and anxiety, that great bright star where I am pointing, just in a line now with my hand? I think, dearest, you have a very quick eye for finding all I have shown you.'

"I see it as well as possible; it is as bright and brilliant as any in the sky, it is easy enough."

"Then, dearest, do not you see a smaller star just above it, a little to the left, very near it indeed?"

This is the Star of Destiny, and well is it known in India.

"No, I see the great star, but there is no star very near it, that I see.” "Oh, look! dearest Walter, look again now; look away a moment, and then you will see it at once when you look back again, your eyes are dazzled by looking at the great star."

"My dear Clara, as if any star could dazzle my eyes, even in their brightness here: you are learning the exaggerations of Indian poetry already, we shall have you full of starry influences and the evil eye next."

Mrs. Courtenay trembled for a moment, then after a pause, she asked,

"You have found the little star now, have not you, Walter ?"

"I can't see any very little star near that one. You don't mean that star to the right, rather below it, some distance off? I see that."

"Oh, no! love, not that; the star I mean is just above the great one, very near it, and to the left,-look again.”

"My dear Clara, I am sure it is your eyes are dazzled, my sight is long and strong; I have often found it of the greatest service in deerstalking. Glengarry always made me the scout, particularly when we had no telescope; and now you think I cannot see what you do; you must be mistaken, it is a kind of halo of brightness round the star, and your eye dances with looking at so many stars, one after the other, and you fancy you see a little one where there is none at all. Don't you remember I was the only man on deck on our voyage who could see the Victory at first as she neared us. I am sure if there were a star there I could see it."

Strange to tell, and most strange to her husband, was the only reply Clara made, she burst into tears, and sobbed upon her husband's shoulder. Walter was amazed and almost alarmed; he feared for her health that so very trifling a vexation, if it could be called so, of not being able to get him to own he saw an object she wished him to see, should have so much effect upon her; but the young husband thought it was a woman's whim, and anxious for her health, he drew the soft warm folds of her red Indian'shawl, which glowed in the moonlight, entirely over Clara's head and figure, and catching her light form up in his arms, he carried her to the house, with the murmured fondness and anxious care of a mother, whose darling is snatched up from the damp lawn where it has played too long in the summer twilight.

The next day Clara beguiled the languor of the hot hours of the now altered weather, until her evening drive, by some of her accustomed English pursuits, which she had been advised by older residents in India not to listlessly abandon, overcome by the climate, but to endea

vour to persevere in her usual habits of employment. She took from the table one of Ross's exquisite miniatures of Walter, and worked at her copy of it, she had made great progress, and the face was nearly completed.

"It is the strangest fancy, dearest Clara, to copy that miniature; you said so often you were absolutely satisfied with the likeness; and till we are called on active service you have the original too, and I am sure you are always looking at that, more than ever I think, since this sunny weather set in after the rains, I suppose you are looking for freckles."

Clara looked up from her drawing with rather a melancholy smile. "Come and tell me what you think of the copy; I like it myself; can you find any fault, or is it quite perfect?"

Walter seated himself beside her, and examined the beautiful miniature she showed him. It was admirably copied, but one stray Jock of his bright hair fell on the forehead, in a manner different to that painted by the master hand of Ross, and gave, he said, a melancholy air to the eyes.

"One looks, dearest, all happiness, as when I sailed, yours looks as if I disliked the Indian sun, or as if I had some gloomy prospect before ine-as if I read some dark destiny in the stars."

These words were spoken carelessly, and without any further meaning; but they made his wife shudder. She looked at her picture, and endeavoured not to see what she wished to persuade herself was a fancy of Walter's; she endeavoured to prove the drawing was exactly the same as that of the original.

"No, you have an excellent eye for catching an outline, but mine is more accurate about details, I have a clear sight; look, love, at the angle of the eyebrow and this lock of hair; your line is much more curved."

Clara looked at the miniatures, and could not resist the evidence of the comparison. She sobbed aloud,

"My dearest Walter, you certainly have a clearer sight than I have."

Surprised, vexed, and mortified by this apparent childishness and waywardness on his wife's part, which he had never seen in her character during the long acquaintance of their mutual childhood, and the years of their love, Walter Courtenay drew Clara towards him, and tenderly embracing her, soothed her with the kindest and the most persuasive words.

