mination, and her familiarity with fresh German literature, the four or five Misses Templeton called on Cecy. They had not, save in a professional minister's daughters' way, called on her mother, but they extended to Cecy the actual right hand of fellowship, which was only to be taken for two months. During these long summer days in the dull country neighbourhood, two of Cecy Rymer's admirers were birds of passage like herself, and were in that dangerous condition of idleness which is highly favourable to the growth of a flirtation. It must be admitted that one of these admirers entertained for her as she knew, and was content to know, a purely Platonic regard. Cosino Templeton, who was so fond of escorting and waiting upon his sisters' friend, was publicly pledged to another friend of his family who was not then in his vicinity. He was not a bad sort of fellow as men go, a quick, gay, good-humoured, smartish man of the world. He was the last man to be guilty of, not to say a breach of his word, but of the worldly folly of an imprudent marriage. Cosmo's father, mother, and sisters, and the young lady whom he was going to marry, if it reached her ears, could remain quite tranquil on Cosmo's fancy for Cecy Rymer: admitting that, Cecy was peerless as a Lammas lily. More than that, the other one of Cecy's admirers with whom Cosmo had run up in a trice a conveniently agreeable intimacy, was not in an appreciable degree jealous of the Colonial Government official, and of his fair income ready-made to marry on. David Auchinleck's case was different from Cosmo's. "Scratch the Russian and you will come to the Tartar." In spite of David's elaborate culture, he betrayed in this matter a Baotian brutality of earnestness which might yet war successfully in all the crises of his life with his acquired dilettantism. David was very soon very far gone indeed in a violent attachment to the witch, Cecy Rymer. In the teeth of his Fellowship, in reckless disregard of ways and means, he shocked and affronted his mother, half flattered and wholly terrified timid Mrs. Rymer, while he but slightly touched and hugely provoked his mistress. Cecy had returned, in the case of David Auchinleck, to the sauciness of her youth, and was indignant at being besieged, in her own mother's house by the most aggressive Fellow who could forfeit a Fellowship for her sake. David Auchinleck, from whose knowledge and manners, as his mother reflected bitterly, more might have been expected, threw dis cretion to the winds, and haunted Cecy Rymer perseveringly, wherever he could hope to meet her, during these June and July weeks. Poor Mrs. Auchinleck's pride was laid in the dust, and she had great trouble to keep from groaning aloud under the reverse. The little rural world of Auldacres had not accepted with entire complacency the school-master's wife and widow's conceit in her sons. It grinned when human nature returned at a gallop in David Auchinleck. The men at the manse shrugged their shoulders. The women, especially Amelia and May, and Bab and Harriet, who no longer treated David de haut en bas on their own account, were a little scandalized by his prompt and pointed selection of Cecy Rymer. They were forced to remind each other that gutter blood has a long course to run before it waxes blue. The passing flavour of sour grapes did not prevent the girls from feeling secretly attracted to, and amused by, and inclined to promote in a womanly way the College Fellow's devotion to the governess at home for her holidays. He Mrs. Auchinleck tried her hand in arresting David, on what she held his road to ruin, without avail, and was reduced to pouring her grievances into Andrew's ear. At first, when David and Cecy Rymer had returned, Andrew did something to redeem his position as their comrade. roused himself from his wilful mental torpor. He resumed with fresh relish the tastes and habits of his earlier youth, criticised new editions of the classics, and plunged deeper into metaphysics with David. He read Cecy's Freiligrath and Auerbach, and listened, edified and entertained by the woman's quick, delicate opinions on character and sentiments, or he had the evil spirit charmed away from him by Cecy's music, for it was Andrew and not David who had a soul for music. All that was before Cecy was drawn away to speak German or gossip about art or botanize with David; and then driven to escape from such engagements and take refuge in helping to form the Templetons' croquet party at the manse, though David Auchinleck was also of the party. The troquet players played and jested in