"Did you not tell me, that you were specially in the confidence of my mother?" "Yes." "And has she told you the secret too?" "I do not understand you." Speak openly with me. 66 66 I know all." Your mother has told me no secret." Manna seized the cross on her breast convulsively, and gazed silently before her for a long time. With heart-felt earnestness, the Professorin expressed her deep regret at having moved her so greatly, and her desire not to force herself upon her, but to be her true friend. Manna made no answer. At last she turned and kissed the lips of her startled companion. "I kiss the lips which have spoken the dreadful words, and all the rest. Yes, I must experience it, I, myself. I believe that I am now first consecrated as the sacrifice." The Mother stood helpless before this enigmatical being, and Manna at last promised to be quite calm. She seated herself on a bench which stood under a fir-tree, leaned back against the tree, and gazed up at the sky. 66 Why," she said to herself, "does there now come no voice to us from the air? Ah, I would so gladly follow it forth over mountain and valley, to darkness and death." Manna wept; the Professorin reminded her of her promise to be quite calm, but the girl declared she could not, it grieved her so to be torn from this place, which she must leave, since she could not be true in it. She would be living falsely, because people had not been true to her. Now, for the first time, the Professorin understood that Manna had known nothing of what had passed, and she shuddered at what she had done. She mourned over having so disturbed Manna's young soul, saying that she could never forgive herself. And now Manna turned, and tried to calm and console her unhappy companion. 64 "Believe me, pray believe me," she cried, holding up her clasped hands, only the truth can make us free, and that is the dreadful thing, that the park, and the house, and all the splendor are lies-No, that I did not mean - but one thing I beg, do not repent, when you have left me, that you told me what you did; it does not hurt me, it helps me. Ah, I beg-it helps me. I had to know it, and it is well." 66 Yes, I have not told you that your father came here with me; that he is waiting for my return on the other shore, and hoping that you will go home with us." Manna rose and sat down again hastily. "The father hides from his child and sends strangers!" she murmured to herself. Come with me to the Superior," she suddenly exclaimed. She seized the Professorin's hand, and drew her towards the convent. Heimchen came towards them, crying: "No, Manna, you must not go away and leave me here alone." "Come with us," answered Manna, taking the child by the hand. She went to the Superior and asked permission to go with Frau Dournay to her father, who was waiting for her on the main-land. "Send for him to come here." 66 Permission was granted. It was difficult for Manna to free herself from Heimchen, who could be pacified only by Manna's solemn promise to return. Manna sat gazing into the water while they were in the boat. With Frau Dournay, she entered the garden of the inn, where they found Sonnenkamp and Pranken sitting in the shade of the arbor. "You are going home with us?" cried Sonnenkamp to his daughter. She received his embrace, but did not return it. Pranken greeted Manna joyfully, and as she extended her hand to him, said smiling: “I have hardened my hand, but my heart is still soft, perhaps too soft." Manna cast down her eyes. There was some merry jesting about the manner in which Pranken had settled himself here in the neighborhood. He described pleasantly how his new life struck him; there was a fresh vigor in his bearing, and a tone of warm feeling in all his words. He saw with satisfaction what impression his deportment made upon Manna, who said, at last, that she believed she might speak openly before this gentleman and lady, who were not really strangers though not members of her own family. She was not yet quite resolved, but she felt a real longing to leave the convent very soon, or still better, not to return to it again, letting her father or the Professorin go over to say good-bye for her. 66 May a friend say a word about it ?" asked Pranken, as Sonnenkamp loudly expressed his joy.. pillow wet with tears; she dried her eyes and talked to her till she went to sleep; and while pacifying her, and promising all sorts of good things, she became calmer herself. CHAPTER V. NIGHT AND MORNING AT THE CONVENT. UNTIL it was quite late, Manna walked up and down the broad pathway on the island, holding the Superior and the Professorin by the hand. It seemed to her, that two loving potencies, each of which had its own valid claim, were contending to get possession of her. Manna begged him to speak, and he explained that, as a friend, he would urge Manna to act properly and worthily; whatever might have passed, it was Manna's duty not to break too abruptly the close and holy ties which had united her with the It would be difficult to say how they came convent, and, above all, with the Superior; upon the topic, but the two ladies were dishardness and ingratitude towards others cussing the subject of dogmatic belief. The left a weight and bitterness in the soul. He Prófessorin maintained that salvability conmust believe, that, as Manna had entered sisted in a willingness to perceive and acthe convent from her own wish and a pure knowledge a wrong impulse, an