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denly upon his brother, who was contemplating | about that girl? Come abroad with me. I the pencil sketch. should like of all things to return to England at least."

"Well, I went to see how they got on, and Mrs. Stone wanted me to settle up the old man's affairs, which were terribly confused, and so, naturally, you see, Millard-"

"Are you absolutely pledged to marry her?" interrupted his brother, upon whose mind reflection seemed to produce no mollifying influ

ence.

"In words, No; in manner, Yes. And I mean to say in words what I have already said in other ways. I have only waited to speak with you, my only brother. What do you

think?"

"I think she would marry you, or any other man in your position."

"Why should you so insult both me, and the woman of whom you know nothing, except that she is my chosen wife?" demanded Mark, rising indignantly.

"Insult? I don't desire to insult cither of you, my dear boy, but you must remember that, besides being five years your senior, I have seen and studied at least five hundred times as many men and women as you, and am not so easily led away by romantic feeling. You say I know nothing of this young woman. I know that she is the grand-daughter of a crafty, vulgar old miser; that in all probability her father and mother were of the same stamp; and that if human nature is the same in this case as in most others, she would marry gladly and eagerly any man who could make her mistress of the Eyrie."

"You do her injustice, bitter injustice; indeed you do," expostulated Mark, half eagerly, half angrily.

Millard, without reply save a significant smile, took from his pocket a microscope, opened and adjusted it, and bent over the precious engraving, with its triple yet unique inscription.

"Yes," half grumbled Mark, after watching him for a moment, "you can pore over that stupid old stone, with its inscription that never meant any thing in its best days, and now is past finding out altogether, year after year, and think your time well bestowed; but fancy yourself capable of reading the character of this young girl, whose only crime is being Jacob Stone's grand-daughter, without ever having seen her."

"My dear Mark, if I could only find as simple and universal a rule to apply to my inscription as to your lady-love's mind, I should have no need to study longer over the one than the other."

"And by what rule do you measure Rosetta's mind?" asked Mark, still angrily. "By the rule of self-interest. A rule that will gauge all the uneducated human nature with which I ever came in contact," returned the philosopher, coolly, and still scanning his hieroglyphics.

"Millard, you're a—"

"Come, come, Mark, don't say it. Are you and I to quarrel after ten years of separation

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"Not I! And yet," continued the young cynic, after a moment's consideration, "I have no doubt that if I could see her off her guard, and unrestrained by your presence, I could in a very short time open your eyes to the probable fact of her being Jacob Stone's worthy descendant."

"I will pledge my life upon her truth!" asserted Mark, stoutly.

"Come, then; I will, for your sake, give up a week to this experiment," sighed Millard, wearily.

"A week, no; you would then say your experiment failed for want of time. You shall have three weeks in which to study her; and you shall at the end of the first week give me your opinion in writing of her exterior manners and appearance, that will answer to the Greek inscription on your own Rosetta Stone, which he who runs may read. At the end of the second week you shall translate to me her mind, comparing and collating it with your first impression, as you pretend to decipher the enchorial sentence here by aid of the Greek. You see I know somewhat of your jargon. Finally, at the end of the third week, you shall give me a clear reading of the heart and soul of this young girl whom you have studied; and this translation of her inmost nature will, if I know her and you, give more pleasure and satisfaction to your own heart, as well as mine, than if you could read off these ridiculous hieroglyphics like so much Oxford print."

"Agreed, then!" cried Millard, joyously, jumping up to seize his brother's hand. "I will take the three weeks, and I will read your Rosetta Stone. I only wish I could hope as easily to decipher my own."

The next afternoon a gentleman carrying a huge port-folio beneath his arm, and dressed in the careless style affected by artists, stopped at the door of the old farm-house known as the "Widder Stone's," and paused a moment-his walking-staff raised to knock-to glance at the scene within: at the white-haired dame seated in the wooden rocking-chair gravely knitting; at the child who sat at her feet.

