THE JAWBONE TELLS TALES.

"WHY, good heavens!" ejaculated Dr. Blakistry to himself, as he stood with his horse's bridle over his arm, looking down into the wondering, upturned face of the handsome child, as it sat motionless on the stone slab of the churchyard stile," why, good heavens, there it is again!"

It meant the Lindisfarn jawbone; for in truth that special form of feature was very markedly traceable, by a practised physiognomist, in the child's face. And a disagreeable thought shot across the doctor's mind, like a cold ice-wind, that it might be possible that the formation in question was merely one feature of a provincial type, and not the special inheritance of a particular family. This, however, was a point to be cleared up, if possible, at once. So the doctor made a dash at the heart of the matter by asking, "Can you tell me where your father is, my little fellow?"

smile who perpetrates so wretched a pun for counties. This was the dining-hall and also his own private use alone (for private and the kitchen of the inhabitants; and there, unsocial vices cannot be visited by social within the shelter of the huge, old-fashioned laws as those are and ought to be which fireplace, was a woman still young, at least affect society),—“in that house there, with for those who will admit a life of some eightthe stone roof?" he said, pointing to one and-twenty years to be so designated, and, very near at hand, at the bottom of the still, far more incontestably, very handsome, village street, somewhat larger and more engaged, as the youthful inductionist had solidly built than the cottages on either side predicted, in frying rashers of bacon. of it, and distinguished from them by being roofed with the gray, rugged flagstones of the moor instead of with thatch.

Yes," said the child; "that's where grandfather and mother and I lives; and I know there's going to be rashers for dinner to-day," he added, gazing earnestly at the smoke, and reverting unceremoniously, after the fashion of children, to the point of view which interested him in the matter.

“Grandfather, mother, and I," repeated the doctor to himself. "Not a word about father? And I know," he soliloquized, after a moment's musing," that you are a Lindisfarn, by the same rule that teaches you that there will be rashers for dinner, my little

"This is the house of Mr. Jared Mallory; is it not, madam?" asked the doctor, as courteously saluting the occupant of the chamber, as if she had been reclining on a sofa, and making eyelet-holes in muslin. There was in the remarkable beauty of the woman, and also, as the doctor fancied, in an undefinable something about her manner and bearing, a certain amount of additional evidence in favor of the chance that the Lindisfarn jawbone would be found to be in its right place, and the pet theory be saved after all!

"Yes, sir, this is Jared Mallory's house. Have you business with him, sir?" replied the woman, making a courtesy in return for the doctor's salutation, civilly, but, withal, in a grave and distant, if not with a repelling manner.

"Yes; I have ridden over to Chewton from Sillmouth on purpose to speak with him. I am a physician, and a friend of Mrs. Pendleton's, who lives at Deepcreek Cottage. My name is Dr. Blakistry.”

And so saying, the doctor giving a pull with his arm to the bridle, which was hanging over it, as an intimation to his horse that it was time to cease tasting the heathery Bab Mallory," the moorland wild-flower," gamy-flavored moorland herbage at the foot-for, as the reader is well aware, it was to of the churchyard wall, on which he had her and to no other that the doctor was been engaged while his master was holding speaking,—had not thought it necessary to the above conversation, proceeded to walk in the direction of the house which had been pointed out to him.

Two stone steps, with an iron rail on each side of them, led to the low-browed door in the middle of the front of the house; and a little wooden paling, very much out of repair, though evidently some two hundred years or so younger than the iron rail and the rest of the house, fenced in from the street a space about two feet wide in front of the dwelling on either side of the entrance. The door stood open; and the doctor, hitching the bridle of his horse over one of the rails, entered without ceremony. The front-door gave immediate admission to the main living apartment of the house, the " houseplace," as it is emphatically called in the northern THIRD SERIES. LIVING AGE. VOL. XXVI. 1200

