of a man born to immortality; but in moments of bitterness he would feel that he could have done his duty better had he never met Lady Evelyn Sauterne.

to the life, especially during the first announcement of it; he had desired two years, spent as they were in the and still desired to lead a life worthy society of other young men of his own age, all busily employed in learning the different languages which were to be of use, and when not thus engaged, in pastimes and amusements; he might not even have minded the And yet he knew in the depths of his monotony which followed, when he had soul that he could not. He had learned been sent off to administer justice in what had he not learned from that a remote village where lonely days, one deep draught of pure love? It months, and years glided by almost un-softened and mellowed every rugged relieved by any variety.

But that oue week in England had changed the aspect of all. As many will understand, it was not so much the reality, as the hot glamour cast over it by the boy's own excited imagination, which played such havoc with his blood. We know how it had all worked out. We can divine the rest.

point in his resolute nature; it implanted purer and nobler aspirations in his breast; it pointed to another goal than that of mere worldly success for his ambition; it added years to his youth.

No one in his own home ever knew what made Barty's letters so different from those which it had been expected In lonely mountain tracks, on long, he would write. Instead of rattling acsolitary expeditions, in the hush of counts of gaieties, belles, flirtatious night, in the first gleams of breaking or of what was perhaps more in Barday, he would see it all again the last ty's line, fresh “ scores," as the result scene oftenest. Often and often he of indomitable energy and hard work woke with the light waltz tune throb- there was a quiet, matter-of-fact bing in his ears. He saw himself pass- sobriety and an underlying earnestness ing down the broad staircase, felt the of tone in the details of his daily life, touch of a hand upon his shoulder which sometimes caused the narrative his cousin Reggie's, Reggie had volun- to be voted "slow" by his volatile teered to see him off- he heard the young brothers and sisters; Barty congay music striking up afresh, and saw tent with simply doing his duty, and the couples pouring in from gallery and not aiming at brilliancy or distinction, corridor. He wondered where Evelyn was a new thing.

was.

Again, he was with Evelyn in the faintly glimmering conservatory. He heard the sobbing, and felt the little hand in his drenched with tears. She gave him the flowers she wore (here he would take them from his bosom and press them to his lips), he poured forth his heart, unchecked, undisturbed, and he kissed her wet cheek.

Sometimes he wondered how an overruling Providence could have dealt so cruelly with him as to have let his fresh-won laurels be thus crushed so quickly and unsparingly; for Barty was a religiously brought-up young man, and believed in God, after a simple, straightforward fashion. He had thanked God on his knees for his success on the night which followed the

Those, however, who went to see young Allerton in his novel sphere — he was at a remote station, far away from any city or town, but still he did occasionally have a visitor-those, we say, who now and then looked him up, and partook of his hospitality, were wonderfully charmed with their host, and he made more friends than he had ever done before. He had not been particularly popular in boyhood; he had been too self-engrossed; too keen on pressing forward and upward; too certain that all which was worth the winning in life was to be had, provided fame and fortune were won.

But one and all went away from the solitary little station thinking what a good fellow Barty Allerton was ! How awfully kind, and friendly, and unas

pleasant

suming! How anxious to make things | tude, and also to face another quarter It was rather rough on him not that in which his companion sat. surely to be planted down in such a "I am a great chum of a chum of hers beastly hole " - fact is, I'm going to be married to a

Yet no one ever heard a complaint | girl you never heard of, but who is the of the "beastly hole." Only after a bosom friend of Lady Evelyn Sauterne. light-hearted traveller had departed, What do you think this girl of mine and Barty had seen him off, and said to me the other day? She said, watched him riding briskly back to Go and fetch Barty Allerton home. happier hunting-grounds, he would Tell him to pack up his traps and sometimes turn round with a sigh, and tramp for England. D'ye take me?" think for a moment of the day when "N-no," faintly. he saw his name posted up "First" on the walls of Burlington House.

news.