error, or a resolve, she would leave it in all kindness transgression. The Superior agreed with and friendly feeling. It seemed to him the right course that Manna should return for a short time, to take leave of her companions and the holy sisterhood quietly and considerately. He repeated, that though he desired nothing more earnestly than to have Manna return to the outer world as soon as possible, and as fully as possible, still he considered it the duty of a friend to save from remorse and inward disquiet one to whom he stood in any near relation. There was more than excellence, there was a real nobility, in Pranken's manner as he said all this, and various were the looks and thoughts of the three who were watching him. Sonnenkamp was angry, and yet he said to himself: "After all, aristocratic blood knows what's the proper thing." The Professorin believed that Pranken meant to win Manna anew by these noble sentiments; Manna herself was quite subdued. "You are right," she exclaimed, as she extended her hand and held Pranken's firmly. "You show me what is right. I thank you, and will follow your advice." Sonnenkamp was beside himself as he saw his dearest wish again disappointed; but still greater was his astonishment, when the Professorin expressed her acquiescence. After Manna had begged Pranken to avoid any meeting with her until she returned home, they all walked down to the shore, and the two ladies returned to the island. Heimchen, who had wept constantly, had already been put to bed, and was still mourning that Manna had gone. Manna went to her and found her crying, and her this, but showed that one was always liable to return to a false view in the highest things, if a fixed and unalterable revealed doctrine, continually published anew through some infallible medium, did not provide a remedy against error; otherwise, one never knew whether he had not fallen into it afresh, and can never be freed from the pain of choosing. The Superior had always a positive belief to fall back upon, while the Professorin was obliged to find some new basis and reason for every question that came up, which made her appear unsettled and doubtful. And this apparent indecision was increased by the feeling she had of not being justified in contending against a faith so firm and so beneficent in its influence. An unrest, like that of a spy, who, from the highest patriotic motives, inspects an enemy's camp, characterized her whole manner, and she blamed herself for having undertaken the commission. But she was now at the post, and must defend her views. Wishing to find some impregnable position, she represented to Manna that her father wanted to organize a general plan of systematic charity, and that it would be a noble vocation for her to take part in it. The Superior waited for Manna to reply, and she now said: every one who needed help made a demand for sacrifices; that it was not enough to bestow gifts, but one must personally devote himself to the distressed. The alms was not the important thing, but the pains which one must take on the supplicant's account. How often a man, as he goes along the street in winter, well wrapped up in his furs, bestows an alms upon a poor, freezing beggar! For him to unbutton his coat, and to look for something to give, is of more account than the gift itself, at least to the giver. Manna answered that women could not do such a work by themselves. The Superior joined in, saying that she had advised decidedly against Manna's taking the veil, for it was to be feared that she had no true vocation for it. Then she added in a sharp tone to the Professorin : "We are wholly indifferent to the accusation of having tried to get possession of the child's property; we do not despise the wealth, we can do a great deal of good with it; but it is the child's soul that we value, and we do not stop to inquire whether worldlings believe it or not." The Professorin was glad to, find herself at last in the cell where she was to sleep. She had never slept at a convent, and she had again the disagreeable feeling of being a traitress and a spy. She said to herself with a smile: — "I am rejoiced now that I forgot Parker's book; it would be a fresh treachery to have and to read his words and his thoughts here in this house." She gave up the purpose of exerting an influence over Manna, for here were prior experiences which were beyond her control, and relations that were involved in obscurity. A deep sorrow preyed upon the child, which could only be revealed at the confessional, and which perhaps there only could find relief. The Professorin was deeply disturbed, and had troubled dreams. She seemed to be in the midst of Wallenstein's camp, and in fetters as a spy; she was being interrogated by the sergeant of the guard, when, all of a sudden, he was changed into Professor Einsiedel, who said to her: Be not afraid, I have influence on every one here, I will set you at liberty." in strange confusion. She was rejoiced, on waking, to find that it was all a dream. The hour for rising at the convent was a very early one, but long before the matin bell of the church rang, the Professorin had dressed, and stood watching from her cell the breaking day. The impressions of her troubled dreams faded like the mists on the river, which were now struggling with the dawning light. She dwelt in imagination upon the hundreds of young souls who now lay asleep, preparing to meet a peaceful