the company of their kind, amidst the bright sights and sweet sounds of a summer garden, while Andrew Auchinleck toiled for his own and his mother's daily bread, and taught the young idea how to shoot, in the baked and buzzing atmosphere of the school. Andrew listened to the groans with which his mother relieved herself in his ear, and turned towards her a still, impassive "It is delightfully romantic," exclaimed Amelia Templeton. face, white from exhaustion under the bur-[" Mr. Andrew Auchinleck is a respectable, den and heat of the day. He rarely spoke talented young man, besides his connection again or remonstrated unless the incensed with his brother. Ah! he is a very wellwoman slandered Cecy Rymer or accused bred fellow, David, in addition to having her of beguiling David. Andrew Auchinleck his heart in the right place. But he is had always been a just man, and when his astoundingly soft, for a college man of mother was glaringly unjust to Cecy Rymer, standing, on a girl like Cecy Rymer. They or even to David, Andrew fired up and came say his brother the schoolmaster is also down upon the speaker in not the most filial smitten with her." terms, though he was sorry for his rough words and sought to atone for them in his shy, dogged manner, the moment after they were spoken. It was by no means the blame of Andrew (who kept his mother back from the undignified and useless retaliation so long as he was able, and was very angry and disgusted when he failed as a moral policeman) that Mrs. Auchinleck to whom the summer had brought a sore trial instead of the unbroken felicity which she had expected at last assailed Mrs. Rymer as a secondary cause of the misfortune which hed befallen David Auchinleck. Mrs. Rymer had been unswervingly loyal to Mrs. Auchinleck for a large part of both their lives, but now she was bewildered, hurt, and resentful: she flew, in tears, in trembling, and in anger, to her natural pro tector. Cecy in her turn was, to begin with, what she called "furiously angry," then unavoidably struck with a sense of the ludicrous, and at last simply fretful. "I wonder Mrs. Auchinleck does not get sc dangerous and wicked a person as I put out of the parish, since she cannot shut up her distinguished son! Never mind Mrs. Auchinleck, mother; she is nearly mad about Davie, and I am afraid she must lead Andrew a sad life." As for poor Mrs. Auchinleck, she had already discovered that her son Andrew also had come under the spell of Cecy Rymer. "When the second blow struck Mrs. Auchinleck, and she knew her two sons to be rivals, she crossed her arms, interlaced her work-worn hands, drooped her poor mother's vain, energetic head, and sat for hours unprecedentedly, ominously silent. She was vexed with her younger son; she deeply pitied her elder, and longed to help him or to console him. One evening, after Cecy's two months had dwindled to two weeks, and David Auchinleck's vacation to exactly the same period, the manse became so generous in its hospitality as to contemplate a party which should include Andrew as well as David in the list of its guests. "An important functionary, the parish schoolmaster," explained Mr. Templeton. "It is an awkward chance," the minister pursued, "but likely to lead to nothing very disastrous with a praiseworthy family like the Auchinlecks. Fortunately there is no old family here to have their pride outraged by David's choice of a wife." Oh dear no," assented Mrs. Templeton, emphatically. Mr. Andrew, as well as David, is a kind of old school-fellow of Cosmo's," Mr. Templeton continued. "You remember we had both brothers some evenings, years ago, before the elder was schoolmaster, when we wanted to recognize them as a couple of exemplary lads. "We remember," declared May, shaking her head, and dreary evenings we had of it - how David Auchinleck is changed since then! " Andrew was invited, and went, after he had nearly renounced the party, at the last moment, in consequence of the irritation caused by his mother's taking it upon her to superintend his evening toilet, while she cast glances on David's faultless tie, boots, and studs. and on their lingering had threatened to turn them out and lock the door upon them for disturbing his pupils. David had tried ineffectually to smoothe down his brother; Cosmo Templeton and his sisters had slightly telegraphed to each other their opinion of the master's rudeness; Cecy Rymer, after having received a sudden violent impression of the seriousness and strain of Andrew's life, had hung her fair wise head, and felt dreadfully ashamed of having been induced to join