"How can it vex you, my dearest girl, that I see better than you do?"

"It is not about the picture," sobbed poor Clara, it seemed to him like a petted child.

"About any thing, what can it signify? I'll wear green spectacles if you like, but do not take such odd, fancied distresses into your head. I half fear, my beloved,—and it is wretchedness to me to think so, -that your precious health is beginning to feel this climate. Ever since the rainy weather ended you have been nervous and unhinged, it seems as if a cloudy sky were necessary to your happiness."

Clara thought, indeed, with trembling, of the Star of Destiny: would

she had never seen or heard of it, or that Walter could but once see it!

"I have noticed for the last two or three days your Ayah has been always about you, telling you her Indian romances; they are pretty enough, I dare say, but don't listen to them now, those sentimental things will quite upset you. You know, my angel, you are all in all to me, and here, away from every one at home to aid me in cherishing you, and with your youth and my inexperience, I really don't know what to do for you, or with you; if your health fails you will break my heart, Clara."

Mrs. Courtenay murmured on her husband's bosom words of promise to subdue her fancy, to revive her spirits of assurance that she was perfectly well, that he had nothing to fear for her health, and that for his sake she would never allow herself to sink, vainly, for an in

stant.

The rest of the day was one of calm happiness to both; evening came, and with it the refreshing evening drive, the amusement of the gay crowd who thronged around them, and then the ball. It was a very gay one, given expressly in honour of the English, and in the English style, by a distinguished native of Bombay, whose humble origin, his enormous wealth, the result of his industry and enterprise, his profuse generosity, the luxury of his entertainments, and the unrivalled beauty of his exquisite carpets, have long made his name as familiarly known to all the residents in Bombay, as, through the British title lately and deservedly bestowed upon him by the favour of the sovereign, it has lately become in England. The rooms were thronged with all the rank and gaiety of Bombay, natives and British.

Clara and Walter happened to be together in one of the ball-rooms, when they saw a little circle formed round the handsome Major Seymour, one of the gayest of their acquaintance.

"Seymour got his new uniform to-day by the Lady William Bentinck, with the new regulation facings," said Captain Courtenay, "he is showing it or himself off; but let us hear what he has got to say for himself."

They joined the circle which had gathered round the gayest officer in Bombay, who was displaying the alterations in the facings of his handsome uniform, just received from Europe, devised according to royal taste. The criticisms were various.

"I like the embroidery on the collar," said Walter, "and the pattern is pretty, but I don't see any difference there from the old I don't believe there is any change there."

Clara looked at it also.

's,

"There is a difference in the pattern; for my cousin, Edward Clifford was in the - four years since, and I recollect his showing us all his things in the schoolroom at Rossingham just before he joined."

A brother officer of Seymour's was present in the old uniform; it was appealed to, but still Courtenay did not perceive the variation in the pattern; and though judgment was universally given against him, it was only on looking very closely he perceived his mistake, and acknowledged the alteration in the facings.

Mrs. Courtenay's eyes sparkled with delight and happiness, her colour rose to still more brilliant beauty.

"I knew, Walter, you were short-sighted, I am certain you are, that accounts for it all; I am certain I can see much farther than you can, I am so glad to be sure of it."

"What a silly whim!" said Courtenay, and sat down on a sofa.

"Will you dance this waltz with me, Mrs. Courtenay?" said Seymour, who had admired her brilliant countenance, and scarcely knew what she was saying.

"I shall like it of all things," said Mrs. Courtenay, her eyes still fixed upon the embroidery of his collar. "Do not you think Walter very short-sighted, Major Seymour ?"

"Rather," said Major Seymour, and a slight smile curled his chiselled lips, as he whirled Mrs. Courtenay into the waltzing circle away from the sofa, where Courtenay was gazing at the wreaths of flowers around the ceiling.

