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It was a certain quality of sympathy, none the warmer though concealed at times behind his superficial affectations, that had first attracted her in Maurice; to-night he somewhat failed her, like a person wrapt too much in his own affairs.

"The main thing is," said he with a wish to relieve the tension of her mood, "that Pen is well. There was something about your letter that made me think you were apprehensive."

"She was never better," said Norah, gulping. "An engagement of this kind brings out all her strength. She's the heroine of the village; the only person who refuses to be impressed is Mr Birrell's sister. I'm a little afraid of 'Tilda Birrell, Reggy, she's far too quick to discover things." "Yes?"

"She has decerned already that a part of Pen's enthusiasm for nursing is due to the fact that it gives her an excuse for evading Andy."

"I can't imagine Pen in a spirit of evasion; what's the matter?"

Norah hesitated: they were on grounds on which they had studiously refrained from stepping hitherto. "Since Pen came here," she said, "she has been the unconscious subject of an experiment. You know my cousin's fad for that perfection which is always the object of his worship so long as it's ideal, though actually his heart is with the imperfect, the incomplete, the failure? Between us we have been train

ing Pen-Oh, you know! you must have seen it! Fancy Farm for months back might have been a seminary. Why! even you were supposed to help; it was expected that the author of ' Harebell and Honey would impart a proper interest in poetry."

Maurice laughed, incredulously. "Don't tell me I was Sir Andrew's selection on that score," said he. "He always had a saner estimate of the value of my poetry than I had myself."

"No; the idea was mine," admitted Norah quickly. "And it hadn't really anything to do with poetry; perhaps I'll tell you some day what I mean. Anyhow, Pen has discovered, somehow, that we have been moulding her after a system of Sir Andrew Schaw's, and her pride resents it. Do you wonder?"

"I don't! It never occurred to me that there was the slightest necessity for tampering with Penelope, as she was a quite satisfactory personality," said Maurice, with emphasis. "So far, at least, from my teaching Pen, I found I had something to learn from her. Nobody had the courage to show me before that I was a useless idler, and that there's a great deal of genuine poetry about the business I was drawing money from without contributing a single constructive idea. . . . Ships, Norah! I've got a new outlook; I find there's as much artistic joy in putting the last possible touch of finish on a hull as there is in perfecting a sonnet-if I were

He spoke with heat, almost crying against the rude contention of the night which seemed to infect them both with its tempestuous humour; the girl inhaled deep, gusty draughts that seemed to fan her inward turbulence, and the heart of her kept time to the beat of the horses' feet.

capable of that. And it was "Nonsense!" she interrupted only a hint from Pen." impatiently. "Don't begin to be poetical again; I much prefer the shipbuilder. The finest poetry in the world never relieved an aching head, far less a really aching heart. I'm wretched, and the worst of it is there's nobody I can blame. . . . I'm in love with Andy! There! I'm in love with his very follies and his whims!... Open that other window ! Open it! Never mind the rain!"

"Yes, yes!" she said impulsively. "She's fine! I should not deny it if I could. I'm the better for her influence. And so is Andy! Nothing will ever change his temperament which, to most people, makes him a kind of nursery puzzle incapable of solution, though amusing to play with for a time. She couldn't change the pieces, but she has been shifting them about of late, till one almost sees a pattern and harmonious colours. He has done more commonplace, sensible things in the past three months to please her than at any time since I have known him; now he's getting as great pleasure out of improving the wynds as you can possibly get from building ships. . . . I'm the only miserable! Nobody looks for the slightest benefit from me!... Nobody," she added bitterly, "cares the slightest rap for me." She spoke as if with"The desire of the moth for the star, Of the night for the morrow, The devotion to something afar

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She spoke as if she wished to fly away upon the pinions of the storm, from ruins of her pride. She had given up the last vestige of reserve, and was the elemental woman with an elemental passion. The rain, for the time, was gone, but the gale drove through the carriage, whooping, as it drives through halls deserted.

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"I was never under the slightest misapprehension on that score," he broke in.

"I have done my best to make amends by the strictest faithfulness to his purposes and projects. I have sunk my own interests so far as even to help him to look for a wife!

Was there ever such a farce! It will be the climax of my punishment if he now concludes he has found her in Penelope Colquhoun."

"Who evades him! You are being carried away by your imagination, Norah," Maurice cried, but with a note of hesitation she decerned.

"That matters nothing! I evaded, too, and yet I was in love with him. Who can tell? The maddening thing is that nearly all he most admires in Pen is to be found in myself, if he had only eyes to see it. I did not teach her courage and frankness, for these she had already, but the superficial things he seems to think indispensable were got from me: there's a way of dressing her hair she has that seems to fascinate him, and it's simply an imitation of my own. Are you laughing, Reggy? Amn't I disgraceful?" "No," said Maurice. not laughing; I'm sorry. There are occasions on which the temperament of either the poet or the shipbuilder is unable to see any humour."

...

