rather have kept to the fair and beautiful surface of things. Their intercourse was to him far from an unmixed pleasure, for he trembled at every meeting lest she should betray some unlovely trait or emotion. But Margaret was utterly transparent and simply true, for which reason she had hitherto found few to understand her. This man, she felt, did. He divined the meaning that lay beneath a look, a gesture, or in the grasp of an incomplete sentence; and though he had not the gift of a fluent tongue, his ready smile and quick glance interpreted her thought to herself and left her satisfied.

By no fixed plan, but because her presence galvanized to a real but transient activity his torpid spirituality, Leopold showed her all the higher possibilities of his nature. He was when with her a pale reflection of the man he was meant to be-God's ideal of him. But the stimulus never outlasted her actual presence. In the interval between her visits, Leopold was his old self, save that the society of any other woman troubled him, and he kept as far from the sex as possible. Yet even this was scarcely a sign of grace, or due to Margaret's influence, since it had been true of him for some months before his first sight of her. Some of his friends accused him jocularly of having sobered down and grown good; but Leopold shook his head.

"A man does not grows older," he said. worse man when he emotions."

grow good as he "I think he is a has worn out his

One day he discovered, half accidentally, that Margaret was called by her immediate family, “Pearl."

"It has never gone outside ourselves," she said. "I think a pet name like that loses sacredness when it passes beyond the four walls of home."

Leopold looked at her with a smile of exquisite æsthetic pleasure. The name, the sentiment, touched him more nearly than anything yet had done. When she had gone, he said it over to himself, softly, several times, in English and German.

Pearl; Pearl; die Perle; mein Perlchen," said Leopold, under his breath. It clung about his thoughts as the scent of violets had clung to his fingers when he once had touched her ungloved hand. "To have so beautiful thoughts makes one a better man," he said to himself.

Late in August he found her a house,

not so convenient, so comfortable, or in so healthful a location as the first he had thought of, the tenant of which was still trying vainly to sublet, but on the right side of the school-house for Leopold. He should see her pass his office twice a day, and once in every month she would come in to pay the rent. But he was very thoughtful of her in the preparation of this house. It was papered, painted, and generally renovated until it shone again, and the rent was lower than to the last tenant by the exact amount of the agent's commission.

"It is because I am so sure of the money," he said to Pearl in explaining the lease, in which the rent was given at the usual figure. "You will always come in on the day you draw your salary, and I cannot take money for the pleasure of seeing you," he added.

"It is awfully kind of you, Mr. Leopold," said Pearl.

She laughed a little about it to her brother when she went home, but Dr. Worthington took it very philosophically.

You'll find that Smoketon is very good to self-supporting women," he said. We may not rise to give them our seats in a street car, but we make it up in other ways. If the lease had been made out in father's name you would not have fared so well. Besides, it's exactly like Leopold. He's a queer genius, but the kindest-hearted fellow going. Only you don't want to fall in love with him, Pearl. He isn't a Sunday-school book sort of fellow, you know."

"I haven't time to fall in love with any one, and certainly not with Mr. Leopold, though I like him very much indeed," said Pearl, quietly.

"He's a first-class friend, but don't let it go any further," said her brother. He was not especially alarmed for his sister, as he did not believe Leopold at all likely to marry, and, besides, had implicit confidence in Pearl's good sense.

Margaret looked just a little wistful when he had left her. "No," she said at last, with a shake of her head, “I haven't time to fall in love, and that is all there is about it."

She was very busy for the next week moving into her new home, in fact, she worked so hard to get settled before school began that she over-fatigued herself, and taking cold upon the top of that from

sleeping in a room which had been replastered and was not thoroughly dry, she was in bed for a few days, which Leopold was sincerely sorry to hear. Yet her failing to pass his window was hardly so serious in itself as losing the first week of school, with the consequent difficulty in catching the year by the right end, which every teacher will easily realize. Mar garet said that it made her work harder for the whole ten months. She never felt that she really knew her scholars or had thorough control of them, which was, of course, all the more exhausting to her nervous energy because she had returned to her work before she was physically fit to do so.

