Oh, alchemist of life!" the girl goes on. "One can glorify all things with it! It turns sand to gold, and dewy spider-webs to myriad rainbows.' It makes us dream that love is true, that life may be fairer than truth, that friends are honest and gaiety sincere."

"Yet friends are seldom honest, and gaiety is a cheat," he said. "I dread unutterably the effect of this winter upon you. You laugh at it now, but you are just one to become cynical and world-weary. You will see the scheming, the disappointment, the unattained ends and worthless aims; the mockery of true love and true wedded life; you will hear the fashionable falsehoods and the society scandal. You will be deceived here and there. I do not fear your sinking to their level, but I fear that your being above them it will go hard with you."

"I will not believe this till I see it," she said. "No, you have done enough to convince me that there is untruth in the world. Yet I would believe a little in my kind; my imagination shall deck my friends with all gifts and graces, and wreathe my life with flowers."

"When it is unavailing," he said, "may you do as I strive to do, and keep a little Christian charity; it makes one see through a kindly, rose-colored light the failings of those we should honor. Yet the falsehood and meanness of so many will often make you impatient." "It does," she said bitterly. "To hear you now, I would believe you good and true; though it is a bad thing to show one's self acquainted with, the meannesses of human nature; but you - you are the first very insincere man I ever knew."

"Goldie," he said, "you are not yourself to-day. You do not really mean what you say now merely to pain me. My child, you are

not well; I see that you are not."

"I do not think I look very badly," she said coldly.

He took it in unwillingly-the passion and glow of her beauty, the light in her deep eyes, like stars asleep on the bosom of a midnight sea.

"I do not like the way you look," he said.

"No," she said quickly; "I know. Perhaps not. I shock you awfully. But-but-" softly, turning her eyes toward Julian afar, "he likes me. Dear old Julian!"

"For heaven's sake what is the matter with you?" said Caryl shortly, for the first time becoming jealous. "Do you think he cares more for you thinks you more lovely than I do?"

She rose and moved toward the party.

"I haven't a doubt of it," she said coolly.

"It is not so," he said eagerly. "Oh, perverse child! can he think you more beautiful, more lovely, than I do? Don't you know I care for you more than for any other woman? I think you peerless."

"You do? You will not think so by to-morrow then. I believe you utterly fickle."

He drew up the fingers of his hand into his palm, and struggled to keep silence. What good to speak, and not speak one's mind? 66 And you flirt with Julian Meredith?" he said, after a pause. "Do you call it flirting to be with a person and like him?"

"If you do not mean to marry that person, but let him talk love to you, and go with him rather than shun him, it is encouraging him, and is dangerous flirting."

"I have never done it before to-day," she said simply; "I will not again. I do not wish to flirt."

He says no more. They go home before long, very gaily, though Goldie is in sore pain, as the dusky rims about her eyes will show when the eyes are shut in weariness, and the color flickers away, and the distressful headache comes into full sway; but she laughs merrily on the homeward drive.

Goldie stood next evening by the gate; the minister's buggy was standing ready.

"Will you be gone all night, Uncle Henry?"

Her uncle paused and looked up to the sky.

"It is going to rain by night, I think," he said. "Yes, I shouldn't be surprised if we stayed all night."

"Will you be afraid here without us?" asked Horace gravely. "No," said Goldie, smiling at the "us" a little. "I think perhaps I'll stay all night with Marian; she asked me to, if you all took that long talked of ride.”

"Do then, my child," said the rector. "Martha and Katy are company for each other in the kitchen, and you had as well stay with your friends. Good-bye."

"Good-bye, Cousin Goldie," said Horace, stooping over the side of his grandfather's buggy to kiss her. So they drove off.

Little or nothing has been said of this uncle of Goldie's.

He was

a good and affectionate man, who, his native pride and temper well controlled, led a quiet, uneventful life in Briarley; and Goldie, if she did not positively love her good uncle, certainly respected and even admired him.

