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bosom. No brooch, no human brooch, I'll warrant! but a clot of the blood that dried on the spear of the Roman soldier. Ye have trafficked with the devil and have worn his seal. It has robbed me of my money and my home, my son, my daughter, and the power of my members-look at that blemished arm!"

She watched him for a moment, fascinated, seeing now his palsy; he beheld the pity in her eye, resenting it, and caught with his able hand at the bottle of Bordeaux which he poured with a splash into a tarnished goblet. He was about to drink it when he saw a look of fear and speculation come upon her face.

"May the Lord forgive me, Manor!" she exclaimed, "but I gave the brooch this morning to your son!"

"To my son!" he cried, incredulous. "How could you have seen him? He is far from here."

"He never left the country," cried the woman, weeping, "and I have known his hiding all the time. He saw the brooch upon me, was furious when he heard how I had got it, and made me give it up." 'Furious," said Wanlock curiously. "Had he the right?"

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"None better," said the woman, looking on the floor.

"I might have guessed," said Wanlock bitterly. "Though thou shouldst bray a fool in a mortar among wheat with a pestle, yet will not his foolishness depart from him.' He has the brooch! Then are his footsteps dogged by the Accuser

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The night was tranquil, windless, frosty-cold; deep in the valley's labyrinth lay the lodgehouse, far from other dwellings, alien, apparently forgot, with the black plumes of the trees above it. In pauses of the conversation something troubled Wanlock like the fear of ambush, some absorbing sense of breathing shadows: silence itself took on a substance and stood listening at the threshold. Suddenly there came scratching at the door, and Wanlock blenched.

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"God save us!" said the girl, and her face like sleet.

"I dare ye to open the door!" cried Wanlock, shaking.

"It is the dog," she said"the dog come back; I left it in the company of Stephen."

"There is some compact here with things beyond me," said her master. "Open-open the door and see."

One glance only Wanlock gave at the grey dog trotting in, and fell to weeping when he saw a neckcloth pinned upon it with the brooch! He reeled a moment at the sight, then fumbled at the neckcloth and drew out the gem. With a curse he cast it in the heart of the burning peats where it lay a little, blinking rubescent, then rolled among the cooler ashes. He moved expectant to the open door where the dog was leading: the girl took up the gem, which stung her like an asp upon the palm; she dropped it in the goblet where it hissed and cooled among the wine, and at that moment rose the cry of Stephen in the avenue.

With a snatch at the burning candles she ran out behind her master where he stood with head uplifted looking at the squadrons of the stars. She was the first to reach the figure lying on the ground, and putting down the candlesticks, she raised the lad, whose face was agonised and white like sapple of the sea. He had no eyes for them, but, trembling, searched with a fearful glance the cavern of the night made little by the candles burning in the breathless avenue.

"Stephen! Stephen! what has happened?" cried the girl, her lips upon his cheek.

"It-it caught me," gasped the lad. "I ran from The Peel, and it caught me, clawed upon my thrapple, and left me here. I pinned my neckcloth on the dog."

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He leaned upon the woman, helpless in his terror. 'Bring me the wine!" she bade her master, and old Wanlock stumbled back to fetch it.

"Oh, Stephen! Stephen! what were ye doing at The Peel?" she asked. "Ye know ye promised me

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"I could not help myself," he answered, "knowing what was in the well. 'Twas that that kept me in the country. I got it out and was making off with it when I heard the eerie laugh again. I dropped the plunder at the very door of Mellish when the de'il was on me. He was no bigger than a bairn, but he kept upon my heels till I got here, and then he leaped."

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My Stephen ! Stephen!" cried the woman, fondling him upon her breast, and he hung within her arms. A snarl came from the shadows: a creature smelling of mould and rotten leafage, clothed as in ragged lichens, contorted like a pollard willow, leaped at the throat of Stephen and crushed it like a paste, then fled with the bittern call.

Old Wanlock heard the woman shriek he tottered with the goblet from the lodge and came within the circuit of the candles where she knelt beside her lover.

"He's gone! he's gone!" she cried demented. "The devil has strangled him," and at the moment passed the ghost of Stephen Wanlock.

"I knew it," said the father, "very well I knew it: the sixth blow! There is no discharge in this war!" His head seemed filled with wool: his blood went curdling in its channels, and he staggered on his feet. Raising the goblet till it chattered on his teeth, he drained it at a draught, and the woman, heedless, straightened out the body of his son.

She heard her master choke: she turned to see his face convulsed: his eyeballs staring, and the empty flagon falling from his hand.

"The brooch! the brooch!" she screamed: a gleam of comprehension passed for a moment over Wanlock's purpling visage: he raised his arms, and stumbling, fell across the body of his son !

LORD HALIFAX TO HIS DAUGHTER.

THE Marquis of Halifax of the Commonwealth and Restoration had, we know, some shrewd ideas on the subject of naval discipline and training. He also had certain opinions about the habits and behaviour of the female sex, and was brave enough to put them on paper under the title 'Advice to a Daughter.' Bold nobleman! For much less nowadays would Suffragettes have tied themselves up to your area railings, or had their indignant bodies sent to you by parcels post. Every man is ready with advice enough and to spare for his son, but before revolted Margaret even his Majesty's Ministers are dumb. For this reason, that no ordinary male will now venture to admonish the other sex, it may be interesting to explore the pages of a musty old book written more than two centuries ago, and, if we be very reckless, to extract therefrom certain maxims and apply them to the present generation. In parenthesis, why make sham martyrs by sending people to prison who want to go there? There is a tale of a Russian Countess who dabbled with Nihilism; one evening at a semi - Nihilistic tea - party the house was surrounded, and she was seized by two stalwart wardresses, who removed her to another room. Presently she returned dishevelled and in tears, and "On m'a fouetté comme un enfant," she moaned,

"avec un soulier." She would doubtless have preferred Siberia; - but the tea-parties ceased.

