at the two women he hesitated over the news he had come to bring. It is no light matter to strike terror into unsuspecting loving hearts, and a man may well be forgiven if he gets through it clumsily.

"Now, Frances," he said, seeing her first, "you must show your spirit. Ah, Mrs. Rae," as she came through the drawing-room door, "you will do so, I know. There is plenty to be done, and things might have been a great deal worse. The fact is, we are bringing the Captain home, and you must have a room ready for him. He has had an ugly fall. They took him into a cottage, and moving him is a bad job, but on the whole I decided it would be best to get him home at once. I have not a moment to remain. I did not like to send a stranger up to you. My assistant is there,

and we have sent to the barracks for an ambulance cart. I must not stay to enter into particulars. I don't suppose we shall be more than half an hour in getting up."

"How is he hurt?" Magdalen asked calmly, but with a face which had grown absolutely colourless, "He fell on his head. I have not made a thorough examination yet, but I don't imagine there is any other mischief. He is not in pain-in fact, you must prepare yourselves for seeing him unconscious."

"Will he die?" said Frances. Neither of the women had moved since the doctor began to speak. It was in neither of them to faint or shriek. But Frances' voice, naturally full of music, sounded harsh and hard.

66

No, no, certainly not," answered the doctor, sharply turning to her. "Now, my dear, don't excite yourself-above all things, don't excite yourself." Then, after a few hurried directions to Magdalen, he was gone, with a last injunction to them "to keep cool." Magdalen and Frances dared not speak one word to each other of what had befallen them-they even avoided looking at one another. Each felt the same necessity for thinking and doing only superficially. To realise would be to lose the possibility of action. There was more than enough to be done. The doctor had told them what he should require. There was the Captain's room to prepare, the servant had to be sent for ice, and there was work which must be finished before the whole existence should be swallowed up in the coming struggle with death. For neither was deceived by the doctor's ready assurance. It was so unhesitating, so evidently given on principle, that it carried with it the conviction that there was little ground for hope. The moments came and passed. Through such moments, at other times, it appears impossible to live, yet, when they come to us, we breathe, we live, our senses are alert, we do all that has to be done, our minds seize on the practical necessities and issues of each moment with unnatural acuteness, even insignificant details of no bearing, which would usually escape us, are noticed then-in fact, one part of us appears to live supremely, but it is the life of a machine. In the midst of it all we wonder where the feeling, living, loving I is gone.

But all too soon all that can be done is done. That strange awful procession has gone by. Gently, slowly they have carried him up. No lifting, no jolting, nor the bustle of the streets, and the loud voices, have awakened him from that solemn terrible sleep. He lies helpless and still where they have laid him, breathing slow deep breaths. They' have probed the terrible gaslf, and bound it up skil fully. The white bandages make the brown face look ashen-the same dear handsome face that looked at them smiling as he passed the window only two hours before.

When all was done, standing beside the bed, the doctor told them how it had happened-told them in a loud unhushed voice that filled them with nervous terror. It went too near declaring that this was a sleep from which there could never come an awakening. They instinctively yearned to pull down the blinds, to quiet the house, and hush voices and foot

falls.

But Dr. Russell had door and window open, and in this light breezy chamber walked and spoke with too evidently no thought of caution.

The Captain had been walking on the Castle Heights, he said, where there were terraced roads, divided by grass slopes. A passer-by on a lower road had seen the Captain on the one above. A little child, some way in front of him, apparently run away from its nurse in search of adventures, was climbing down the steep side of the dividing bank. It had not gone far before, its bold spirit deserting it, it set up a piteous cry, and stood still, afraid either to come on or go back.

"Holloa!" cried the Captain, coming up and looking over the bank, "you're not half a man. For the credit of an Englishman, aren't you coming back?"

The child, looking up in astonishment, stopped his crying for a moment, but speedily resumed it again, evidently too frightened to budge.

The Captain thereupon climbed down to him, with a too confident agility, and in one terrible moment more was laying motionless at the feet of the narrator. Others had come up, and they had lifted him into a cottage by the side of the road. And some one who knew him had sent for Dr. Russell.