Child? No; petite and agile, blue-eyed, fair-haired, and rosy-tinted though she was, a second look showed that she was past childhood, while yet the idea of womanhood seemed absurdly ponderous and formal as applied to her airy motions and careless mirth.

"Rosetta, can it be? Not much Stone of any sort," flashed through the mind of the artist as the uplifted cane fell upon the half-open door.

The old woman raised her dim eyes. The girl bounded to her feet so suddenly that the

spectator winked, but removing his hat stepped inside the door in answer to the dame's invitation, and seated himself in the chair shyly proffered by the girl.

"Won't you have something to take, Sir?" inquired the old woman, with hospitable earnest ness. "Setta, you get a plate of them crullers and a mug of cider for the gentleman." "Nothing, nothing, thank you, madam; unless, indeed, this young lady, Miss-"

"Rosetta's her name, Sir; 'Setta we call her for short most generally."

"If Miss Rosetta will give me a glass of water, then, I shall be much obliged to her." "Certain, if you won't have nothing better, Sir. Have you walked a long way, Sir?" "Some distance, ma'am. I am an artist, and am making sketches of the magnificent scenery about here. I have seen so many different ones to-day which I had no time to sketch, that I have resolved to spend some days in looking them up, if I can find a convenient lodging. Perhaps, madam, you may be induced to take me in. I assure you it would be quite a favor." "Well, I never! Lor', Sir, you couldn't put up with our homely doings-not a day, Sir. We ain't nothing but farmers, and much-as-ever that we're that. My old man he's dead this couple o' year, and Peter Schenk carries on my farm at the halves."

"Never fear, ma'am, but that I shall be contented. My name is Vane-a cousin of Mr. Mark Vane." "Our landlord, Sir! Have you been staying with him ?" "Not yet. I wish before every thing else to complete the series of sketches that I have commenced, and do not intend to allow myself to think of any thing else, not even of visiting my cousin, until they are done."

"And don't Mr. Mark know you're here?" "I don't intend to tell him of it, and I must beg you will observe a like silence, Mrs. Stone. He doesn't come here very often, does he?"

"Well, Sir, he do come pretty often when he's to home, but I expect he'll be going down to the city this week. He mostly spends some days there the first of every month."

"Oh, well, I don't believe we shall meet. I intend to live out of doors principally."

The next day Mark Vane stopped his horse at the farm-house door to say, without dismounting, that he was off to the city, and probably should not return under two or three weeks. Then, affecting great haste, he added a few hurried words of general farewell, meeting guiltily, as he did so, Rosetta's great eyes of wonder and dismay, and was gone.

"Never mind, 'Setta, he'll be back before long," whispered the grandmother patting the pretty flushed cheek.

"I don't so much care whether he is or not," retorted 'Setta, hastily running out of the room lest the tears in her blue eyes should run over and betray her.

A week afterward Mark Vane received among

a dozen invitations to one festivity and another the following dispatch from his brother:

"I can not deny, my dear Mark, that your own rendering of the obvious or Greek inscription is perfectly correct.

It describes a creature full of beauty, grace, and winning ways; but remember, youthful student of this great art, that to translate the Greek fluently is only to open the door for a hundred confusing and contradictory readings

of the more abstruse legend, and that after all the Demotic

may contradict the Greek, and the hieroglyphic (when we shall come to it) entirely upset both."

"Have I been a fool, or is Millard becoming one?" was the mental query which accompanied the note into the traveling-desk of Mr. Mark

Vane.

Another week, and another note:

"The enchoric version of the fair inscription is as easily deciphered as the Greek; and though I expose myself to your derision for having conceitedly assumed a theory only to abandon it, I will acknowledge that each freshlydeveloping trait of mind and heart is fully in accord with the fair exterior. Should the more intimate and searching study of the next week, typified by the hidden and abstruse hieroglyphics, verify, as I foresee. that it will, my present conclusions, I will gladly, my dear Mark, acknowledge you right and myself wrong, and prepare to be groomsman at the wedding which shall add to the old house of Vane an ornament so fitting as this fair Rosetta Stone."