future. She thought upon the nuns who had renounced life, to whom the day brought no event of personal interest, nothing but the uniform round of duty. She shuddered as she thought of venturing to disturb such a life. There may be many incidental and casual irregularities here, she thought, but a holy will has authority over these spirits; and at this early morning hour, a saying of her husband's recurred to her: "You can oppose an established positive religion only by having more religion than is embodied in it. The idea of the pure is persecuted, hunted down, obscured, in the world; and the hand must be sure of its high consecration, which ventures to attack a sanctuary of that idea." The morning sun had become lord over the mist, shining brightly over river and mountains. The convent bell rang, and the great house was all astir. The Professorin went down, and knelt behind a pillar; the sisters and the children assembled together. She remained until the morning service had ended, and then going into the dininghall, she begged Manna and the Superior to permit her to take leave. They accompanied her to the shore. The Professorin exhorted Manna to stay at the convent, and devote herself to reflection and pure thought. She spoke with such earnestness that the Superior, taking her by the hand, uttered in a low tone what was evidently a prayer. The Professorin perceived that her old friend was praying in her behalf. And why should there not be just as good grounds for this form, as for an inward thought and wish for another, on whom one would invoke every blessing, unexpressed in words? With a light heart, she was set over to the main-land. Then she was standing in the midst of the court-circle, and all were laughing at the vivandière — years ago when she was a young, frolicsome girl, she had once taken Sonnenkamp was surprised that she did that part and now, as she met the glance not have Manna with her; but she said, in of her son, she felt ashamed of her appear-explanation, that she would not interfere any farther in this matter. She went back These dreams whirled through her brain with Sonnenkamp to the villa. On board ance. the boat, she sketched out in full the plan of an organized system of charity, which must be so arranged that Manna could go from one sanctuary into another. Sonnenkamp listened in silence, but in no pleasant humor. The whole world seemed to have entered into a conspiracy against him, to make of him a sanctified hypocrite. Yesterday, Pranken had made the same demand upon him, and he had said in reply, that it was a contemptible thing for the very nobility to be desirous of playing the hypocrite; but Pranken had insisted principally upon the religious obligation. Sonnenkamp had shrugged his shoulders, for the man kept his mask on even when he was alone with him. He only consented after Pranken had added, that, by this means, the Court would not only be justified in conferring the title of nobility, but would feel bound to do it. Here now was Frau Dournay making a similar demand; and this was so far good, that her intentions were most likely honest. The journey home was not very animated, for they were returning from a bootless errand. Sonnenkamp was disturbed because he was called upon to do this and that, and no object had yet been accomplished. ering men; some without blankets to shelter them from the cold, and without even tools to prosecute their search for gold, having come in the hope of picking it up on the surface; others, with their clothes wet from the day's work, endeavouring to dry them as best they could without taking them off; some slept in the pews, some huddled "heads and thraws" by the half-dozen in a corner, and some on the earthen floor without covering of any description. The rays of a tallow candle shed something even dimmer than a dim religious light through the murky edifice; the pulpit was barely visible from the nearest seat, and the mixture of fumes from wood, tobacco, and steaming garments created an atmosphere from which we were glad to escape. Pall Mall Gazette. GOLD-DIGGING IN SUTHERLANDSHIRE. The proprietors of the North British Daily Mail have sent a commission of inquiry to the Sutherlandshire gold districts. These gentlemen report very favourably of the conduct of the diggers, who appear to be finding out practically the truth of the proverb that "all is not gold that glitters." A more orderly and well-conducted body of men we have never seen brought together under such circumstances. During a week's sojourn among them we have not heard an angry word between any of them; and we are assured that such has been the case from the very commencement of the rush. The Duke's liberality has been all the more felt that, owing to last fishing season being a very bad one, many of the fishermen's families would have starved but for the gold. At present (the report goes on) the miners are enduring great hardships. The majority of them have to walk daily from Helmsdale and back, a distance in SCIENTIFIC discovery has destroyed another all of twenty miles, or if to Suisgill of twenty-of our most popular theories. Hemlock, to five miles, there being no accommodation on the which Socrates and Phocion were said to owe spot. Now, to walk twenty or twenty-five miles their death, is pronounced by Mr. Harley and per diem, and do a hard day's work, would require the inducement of a very extra wage. Added to this, the ground has, for the