"You ought to take care of yourself," Leopold said to her several times. "You are working too hard. Teaching is not fit for you."

"I never felt it as I do this year," Margaret said. "It is a longer walk to school than I ever had before, and the cars are no good to me at all, at least in wet weather. I have so far to walk at each end that I get thoroughly damp, and then I catch cold."

"The school-house is badly situated," said Leopold, gravely. "It is not on any car line, and that is wrong."

་་

The little house which she might have had was within a stone's-throw of the school, but there would then have been no daily passing of Leopold's window, with a glance and smile for him whenever he chose to claim them. And this was not always; for though it was very convenient to be busy about his flowers at the times he expected her, he sometimes preferred to remain concealed, and watch the slight look of disappointment with which the beautiful eyes dropped again.

Leopold was not a coxcomb; he was perfectly conscious that the disappointment was very slight indeed. The slightness of it surprised even Margaret herself. "It is almost a wonder," she said, "that Mr. Leopold and I do not fall in love with one another."

The year wore around to July again. Margaret's teaching was over, and Leopold's annual holiday had come.

"I must go home to see my parents, you know," he said, half excusingly. "They have no one but me."

'You have no brothers or sisters?" she asked.

None; and I may say that I have no home; that I have never had," he told her. "I went first to school when I was but seven years old-a great boardingschool, too; for my parents had only me, and they were resolved to give me a good education."

"Well, I'm sure they succeeded,” said Margaret.

He shook his head. "I wish they had kept me at home a few years longer," he said. "A man has lost much, Miss Worthington, when he has missed knowing what it is to have a home of his own."

He looked at her very wistfully; his eyes seemed to pray her not to be hard upon him, to make this excuse for him, that he had never had a home. Then he let his glance fall upon the paper where his pencil idly traced strange arabesques. There was a great sadness at his heart, and for once he was not absorbed in epicurean enjoyment of Margaret's character. He had known her for a year, and he was about to leave her, though for such a short while; it seemed to Leopold that he had read the book of her soul to the very end, and found not one line that was not utterly pure and womanly. Yet she had faults, he knew; she was hasty in speech, quick-tempered, proud; but these, in his mind, were but the natural shading which enabled him to believe in the truthfulness of the picture. His ideal had come very close to him; she was all that he had dreamed, and more; but Leopold's chief feeling was one of weary disappointment.

He looked up again, and met her grave, considering eyes fixed upon his face, as though she were weighing, judging, reading his character as he had read hers. The blood rushed to his forehead; for a moment Leopold saw himself, not quite with her eyes-ah no!-but in a measure as she would have seen him had she known his life; and he was vile in his own sight for that one moment.

Margaret rose to go, and held out her hand in good-by. "And thank you," she said, "for all your many kindnesses."

"No, no, Miss Worthington," he answered, holding her hand lightly-he could scarcely bring himself to touch it; it is you who have been kind to me."

He did not explain his meaning, nor did Margaret ask it; she went away feeling very strangely heavy of heart, while

"It is possible, I believe it is perfectly possible, for a woman to be thoroughly pure and good," said Leopold, with a great advance from his sentiments of last year. "It is not possible for a man; but if I had known her earlier, I could have been better. Now it is too late."

On

He was gone his usual fortnight. his return he awaited, half eagerly, half in dread, some sign or token from her, some glimpse of her upon the street. For Leopold felt dimly that there had come a crisis in their friendship; he had reached a point whence he must go forward or back. The questioning look in Margaret's eyes had told him this.. She had begun to judge him. He turned pale at the thought that she could know him as he was; yet so to live as not to dread those eyes was a task beyond his strength -beyond the strength that his life had left him.