Orders had been issued for the march of troops into Affghanistan, a large body of forces had already moved northwards, with the baggage, and Captain Courtenay and his devoted wife were already some days march on their road towards Cabul. The last evening before the departure of the last detachment had arrived, and the officers who were to accompany it, twenty-two in number, were seated at a gay supper in a large tent. At the table, loaded with the profuse abundance of an Indian meal, the moonlight, for it was a perfectly cloudless and most brilliant night, glanced, mixed with and overcoming the artificial lights, upon the uniforms, the bright locks, and the fair complexions of the British officers, most of whom of this detachment were young men, some almost boys, contrasted with the dusky folds of their tent, and the dark forms of their Indian attendants, who moved to and fro in their service, about the doors of the tent. One swarthy figure alone stood motionless, and apparently engaged in listening to every word of the gay discourse of the young soldiers, all eager to take the field, ardent for honour and for excitement of any kind.

"I wish we knew a little of the fellows we are going to fight," said one young soldier; "they don't seem like any thing we have seen yet, and they say their dialect is something quite different to any thing we know of here. It is too bad, after all the pains I have taken at Sandyhurst, and coming out, and with my moonshee here, to find all my trouble will be of no use in Affghanistan, and we shall not know, when a fellow cries out, whether he is surrendering himself, or telling you where his diamonds are hidden."

The dark figure I have spoken of advanced from the door of the tent to the circle of young Englishmen.

"Do not," he said, in a solemn and thrilling tone, which immediately arrested the attention even of the gayest and most careless of his auditors," do not believe that the accents you will hear from the lips of an Affghan will be a prayer for mercy, or the offer of his treasure to save a life which the demons themselves watch over; but if you knew by whom the prayers of vengeance which will burst from Affghan lips will be heard, and who will listen with delight to those accents well known to them, you would long for the power of hearing to pass from your shuddering senses. Even the name of the city you march to is fatal. When Solomon, the greatest king then upon the earth, repaid Hiram,

King of Tyre, for his cedar-trees and his gold with the princely gift of twenty cities, and they pleased not Hiram, look in the First Book of Kings in the Old Testament of the Christian Scriptures, what Hiram called the gift."

The youngest of the party, William Howard, desirous to know what was alluded to, drew from his breast-pocket a little bible. He had faithfully kept the last promise he made to his mother, always to carry this little bible, her last gift to him, next his heart. He read in the thirteenth verse of the ninth chapter of the First Book of Kings, "What cities are these which thou hast given me, my brother? And he called them the land of Cabul unto this day." The bible young Howard's mother had given him had marginal notes, in which he saw Cabul was translated, displeasing or dirty.

"Even so; and though those cities stand in Judea, yet here, in Hindostan, does the same name bear the same dark signification. Listen to me, and learn what enemies you will have to deal with, learn the true origin of the Affghan race, the children of a mighty monarch while he walked uprightly, and the dearly beloved heirs of the demon tongue. When Saul, the son of Kish, was chosen from his father's sons to be king over Israel, because he was the most goodly and the strongest of his race, his ambition, inflamed by the prize so early obtained, soared to lofty and forbidden things, after his love for earthly power had been fully satisfied. Remember the witch of Endor !"

The young men looked with increasing interest and attention on this strange narrator.

"The longings of Saul were gratified even here as they had been before, and he obtained power and mastery even over the demons. Night and day did his demon slaves toil at his bidding to build the palace his pride delighted in, it was to excel in riches and in workmanship, and the demon art was tasked by their unfaltering master to complete it. But long was the toil, and heavy the labour his will required, and the days of Saul drew towards their close. To hasten the work, he bade his eldest born, Prince Affghan, labour with the demons, to increase their exertions; and to render him able to communicate with these slaves, he taught Prince Affghan the demon tongue. Yet was all far from completion, when the Angel of Death stood before Saul and demanded of him his soul. The monarch bowed his knee before a monarch more powerful than himself, and besought of him the boon to spare him yet a while, to pass away from him for a season, till his palace was completed; for well Saul knew that his demon workmen would obey no presence but his own. But the Angel of Death said, Lo! to no man living have I said, thou shalt follow me, and he said nay; and thou must follow me likewise. But for thy power and thy wisdom, for it is much, and like unto mine own, will I grant thee this thing, thine earthly form shall remain to the eye as though thy soul were in it when it is away with me, and the demons shall believe thou livest and shall labour at thy palace.'

"So the dead Saul stood, night and day, propped upon his staff before his palace as the living Saul had done, and the demons believed that he lived, and laboured on. But the white ants came, and grew bold as he moved not, and they devoured the wood of the staff on which the dead Saul leaned and the staff crumbled and fell down,