came not at six-at seven.

O God! he never came again.

I saw him no more. I heard nothing from him. He left his place of business as usual.

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Twelve years have flown, and I have never heard a word. Two months after he left, Nepenthe was born."

Some of the events of our lives are so wrapped up in mystery that we try to forget them. This death and burial of this strange woman haunted Mr. Selwyn's mind; he could find no trace of her history.

Nepenthe Stuart's mind was also left agitated, perplexed and harrassed. Why had this woman so persecuted her dead mother? Why so watched and haunted her life? She had never made an enemy by a harsh word or rash deed; and yet, parallel with her existence, had ever been the hatred of this implacable enemy.

All that could be found of the strange woman's recent history were a few vague rumors that she had lived in that place only three months; that she slept with two bolts at her door; that she always had a box under her pillow at night; that the day before her death she was walking about, apparently as well as usual; that she died on the twentyfifth, and she had often said she would die on the twentyfifth.

The woman had no known relatives, so Mr. Selwyn's anxious conjectures could never be cleared up, never be quieted, never be silenced; and yet over the dead he read slowly, solemnly, and humanely, "Earth to earth; ashes to ashes dust to dust." So had turned long since his young bright hopes to mocking dust.

The hand of his little clock on the mantel moved on to four. Mr. Selwyn took home his likeness, feeling that he had a right to it, as there was no other to claim it. As he sat in his room writing, a man with an organ commenced playing under his window, and at last little images came dancing out as the man played, to the great delight of the surrounding children.

As the organ played Mr. Selwyn wrote on in his old journal : "So we turn away at the wheel of life, burdensome, heavy as it is, almost weighing us down; yet some sweet music may grind out of its very discord harmonious trills of happiness, little chimes of joy-bells, some friendly polka or some sympathetic waltz. They awake, thrill, and

depart, without our bidding and without our willing. We turn this heavy wheel of life, hoping to see something open and bring out little forms of happiness dancing as if to meet us-but there opens ever only darker dancing shadows and deeper revolving mysteries, till through all the stops and pipes and organ swells of the cathedral soul ascends its despairing miserere."

A heavy cloud was gathering overhead, and wrapping, as with a pall, the sky so bright only an hour before. Mr. Selwyn looked out, and he could see no blue sky; he sighed bitterly: "So is my life," thought he. The blue sky of its early morning is all cloud-covered. I have one little vain hope left. Will it ever dawn? Will I ever see it realized?"

He involuntarily took up a book of poetry from the table before him, and read, as his eyes rested upon a page :—

"The light of smile shall fill again

The lids that overflow with tears,
And weary hours of woe and pain
Are promises of happier years.
"There is a day of sunny rest,

For every dark and troubled night,
And grief may bide an evening guest,

But joy shall come with early light."

Carleyn came in to see Selwyn early the next morning. The bed was undisturbed, the embroidered pillow frills were as smooth as when they came from the laundry the day before, the tulips were spread out as stiff and bright as when Margaret first folded over them the linen sheet according to Mrs. Edwards' very particular directions.

"I'm afraid you've been watching ghosts again," said Carleyn, kindly, as he glanced at the bed and then at his friend's sleepless, weary eyes; "you'll think youself mad, Selwyn."

"I never had such a night before, Carleyn," said he. "There are moments when the power of clear thinking and strong imagining comes over me; the weary body may long for rest, but the worn soul lies not down like a tired child to dreamless slumber, but walks forth along the coast of thought, where the tidal driftings of the heart come and go, and with clear eye looks off the battlements of reason, looks off and listens to catch the sounds that boom across the shore eternal, gazing back, defines each faintest outline of

the shadowy past, judges mercilessly some almost forgotten sin or wrong, screams like a night bird over each hill-top of memory, or wails like a ghost around the ruins of the heart. We vainly lock up our sins and our sorrows in the eternal safe, for there comes, at times, a fear they cannot be forgiven; even though a divine substitute has been made, even under the very shadow of the Redeemer's cross, they will be our sins still. Through them we have suffered, we do suffer, and we fear we will suffer. Some nightly touch of the clairvoyant soul, whose spirit-rapping must be heard on the walls of the heart, will open the gate of tears, and the grieftide rushes in and overflows the last green leaf of comfort, while whispered tones recall the dear lost face, the sweet, silent voice. When the clairvoyant soul thus patrols, rapping here and pausing there, the strongest hearted and proudest man may tremble and weep. You have never had to dig up and explore the tombs of the past, and pore over the old half worn inscriptions of lost hopes, lost friends, lost loves. May you never be a kneeler at the gate of sorrow, a bent and bowed worshipper at the tomb of regret, a lone pilgrim in the desert of despair."

