well happen that it would be impossible for her to escape from Lady Sempronia at the right moment. Usually on such occasions as the present, the tea, thus promoted to the position of a meal, was served at seven o'clock. And it seemed likely that at six, the fateful hour fixed for Margaret's escape, her gently fretful ladyship would be awake and in the drawing-room waiting for the repast which such ladies love, and expecting her niece to keep her company.

During the whole forenoon Margaret was in a state of great anxiety, and was eagerly debating within herself the expediency of despatching Parsons with a note to Frederick informing him of the state of the case, and of the probable necessity of modifying their plans to meet the new circumstances.

It was past twelve o'clock, and she had just made up her mind that she would do this immediately after luncheon, when once again fortune stood her friend, and made any such step unnecessary. She was in her own room nervously looking over for the twentieth time every article of the costume she intended to travel in, when she was startled by a little tap at her door. Hurriedly shutting the

drawers in which she had laid out most of these in readiness, she told the applicant to come in. It was Lady Sempronia's maid, with,

"Please, Miss Margaret, my lady bade me say that she is took so bad with her nerves that she will not be able to come down to luncheon. She hopes you will excuse her, and she would be glad to speak to you."

Margaret found her aunt in bed. The prominence with which the dangers to be feared from the growing importance of the doctor's monograph on Chewton Church had been brought before her prescient mind had, as usual, proved too great a trial for her enfeebled nervous system. She had, she declared, a racking headache,-feared she should become hysterical,-felt that her only chance was to keep herself absolutely quiet,—and should not leave her bed any more that day, even if she were able to do so on the mor

row.

culties out of the way, and leaving the coast clear for her!

The remainder of the day passed very slowly with Margaret, but not altogether unhappily. She was nervous and excited, but full of hope and confidence. Twice she walked round the garden, and glanced sharply at the cavity in the wall near the little door into the lane, to satisfy herself that the key was there. She longed to take it up, and try it in the lock, but refrained. It was imprudent; and Margaret was a very prudent girl !

At last the feared yet wished-for hour came. At last it wanted only a quarter to six. The note to be given to Lady Sempronia when her ladyship's cup of tea was carried up to her, was all ready.

"DEAR AUNT," it said,

has reacted-less forcibly, no doubt, than on "The shock which has sent you to bed, your delicately sensitive nervous system-on me too. I have a violent headache, and am now going to bed. I have told Elizabeth to give you this when she takes you your tea, and not before, lest you might be getting a little sleep. I hope, dear aunt, that we may "Your loving niece,

both be better to-morrow.

"MARGARET."

This was given to Lady Sempronia's maid with injunctions not to disturb her mistress till tea-time, then to carry her a cup of tea, and give her the note at the same time.

"I have a dreadful headache myself, Elizabeth," added the young lady; "I shall not stay up for tea, but go to my room at once. If I want you to undress me, I will ring, but do not disturb me unless I do; for if I can keep myself quiet and get to sleep, I would not be waked for the world. If it is late when I wake, I will manage to undress by myself."

Then while the servant was going through the hall towards the kitchen, Margaret heavily and wearily dragged herself up half a dozen stairs toward her room. But as soon as ever the swing door which shut off the servants' part of the house had slammed to It was difficult for Margaret to keep the behind Elizabeth, she turned, and darting decently sorrowful face of sympathy which light of foot as an antelope, and swift as this communication required, so great a relief thought into the drawing-room, passed gently was it to her. Was it possible for anything through the window, carefully shutting it to be better? Fortune herself seemed to after her, into the garden. Then tripping, have undertaken the task of taking all diffi- with short-drawn breath and beating heart,

Margaret began to feel both physically and morally very cold. A sickening sensation of fear crept over her. Yet there was no other possible course to follow but still to wait. And Margaret still waited, with a rapidly gathering agony in her heart, a few hours of which might be deemed a fair expiation for many an ill-spent day.

along the dark garden-walk to the little door selves till once again there came the harsh in the wall leading to the lane, she paused, rattle in the quarter bell's throat, preparapressing her hand to her bosom, and intently tory to its clearly chimed ding-dong,-the listening. But no sound broke the silence first quarter after six. save the audible beating of her own heart. She had not waited thus more than a few minutes, however, before the quarter bell in the neighboring cathedral tower, after a strange sort of grating, jarring prelude, as if clearing its voice before speaking, sung out its clear ding-dong !—ding-dong!-ding dong!-ding-dong!-Four quarters. It was the full time then. Margaret had not been sure whether it might not yet want a quarter to the hour fixed. No! and in the next instant the deeper bass of the hour bell tolled, one-two-three-four-five-six! she was leaving the house to come out into Of course, she knew very well that the bell was going to strike six. Yet it seemed to her fancy as if that sixth stroke had a fateful clinching power in it, which cast the die of her fate, and made it impossible for her to draw back.