in the intrusion. But Andrew knew nothing of Cecy's penitence; he only knew how inauspicious the visit had been, and felt also with how little of the coolness of a man of the world, how little of the courtesy of a gentleman, he had met the visitors. When Andrew was installed in the manse drawing-room, and seated on a remote sofa, the scene recalled forcibly that former dubious reward for being exemplary lads which his brother had compietely forgotten. David was as one at home on the hearthrug, impressing the minister himself, who had not gone south of the Tweed for his humanities, by talking of Balliol, the last year's examinations, the Bampton lectures, &c. apparently six years older, still in airy floating garments, still with wonderfully artistic heads; though the young ladies had changed their style of hair, and what had once constituted smooth shining rolls and plaits formed now massed chignons and ruffled waves. The Misses Templeton remained impressed with their duties as hostesses, consulting together, he thought, on his impracticability as a guest, and preparing to show him over again, he verily believed, the old photographs, and to sing to him the old Scotch songs. And Andrew was still blunt to Mr. Templeton, and blundering to the ladies, though he was no longer so thin-skinned as of old to pin-pricks of annoyance. How could he be, when his skin bore the scars of serious battles? He did not think that he would have minded much now either the good folks' patronizing or his own stammering and stumbling had she not been there to witness his uncouthness. As if for the purpose of contrast, she was surely supremely beautiful and bright tonight, with not only David and Cosmo Templeton and the minister hovering on her steps and hanging on her looks, but the very women, in a tide of honourable enthusiasm sweeping away rivalry, combining to exalt and make much of her. Andrew Auchinleck kept aloof from the queen, convinced that she would not miss his homage, and not wishing to trespass on old friendly regard and sympathy, though he gave the feelings their due from Cecy Rymer, and did not writhe under the expression of the last on her part. But Andrew felt anything save an exemplary lad to-night. Certainly he told himself that he was the most morbid, malicious brute in creation. He did not free his neighbours altogether from the charge of aggravating self-satisfaction and veiled arrogance. But what could you expect of them? If he were as well armed and equipped for society, with as fair prospects as - -say Davie or Cosmo Templeton, and were not a soured, morose chap of a schoolmaster, doomed to drudge in obscurity to his dying day, no doubt he would have been as light and care-ters, pestered Andrew with attentions, until less as Davie or Cosmo Templeton, now buoyantly exuberant, now refreshingly passive. All was much the same in the pleasant, slightly showy room, from its profusion of flowers contemporaneously with its cosy fire, to its mixture of dainty fragile china (to which Cosmo had added fur skins, models of canoes, specimens of mocassins) and its homely Dorcas work, little coats and muffatees, on which the ladies bestowed a portion of their leisure. There was Mrs. Templeton, still sitting in easy state behind her old-fashioned glittering urn. Here was Andrew's superior dominie, the minister, loving to tackle Andrew, as of yore, with musty classics and false quantities, which he was not at liberty to correct. Yonder were the Misses Templeton, not Amelia and May, Bab and Harriet, in spite of some acquired tact, in their resolu tion to do their duty as their father's daugh Cecy Rymer interposed in his behalf. She was eager to hide the object of her interposition, and so she was voluble, discursive, saucy to Andrew for the first time since they had resumed their relations after he was the parish schoolmaster. Amelia Templeton, wrapped up in the tradition that Scotch songs were the only songs adapted to Andrew's taste, had carried out the programme by singing, to suit his supposed capacity, one of the most stilted, wishy-washy of modern imitations of old Scotch songs. And then Cecy Rymer sat down in the place which Amelia had vacated, and proceeded to sing with fine power and art her grand German "Adelaida," Andrew's favourite song, as she knew. David Auchinleck and Cosmo Templeton stepped noiselessly to Cecy's side to drink in more fully melody in its passion; and Andrew, the ungrateful man, came lumberingly, and as it were unwillingly, drawn by an irresistible attraction, face to face with the singer. But he answered the