lay aside the occupation in which she had been engaged when her visitor entered. She remained under the deep shadow of the great projecting fireplace, but with the red light of the fire, at which she was cooking, on her face and figure. She retained in her hand the long handle of the frying-pan, constructed of a length which would admit of its being used at a fire made on a hearth raised only a few inches from the floor, without compelling the person using it to stoop inconveniently, but turned herself partially so as to look towards the stranger. The hand unoccupied by the frying-pan was on her hip; and the quick movement by which this unemployed left hand started to a position a few inches higher up on the side, and was pressed convulsively against it, was, therefore, not ne

cessarily a very noticeable one. And the most favorable to human health.
sudden deadly pallor which, at the same mo-
ment overspread the beautiful, but almost
olive-colored face, seen as it was in the ar-
tificial lurid light, of the fire, might easily
have escaped the observation of a less keen
and practised observer than Dr. Blakistry.
Neither of these indications escaped him,
however; and connecting them by a rapid
and habitual process of inductive reasoning
with the words of his which had evidently
produced them, the doctor thought he saw in
them another gleam of light on the mystery
he had ridden across the moor to elucidate,
and another probability of salvation for his
theory of the hereditary nature of the shape
of the jawbone.

And I am disposed to think that the psychological doctrines analogous to it are not entitled to much greater weight.

The daughter of Jared Mallory, who knew all about the affairs of the Saucy Sally and her owners, and who was the mother of that beautiful child yonder with the unmistakable Lindisfarn jaw, was violently agitated at hearing that a physician had come out from Deepcreek Cottage to see her father. Humph!

He paused for some word of reply, which might serve to throw further light on the subject of his speculations, and confirm the suspicions which were now verging towards conviction.

But Bab Mallory had not had the weight of an ever-present secret on her heart for ten long years for nothing; and was not so easily to be thrown off her guard.

"Sweet are the uses of adversity,' we are told on high authority, not altogether unbacked by some gleanings from still older wisdom. Yet, upon the whole, it may be doubted, perhaps, whether that opinion be not one of those formed by the world in its younger day, which the advantage of its longer experience and riper wisdom may lead it to modify. Surely, the uses of prosperity are quite as frequently sweet with fruit of the highest and most durable savor. Surely, the uses" of adversity are quite as frequently, nay more frequently, bitter and evil than sweet. I am inclined to think the greater number of those human plants, which do not thrive to any good purpose in the soil of prosperity and happiness, would grow yet more stunted and deformed in the unkindly soil of adversity and unhappiness. It is oldfashioned physiology, which supposes that cold bleak mountain-tops are the positions

Though Bab Mallory's life up to her eighteenth year had been-not altogether an uncultivated one; for that strange old Jared Mallory, her father, amid his varied avowed and unavowed occupations was not altogether an uncultured man, yet—a sufficiently wild and rough one, she had never known anything fairly to be called adversity till then. Up to that time she had been the wild-flower of the moorland, as healthy morally as well as physically, as lovely, as sweet with as wholesome fragrance as the heather around her. Then adversity had come, and its uses had not been sweet to her. The open, fearless eye of innocence had been changed into the hard, bold eye of defiant resistance. Easy-hearted trustfulness had become everpresent mistrust. The high-spirited self-reliance, which is the substratum of so many a great quality and virtue, had been corrupted into the cankered pride, which seeks refuge from wounds, and at the same time finds an unwholesome nourishment, in isolation.

No; poor Bab Mallory had not been made better by adversity.

Open-heartedness had, of course, gone, together with so much else; and when, after the lapse of a moment, she had recovered from the heart-spasm which Dr. Blakistry's words had caused her, she only replied to them, by saying quietly, as she turned a little more towards the fire and the occupation which made an evident excuse for her doing so,

"My father will be home very shortly, sir. Will you please to take a seat? Have you been acquainted with Mrs. Pendleton for long, sir?” she added, after a short pause, as the doctor complied with her invitation.

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No, not very long. I had no acquaintance with her, indeed, till I was called to her cottage to visit a wounded man lying ill there, by a young lady who is a friend of mine. But we soon made friends, Mrs. Pendleton and I. It is a doctor's business, you know, to make friends, and be a friend, wherever he goes."