"I'm

"I'm afraid! That's the long and the short of it, Reggy; I'm afraid! There's always a fate pursuing Andy that drives him to the most serious acts on the

hasty impulse of an admiring If I or generous sentiment. had not been his ward, and burdened with an inheritance I don't want, he might have— he might have thought of me; but everything of late appears to be pushing him into the arms of Pen. It is she who is always having the opportunities,—she saved my life and tried to save my reputation; now she's nursing his blunders. What's the monster, Reggy?-the thing that was made by Frankenstein? I've made an adorable monster, and, quite unconsciously I'm sure, she's doing her best to make me wretched."

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"I am sure you exaggerate the gravity of the situation,' said Maurice, yet sharing her agitation.

"I'm not! He has only to brood for a day or two on the idea that she is compromised in the eyes of some gossiping villagers, and Quixote would marry out of hand without any better reason! . . . And whether he does or not, if ever you say a word to me on the subject again I'll hate you, Reggy Maurice! I hadn't another soul to speak to on the matter, and now it's done. Tell me all about your shipbuilding."

(To be continued.)

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THE beams of the rising sun slant over the wall of the post and athwart the courtyard. The freshness which, even in the hot weather, comes with early morning, is in the air. The sentry stands brisk and alert at the newly opened, red-painted, loopholed gate. loopholed gate. The men of the guard smoke the morning hookah. Without the post a stony plain slopes away to the east: hardly a vestige of green is to be seen. Bare brown hills surround it on three sides and are already beginning to glow in the sun's rays. In the centre of the plain stands the post. Four-square, matter-of-fact, and utilitarian as the folk who built it,-it stands, an uttermost picket of the Empire. From it starts the road; the reason of this and other posts, a strip of territory, rented from the surrounding tribes, thirty yards broad, and meandering many miles in length, till at last it reaches British India. Politicians call it a trade-route, soldiers a strategic road, and the men in charge many things, according to the height of the thermometer, their temper, and the state of their health. But the road and the post are of importance to people many thousand miles away, as is testified by the strings of camels, bearing English goods, that troop up every season to Afghanistan and beyond to

VOL. CLXXXVIII.—NO. MCXXXIX.

Central Asia. So stands the post of "The Little Mulberrytree."

Inside the outer courtyard of the post stands the Daktonga-a low-hung, stout, well-balanced vehicle on two wheels. Its dingy red paint is sun - blistered and dusty, and its canvas tilt is weatherbleached. The two thin ponies hang their dejected heads and patiently whisk off the flies. The ostler, a lad of the surrounding country, and wild as a hawk, squats on his heels and shares the morning pipe with the guard. The guttering of the pipes' water-cooler is occasionally interrupted by remarks. Over against the mounted men's stables are the men of the escort. Khaki-clad and armed, they adjust girth and surcingle and wait. It is not good to start too early, before the road has been picketed. Inside the room that serves as post and telegraph office snatches of talk burst out, and subside as the Babu makes up the mail-bags to give to the driver. latter, clad in garments none too clean, belted, and equipped with a battered bugle, lolls in the doorway, twisting his short whip in his hands. He wonders if he will get through to British India, fifty-two miles away,

The

without molestation. "The Lifter" and his gang are out on a "running," and three

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days before the mail-tonga One rider draws ahead and one was shot at, and to-day is the drops a hundred yards behind; day of the Walaiti-dak-the two follow close after the English mail. tonga. The English mail has started.

A servant runs along the verandah of the officers'

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quarters, a letter in his hand, descends the steps, and enters the post-office. "Oh, Babuji! is there yet time? Then give me a ticket of one anna. The greasy, clumsy copper coins, value one halfpenny each, are put down, the stamp is affixed, the letter is handed to the Babu, who obliterates its stamp and drops it into the mail-bag, whose mouth he proceeds to tie and to seal up with black sealing-wax. That anna has purchased a portion of the labours of these and many other men. The driver begins to brisk up, and makes careful mental tally as the Babu hands over the various scantily - filled bags: "This for Islam Khan and that for Ghuzni Khel." The driver goes out and places the bags under his seat amongst old bits of spare harness, bags of grain, and ends of rope. He gathers up the reins and seats himself. The ostler stands to the ponies' heads; the escort mount; the guard pause in their talk and look up. "Let go!" and the whip cracks, the ponies spring forward, taking the gateway at a gallop; the ostler swings himself up behind as the tonga starts. The escort clatter in rear. Down the long straight stretch of road between the black shingle goes the tongaa long cone of dust rising from either wheel and swirling away behind to unite in a cloud.

Across the plain and down the winding valley; between the bare brown hills; crossing and re- crossing the scanty trickle of water in its stony bed, which, dignified by the name of river, gives a name to the road. Look up! away on the left, at that salient angle of the hill-side, a pile of stones shows up from its contour, and two khaki-turbaned heads look over as the tonga comes into view and passes. That is a picket. A thousand yards farther on another shows, this time to the right. The road is watched right down to British India, that the king's peace may be kept and his subjects and others may go upon their lawful occasions on the king's highway. None may carry arms on the road: theft or murder comes within the British law. Should a man desire to go armed, it is necessary that he take the hill-path. But the road is in the keeping of the "Sirkar," the Government, that great impersonal power of the English king and British people.

Down the winding, dusty road gallop the panting, sweating ponies. The escort are at a hard canter now, their rifles bumping on their pommels and their sword-scabbards flogging their horses' sides. Round a bend on one wheel, and the next post comes into view,

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