But the days passed, and still he saw nothing, heard nothing of her, and he would ask no questions, for save from sheer necessity her name had never passed his lips. One day he saw in a jeweller's window a bracelet of fine golden chain-work, the clasp set with one large pearl; another day an engraving they had discussed, and which Margaret had expressed a desire to own, made its appearance among the stock of a certain picture-dealer.

Leopold bought them both; he could scarcely have told why, except that it would have been his most natural course had he been a better, and therefore a happier man. There was a pathetic side to his extravagance, as there is to the herculean efforts of a hopeless invalid to walk the few steps which a person in normal health accomplishes without a thought.

Then came the 1st of August. "She will come at last," thought Leopold.

His new engraving, framed, hung over his mantel; he had bought a new carpet for his floor, and new pots of blooming plants stood in his window, for it had been a frightfully hot and sickly summer, and the old plants had died during his absence. There was not a speck of dust upon anything in the office, and, in a morocco case in the drawer at his elbow, lay the heavy bracelet with its sin

There was a film of dust over everything the next morning, even upon the flowers which he had not had the heart to water: if they were to live without Margaret's smile, it were better that they should die, said Leopold. His eyes were weary and his face haggard when, late in the afternoon, Dr. Worthington sprang out of a carriage at the door and ran into the office.

"I am instructed to hand you this," he said, as he placed an envelope on the table; "the rent and thirty days' notice, you see. I sha'n't let them stay in that house, Leopold; unhealthy situation, and I always said so. The notice ought to have reached you two days ago, but I've simply not had time to breathe. I shall move them out as soon as my sister is well enough."

Leopold had begun, dully and mechanically, to fill out a receipt. A great blot fell upon the paper with the start he gave, yet he did not speak.

"Never mind another receipt; that one will answer," said the doctor, who had all Pearl's powers of observation joined to his own volubility. "I suppose you had not heard of her illness? Typhoid fever: she's as low as she can be to be alive; but I hope, in God's good mercy, we'll pull her through. That's right. Thank you,' as he took the blotted receipt. "Goodby. I'm just rushed to death this sum

mer."

When he was gone, Leopold said over to himself: "In God's good mercy, we'll pull her through.' In God's good mercy," he repeated. "In God's good mercy."

It was the nearest to a prayer that he had ever come. He sat in his office in the summer darkness silent and motionless for a long, long time; then he went to his lodgings, ate a hearty supper, and slept heavily, rising the next morning to endure the same dull anguish in the same mechanical way. It never occurred to him to send her fruit or flowers, or to offer any of those trifling attentions that have been the stay of many a breaking heart; he never went near the house, but sat in the office which she would never again enter, and waited for the blow to fall. Two days later he saw a notice of her death in the paper.

Early in the following spring, Dr.

Worthington entered a certain jeweller's shop, and laid on the counter a bracelet of golden chain-work, the clasp set with a single large pearl. "I want to trace this," he said. "I found it, and fancy it may have been stolen and secreted; the case was pretty far gone, but I made out your name on it. Can you tell me anything about it ?"

"I shouldn't wonder if I could," said the jeweller. "Mr. Leopold bought that bracelet from me last summer some time. I did not ask any questions."

"Thank you," said the doctor; "that's all I want to know."

He stumbled a little in getting into his buggy. "Poor fellow!" he said, brushing the back of his glove across his eyes. The next evening he drove out alone-thus proving himself worthy to be Pearl's brother-and replaced deeper beneath the soil of his sister's grave than he had found it, the pearl-set bracelet. The paper in which he had wrapped it was a receipt for house-rent, with one large round blot of ink upon it.