Dr. Blakistry had watched the patient on whom he was operating narrowly, as he spoke; and he had not failed to mark the little involuntary start, though it was a very

slight one, which had been elicited from poor | tude of age.
Bab by his purposely introduced mention of
the young lady " who had summoned him
to the wounded smuggler's bedside.

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Yes, a young lady it was, and a very charming young lady, too, I can assure you, who called me to visit a patient at Deepcreek Cottage!" added the doctor, answering that little start, and choosing to let her know that he had observed it.

"It was very kind of a young lady, and a little out of place, too, was it not, sir, for a young lady to be interesting herself about a poor wounded smuggler?" said Bab, attempting to turn the tables, and do a little bit of pumping in her turn.

“You know, then, that the sick man is a wounded smuggler?" returned the doctor, showing poor Bab at once how little she had taken by her motion.

"It is little likely that he should be anything else!" returned Bab, darting an angry flash of her dark eyes at the doctor as she spoke. But the flash was only momentary, and quickly died out into the quiet, observant look of habitual caution.

His attitude was upright, even stiffly so. His head was abundantly covered with long iron-gray locks, which were only just beginning to turn more decidedly to silver. His features were good,-must have been handsome, and there was an air of superiority to the social position he occupied, and even of dignity, about him, which, though remarkable, did not seem to challenge so much notice, or to be so much out of place, as it might have done thirty years previously. It was in due keeping with one's conception of the village patriarch, if not with that of the parish clerk, or still less with that of the confidant and accomplice of smugglers.

After the first little start of surprise, Mr. Mallory bowed courteously to the stranger in his house, at the same time, however, turning on his daughter a look of very unmistakable inquiry.

"This is Dr. Blakistry from Sillmouth, father, who has ridden over the moor to speak with you about a wounded man, whom he has been attending in Hiram Pendleton's cottage at Deepcreek," said Bab, in reply to the look; and Dr. Blakistry could observe the same sudden manifestation of interest in the old man's face which the same announcement had called forth in the no less carefully guarded features of his daughter.

The rashers were cooked by this time, and the amount of attention needed for transferring them from the frying-pan to a dish, and placing the latter, carefully covered, by the side of the braise on the ample hearth, supplied an excuse for abstaining from any fur-" ther reply for a few moments. When the operation was completed she resumed the conversation, having quite got the better of her sudden gust of anger, and again essaying to turn the pumping process on her visitor.

"One need not be very 'cute," she said, “to guess that a man lying wounded in Deepcreek Cottage must be a smuggler ;-at least for those who know anything of Hiram Pendleton. But here comes father, sir. I am sorry you should have had to wait so long; but now you can despatch your business at once."

"Nay, Mr. Mallory," replied Blakistry, 'your daughter's interest in my patient at Deepcreek has led her to jump to a conclusion which nothing I have said has warranted."

Bab tossed her head at this, with an air of much annoyance and impatience.

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I said," resumed the doctor, "that I had been attending a wounded man—your daughter here tells me that he is a smuggler; I dare say that may be so-at Deepcreek Cottage, that I was a friend of Mrs. Pendleton's, and that I had ridden over to speak with you."

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you.,'

I am acquainted with Mrs. Pendleton, Jared Mallory, who entered with his grand-sir, and shall be happy to attend to you. son as she spoke, was a tall and upright old Bab, perhaps you had better go into the parman, considerably older, apparently, than lor for a few minutes, and take the child with Bab Mallory's father need have been. He looked nearly if not quite seventy. But, though his figure seemed to have shrunk from that of a man muscular and broad in proportion to his more than ordinary height to a singular degree of gaunt attenuation, he bore about him no other obvious mark of decrepi

"Oh, no! pray do not do that. You are just going to dinner: I will not detain you more than a minute or two; and I have no further secret than just this, which, as I was told to whisper it, I whisper accordingly."

And the doctor, advancing a couple of