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And over this report, as over the other, Mark pondered doubtfully and somewhat gloomily; and even while mounting his horse to ride with beautiful Gertrude Cortlandt, he muttered discontentedly,

"Because I'm a fool, why need Millard be one too?"

Another seven days, and the three weeks devoted to the deciphering of the Rosetta Stone was accomplished; and Mark Vane leaving directions that his letters should be sent after him betook himself to the Eyrie, and the next day after his return rode down to Mrs. Stone's farm, and hitching his horse, as he had many a time before, to the garden paling, walked directly in.

The dame sat alone in the wide old kitchen basking in the golden autumn sunshine which glanced merrily in at the latticed window transfiguring the brilliant tin and copper upon the dresser to burnished silver and gold, and tipping the widow's busy knitting-needles with sparks of scintillant flame.

"Where's Rosetta, Mrs. Stone?"

"Rosetta?" repeated the grandmother, flushing rather uneasily as she scanned the troubled face of her young landlord, "Why, I believe she went up the brookside after dinner to show Mr. Vane a tree or something."

"Up the brookside path, did you say? I'll go and meet them."

And before Mrs. Stone could draw breath for a reply the young man was beyond hearing. He trod hastily the familiar path, down the orchard, beside the meadow hedgerow, across the stepping-stones, and up the bowery brookside path. And ever as he went the lowering brow and gloomy eye, the pale cheek and restless lip, showed that the sweet beauty of the hour and scene found no answering sweetness in the young man's mood.

About half a mile had thus been hastily trav

ersed when the sound of voices, apparently close at hand, caused Mark to pause and listen intently for a moment, then move quietly on, till through the drooping branches of a silver birch he could, himself unseen, gain a view of the speakers.

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And if Mark Vane the aforesaid had a little human longing for revenge, it was gratified as he contemplated in silence the crest-fallen, humiliated, resolutely wretched look upon the face of the somewhat domineering elder brother, who sat opposite to him some hours later, stirring an untasted cup of tea, and waiting till the servant should have left the room before he spoke.

Perhaps, too, Mark was wickedly glad to protract the condition of nervous suspense so palpably evident in the other's manner. At any rate, he seemed in no hurry to dismiss either the tea equipage or the solemn old butler who attended upon it. Indeed, it seemed to Millard that the most elaborate dinner might have been consumed while his brother, trifling with his tea and toast, airily chatted upon the weather, the city, politics, the last gossip from Washington, and a hundred other trifles all equally impossible to the less facile listener.

At the opposite side of the brook the high bank, suddenly retreating, had left a small amphitheatre-so small that now, in the golden autumn time, its floor was carpeted all over with gorgeous leaves showered down by the trees overarching its curved side, while in front the murmurous brook brought tribute of scarlet berries and golden blossoms to fringe the margin of this woodland tapestry. In the centre lay a great flat rock, rooted in the earth which had been gathering at its foot ever since the great Noachian deluge had rolled it thither; and throned upon the rock, herself as bright as the foliage, as pure and sparkling as the water, as motionless as the granite, sat Rosetta, Mark's Rosetta Stone, her blue eyes glittering with happy tears, her pretty head bent to receive the wreath of wild asters, whose pale bluc contrasted so well with the sunny hair, which, slipping from its net, lay coiling itself upon the white neck like an amiable golden serpent, charmed beyond the power of mischief by the music of the time and place. Kneeling beside the girl, his mind as earnestly bent upon the proper adjustment of the wreath as it had ever been upon elucidation of the wisdom of Rameses the Great, Millard Vane pursued, after his own peculiar fashion, the study to which he had pledged himself. The wreath at last was settled; and with a murmur of commendation at its effect, the artist, clasping in his own the little hands folded so nervously together, drew down the blush-give you so much satisfaction to see your only ing face until

As noiselessly as he had come, Mark Vane retreated from the shelter of the silver birch, and, without seeking to see or hear more, retraced his steps to the farm-house. But although, as he walked slowly on, his manner showed even more absorption than before, it was singular enough to see that an air of relief, even of amusement, had replaced the troubled doubt and apprehension so plainly stamped upon his face before encountering his recreant brother and faithless love.