She listened still more intently than before, but heard nothing. Perhaps the carriage had already taken up its position on the other side of the wall; and perhaps Frederick was within a few inches of her on the other side of the door, afraid to give any audible sign of his presence, for fear that it might reach other ears beside hers.

After a few more minutes of intent listening, which seemed to be at least four times as many as they were, she decided that this must be the case, and she determined to open the door. There could be very little risk in doing so; for the lane was a lonely one, but little frequented by day, and still more certain to be undisturbed by night. She turned the key in the lock with the greatest precaution, starting at the little click it made just at the end of the operation, and cautiously opening the door a little, peered out into the darkness of the lane. She could see nothing! And yet she was sure she had counted the striking of the clock aright.

The more Margaret reflected, the more inexplicable it seemed to her. And if she could have perceived what was taking place on the other side of the wall, at the moment

the garden, she would still have been as much at a loss to understand the meaning of what she would have seen.

The phenomena which presented themselves on that side of the brick and mortar screen fell out in this wise.

At a little more than half-past five o'clock, Frederick, true to his engagements, was giving the last instructions to a well-fed postboy in the yard of the Lindisfarn Arms hostel and posting-house. These instructions were that he should remain in readiness himself, his chaise, and his pair of horses (for Frederick considered that four horses would only serve to attract attention in a manner that was not desirable; and that the notion that four horses can draw a light chaise over a short stage more quickly than two is a mere popular delusion, unless, indeed, the stage should be a specially hilly one), within the safe seclusion of the innyard till six o'clock,--that he should then quietly come out, and proceeding by a certain back way, such as most Old-World English cities are provided with, towards the turnpike at the Castle Head, as it was called, which was very near the embouchure of the lane behind the doctor's garden into the road, should so come on towards the little door from which Margaret was to emerge, telling anybody who might question him-if the questioner were one to whom it was necessary to reply at all—that he, the postboy, was going to carry Dr. She all but closed the door, leaving barely Lindisfarn up to the Chase to dinner—a a sufficient aperture for her to keep her anx-perfectly reasonable and satisfactory reply, ious watch of the lane. And the intolerably inasmuch as the doctor when going to the tedious minutes slowly accumulated them- Chase usually did get into his chaise at the

And then a sudden hot flush came over her; and she began to think of the retributive storm of indignation and reproach with which she would visit the delinquent for his unpunctuality as soon as he should arrive.

the Castle Head turnpike, saved him a considerable détour through the town.

Old

little garden-door, which, opening so near to | Then he had no beard, or any other visible or traceable hair on his broad white face. Greg had lived, man and boy, with Mr. Fal coner as long and rather longer than he could remember anything. And it would have been difficult to imagine any command of the banker which Gregory would not have faithfully excuted, not exactly from affection for his master,-Greg Greatorex was not of a remarkably affectionate nature,—but simply because it seemed to his intelligence, part of the natural, necessary, and inevitable nature of things that it should be so.

Nothing could have been better arranged. Jonas Wyvill, the postboy,-he was a cousin, I fancy, of those Wyvills one of whom was a verger in the cathedral, and another a superannuated gamekeeper up at the Chase, and " boy" as he was perennially in professional posting parlance, had long since reached a very discreet age,-Jonas Wyvill had pocketed his retaining fee, perfectly comprehended his instructions, got into the saddle at six punctually, precisely as the cathedral clock-that same bell to which Margaret had listened so nervously-struck the quarters, and quietly proceeded towards the place of rendezvous.

Frederick, fond and faithful, was standing on the other side of the little door at the moment that his beloved was tripping across the garden towards it. In another minute they would have been in each other's arms, and in the next dashing along the road on their way to Scotland.

What could have interrupted so suddenly the course of true love which had run smoothly so very nearly to the point of pouring itself into the ocean of connubial felicity?

"Come, come away, sir, quick! this instant! Thank the Lord, I'm in time!" panted the old man into Frederick's ear.

"Good God! Gregory, what do you mean? What are you come here for? Why, man, the governor's up to it," he whispered into the old clerk's ear.

"I know! I know, sir. The governor has sent me here now. It is a good job I am in time. The old gentleman would have run here himself, only he knew I could come fastLest. I never saw him in such a way.”

"What's up now, then? What is it, in Heaven's name, Gregory?"

"You must ask your father that, sir. There was no time to tell anything ;—it was Frederick was on the outside of the garden- just touch and go! But all the fat is in the door, with his car close to the panel of it. fire some way or another; and if this runIt wanted just one minute to six; when, in-away job had a' come off, you would have stead of the light step which he was straining been a ruined man, Mr. Frederick. I heard his ear to catch the sound of on the other side your father say so much." of the wall, and which in another minute he would have heard, he became aware of a footfall of a very different character close to him in the lane. And the next instant he distinguished in the rapidly increasing darkness old Gregory Greatorex, his father's longtried, trusty, and confidential clerk.