Lord Halifax begins his dissertation with some remarks on religion.

"As to your particular faith," he writes, "keep to the religion that is grown up with you, both as it is the best in itself, and that the reason of staying in it upon that ground is somewhat stronger for your sex, than it will perhaps be allowed to be for ours; in respect that the voluminous inquiries into the truth, by reading, are less expected from you." The Bible is "the best of books," and will be direction enough for her not to change.

On the whole, however, his attitude is not unlike that of the average Frenchman of the present day, who rarely visits a church, thinks as freely as he pleases, supports his Government in its attack on the religious orders-and yet, in his heart, much prefers that his wife and daughter should attend Mass. The Marquis was a religiously minded man, but not a religious Christian, and there is little or nothing in his essay that might not have been penned by a devout Buddhist. Still, he would have his daughter grow up a religious woman.

The largest portion of his discourse is on the subject of husbands. Apparently, lovematches were rare in those days.

"It is one of the dis

advantages belonging to your sex, that young women are seldom permitted to make their own choice; their friends' care and experience are thought safer guides to them than them than their own fancies; and their modesty often forbiddeth them to refuse when their parents recommend, though their inward consent may not entirely go along with it."

Let those who clamour for women's votes consider the following passage:

"You must first lay it down for a foundation in general that there is inequality in the sexes, and that for the better economy of the world, the men, who were to be the lawgivers, had the larger share of reason bestowed upon them; by which means your Sex is better prepared for the compliance that is necessary for the better performance of those duties which seem to be most properly assigned to it."

It is this fundamental fact, that there is "inequality in the sexes," which the Shrieking Sisterhood forgets. The strongest will ever be the lawgivers, and, generally speaking, might is right. But there are consolations. "The first part of our life is a good deal subjected to you in the nursery, where you reign without competition, and by that means have the advantage of giving the first impressions. Afterwards you have stronger influences, which, well-managed, have more force in your behalf than all our privileges and jurisdictions can pretend to have against you. You have

more strength in your looks than we have in our laws, and more power by your tears than we have by our arguments."

He acknowledges that it is hard that there should be one law for a husband and another for a wife, that an offence should be considered "in the utmost degree criminal in the woman, which in a man passeth under a much gentler censure." But it is the way of the world, he says, and necessary for the preservation of the family honour, which a woman has in her keeping.

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A husband's faults are & wife's opportunities; "I am tempted to say, That a wife is to thank God her husband hath faults. (Mark the seeming paradox, my Dear, for your own instruction, it being intended no further.) A husband without faults is a dangerous observer, he hath an eye so piercing. . . . The faults and passions of husbands bring them down to you, and make them content to live upon less unequal terms than faultless men would be willing to stoop to." No one has ever met the faultless man, save in the pages of lady novelists; he does not exist any more than the peyaλоπρeπns ȧvýp of Aristotle, but no doubt it is quite justifiable to use him as a bogey for frightening a demoiselle into making the best of a future husband's faults! Lord Halifax would probably have been the first to confess that he had never met the faultless man, and would never meet him though he attained to the years of Methuselah. "In

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case a drunken husband should fall to your share, if you will be wise and patient, his wine shall be of your side; it will throw a veil over your mistakes. . Others will like him less, and by that means he may perhaps like you the more. When after having dined too well he is received at home without a storm, or so much as a reproaching look, the wine will naturally work out all in kindness, which a wife must encourage, let it be wrapped up in never so much impertinence."

It is unpleasant advice, and seems to leave out of consideration the possibility that a wife might help her husband to better things, or that she might have too much love for him to acquiesce in or profit by his frailty. But drunkenness was not looked upon with any very great disgust then, and the age was less squeamish and sentimental.

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Husbands sometimes had nerves," it would seem, even in the Seventeenth century. "It concerneth you to have an eye prepared to discern the first appearances of cloudy weather, and to watch when the fit goeth off, which seldom lasteth long if it is let alone. But whilst the mind is sore, everything galleth it, and that maketh it necessary to let the black humour begin to spend itself, before you come in and venture to undertake it."

The Stingy husband is a hard nut to crack. "There are few passions more untractable than that of avarice." However, he thinks that

women are far too ready to call their husbands "a closehanded wretch," and that a wife before making an outcry should find out what her husband's expenses are and how much money he can properly spend on her. A good deal can be done by taking a man in the right mood-"A dose of wine will work upon this tough humour, and for the time dissolve it. Your business must be .. to watch these critical moments." men indeed are ever lenient or generous when their stomachs are empty!

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There is reason in his remark "That a wife very often maketh better figure for her husband's making no great one. . . . His unseasonable weakness may no doubt sometimes grieve you, but then set against it this, that it giveth you the dominion, if you will make the right use of it, . . . you must be very undexterous if when your husband shall resolve to be an ass, you do not take care he may be your

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She must be very careful, however, to give him his due in public, lest "the tame creature may be provoked to break loose and to show his dominion for his credit, which he was content to forget for his ease. In short, the surest and the most approved method will be to do like a wise Minister to an easy Prince: first give him the orders you afterwards receive from him." Is not this a delightful little sketch, and do we not all know the wife who makes a better figure for her husband's mak

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