tion, much less to decide it, a carriage drove up to the door, there was a slight bustle in the hall, and the object of the thoughts of all present entered the room, radiant in beauty, all smiles and tears, and almost overcome with the joy of seeing once more the beloved home and its circle of happy faces. She was followed by a Quaker lady and gentleman whom she introduced as friends of her aunt, who had placed her under their care; - Mr. and Mrs. Thurston Caroline called them; they would have given themselves out in plainer style.

The warm greetings were said, and Miss Hay's fashionable courtesy to Mr. Bullitt accomplished, with scarce a suspicion on her part that the welllooking young man before her could be the yawning hero of the snapping-turtle. The Friends (exceedingly polite and well-bred people, by the by) received due welcome on the part of Mr. and Mrs. Hay, and were much urged to remain for the night.

"We must decline your kindness," said Mr. Thurston, with but little of the formality supposed by those, who do not know them, to belong to the members of his society; "my wife has set her heart on seeing her sister to-night if it may be. I think Joseph Ellingham's is but a few miles beyond this?"

"Ellingham's! Ellingham's!" repeated more than one voice, as if unconsciously, while each looked to each as if in perplexity.

Mr. Thurston noticed at once the changed expression of countenance on all around him.

1

"You have heard evil of Joseph or his family, fear," said he, hesitatingly, and with some emotion. "The road is very bad," said Mr. Hay, "and the night stormy; wouldn't it be better to wait till morning?"

"If it be only the road and the storm," said Mr. Thurston, "our driver is well acquainted with your roads, and if there is no other difficulty but I fear from thy aspect, friend Hay, that there may be

"There is," said Mr. Hay, kindly, taking Mr. Thurston's hand, "there is, my good friend. Our neighbor Mr. Ellingham has met with a great loss -the greatest he is a lonely man."

"My sister!" said or rather sighed Mrs. Thurston, as she sank back, covering her face with her hands and weeping abundantly, but in silence, while her husband's sympathies, though evidently much excited, were repressed as by a powerful effort.

"And when was this?" said Mr. Thurston, after a long pause, during which nothing was heard but the stifled sobbing of his wife.

"Three weeks since," was the reply.

"And how? Thou hast heard of course."

"By a dreadful accident - by fire," said Mr. Hay, in a whisper.

By fire! alas! alas!" said the poor lady, whose watchful grief had caught the sound; and now no longer able to exercise the strict control at which she had aimed, she fell on her knees on the floor, mingling her heart-wrung sobs with prayers and incoherent and bitter lamentations.

'Lydia!" said her husband, "my dear Lydia, recollect thyself;" and as he bent over her, his tears dropped fast upon her smooth cap; "our Heavenly Father doeth all things well! we are allowed to mourn, but we must not murmur."

And when the mourner accepted his offered assistance, and meekly suffered herself to be raised from the floor and placed on the sofa, she wept in silence, and seemed to suppress forcibly the passionate grief into which she had at first been surprised. And she might have observed that of the circle whose smiling faces had brightened the fireside, none remained to witness her distress except Mr. and Mrs. Hay and Caroline, the rest having, with a delicacy not unknown in the woods, retired silently to another room.

Few words were required to tell the particulars of a casualty but too common where the country is thinly inhabited, and the dwellings built with little precaution against fire. The result is not often so fatal, but when a fire occurs during the night, children may perish by families without a possibility of rescue.

Some two or three broad stones for the hearth,

and one or two more for the back of the chimney, are usually the only parts of a log-house not made of wood; the parts adjacent to the fire and the chimney itself being all of oak, the latter slightly covered within with clay. When this chimney takes fire, as it is very apt to do in spots where the clay has crumbled off, the loft where the children usually sleep may be all in flames before the inmates of the lower room are aware.

In this case nothing was ever known but that Mr. Ellingham, returning home late in the evening, after a short absence, found his two little daughters crying in the wood, and learned from them that the light which he saw at some distance proceeded not as he supposed from a brush-heap, but from his own dwelling. When he reached the spot a blazing ruin was all that remained. The poor babes said, mother had brought them out, and then went back, and did not come any more.

It is not surprising that Mrs. Thurston, learning that Mr. Ellingham was provided with another dwelling, still desired to proceed at once. To see the dear motherless infants would be at least a melancholy satisfaction. And Seymour, learning this from Mrs. Hay, offered to be their guide through the woods, an offer which was thankfully accepted, as the road was newly cut and abounding in stumps and fallen trees.

Art thou not changed? Do the same feelings now
Come fresh and joyous that were once thine own?'
When clustering locks lay on thy childish brow,
And life was new, and almost all unknown?

T. COLTON.

BEFORE Caroline Hay had been three days at home, she had become painfully sensible that her father's forebodings as to the effect of a city residence had not been unfounded. All was changed to her eye, if not to her heart.

Much as she loved the

and she

an air of coarseness,

dear inmates of the plentiful farm-house, loved them as dearly as ever, which she had never before observed, met her at every turn. Her mother's dress and occupations, the homely phraseology of her sisters, the furniture, the style of living, though certainly unchanged, or at least not changed for the worse, struck her unpleasantly, and chilled her feelings even against the pleadings of her heart and of her better judgment. She saw and acknowledged that all was good and true, generous and contented and happy, that her father's house was a well-spring of bounty to all who were in need, and that to him, and to his excellent partner and help in all good things, the whole neighborhood looked with undoubting trust