"I wonder what made that man walk so last night," said Mrs. Edwards, as she sat in her front basement cutting out a new kind of tulip. "If he only had such a toothache as I had, he might walk; but he seems well. If a man has money enough, and health and clothes, I can't see what should keep him out of his bed. I never knew a man before that would grieve and keep awake and think all night as a woman will.”

There was a bundle sent to Mr. Selwyn the next night. Mrs. Edwards said that he was up later than she had known him to be for weeks, and he was evidently reading some writing. She had just looked once more through that convenient crack. As she sat, after breakfast, embroidering a palm leaf in her muslin band, she said to Miss Kate Howard," that Mr. Selwyn never looked so bright and so handsome. She did wonder what had got into the man. began to think that he was going to be married," but that evening he astonished her with the intelligence that he was going, next week-not to be married-but going to Eng land.

She

CHAPTER XXXII.

DARKNESS WITHOUT; LIGHT WITHIN.

"Send kindly light amid th' encircling gloom,
And lead me on:

The night is dark, and I am far from home;
Lead Thou me on;

Keep Thou my feet, I do not ask to see

The distant scene; one step's enough fo me."

MR. SELWYN is in England, and he hears, as he sits quietly in his room one pleasant morning, a manly voice singing

"I travel all the irksome night,
By ways to me unknown;
I travel like a bird in flight.
Onward and all alone."

He listens; he hears nothing more, but soon the adjoining door opens, and a gentleman walks out. He is not alone-one other pair of feet keep pace with his as he goes through the hall and descends the stairs. Mr. Selwyn hears some one say, "This way, doctor; there are trunks piled up close by the stairs at your right hand." Mr. Selwyn looks out as the street door closes and sees two gentlemen walking slowly on the opposite side of the street. One has a green shade over his eyes, and carries a cane in his right hand, and he has the arm of the other gentleman.

It is a beautiful morning, the windows are open, and the air is still. Mr. Selwyn hears one of the gentlemen say, as they come to the crossing, "Here's a curb-stone, doctor; we'll walk slowly along here, for the men have been fixing the road, and the stones are a little out of place."

"The rough path in life seems the safest for me," answered the other; "'tis on the smooth roads we are apt to slip."

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He is a doctor, and is blind," thought Mr. Selwyn, as they passed out of sight. "How hard to be blind such a beautiful morning."

Just then there is a knock at his door. 'Tis a woman with a basket of clean linen.

"Is Dr. Wendon in ?" she says, setting down her basket. "This is not his room," said Mr. Selwyn.

"Oh !" said the woman, I have made a mistake; but he had this room last month when I came. It may be that he has taken the next room. They told me I should find him on this side of the hall."

"I saw the gentleman in the next room go out a few moments since," said Mr. Selwyn.

'I ought to have come earlier. Mr. Leaden comes to take him out mornings about this time," said the woman, as she took up her basket and went down stairs.

I don't believe that man was always blind," thought Mr. Selwyn. "He does not walk as if accustomed to walking in the dark. I am thankful, that in all my affliction, I can have, in loneliest hours, the companionship of books and nature."

In about an hour the gentlemen came back.

Dr. Wendon opens his door, while the other pair of feet descend the stairs again. Mr. Selwyn can hear him moving slowly around the room, as he puts his cane in the corner, opens and shuts his wardrobe door, and at last moves his chair slowly up to the window and draws a heavy sigh. Byand-by somebody opens his door without knocking and says, I have come to read to you this morning, doctor. What will you have? the morning paper or the last of Jane Eyre?"

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I dreamed last night," said the doctor, "that I was at home with my mother, in the old farm-house. I thought I was a child sitting at her feet. She was reading to me out of the Bible. She put her hands on my head just as she used to do, and looking into my eyes, said, earnestly, 'There's only one book, Walter-there's only one book,' and then she said, 'Thy word shall be a lamp unto my feet and a light unto my path,'-and she made me repeat it till I could say it correctly, and she said, 'Don't be so troubled, Walter,' as she opened the Bible again and read, 'Thou wilt keep him in perfect peace whose soul is stayed on Thee,'and she taught me that, too. Then she read something more about the Lord's being an everlasting light. I wish I could