6

and can

"No? I'll put it plainer then. The Allertons at home can't make anything Five, six, seven years passed. of that job you wot of. Evelyn SauA friend arrived one day unexpect-terne is her own mistress now, edly at the station. He had been there do as she pleases, and marry whom she not very long before, and had taken a chooses; and she won't have Reggie fancy to Barty, and Barty to him; at any price; says he's a drivelling wherefore the solitary resident re- idiot - or as good as says it. Says joiced, made a little feast, brightened there's only one man of the Allerton up his spirits which were at a low ebb family she- well you can guess the at the moment, and asked for English rest. You know pretty much who the one man' is; and you can divine "I can tell you one piece of English what that man had better do news,' ," observed his friend, looking Eh ?" looking round. "Eh? Oh, I somewhat keenly at him, "that will say! Poor fellow ! This comes of put a little color into those thin cheeks living alone, you know. I told you of yours, or I am mistaken. I think you had better go home. And the long I'll keep it till after dinner. What and the short of it is I am come to take have you been doing to yourself? You you. I am not going to let you out of don't look half as fit as when I was my sight till I see you on the shores of here before and you were nothing to Old England. Couldn't face Muriel if boast of then." I did. She gave me the tip, and I tell you she got it straight from headquarters. My orders were to find you out, and if you were still of the same mind in regard to Lady Evelyn as when you came out and of course I knew you were, for hadn't you told me ? I was to take you by the shoulder and say, he'Right about face; home by the next steamer !' So now, old chap, pull yourself together; do—there's a good chap! And if we haven't two weddings this spring

"Oh-I-I suppose I have run down a bit," said Barty quietly. "It's the hot weather. And I have been seedy. I shall be all right again by and by."

"You won't, if you stop here much longer," said his friend abruptly.

A faint smile on Barty's part; had got to stop; what was the use of saying more?

"You don't ask for my news," pursued the speaker. "I must give it without demand, then. Look here, when I was here last you told me about some one, you know." Barty nodded. He had. In a moment of great and sore hunger for sympathy he had let his secret be drawn from him.

"It's about her," said his friend, turning round to secure a fresh atti

And they had.

From Temple Bar. IN THE VALLEY OF THE VÉZÈRE.

the gauntlet of the garde-pêche, who lives close by. The poor ragamuffin I PASS from one valley to another in has been out all night, wading in the this sunny Périgord - land of memory- streams, and his wife, who looks, if haunted ruins, captivating romance, possible, more eager and hungry than and still more captivating truffles; but himself, is waiting near, keeping watch. wherever I wander I have the rocks He offers his crayfish for three sous the near me, flashing their entire naked-dozen, and I buy them of him without ness under the blue sky, or drawing about their flanks a draping of foliage, which is light or sombre as the leaves of oak or ilex, box or hazel, juniper or sumach, may dwell upon the note that rules both color and feeling.

feeling that respect for the law and the spawning season which I know I ought to have. But I have suffered a good deal from bad example. There was a procureur de la république not far from here the other day, and the first thing he asked for at the hotel was fish.

I am now at Les Eyzies, in the valley of the Vézère; a paradise of exceptional richness to the scientific bone Presently the other man the one I and flint grubber on account of the am waiting for - shows himself. He very marked predilection shown for it is a lean old soldier of the Empire, with by the men of the Stone Age, polished a white moustache, kept short and stiff and unpolished. It is about five in the like a nail-brush. He is still active, and morning, and the woods along the cliffs if he has any disease he is in happy are just beginning to catch the pale fire ignorance of it; nevertheless, he conof the rising sun. Just outside my fides to me that it is in the legs that he open window are about twenty chick- begins to feel his seventy-two years. ens in the charge of two mother hens, His face has a very startling appearand as they have not been long awake ance. It is so scratched and torn that they do their utmost to make a noise in it makes me think of the man of the the world like other creatures that are nursery rhyme who jumped into the empty. As soon as the neighbor's | quickset-hedge; and as it turns out, door is open they enter in a body, and this one was just such another, only march towards the kitchen. A female his movement was involuntary. He voice is heard to address something tells me how he came to be so disfigsharply to them in patois; there is a ured. He was coming home with some scuffle in the passage, and all the chick- cronies, at a late hour, from one of ens scream together as they rush be- those Friendly Society meetings which fore the broom into the road. This is in France, as in England, move the how the village day opens. bottle as well as the soul, when, owing to an irregularity of the road for which he was in no way to blame, he took an unintentional dive down a very steep bank, at the bottom of which was a dense forest of brambles. As he was quite unable to extricate himself, his companions, after a consultation, decided to haul him up by the legs; and it was to this manner of being rescued that he attributed most of the damage done to his ears.