It was later that evening that she strolled towards the Merediths, telling Martha that she was going to stay there all night. A thunderstorm in the west did not look very threatening, and she passed the house and wandered up towards the hills, away from home, the Merediths, and not very near Glengoldy. She reached a little eminence, and saw a sunset crimson as with the life-blood of the dying day. She stood there with weird fancies trooping through her brain, and watched the blood-red fade, and the clouds sweep darkly over it. Then she began to retrace her steps. The sultry air grew closely about her, and the clouds began to mutter. She was in a part of the road passing through many uncultivated fields, half-grown with shrubby and stunted trees, and the log-fence on either hand was grown with the prison-ivy creeper and half-hidden by bushes and undergrowth. Quickening her pace she hurried on, but stopped short at a tuft of delicate wild flowers, and knelt to pluck them. Yet just after a long, low roll of thunder came another sound that sent her heart to her throat: a man's voice, not often heard, but fully recognised, was speaking.

"The road is safer. The house is full of screeching women a housekeeper and two maid-servants."

"I want something worth my pains; it's still work with a hatchet or a log. I know that place like a book, and his room."

"I'll tell ye this: I'd rather shoot him and let him know I done it than send him off asleep; but if he don't come this way to-night, I'll try the house."

"Well, come over there now, I say; we'll get awful damp—it's going to rain."

A sound of moving feet - Goldie started to her feet in terror, and fled like a deer.

"Wasn't that something?" said Jem Burton, startled.

"A bird started up out of the hedge," said his companion. Yes, a messenger-bird.

And all the land was darkening round her as she fled. Dark was the road and darker the shadowy park of Glengoldy. The great

trees were whispering and sighing together, and nodding their heads as if over some fateful secret. As she sprang up the steps and sent a loud peal of the bell through the house, the rain came down and danced along the steps.

"Is Dr. Erle here?" asked Goldie.

The housekeeper peered out in amazement at the slender, solitary figure, which she did not recognise.

"Uncle Caryl-has he gone out?"

"Oh! Miss Ashe," very dryly. "Yes, he's out."

"When will he come?

the Merediths?"

Has he gone to see some sick people, or to

"He ain't always to the Merediths," said the housekeeper crossly. "He's gone to see some patients; I don't know who."

"Very well," said Goldie, turning round, vexed at the woman's

manner.

"Shall I tell him anything? There's some one with you, I 'spose?' said the old woman, peering out into the darkness.'

"No, you needn't tell him," said Goldie, making up her mind to a watch on the porch in preference to the old housekeeper's society.

The woman hesitated a moment as Goldie stood stock still, then banged the door and retired.

Goldie sat down on a bench on the piazza, with a strange feeling of despair coming over her, and even subduing her anger at the rudeness of the housekeeper, whose evident dislike for her was a mystery to her, but whose subsequent malevolence Goldie afterwards began to comprehend. Now she scarcely reflected about it; she was waiting for Caryl in storm and darkness, listening in thunder and rain and wind for that little, blessed sound of horses' feet and wheels.

"Would he never come? Ah, Heaven! that lonely road! This minute, this very minute, he might be gasping his last; his brave, beautiful, manly life be ebbing away. He might be lying with his face up, in the rain, a lifeless corpse. He might be only coming, humming a song perhaps, or maybe thinking of her, or perhaps they might miss him in the dark. Oh, Caryl! Caryl! Thank God! thank

God!"

For a flash of lightning revealed him driving swiftly by towards the

stables. He heard her cry, stopped the horses, and all amazed, leaped from the buggy and sprang up the steps to her.

Sobbing, she ran to him and threw herself into his arms, laying her cheek against his wet, shaggy coat. Who will believe that as a man he happened to think of the dainty white dress she wore? Yet it only flashed across his mind; he was willing to "take the good the gods provide," and put his arms around his subdued little darling, asking:

"What is the matter?"

She could not answer, and he walked to the side of the piazza, called in thundering voice to the stable-boy to take his horses, and leading her back to the front door, was about to open it and enter.

"No, no!" she said, "I won't go in; that horrid woman is there!"

"Who? the housekeeper?" asked Dr. Erle, thinking that if the child was crazy she at least remembered that she was never a pet of the old lady's; "she won't trouble you."