And now there was nothing to be done but to watch and wait, in the presence of this which was neither life nor death, but might any moment become either. The peacefulness of that figure was awful, himself taking no part as it were in the terrible suspense : to what far distance had that tender self-forgetful spirit gone, that its two dearest ones should thus be left to utter loneliness and fear! Now that action was over, Magdalen became the weaker of the two women. Courage had been hers only by force of will. To Frances it had belonged by reason of a strong nervous excitement which had kept her up with sharp tight tension not yet relaxed. This nervous excitement in some sensitive natures mercifully throws out a kind of shield to ward off the full realisation of the present. Magdalen had no such shield, and her realisation was thorough and intense. Hour after hour she sat by her husband's side holding in hers his unresponding hand, with a white still face, down which the tears fell one after another unheeded. It was Frances who brought her a cup of tea and made her drink it, who roused the terrified servant from her stupor to a sense of her unfinished work, who answered the inquiries which one after another came to make, and who went down to see her aunt when she arrived. Mrs. Russell was almost awed by Frances' unnatural calm. Her sobbing and bemoaning was hushed in an imperative way, and she was sent away with the assurance that if they wanted help she should give it. Frances had hard work to persuade her to go; she wanted to stay and watch with them, but the girl felt as though her wailings would drive her crazy.

Night came, familiar night, which had come so many hundred times before, bringing parting kisses and happy rest; now bringing only a change of light

into the one chamber, and a deeper stillness, they two watching while the world slept. Dr. Russell, who was to stay in the house, to be ready for any change, lay down on the bed in Frances' room. He would have had Frances also rest, for he said the strength should be economised which might have to be so sorely tried, but she refused, and her mother could not urge it. They sat in silence, and heard all the sounds of day die out, till the ticking of the clock, and once or twice a whistle on the distant railway, as a night train whizzed to or from the boats, alone relieved the stillness. Magdalen's whole being seemed to be but an aching love and a voiceless prayer, which never for a moment wandered from her husband. But Frances' mind, on the other hand, was active, restless, not daring for long together to dwell with her father. A conviction had seized her, growing in certainty hour by hour, that she had seen her mother sitting there, a conviction that even in those hours brought to her strange stirring contradictions of feelings startled wonder, gladness, pain. Magdalen had sat for hours in the same position, her figure bending over the bed, her hand holding her husband's. The dim light fell on her pale features, her eyes never moving from her husband's face, and her lips compressed to endurance. "This is not pity, this is love," cried Frances' heart, and her whole soul went out to meet her. Her gaze must have had some intense quality magnetically attracting. It drew Magdalen's eyes away from her husband. When she met her daughter's look, the endurance which had held her face in rigid lines dropped from it like a veil at the instant. It became an appeal of piteous suffering.

Neither knew whose had been the first movement, but in another moment Frances had Magdalen in her arms, and she was sobbing long tearless sobs upon her shoulder. Frances strained her tight, and called her "Mother! mother!" in full intense tones. Alas! there was no need to hush the sobs, though he whose heart they would have gone near to break was lying so close beside them. He was wrapt away from them beyond reach of their love or sorrow. In that solemn unheeding presence the two women had found each other out. There was no need of words. Each knew that she was loved, and in that knowledge was strength and comfort under the very shadow of death. Through the long hours that had passed, each heart had borne its own separate weight of lonely anguish —alone, though in the other's outward presence. Abandoned by the one being dearest to both, the world had been utterly desolate. Now no longer would either suffer alone, but together, heart meeting heart through clasped hands and seeking eyes. By-and-by Magdalen said—

they and the life for which they yearned were together held in God's hand.

Magdalen's voice rose at length, growing in depth and fulness as she proceeded

"Almighty and everlasting God, Who art always more ready to hear than we are to pray, and art wont to give more than either we desire or deserve, pour down upon us the abundance of Thy mercy, forgiving us those things whereof our conscience is afraid, and giving us those good things which we are not worthy to ask, but through the merits and mediation of Jesus Christ, Thy Son, our Lord."

