cries. Friends and neighbors came running over the hill to the scene of destruction; and there were pale, dismayed faces, hasty suggestions, and wild efforts to discover and save the drowning victims, but all in vain. Suddenly the frantic father descried his Henry sitting apparently in security upon some logs which had become jammed together, and were arrested in their progress by the mill. At the same moment, the whole group caught sight of Mary, carried alive and struggling over the mill-dam. With one impulse they rushed down the bank and round the mill, to the rescue. The father followed his neighbors with hurried steps and trembling knees, casting a single glance to ascertain that Henry was indeed safe, and calling to him, as he passed, not to stir till his return. Henry seemed not to hear. He sat motionless and crouched down in the extremity of his terror, uttering quick low shrieks. They were lost in the tumult, and he was left alone.

The father came down to the flat rock below the mill. just as the bruised, dripping and lifeless body of his daughter was drawn out of the water. With sad countenances and silent lips, her two elder brothers laid the pale corpse--for such it was--on a board, and carried it hastily up to the village with a vain hope of resuscitation. The father followed it a few moments anxiously; and then suddenly recollecting his blind boy, he went with one or two of his neighbors to bring him to his desolate home.

Henry was where he had left him, bowed down, silent, motionless. The father's look grew fixed and earnest as he drew nigh. He strode hastily over the heaps of timber and ruin, stooped to lift his child, and uttered a cry of horror. The lower limbs of the poor blind boy were wedged fast between two heavy beams of the demolished bridge, and he had fainted with excess of agony. Wild and almost superhuman were the efforts with which the father strove to relieve his child from a situation so horrible; but it was not till his friends came with an axe and hatchet, with calmer heads and steadier hands, to his assistance, that the sufferer was extricated.

It was a night of grief and agony beneath the roof of William Halleck. The remains of the fair, gentle, and

pious Mary lay stretched on her own little bed in one room, and in the next, father, mother, brothers, and sisters hung weeping round the couch of the suffering Henry. Acute indeed were the pains with which it pleased God to afflict the youthful saint; and saint-like indeed was the resignation with which those pains were borne. But about midnight his agonies were suddenly calmed, and hope fluttered for a moment in the heavy hearts of those who loved him. It was but for a moment. The physician announced that the process of mortification had begun, and death was drawing nigh. All at once the voice of the blind boy was heard, calling his mother, in a faint but calm voice. She came to his bedside, and he took hold of her hand. Then he asked for his father, brothers, and sisters. They all came. He touched each, and said, "Mary is not here."

No one spoke; but he felt his mother's hand quiver in his.

"Mary is drowned," said he; "God has taken her to be an angel. Do not sob, mother, because she and I are to be so much happier than we ever could be on earth. Let me tell you of what Mary and I were talking this very morning, and you will see that God has kindly called us away, at the very time, when we were most willing, perhaps most fit, to die."

Then he told them briefly all that had passed that day; and, after a moment's pause, added

"Father and mother! I thank God for taking me away so young; and so too did Mary. You will be saved much trouble, much care; and we shall find no temptation, no sin, where we are going. Mary will never suffer pain and sickness again; and I, the poor blind boy, that never saw even your dear face, mother, I shall behold God. My eyes will be opened, and I shall go from a world of darkness into a world of light. Promise me, all of you, that you will not sit down and mourn for me when I am dead; you will observe how wise and good it was that Mary and I should both die young. I have been a happy boy. God gave you a sick child and a blind one to try your patience and virtue, and you have borne the trial well. You have been very kind to us both; you never said a harsh thing to your blind boy

We have lived just long enough to try your submission, but not long enough to be a heavy burden all your long lives to you; and now God has taken us away, just as we could have wished, together, and at the best of times to die-the best for you, the best for us. Sometimes it

is hard to see why things should be just as they are; but this is an easy matter to undestand. I am sure it is right, and I am happy."

Henry Halleck never spoke again; but his last words had breathed comfort into the hearts of his parents, which dwelt there enduringly with his memory.

He lingered till morning. The first red beams of that sun he had never seen, fell on his pale features and sightless eyes. He felt his mother drawing open the curtain of his little window at his bedside, that she might behold his face more plainly. With a faint smile on his lips, he turned towards her; it became fixed, and with a short spasm, his renewed spirit passed suddenly and peacefully into the world he had panted to know.