"I don't want to see her," said Goldie; "she thinks I have gone long ago. Oh, Caryl! they are going to kill you!"

The lightning showing him her face, pale as it really was, made it actually ghastly, with wild dark eyes, and her hands were hot as fire. "Goldie," he said, speaking as calmly as possible, "you are in a terrible state of excitement. Try and tell me what is the matter as quietly as you can, and let me take you home. It is late and stormy, and you are nearly ill already, as I have been afraid you would be.'

"There, hush!" she said, pushing away his arm, his coolness having the very best effect possible, of making her angry. "I can tell you. I was out this evening alone, and I heard that -- that horrible man," shuddering, as she always did at remembrance of him, "plotting to kill you to-night."

"No, not your name, but I am sure it was you," said Goldie, astonished to see how little it seemed on telling it.

"Are you sure it wasn't some innocent butcher talking about a cow or a pig?" asked Caryl, in a slightly amused tone. "My dear child, you have a morbid terror of that drunken scamp. He is probably fifty miles away just now."

"I am sure it was he," said Goldie desperately. "Are you sure of anything else? What did he say, exactly?" "I can't remember. There were two, Jem and another man. I am certain they meant you; they are going to break into Glengoldy to-night. They meant to shoot you if you came along the road; and, oh! I thought you might be dying then, when you came. thought you might be dying in the road, and the rain-oh, Caryl!” "Poor child! you let your fancy draw terrible pictures, no doubt. Now just consider what an improbable thing this is. In the first place, Jem —if Jem were here doesn't hate me enough to kill me.

I

It would be a very silly thing in Jem; I've a better opinion of his common-sense. In the second place, Glengoldy isn't so easy to get into, nor is it easy to find one's way in it, just to kill a man you have a little spite against-just for the mere pleasure of killing him."

"I think the other expected plunder," suggested Goldie. "He may have nursed Jem's revenge for his own purposes."

"Very plausible, my dear child, but I can't appreciate it. Now, Goldie, you must excuse me ; you must confess that you are excitable, that you have a great dread of Jem Burton, that you are always thinking of him, that you can't recollect what these two country people said exactly, and that it isn't clear as daylight. I know you thought me in danger; I know you came here bravely to give me warning, and if you had saved my life a hundred times I couldn't care more for it." So tenderly did he end the sentence that it almost soothed the pain he had inflicted so ruthlessly before.

He took her in then to her old nest, the library, went a moment into his own room beyond for a dry coat, and returning, said:

"The rain will soon be over. We'll have supper in here, and afterwards I will take you home."

"Are you going to tell Mrs. Hopkins I am here?"

"Yes, but you will not see her; she will send in supper and go to bed."

"Why need you tell her?"

Because to make it a secret is to assume that it is not right. It is perfectly right."

Goldie said no more.

She had cause afterwards to wish that she

had confided the whole truth even to the cross, suspicious woman who already disliked her.

Looking up from the silent little supper Dr. Erle said:

"I have been at a death-bed to-day, Goldie."

I

"Was it an old or young person?" she said, arousing herself. "A little child's- -a poor child who has been sick some time. have seen many death-beds, Goldie, and one like this I seldom see; a soul giving itself in perfect peace to death, because death will lay it in its Master's arms beyond unsafety."

"I am never sorry for the death of a little child," said Goldie, softly. "It seems such a blessed thing that one more soul is surely and safely entered heaven; in no further danger, will have no more trouble or pain."

"It was one of Miss Marian's Sunday scholars, and I think the child's parents bless her for its happy state; they are very poor and rough people—this little girl was the flower of the flock."

"Dear, sweet old May! she has such a blessing," said Goldie, her eyes filling with tears. A little haze came over the Doctor's eyes, looking in hers. He rose and looked at his watch.

"Ten o'clock,” he said.

"Uncle Caryl, I can't go!

Don't ask me!" she said, startling, and rushing back into her old, miserable terror.

"Shall I ask you to stay?" he said, laughing.

I

"I cannot go away," she said. "I shall suffer more than you can dream. I shall imagine I hear your death-scream every moment. shall go mad with fright."