It was a divine instinct which had led Magdalen to utter the old well-loved words. They sank as such familiar sacredness alone can do into each heart with soothing. They rose and began again the wearying watch. But daylight was glimmering in the East, and a new day had dawned in their hearts.

At five o'clock the Captain moved one hand. They pressed up close, and spoke, and touched him, and gazed with a passionate expectancy that might have waked the dead. He sighed heavily. He raised his eyelids wearily, and a living spirit looked out from beneath.

"Michael, Michael, do you know me?" cried Magdalen.

His eyes sought her face confusedly, painfully.

66 Of course, my dear; why shouldn't I know you?" he said, and then sank back into the darkness again. But the two women fell to crying with joy; and the doctor came, and gave them hope.

CHAPTER XIII.-THE CROOKED MADE

STRAIGHT.

EVEN days have passed. At first hope had been only a feeble glimmer, often quenched altogether. The three doctors watching the case shook their heads and expressed themselves with the vagueness which only their race can command. But three days ago hope had become steadier, and now the doctors dwell on care, and absolute quiet, and good nursing, and cease to give the trembling pale-faced women the consolation that lies in such answers as, "We must hope for the best; your husband has a good sound constitution," or, "Everything is being done for your father that can be done, you may take comfort in that."

That week of terrible anxiety, and of hard workfor after the first long interval of unconsciousness the nursing became difficult and arduous-has told upon both Magdalen and Frances, though in different ways. With the growth of hope, Magdalen's strength had grown. Though worn out physically, her stupor of

will has left her; she can take proper food and sleep, can organise and direct, and has regained her elastic step and clear serenity of look.

Poor Frances, on the other hand, breaks down utterly when the relief from the strain comes. Each day of renewed hope takes away from her fictitious strength, and Magdalen has her anxiety here as well as in the sick-room.

There are many helpers now; indeed, there would be too many were Magdalen to accept all who offer their services. Inquiries and little offerings are made at the door constantly.

The door-bell, swathed in flannel, shakes noiselessly in the kitchen over poor Susan's head, till her aching legs bring her to the point of declaring, with repentance already at her heart, "that she could wish poor master was not so beliked-of in the town, that she could!"

One day, a bunch of purple blooming grapes was left, of Eshcol magnificence, with an inquiry, but no message or name. They were supposed to have come from the parents of the child who had been the innocent cause of the accident.

On this evening of the seventh day, Frances' fortitude entirely gave way. She had been in her father's room, and he had talked to her for some minutes in his weak voice in the old loving playful fashion. Immediately after, she came down-stairs into the dining-room, and burst out crying hysterically and violently. Susan, hearing her from the kitchen, ran to her aid, and did her best to soothe her by alternately poking a smelling-bottle at her, and entreating her to "keep up, poor dear." These measures failing, she had to go for "missis," much against her will, for poor "missis" was resting. She came, however, at once. She saw that love and leave to cry were what Frances wanted; and now she was no longer afraid of a repulse. At one time Frances would have tried to hush her sobs when Magdalen entered. Now each was confident with the other. Frances' emotion was allowed to spend itself, and then she was gently obliged to drink a cup of tea, which was a form of consolation understood and supplied by the thoughtful Susan, to lie down on the sofa, tucked up in shawls, and to try to go to sleep. Magdalen sat by her awhile in silence, and then stooped to kiss her, thinking the work of soothing done, and that she might go. But Frances, to her surprise, suddenly

rose.

"Oh, mamma!" she said, "I believe you love me now."

"You are quite right, Frances; I do."

"You will not love me when you know what I must tell you. You mustn't go on being good to me without knowing what I have felt about you, and something I did."

Magdalen tried to make her lie down again.

"Whatever you have to talk to me about, let it wait, my child. We are neither of us fit for any more excitement. Try to go to sleep, and think of nothing."

so cold-hearted, and only caring for duty and things like that, and because you looked down on me, and thought I was a trouble to papa; and most of all because he thought you really loved him, when all the while you were only sorry for him; and thenthen, when I found that was true-"

"How did you do that, Frances?" asked Magdalen, quickly. She, too, was standing now, and listening with a quickening sense of a coming enlightenment.