phisical

characteristics of the utmost dissimilitude. The almost rainless western coast descends in a series of plateaus and picturesque valleys to the sea. Here are centred that higher culture and progressive activity which give Peru her standing among the nations of the earth. Rimmed about with lofty mountains, extensive interior valleys stretch in a chain from north to south, subduing the asperity of naked rocks and fields of snow with their bloom and verdure. Except in the case of a favored few, those born here are fated to life-long isolation, relieved only at infrequent intervals by scanty news of the larger life of the world, brought in when mule trains toil across that wall of cold blue peaks which limits their vision forever. East of all this occurs an abrupt transition from the mountains to the broad, low-lying forests of the Amazonian basin. The silent solitudes and torpor of the tropical wilderness seem to have placed a spell over life in all its forms, while nature has almost interdicted labor by that lavish abundance which renders the problem of existence so easy of solution. With an imperturbable gravity and serene contentment, the inhabitants of this region glide on the stream of time unembarrassed by need of serious forecast, for the opportunities of all days are to them the same.

Eastern Peru, though changing its political title at various periods, has been called the Montaña, or wooded country, since the first colony was planted there two hundred and fifty-six years ago. The

tures. Towns were built and destroyed many times, and there is scarcely a single site which has not been bathed with the blood of white and Indian through centuries of conflict. Spanish and Peruvian possession of this territory has consequently been more nominal than real until within the last twenty years, during which time several of the old mission stations have flourished forth into cities of from two thousand to six thousand inhabitants, under the commercial stimulus given by opening the Amazon to the flags of all nations in 1866. Accordingly the majority of the pure whites now living in the Montaña are either Peruvians originally from the west coast, or Germans, French, and English, with two or three Americans, who have been allured into this remote corner of the globe by the prospect of speedily amassing fortunes in the rubber trade. These new-comers are often noble examples of manhood, full of that courage and determination which are needful in establishing government and commercial prosperity in the midst of a somnolent and sometimes treacherous native population. Women of apparently equal rank are, however, conspicuously absent. Almost without exception they belong to the class of cholos, or half-breeds. The Indian element is strong in the features of this mixed race, although at times the Caucasian blossoms out in a clear-cut arching mouth, a delicate face and chin, and a thin aquiline nose. The young women possess the feminine instinct of neatness

in dress and love of personal adornment. Simple pink or light blue frocks trimmed with a bit of lace or ribbons make a cool, becoming costume. The dark hair is secured behind by a ribbon, from which it falls loose down the back. A few pinks and rose-buds half encircle the head like a broken wreath. Out-of-doors a Panamá hat is worn well down over the eyes, and a thin blue and white shawl invariably envelops the shoulders. But the dirt of loosely constructed houses and the dampness and mildew of a tropical climate render it difficult to preserve undiminished the spirit of neatness, and at last with age they lapse into the slovenliness of the typical old women of the country, becoming shrivelled, toothless, holloweyed, and innocent of any attention to grace of manner or tidiness of appearance.

The men are more prepossessing. A youthful beauty of physical strength and vigor ripens into a rugged weather-beaten aspect, which masks the lines of age. The cholos rival the Indians in number throughout eastern Peru, which fact alone serves as circumstantial evidence

turer must either become an exile or found here his home. There has not been in the past, nor is there to-day, any reluctance to intermarriage between white and Indian. Indeed a foreigner seldom remains here long without becoming married. The Montaña of

For a man who

Peru is a lonely place. must live here for years, apart from friends and kindred, it certainly must become fearfully lonely. The outer world almost loses its reality, and ebbs from the memory into the dimness of a dream. He sees perpetually a few faces which represent humanity and all human affections, hopes, aspirations to him, until at last he fancies he can see the promise of an ideal life in those dark lustrous eyes, forgetting the tawny skin, the harsh speech, the want of noble bearing. It is, after all, a human soul, and the human soul flashing through intelligent eyes is always suggestive of infinite possibilities. So he estimates the spirit at the value of its potentiality, being hungry for sympathy, and hence not careful to avoid the enticement of dark eyes flashing on him. Then he becomes tied irrevocably to the soil, and realizes too late that the innate power of youth needs somewhat more than the narrow opportunities of a tropical wilderness for its development. The disappointment, moreover, is not confined to him alone.