unspoken appeal of her lustrous eyes. Cecy Rymer was entreated to sing again. She occupied herself with the pages of a piece of music, trying to steady it on the stand before her. "Why don't you help me?" she enquired of Andrew, almost with sharpness. "I am neither useful nor ornamental here," half grumbled, half lamented Andrew, puzzled, hurt because she was hurt, and with a dubious approach to a smile; "you had better get Davie or Mr. Cosmo to help you." "I don't want them." The answer broke forth quickly and sadly, and the accent supplied what the words kept back. "If I cannot have you," it said, "I will have none of them." The intimation was not the heartless deception of a coquette who would not be content unless she had all kinds of spoil in her net-it was the generous abandonment of a woman who is fit to break her heart because she is not let lift up the man who has chosen her, whom she has chosen, from his mistaken, unmerited humiliation. Moreover she had returned instantly to her allegiance to Davie her highest risen and rising son. "I am going, Andrew," said David next day, following Andrew when he went out after breakfast to the school. "No," protested Andrew, in default of anything better to say. 66 Yes," insisted David, "I have nothing to stay for; and for that matter, I have stayed a deal too long already." After a moment's silence, he added vaguely, with a shrug of his shoulders, “I believe it is as it ought to be." Though David spoke calmly, his face showed haggard after a sleepless night, in the summer morning. He had been as unsophisticatedly in earnest, it might be because of that peasant blood of his, in his love as in his ambition. "I shall probably join Evans and Ingledew in their reading party in Normandy, as they wished me," explained David, striving feverishly to be commonplace and cheerfully communicative, and naturally ending the struggle, gentleman as he was, by bordering on bravado. “After that I shall be prepared to wish you and her every blessing, and stick to my college for the rest of my days." 66 er before. They are early days yet," Andrew reAndrew Auchinleck would have been a minded him, gently; "you'll be our scholar, dolt and fool if he had not understood the Davie, as our folk intended that you and I words. "If you want me, I'll do what I should be; whom we shall be proud of, can," he answered with a low laugh, bend- whom the world may be proud of who ing over and adjusting what was amiss. knows?" exclaimed Andrew, with a fondHis eyes were opened to a flood of lightness which he had never shown to his brothwhich rendered his unpractised fingers dexterous, and inspired him to hold himself up as his mother had recommended, the most towering figure with the boldest front in the room. It electrified Andrew; it melted and subdued him. It shrivelled up and consumed arbitrary, accidental distinctions, and proclaimed him by sheer virtue of his manhood with its defects, and of her tenderhearted, magnanimous election, the winner of a woman whose price was far above rubies. Andrew went home in the soft falling rain with Cecy Rymer, and when he returned to the school-house he found his mother waiting for him. "I ken where you've been, and it's all richt," she said to him, meaningly clapping him on the shoulder. "As for Davie, he has been hame an hour syne, and he has been rummaging among his boxes and books; what you might expect, let it be midnicht, in a grand scholar." Andrew was aware that his mother had leapt to and approved of the conclusion. It was Cecy Rymer's task to reconcile her mother to her beautiful, accomplished, admired daughter's marrying no higher than a parish schoolmaster; but Cecy represented to Mrs. Rymer, first, that if Cecy had married Mr. Cosmo Templeton (who had never thought of asking her to marry him, and was bespoken ever so long ago in another quarter), Cecy would have had to go out to Canada, while the minister might never have spoken to Mrs. Rymer again. "I could never have stood that," ejaculated Mrs. Rymer, speaking as if even now guilty and condemned. And if Cecy had had Davie, she would have cost him his Fellowship and his living, the two would have been on the world without a certain bite to put in their mouths for all his learning, and Mrs. Rymer's old friend Mrs. Auchinleck would never have spoken to Mrs. Rymer again. 