Arrived at the house, Mark requested to be shown to Mr. Millard Vane's apartment; and having written the following note, desired Mrs. Stone to deliver it as soon as her guest should return to the house:

"I had no idea, Millard, what a fascinating study this of hieroglyphics may become. I have been taking a lesson at it myself this afternoon, up by the brookside, at the great rock where you and I once dug for buried treasure. It's much pleasanter to find one's treasure above ground,

is it not?

"Well, as I was saying, it was just there, or rather from the opposite side of the brook, that I found, some half hour ago, that I too can read hieroglyphics, especially one very significant one-so potent, indeed, that after deciphering

it I have no need of farther research to fully comprehend

even this wonderful Rosetta Stone.

"Will you come up to the Eyrie to-night and compare

At last, however, the brothers were alone; and hardly was the door closed when Mark, turning his chair from the table and crossing one leg over the other, suddenly remarked, in the coolest possible manner,

"By-the-way, Mill, your three weeks are out. Let's have the result of your studies of the Rosetta Stone."

"Mark, I thought you had more heart!" exclaimed the victim, hoarsely. "You have a right to exult and triumph, no doubt, over my miserable weakness and treachery, but I didn't think you would do it. I didn't think it would

brother condemned by his own folly to a life of remorse and lonely misery."

"What!" broke in the pitiless Mark, "you don't mean you've come to that? 'Lonely misery' means because you can't marry Rosetta, I suppose, don't it? And the remorse is because you have proved once more the truth of the old proverb that, ‘It's not safe to give the cat the cream-pot to keep.'

"Do you think it kind or manly to take advantage of my position to taunt me thus ?" came sternly through white lips.

"Don't get mad, old fellow! It won't do a bit of good. Come, I hold you to your compact. Tell me what is the result of your last week's study, your hieroglyphical study remember, of Rosetta Stone. You owe me that bit of information at least, especially since I've seen how the hieroglyphics are translated."

"Very well. Since it enters into your system of revenge to force me into saying it, I will confess that the keenest scrutiny has developed only virtuous instincts, charming docility, keen aptitude, and native refinement and tact, in this girl's heart and mind. The perfect beauty and grace apparent upon the surface are but faint and poor translations of the wealth within. Are you satisfied?"

"That'll do, Mill. Please don't be poetical; it isn't your line, you know, and I don't think I can stand any more just now-"

COAL AND PETROLEUM.

A protracted and irrepressible peal of laugh-Cary may estive aspects

ter closed the sentence, and completed the angry discomfiture of the elder brother, who sprang from his seat and was about leaving the room when Mark, suddenly controlling himself, called him by name, at the same time extending a hand.

66

YOAL may be contemplated in some other very We may regard it as a consolidated form of the sunshine of a long-past day; as a portion of the generously expended solar force of one age, fixed in material shape; and by simple yet wondrous process sealed up from all dispersion and loss, and transmitted to another age long later to assist to ful"There, I've had my turn, now it's yours. fill in it the development of a state of life incomDo you know, Mill, I came up here to-day as | parably higher than that in which it originated. blue as indigo because I thought I was pledged It is evident that a given quantity of vegetable in honor if not in word to Rosetta Stone. I product represents, or is the equivalent of, a went down to New York fully persuaded that definite amount of the sun's action on the earth. Rosetta was the only woman worth mentioning A sheet or bed of coal of any especial thickness on this mundane sphere. But I never had and area expresses-if we knew the relation or seen Gertrude Cortlandt. There's a woman for coefficient accurately we might convey it in you, my boy! Full of wit and verve, and cul-figures-the very quantum of time expended by tivated to that extent that there's not a weed to be found either in mind or heart. Brilliant, proud, full of honor and noble instincts. Ah, after worshiping the rose, one doesn't care so much for the poor little anemone."

