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"No," answered Uncle Christopher, bringing down his great stick on the floor; "but you can stay in the barn, till you learn better than to gainsay my judgment." Rising, he pointed in the direction of the well, and followed, as I inferred, to see that his order was executed, deigning to offer neither reason nor explanation.

Andrew looked wistfully after, but dared not follow, and, taking from the mantle-shelf Walker's Dictionary, he began to study a column of definitions, in a whisper sufficiently loud for every one in the house to

hear.

I inquired if that were one of his studies at school; but so painful was the embarrassment occasioned by the question, though he simply answered, "B'lieve it is," that I repented, and perhaps the more, as it failed of its purpose of inducing a somewhat lower whisper in his mechanical repetitions of the words, which he resumed with the same annoying distinctness.

With the first appearance of daylight the single candle was snuffed out, and it now stood filling the room with smoke from its long limber wick, while the seven women removed the dishes, and I changed from place to place that I might seem to have some employment; and Andrew, his head and face heated in the blaze from the fireplace, studied the dictionary. In half an hour Uncle Christopher returned, with stern satisfaction depicted in his face: the kitten was in the well, and Mark was in the barn. I felt that, and was miserable.

I asked for something to do, as the old man, resuming his seat and, folding his hands over his staff, began a homily on the beauty of industry, and was given some patch-work; "There are fifty blocks in the quilt," said Aunt Rachael, "and each of them contains three hundred pieces."

I wrought diligently all the day, though I failed to see the use or beauty of the work on which I was engaged.

At last Andrew, putting his dictionary in his pocket, saying, "I b'lieve I have my lesson by heart," and a piece of bread and butter in the top of his hat, tucked the ends of his green woollen trousers in his cowhide boots, and, without a word of kindness or encouragement, left the house for the school.

By this time the seven women had untwisted seven skeins of blue yarn, which they wound into seven blue balls, and all at the same time. began the knitting of seven blue stockings.

That was a very long day to me, and as the hours went by I grew restless, and then wretched. Was little Mark all this time in the cold barn? Scratching the frost from the window-pane, I looked in the direction from which I expected him to come, but he was nowhere to be

seen.

The quick clicking of the knitting-needles grew hateful, the shut mouths and narrow foreheads of the seven women grew hateful, and hatefullest of all grew the small blue shining eyes of Uncle Christopher, as they bent on the yellow worm-eaten page of the old book he read. He was warm and comfortable, and had forgotten the existence of the little boy he had driven out into the cold.

I put down my work at last, and, cold as it was, ventured out. There were narrow paths leading to the many barns and cribs, and entering one after another, I called to Mark, but in vain. Calves started up, and, placing their fore feet in the troughs from which they usually fed, looked at me, half in wonder and half in fear; the horses-and there seemed to be dozens of them-stamped, and whinnied, and, thrusting their noses through their mangers, pressed them into a thousand wrinkles, snuffing the air instead of expected oats. It was so intensely cold I began to fear the boy was dead, and turned over bundles of hay and straw, half expecting to find his stiffened corpse beneath them, but I did not, and was about leaving the green walls of hay that rose smoothly on each side of me, the great dusty beams and black cobwebs swaying here and there in the wind, when a thought struck me: the well-he might have fallen in! Having gone "a rod or more easterly from the barn," directed by great footprints and little footprints, I discovered the place, and, to my joy, the boy also. There was no curb about the well, and, with his hands resting on a decayed strip of plank that lay across its mouth, the boy was kneeling beside it and looking in. He had not heard my approach, and, stooping, I drew him carefully back, showed him how the plank was decayed, and warned him against such fearful hazards.

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But," he said, half laughing and half crying, "just see!" and he pulled me toward the well. The opening was small and dark, and seemed very deep, and as I looked more intently my vision gradually penetrated to the bottom. I could see the still pool there, and a little above it, crouching on a loose stone or other projection of the wall, the kitten, turning her shining eyes upward now and then, and mewing piteously.

"Do you think she will get any of it?" said Mark, the tears coming into his eyes; "and if she does, how long will she live there?" The kind-hearted child had been dropping down bits of bread for the prisoner.