66 An' that could na ha'e been tholed, and hiz sae near connec'et, and me wanting to consult her for she was aye a fell smart woman, Mrs. Auchinleck where to school!" Demean herself by doing what win bread for my bairn," acknowledged her "man" did! Her Andrew had said a Mrs. Rymer seriously. lady's mission was to go up hill and down dale, refining the world; and she, if she had any pretensions to be a lady, would refine Auldacres parish school. Would she lose her grand friends? Let her lose them, if they could be so lost. Her Andrew and her mother were her best friends, and she wanted none if she had them. Cecy's dear mother must and did believe in her daughter's great good fortune and uncloudDemean herself by teaching in a parished happiness. But since Cecy was so happy as to be going to marry Andrew Auchinleck, all was plainest and smoothest sailing in delectable sunshine. A living was provided, Auld acres was next door, Mrs. Auchinleck was propitious. Then teaching was Cecy's business as well as Andrew's; she would help him as it had been projected she should help his father. had at least the latter among their objects. The line, it is said, would take four years to execute, but the Argentine Republic will be surer of success if they do not try to go even so fast as that, but gradually extend their railways to the West. Economist. RAILROAD ACROSS THE ANDES.-WE are glad | original projectors of a railway over the Andes to see that progress is being made with a scheme for crossing the South American continent by a railway, which may rival if not surpass in actual utility the great Atlantic and Pacific line across the North American continent. An engineer, Mr. Rossetti, was appointed by the Government of the Argentine Republic to survey the passes of the Andes, and his report appears to bring the undertaking within practicable compass. By the pass of the Planchon or Teno communication may be established between ex- A WEEK or two ago we announced a rumour isting lines on either side of the Andes by a con- to the effect that the Government had refused to necting line of about 1,000 miles (1,651 kilo-llow a ship to convey the eclipse observers to metres) in length. The highest elevation reached will be 3,300 metres, and apparently there will only be one very difficult section in the Vargara ravine, where there is a difference of level of 790 metres in a distance of 10 kilometres, which, gives a grade of 70 in 1,000. Thus the undertaking will not be on the scale of the Atlantic and Pacific undertaking either for length or the number of the difficult engineering works. The whole cost is calculated at about 6,000,0001 sterling, that is about 6,000 per mile, of which the greater portion will be in the territory of the Argentine Republic, which has prosecuted the survey, about a fifth only of the expense or 1,200,000l falling to the Government of Chili. No doubt, small as the work comparatively is, it may still be too costly for any traffic that may come upon it; but there are many objects of public utility that would be served. The Argentine Republic, we believe, has great expectations, both from the emigration which is likely to flow into its great West, and the richness of the mining districts which will be opened up. There is a considerable trade besides between the Eastern and Western coasts, and the route would almost certainly command the mail and passenger traffic between Peru and Chili and Europe possibly would supply another practicable road to and from our Australian colonies. The Spain and Sicily next December. The rumour was too well founded; the Government has aotually refused to tell off a ship for this purpose. This decision in the teeth of the plainest precedents requires no comment on our part; in fact, it is beyond all comment, it is astounding. We are enabled to announce, however, that the American Government, more enlightened than our own, are making extensive preparations; and upon the results of their labours and those of the Continental Governments Englishmen must therefore fall back, in a research which is eminently English. The Americans will send three corps of observation, to be stationed respectively at Malaga, Sicily, and some place in Turkey most available for making the best scientific records and views. One of these corps will be sent from the Naval Observatory, and the other two will be composed of the most scientific men in the country, including the professors from Harvard University. Before the war broke out it was arranged that Rear-Admiral Glisson should extend to the corps at Sicily all the aid and co-operation in his power. But the original plan has been spoiled for the present by the troubles in Europe, Admiral Glisson being obliged to move his squadron to the Baltic for the protection of American commerce in that vicinity. Nature. |