"But, Mark, are you sure? Isn't all this a ruse to make me think you don't care for the treasure of which I have robbed you? Are you not deceiving me or yourself?"

the coal-moss in growing, and the total of sunshine tributary directly and indirectly to its entire vital development. It is no mere sport of fancy, then, but an utterance of science, to say, that all the while we are imbibing the warmth of our coal-fire, we are actually basking in the sun's rays which vivified the vegetation out of which the coal was produced countless ages ago. In this act of its combustion we behold, as it "Not a bit of it. I'm just honestly delight- were, the completion of a marvelous cycle, a sort ed, that's all. I never said a word to Gertrude, of respiration by the earth of the solar heat and of course, feeling half bound up here; but if I light; and attendant upon this breathing in and have half as much quickness in reading those out of the life-giving emanation or influence magnificent eyes as you have in reading hiero- we note also the play of another beautiful round glyphics, why I'll venture to speak at least. At of actions, the imbibition and assimilation into any rate, say she yea or say she nay, I nev- the globe's tissues of the carbon of the air, and er could love Rosetta as she deserves to be the restoration of it again, enacting a function loved." for the earth, curiously analogous, but on a far "And I, you insufferable young coxcomb," | grander scale, with that it discharges in the retorted Millard, who had suddenly recovered nourishment of an individual plant. How wonhis spirits and his equanimity, “love Rosetta a thousand times better than I ever could one of your grande dames, and I've seen plenty of them from Pharaonic princesses down to-a New York belle.'

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"But for all that, my dear boy, you sha'n't see Gertrude Cortlandt till either she is my wife or I have become persuaded that she never will be. This time it has turned out very well, but I won't risk any more hieroglyphical studies of the woman I expect to marry."

"We will be married at the same hour," responded Millard, reflectively. "Not in the same place though, for the Cortlandts won't lose the chance of making Manhattan ring again with their magnificence, while the village church will satisfy all the aspirations of Rosetta and myself."

"All right, Mill. Only aren't we, just a little you know, counting our chickens before they're hatched ?"

66

In this inhaling, pro

derful a succession of phases these of the world's
carbon! In one age a part of the atmosphere,
in another of living vegetation, again a compo-
nent of the solid rocky crust, and finally, when
ministering to human wants, regaining once
more its primal station in the all-encompassing
and life-sustaining air.
longed retention, and ultimate re-exhaling of
the carbon, the earth, it may be said with a lit-
tle stretch of fancy, almost breathes. In so view-
ing this course of the carbon, how stupendous is
the duration of the one long-drawn breath we
are describing!

It must be obvious from the fact, that while all the sedimentary strata of lower position, or older geological date than the coal-measures, are comparatively destitute of coaly matter, or, indeed, of any large amount of air-derived carbon, the so-called carboniferous formation embraces in a solid or condensed form so prodigious a quantity of this element that there must

May be so. But my faith is founded on a have arisen, during the growth of the coal-formstone, and can not be shaken."

And with a very sheepish smile on both faces the interview closed, as does the story, somewhat abruptly.

ing marshes, a solidification or fixation from the gaseous state of a store of carbon so immense as to influence materially the subsequent amount of it held in the earth's general atmosphere. No matter what the vast proportion already in

cluded in the vegetables and animals that clothed the coal. What is the power in this blazing and peopled the earth, this immense bulk of the fuel but that of the ancient carboniferous suncarbon stored away in the form of coal must shine which the coal embodies? This now, at originally have come altogether from the air. the will of men, stirs the artificial blasts that The animal organisms of the period would, no have a might under skillful guidance capable of doubt, as in the present day, resupply to the withstanding or defying the strongest storms atmosphere a large part of the carbon appropri- which the existing sunshine can arouse. The ated by them as food from the vegetable ones. engineer may well be termed the " master of It is of the surplus quantity of the carbon be- the winds," for he generates his mechanical yond that perpetually interchanged between the ones precisely in such force and directions as he animal and vegetable kingdoms, and placed out-likes, while his source of power is still the side of this beautiful organic cycle and hoarded breeze-arousing sunshine of the old sun of the securely away for a far future age to appropri- earth's early days. ate, that we are here speaking.

