There's only the sound of the lone sentry's tread,
As he tramps from the rock to the fountain,
And thinks of the two in the low trundle-bed
Far away in the hut on the mountain.
His musket falls slack; his face, dark and grim,
Grows gentle with memories tender,

As he mutters a prayer for the children asleep,
For their mother,

may heaven defend her!

The moon seems to shine as serenely as then,
That night when the love yet unspoken,
Lingered long on his lips, and when low-murmured

VOWS

Were pledged never more to be broken.
Then, drawing his sleeve roughly over his eyes,
He dashes the tears that are welling,

And gathers his gun closer up to its place,
As if to keep down the heart-swelling.

He passes the fountain, the blasted pine-tree,
The footstep is lagging and weary;

Yet onward he glides through the broad belt of light,
Towards the shade of a forest so dreary.

Hark! Was it the night wind that rustled the leaves? Is it moonlight so suddenly flashing?

It looked like a rifle-" Ha! Mary, good night!" His life-blood is ebbing and dashing.

All quiet along the Potomac to-night,

No sound save the rush of the river;

But the dew falls unseen on the face of the deadThe picket's off duty for ever.

QUESTIONS.-Where is the Potomac? What is a picket? What time of the year did this story happen? Can you put the description in the second verse in words of your own? Can you do the same with the third verse? Did the sentry get back to his wife and children?

LINES FROM THOMAS MOORE.

(1780-1852).

LIKE the stained web that whitens in the sun,
Grow pure by being purely shone upon.

Sunshine, broken in the rill,

Though turned aside, is sunshine still.

Earth has no sorrow that Heaven cannot heal.

Some flow'rets of Eden we still inherit,
But the trail of the serpent is over them all.

THE POND IN THE WOOD.-A Philosopher. va-ri-e-gat-ed night-shade com-mand-ments gen-e-ral-ly mel-an-chol-y watch-ful-ness

As soon as you get inside the belt of wood, and begin to go down to the pond, the damp, and the dusk, and the scent of the dead leaves and the ramps make you feel as if you were in a very old, old church. Plenty of wake-robin also grows in the wood, with its leaves like spotted spear-heads, and its stumpy red and purple pencils wrapped up in faded green satin ("lords and ladies," I think, we used to call them when I was a youngster). The sweet flag grows all about the

pond, and in it, too;

and the corn-flag

brightens up its

banks with great

yellow flowers; and the stinking-iris nods its purple

H

blossoms on them-looking a great deal nicer than it smells; and big tangled sheaves of bright-green forget-me-not, dotted with tiny stars of blue and gold, bulge over, and into, and straggle along, the water. A great part of the pond is choked and carpeted with crow-silk, and water-flannel, and moor-ball, spangled with glassy air-bubbles and bright-backed little beetles; and white water-lilies. and yellow water-lilies spread a splendid service of china and gold on glossy-green table-cloths, for the water-fairies to take supper off by moonlight; and yet, for all that, the great pond is a melancholy place. Big fish mope motionless in its corners, as if they had something on their minds; and little fish leap through its duck-weed, almost covered with the green scum, not as if they did it for the fun of the jump and the splash, but to keep for a moment out of the jaws of the shark-like pike that is waiting for them. The pond's great pike-it has only one, according to village report-is said to have dragged into its waters a dog that came to lap them. No one ever bathes in the pond. Steely-blue dragonflies zigzag over the water on their gauzy wings, and two or three kingfishers flash backwards and forwards across it like streaks of variegated lightning.

There is plenty of bright colour in and about the pond, and yet it still looks sad. In very hard weather, wild ducks flock to the pond, and sometimes wild geese also; but generally you can only see a shy teal or shoveller floating on it a long way off, with perhaps a brood of funny, fluffy little ones

splashing about, or kicking up their heels as if they had a skewer run through their bodies to swing over on. At almost all seasons of the year, however, if you are anywhere near the pond after sundown, you can hear the bittern booming as if it wondered how the sun could ever rise again on a world so full of wickedness and woe. I ought to have said before, too, that the deadly nightshade grows in great bushes round the pond. Belladonna "beautiful lady”—is the learned name for nightshade and very pretty its berries look as they ripen from scarlet into purple "Polsted cherries;" but, if you are ever tempted to pluck and eat them, remember that Death is rolled up small in those pretty pills.

:

*"But if the pond is such a melancholy place, why does Sir Henry like to go to it, when he is such a melancholy old gentleman ?”

That is the very reason why he likes to go, and why Simpson does not want him to go. The pond, I fancy, makes him seem to come close again to the three people in the world he loved the most, and so he likes to go there. He says that he can't sce them anywhere else, and seems to forget that it was at the pond he lost them. He cries sometimes when Simpson makes him go another way.

The old village people are quite right in saying that poor old broken-down Sir Henry was a fine, dashing young fellow once. He married a good, beautiful lady, and all the tenants were nearly as fond and as proud of their kind handsome landlord, and his kind beautiful wife, as they were of each