Old Greg Greatorex was one of those men who look like over-grown and ill-grown boys all the days of their lives. Old Greg was nearly sixty years old, and as gray as a badger. But still his gaunt, shambling figure had the peculiar effect above mentioned. Perhaps it was mainly occasioned by the fact that his body was very short in proportion to his long, flute likelegs. They seemed-those straggling, ill-shapen, knock-kneed, long legs-to be attached to his body rather after the fashion in which those of Punch's dramatis personæ are arranged than according to the more usual method of nature's handiwork.

"Good heavens ! whispered Frederick.

What am I to do?"

Come to

"Come away, sir, from here. your father and hear all about it. Anyway, you may be quite sure there is to be no elopement to-night."

"And Margaret ?-the lady, Gregory? What in the world am I to do about the lady? She will be here in a minute, if she is not at this moment waiting on the other side of this door."

"Leave her to wait, sir; she will soon find out that something has put the job off." "She will never forgive me," sighed Frederick.

"It don't much signify whether she does or not, so far as I can understand," chuckled the old clerk. "But you can come and hear what your father has to tell you about it, and thank your stars that this business was put a stop to in time."

"But the chaise will be here in a minute, | old clerk to meet and turn back Jonas Wyvill Gregory. There! it is striking six now! and the chaise; Frederick to hasten to his The chaise was to come out from the Lindis- father's house in the Close, to learn the exfarn Arms as it struck six." planation of this most unexpected and unpleasant termination of the enterprise which had seemed on the eve of successful execution.

"I'll go and meet it, sir, and turn it back, while you go to your father. It would come up the back lane to the Castle Head, I suppose ? ››

Yes, you will meet it in the lane. It is old Jonas Wyvill; you must tell him that it is put off for to-night."

"Or rather that it is not off';" said Greatorex, who had recovered breath enough for superfluous words by this time, and for a chuckle at his own wit.

He did for one instant think of seeing his Margaret, and telling her, as best he might, that some contretemps had frustrated their plan for to-night, instead of thus brutally leaving her to the agonies of suspense, and slowly-growing conviction that it was a hopeless disappointment. But Frederick was not a very brave man, and he stood in no little They had withdrawn from the immediate fear of his gentle Marguerite. It would not, vicinity of the door in the wall as the clock it may be admitted, have been a pleasant instruck, but still spoke in whispers. Had terview; and perhaps braver men than FredMargaret opened the door a moment sooner erick Falconer might have hesitated about than she did, she would have seen the two facing the lady in the moment of her legiti men, within a few paces of her. But they mate wrath. But it certainly was a cur's separated at the mouth of the little lane trick to sneak off and leave her as he did. some fifty yards from the doctor's garden- But que voulez-vous? Figs wont grow on door, as the last words were spoken,-the thistles.

we believe, in the press at the time of his death, secured him a very high position as a clear and original thinker. He labored hard in the foundation of the colony of South Australia, to control the blind policy of a not very wise Government, and succeeded in his work. To the last, he impressed all who knew him with the calm and lucid character of his judgment, and attracted them with something of that perfectly simple dignity, that old English courtesy, that stately kindliness of manner, which appear to be becoming rarer and rarer in our bustling and familiar day.-Spectator.

We sincerely regret to record the death of Lieutenant-Colonel Robert Torrens, who died yesterday week (the 27th of May), in the eightyfourth year of his age. Colonel Torrens will be remembered chiefly by his economical writings and his connection with the colonization of South Australia; but his career as an officer was not entirely without mark or incident. In 1811 he was promoted to the rank of Major for what was then generally called the "romantic_defence of Anholt," an affair in which Captain Torrens repulsed a Danish force which outnumbered his little garrison by nearly ten to one. He was a warm advocate for the rights of the Roman Catholics in Ireland, and even refused the offer of a Government borough in 1811-an offer drawn forth by the ability of his essay on money and paper currency-rather than abandon their M. BARDOUX, of Poitiers, manufactures paper cause. He fought and gained a most expensive from wood-oak, pine, walnut, and chestnutcontest in Ipswich, in 1826, on the Roman Catho- and from vegetables without the addition of rags, lic side, only to be unseated upon petition, but and by his process, he states that a saving of not before he had made a speech on Ireland, from sixty to eighty per cent. is made in the cost which drew forth the warmest praise from Mr. of production. Mr. Carl Heinrich Roeckner of Huskisson, and has, in fact, proved prophetic. the Clapham road, has just taken out letColonel Torrens was in the House during several ters patent for "improvements in machinery Parliaments, first for Ashburton, then for Bol- and process for reducing wood to a fibrous ton, and his books on political economy, one of condition for the manufacture of paper-stuff which-a catechism of political economy-was, or pulp."