Coal is not a substance of uniform elementaHow much of the primeval supply of carbon in ry constitution. It presents itself, indeed, in the air was thus ultimately solidified as coal, by many varieties, each adapted to especial applivital organic action, during the carboniferous cations and wants in the economy of human afages, must, in our present defective knowledge fairs, yet all of them so related as to bespeak, of the whole mass of coaly substance in the when compared with one another, a most interearth, be a matter rather of conjecture than of esting phasis in their history. The most curcomputation. Nevertheless, I can not but be- rently used classification recognizes but two lieve that the atmosphere at the beginning of the chief sorts-common bituminous coal and the carboniferous period on the great day of plant- non-bituminous or anthracitic: a nicer subdilife was many times richer in carbon than it was vision is founded on the relative abundance of at the close of it. An estimate carefully made the uncombined carbon or coke, and the volatile from the best data of the sum-totals of coal with- or distillable and inflammable bituminous matin the principal coal-fields of the world, indicates, ters so called. These, in the phraseology of indeed, that the aggregate of carbon buried un-chemistry, are known as the hydrocarbons—a der the soil can not be less than some six times the quantity still resident in the air. If we can assume it to have approached at all to this proportion, we need no longer wonder at the colossal dimensions of the ancient coal-plants, nor at their exuberant growth. Coupling this conception of so high a supply of carbon-the main pabulum of all vegetation-with that of a commensurate abundance of warmth and moisture indicated in the very structures of the fossils, we clearly see that it was an age in which all the conditions, chemical, physical, and climatal, were in an especial degree fitted and prearranged for a most fertile summer of plant-life all over the globe.

Allusion has been made to the curious deduction that the heat engendered during the combustion of a mass of coal is in truth the equivalent of a given amount of the ancient sunshine originally operative in stimulating the growth of the vegetable matter. Let us indulge a little further in this speculation upon the relationships of the sun's powers, as these are exerted through this its potent offspring, its subservient representative. Consider what takes place, as far as the sun is concerned, when a mass of the fossil fuel, the coal, is used as the agent for propelling a steamer against an opposing wind. The wind, every natural movement of the atmosphere, is primarily, as we all well know, a consequence of the unequal warming by the sun of the different latitudes and tracts of the globe's varied surface. But to what is due the speed of the vessel which defies the blast? It is impelled by a potent wind, or rather by most aptly balanced and well adjusted alternating winds of steam of a tempest's strength, awakened from torpor by the heat engendered in the mere burning of

group of substances in liquid and gaseous conditions, according to the temperatures they exist under, and all constituted of hydrogen and carbon united in definite proportions. A coal destitute altogether of the hydrocarbons is a true anthracite; if it contains some ten or twelve per cent. of those volatile compounds, and burns with a soon-exhausted flame, it should be called a semi-anthracite; if it have as much of them as twenty or twenty-five per cent. it is best termed a semi-bituminous coal; and in all cases where it possesses as much as or more than thirty per cent. it claims the title of a true bituminous coal. All these four classes may be divided into sub-varieties founded, not on the amount, but rather on the specific nature of their hydrocarbons or flame-making elements, and partially on the texture or physical structure of the coal as a rock. Such, for instance, is the distinction between the cannel and ordinary coals. There is a general law in the geographical relations of the above-named four classes of coals-noticeable in crossing many of the larger coal-fields, especially those of the United States between the Alleghany Mountains and the Missouri River-which will demand our attention when we enter presently on a consideration of the physical conditions which have produced the rock-oil or petroleum, which so abounds in certain districts. To this and the other hydrocarbons, the associated inflammable gases found escaping naturally or extracted artificially from the earth, let us now direct our attention.

The chief of the chemical compounds of hydrogen and carbon (hydrocarbons) which issue spontaneously or are derivable from the strata under the soil are the so-called bitumens and

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