"I am glad at least that you have done no further mischief."

Magdalen spoke in a cold stern voice. Every word cut Frances like a knife. Magdalen was seldom angry, but on such rare occasions her anger glowed to a white heat. The passion swept clean away before it all consideration of extenuating circumstances, the generosity of the confession, the piteousness of the appeal in the drooping figure, and the pale face with its eyes red with weeping, and the quivering lips. She turned and left her, without another word. Of herself she did not think any more than of Frances; it was for her husband that her anger burned, that his heart should have been thus wantonly played with, thus cruelly wounded, and that he might have gone away from her for ever with the shadow brought by that falsehood still between them. It was scarcely against Frances that her anger was directed. It was a kind of passionate impersonal resentment, as of a mother whose children have been stolen away, she knows not how. Her passion almost overlooked Frances, the insignificant cause of the mischief.

Frances watched her, as she passed out of the room, with fascinated eyes. She could utter no prayer for forgiveness. There was too awful a majesty in that retreating figure. She heard her go up-stairs with a soft yet decided tread, and then, as she expected, she heard her footsteps overhead. She had gone to her husband. She would not delay one moment to carry comfort to him, she would tell him softly that Frances had done wrong, that whatever it had been, it was love, not pity, now, and then she would kiss him, they would be happy-perfectly happy in each other. And she, Frances, was shut out. Her mother had begun to love her, now her heart would be turned from her. They would neither of them want her, nor love her. Her mother was angry, her father would be angry because she had come between them.

Frances would, perhaps, never pass through more bitter moments than those when, desolate and forsaken, she lay on the sofa of the dimly-lighted diningroom, too exhausted to cry, with her own hidden trouble gnawing at her heart, and the picture of those two in the room above painting itself on her fancy.

Yet never, perhaps, would poor Frances reach a higher nobleness and a truer blessedness, for crushed down by pain, with her whole soul she willingly bore it; laid fast hold of the happiness which had come to those others, clasped it close to her heart and rejoiced in it. Through her passion

for her father, narrow and exacting, yet true, and for that reason capable of being purified by fire, she had climbed through pain and discipline to a higher region of self-renunciation. She was content, yes, even content that those two should forget her, those two so much better and worthier than she.

In the meanwhile a swift resolve had, as Frances had supposed, carried Magdalen straight to her hus band's side. Not an hour longer must they be parted in feeling. He was sensible-he could hear her. Who could tell that the angel of death might not yet be hovering near? But when she reached the bedside she checked herself in her impetuous intent. He lay with closed eyes, too utterly weak to look up. She motioned the nurse to leave the room. Then she said, slowly, in low clear tones, "Darling, don't trouble yourself to speak to me. I have just heard from Frances what you have both been thinking about me, and I cannot wait till you are better before I tell you that it is not true. I married you because I loved you with my whole heart, and soul, and strength. I will explain some day, but now you must just believe me."

The Captain's hand searched for hers, his eyes looking at her. He was very weak, and the tears brimmed them, and fell over on to the sunken cheeks. His lips moved to speak, but failed, and he shook his head feebly; but his eyes, full of an absolutely childlike love and trust, spoke for him. Magdalen stooped and kissed away the tears, and then followed a silence better than words.

But at last across Magdalen's content there fell a shadow; it was the thought of Frances. It was not in Magdalen's magnanimous nature to retain resentment after a wrong had been righted. She went down immediately to find her. Frances looked up as she entered, and her aspect woke all the motherliness in her.

"My poor little child!" she said, taking her into her arms.

"Can you ever forgive me?" said Frances; though had she not felt that forgiveness was hers already, she could not have asked for it.

"It would be strange if I could not, Frances. It was all a mistake. I must explain it to you; we must explain things to each other. We are no longer strangers, to misunderstand one another."

Magdalen spoke in a bright tender tone. They talked of all that each had felt, and Frances knew for the first time what it was to have a mother.

(To be concluded.)