past fortnight, been covered with snow, which is now only partially disappearing; for the past few days it has been freezing hard. The few erections at the township afford accommodation only to a very small number; some find quarters in the neighbouring shepherds' huts. But these are few, and are now all full. A party have taken possession of the old parish church in the flat, from which the door is gone, and many of the windows are broken. We visited this party the other night, and saw a sight which has, we are sure, not been seen in this country for many years. In the body of the church, the floors of which are earthen, were three fires of damp wood, throwing out large volumes of smoke. Around these fires were grouped circles of shiv other eminent toxicologists to be no poison at all. Sixty grains of tincture of hemlock were administered to a young woman without any apparent effects, and Mr. Haley, after a dose of 24 grains of the pure juice of the leaves of the hemlock, only experienced a slight muscular numbness, which passed off after an hour. From further experiments it appears that the common hemlock is neither a poison nor even a medicinal remedy. The facts relating to Socrates and Phocion may, however, be reasonably explained in another way. Hitherto dictionaries have always translated the Greek KOVELOV and the Latin cicuta by our word hemlock. Some change of classification has no doubt taken place. What the ancients called hemlock was perhaps the cicuta vivosa, L., which is, in fact, a most poisonous plant. Pall Mall Gazette. From Good Words. WHAT is musical pitch? 66 doubt. Of course, the evidence of many tuning-forks, collected from different quarters, all of which told the same story, with only trifling variations, would go far to prove what the pitch was when they were made; and, in the conduct of a case," to which I propose to introduce my reader, I shall perhaps call this evidence into court; only, however, as confirmatory of other evidence, direct and indirect, much more worthy of consideration. Too much, perhaps, has been said about certain tuning-forks supposed to have been used as authoritative standards of pitch at this or that epoch. Once for all; if all the tuning-forks in existence were broken up into knife-blades, the relative pitches of the present and such past times as we care to know about, could be quite as satisfactorily ascertained as now. The ground being cleared thus far, let us get on to this "case," to the consideration of which it is the object of this paper to draw attention. : It is asserted on the one hand that, for about 250 years past, pitch has been rising gradually, insensibly at any particular moment, but as certainly without intermission inexorably, so to speak. That this rise now approximates in amount to a minor third in other words, that the A of today is nearly identical with the C of the seventeenth century. Moreover, that this elevation has been attained with an accelerated velocity, - that the pitch has within only thirty years risen a semitone, and that it still continues to rise. That this rise, which has been attended with no advantage to any class of musical performers, is in the highest degree inconvenient and distressing to one class; and that the public are every way losers by a state of things under which possibly instrumental, certainly vocal, performance is deteriorated in sonority and sweetness. The pitch of, or number of vibrations due to, any given sound can be ascertained as certainly and easily as the height of any given mountain or the distance between any two given places; and this not by one method only, but by at least six methods, more or less differing from, and therefore confirming the accuracy, one of another. Some of these have been known to, and used by, scientific men, since the beginning of the seventeenth century. A brief description of even the simplest would be probably unintelligible; and for a long one, I have not space. I must, therefore, ask my reader to accept as proved that though 512 vibrations The answers to these charges and assermade in a second cannot be counted, 8 can; tions are very various; so various, indeed, and that the number due to any note once that, in some instances, they answer not so ascertained, that due to any other is simply much the charges as one another. It is dea matter of easy arithmetical calculation. nied that the pitch is essentially different Consequently, as there would be no difficul- from what it has been always; or, granting ty in tuning a pianoforte in St. Petersburg that it is higher than it was a century ago, and another in Naples, on the same day, that it has risen at all considerably within and at the same hour, to precisely the same the memory of living men. Or it is adpitch, so that there is no difficulty in recov-mitted that there has been an elevation ering the pitch of any given note at any since (say) the end of the last century, and given past time, supposing it to have been that this elevation, so far from being a matascertained and recorded scientifically. ter for regret, is matter for congratulation, Such record, it must be observed, will be altogether irrespective of tuning-forks, the authenticity and unaltered conditions of which must always be matters of some having been attended with an increase of "brilliancy" in instrumental performance; while, as for singers, the complaints we hear come only from those whose physical gifts |