He was afraid to go to the house, but when I told him Uncle Christopher might scold me if he scolded any one, and that I would tell him so, he was prevailed upon to accompany me. The hard man was evidently ashamed when he saw the child hiding behind my skirts for fear, and at first said nothing. But directly Mark began to cry. There was such an aching and stinging in his fingers and toes, he could not help it.

"Boo, hoo, hoo!" said the old man, making three times as much noise as the boy-"what's the matter now?"

"I suppose his hands and feet are frozen," said I, as though I knew it, and would maintain it in spite of him, and I confess I felt a secret satisfaction in showing him his cruelty.

"Oh, I guess not," Aunt Rachael said, quickly, alarmed for my cool assertion as well as for the child: "only a leetle frosted, I reckon. Whereabouts does it hurt you, my son?" she continued, stooping over him with a human sympathy and fondness I had not previously seen in any of the family.

"Frosted a leetle-that's all, Christopher," she said, by way of soothing her lord's compunction, and, at the same time, taking in her hands the feet of the boy, which he flung about for pain, crying bitterly. "Hush, little honey," she said, kissing him, and afraid the good man would be vexed at the crying; and as she sat there holding his feet, and tenderly soothing him, I at first could not believe she was the same dark and sedate matron who had been knitting the blue stocking.

"Woman, fret not thy gizzard!" said Christopher, slapping his book on the table, and hanging his spectacles on the jamb. The transient beauty all dropt away, the old expression of obsequious servility was back, and she resumed her seat and her knitting.

"There, let me doctor you," he continued, drawing off the child's stocking. The feet were covered with blisters, and presented the appearance of having been scalded. "Why, boy alive," said he, as he saw the blisters, "these are nothing; they will make you grow." He was forgetting his old pomposity, and, as if aware of it, resumed: "Thou hast been chastised according to thy deserts; go forth in the face of the wind, even the north wind, and, as the ox treadeth the mortar, tread thou the snow."

"You see, Marky," interposed Mrs. Wright, whose heart was really kind," you see your feet are a leetle frosted, and that will make them well."

The little fellow wiped his tears with his hand, which was cracked and bleeding from the cold, and, between laughing and crying, ran manfully out into the snow.

It was almost night, and the red clouds about the sunset began to cast their shadows along the hills. The seven women went into the kitchen for the preparation of dinner (we ate but two meals in the day), and I went to the window to watch Mark as he trod the snow "even as an ox treadeth the mortar." There he was, running hither and thither, and up and down, but, to my surprise, not alone. Andrew, who had returned from school, and found his little friend in such a sorry plight, had, for the sake of giving him courage, bared his own feet, and was chasing

after him in generously well-feigned enjoyment. Towser, too, had come forth from his kennel of straw, and a gay frolic they made of it, all together.

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The innermost heaven seems to ope;-
I think, though the old joys pass from sight,
Still something is left for heart's delight-
For life is endless and so is hope.

"If the aloe wait an hundred years,
And God's times are so long, indeed,
For simple things, as flower and weed,
That gather only the light and gloom,-
For what great treasures of joy and dole,
Of life, and death perchance, must the soul,
Ere it flower in heavenly peace, find room!

"I see that all things wait in trust,

As feeling afar God's distant ends,
And unto every creature he sends

That measure of good that fills its scope:
The marmot enters the stiffening mould,
And the worm its dark, sepulchral fold,

To hide there with its beautiful hope."

Yet Bertha waited on the cliff,

To catch the gleam of a coming sail,
And the distant whisper of the gale

Winging the unforgotten home;
And hope at her yearning heart would knock,
When a sunbeam on a far-off rock •

Married a wreath of wandering foam.

Was it well? you ask-(nay, was it ill?)
Who sat last year by the old man's hearth,—
The sun had passed below the earth,

And the first star locked his western gate,
When Bertha entered her darkening home,
And smiling, said: "He does not come,

But, dearest Father, we still can wait!"

BORN

Albert Mathews.

BORN in New York, N. Y., 1820.

HONOR.

A Bundle of Papers, by Paul Siegvolk. 1879.]

ORN of Christian precept and example, and nurtured by feudalistic chivalry and gallantry, it has something of the majesty of the former, with the perfume of the latter; and is personified in the gentleman.

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