Death had at last come under the roof William Halleck, and summoned the young, fair, and good; but he had come in visible kindness.

When the dispensation is dark, dreadful, and mysterious, latent good is still there; and the true Christian seeks for it and if he finds it not, still adores without doubting.

Christian Liberality Rewarded.

MR. THOMSON, a clergyman in the west of England, had made it his custom for many years, to distribute the overplus of the proceeds of his farm among the poor of his parish, after having supplied the wants of his own household. One year, however, he engaged to subscribe thirty pounds for the building of a chapel in a distant town. Being unable to raise the money by any other means than by breaking in upon the little hoard of his poor parishioners, he was under the necessity of selling so much, as would raise the thirty pounds for his subscription to the chapel. The expedient, though painfu' to him, was unavoidable.

Having procured the money, he left home to be the bearer of his benefaction. In his journey he overtook a young lady riding on horseback, whom he thus accosted: "Well overtaken, fair lady, will you accept of an old clergyman as your companion over the down? I am too old indeed, to promise you much protection, but I trust God will protect us both." There was a certain something in the manner with which Mr. T. said this, that was very attractive, so that the young lady felt a strong prepossession in his favor, before he had half finished what he said. She expressed herself much satisfied with his company; and, by inquiring, found they were both going to the same town. In the course of conversation, he told her his name, and the name of his church; what a happy village of poor people his was, and how dear they were to him. When they arrived at the town and were about to part, Mr. T. informed the lady of the name of the friend to whose house he was going, expressing a wish that she would call upon him before he left the place. The young lady, the same evening, mentioned to her friends, to whom she was on a visit, the name of the clergyman, and the many precious subjects of conversation with which he had entertained her. "Thomson!" cried the lady, "I wish I knew it was a Mr. Thomson, we have been so many years inquiring after in vain. I have thirty pounds tied up in a bag by my late husband, due to a person of that name, who desired to leave it till called for. But I suppose he is dead: and his executor whoever he be, knows nothing of it." Mr. Thomson was sent for, when it soon appeared, that the Mr. Thomson, to whom this money had been so long due, was his own brother, who had been dead for several years; and to whose effects he was the executor and residuary legatee. On the bag's being put into his hand by the lady of the house, he fell on his knees, and with eyes lifted up, exclaimed, "Blessed be God! how wonderful, thus to provide money for my poor people at home! The money will be theirs again." He hastened to his friend in the town to inform him of what had happened; and as he entered his house, he cried out, "Praise God: tell it in Gath, publish it in Askelon. that our God is a faithful God."

A Mighty Weapon

THE preaching of the late Rev. J. Scott having beer. made effectual to the production of a great change in a young lady, the daughter of a country gentleman, so that she could no longer join the family in their dissipations and appeared to them as melancholy or approaching to it, -her father, who was a very gay man, looking upon Mr. Scott as the sole cause of what he deemed his daughter's misfortune, became exceedingly enraged at him; so much so, that he actually lay in wait, in order to shoot him. Mr. S. being providentially apprised of it, was enabled to escape the danger. The diabolical design of the gentle. man being thus defeated, he sent Mr. S. a challenge. Mr. S. might have availed himself of the law, and prosecuted him, but he took another method. He waited upon him at his house, was introduced to him in his parlor and with his characteristic boldness and intrepidity thus addressed him: "Sir, I hear you have designed to shoot me, by which you would have been guilty of murder. Failing in this, you sent me a challenge: and what a coward you must be, sir, to wish to engage with a blind man, (alluding to his being short sighted.) As you have given me the challenge, it is now my right to choose the time, the place, and the weapon; I, therefore, appoint the present moment, sir, the place, where we now are, and the sword for the weapon, to which I have been most accustomed." The gentleman was evidently greatly terrified, when Mr. Scott, having attained his end, produced a pocket Bible, and exclaimed, "This is my sword, sir, the only weapon I wish to engage with." "Never," said Mr. S. to a friend to whom he related this anecdote;" "never was a poor careless sinner so delighted with the sight of a Bible before." Mr. Scott reasoned with the gentleman on the impropriety of his conduct, in treating him as he had done, for no other reason than because he had preached the everlasting Gospel. The result was, the gentleman took him by the hand, begged his pardon, expressed his sorrow for his conduct, and became afterwards very friendly to him.