I am waiting for a man who has undertaken to show me some caverns in the neighboring rocks. Meanwhile, another comes along and makes mysterious signs to me from the road. He is barefoot and ragged, and does not look as if he had a taste for regular work, but rather as if he belonged to the somewhat numerous class who live by expedients and have representatives in all ranks of society. He has a small sack in his hand, to which he points while he addresses me in patois. I tell him to come in. The sack contains crayfish, and now I know the reason of his mysterious air, for all fishing is prohibited at this time, and he is running

We passed under the ruined castle of Les Eyzies, which was never very large, because the shelf of rock on which it was built would not have admitted of this; but it must have been very conveniently situated for the ra

pacious noble who, according to the | feels at such mutilation of the water's tradition, at one time lived there beautiful work destroys the pleasure and tormented the inhabitants of the that one would otherwise derive from surrounding region. Architecturally these caves in the limestone.

the ruin is unimportant; but it is very A visit, however, to the now celepicturesque, with the overleaning rock brated cavern known as the Grotte de above, and the clustered roofs below. Granville repaid me for the trouble of The village is continued up the marshy reaching it. It lies a few miles to the valley of the Beüne, which here joins north of Les Eyzies, in the midst of that of the Vézère. In the face of very wild and barren country. From the overleaning rocks are orifices that any one of the heights the landscape strike the attention at once by their on every side is seen to be composed of shape, which distinguishes them from hills covered with dark forest and sepnatural caverns. They have been all arated by narrow valleys. Here and fashioned like common doors or win- there the white rock stands out from dows on the rectangular principle, the enveloping woods of oak, ilex, and which proves that they are the artificial chestnut, or the arid slope shows its openings of human dwellings. The waste of stones, whose nakedness the men who made their homes in the side dry lavender vainly tries to cover with of the precipice, and who cut the rock a light mantle of blue-grey tufts. It is to suit their needs, must have let them- these sterile places which yield the selves down from the top by means of best truffles of Périgord. One has to a rope. To what age these Troglodytes climb or descend a steep wooded hill to belonged, nobody knows, but it is not reach the cavern, for the entrance is doubted that they came after the flint- on the side of it. The métayer acts as working savages, whose implements guide, and his services are indispenare found in the natural caverns and sable, for there are few subterranean shelters near the ground. labyrinths so extensive and so puzzling as this..

We continued up the valley of the Beüne. The banks under the rocks were starred with primroses, and from the rocks themselves there hung with cotoneaster the large and graceful white blossoms of that limestone-loving shrub the amelanchier. In the centre of the valley stretched the marsh, flaming gold with flags and caltha, and dotted with white valerian. The green frogs leaped into the pools and runnels, burying themselves in the mud at the shock of a footstep; but the tadpoles sported recklessly in the sunny water, for as yet their legs as well as their troubles were to come. I confess that this long morass by the sparkling Beüne, frequented by the heron, the snipe, the water-hen, and other creatures that seek the solitude, interested me more than the caverns which I had set out to see. I nevertheless followed the old man into them, and tried to admire all that he showed me; but there was not a stalactite six inches long the end of which had not been knocked off with a stick or stone. The anger that one

Although the principal gallery is barely a mile in length, there are so many ramifications that one may walk for hours without making a complete exploration of the dædalian corridors, even with the help of the guide. With sufficient string to lay down and candles to light him, a stranger might enter these depths alone and come to no harm, but if he despised the string and trusted to his memory he would soon have reason to wish that he had remained on the surface of the earth, where, if he lost himself, there would be fellow-creatures to help him. Now with the sticky and tenacious clay trying to pull off his boots at every step, now walking like a monkey on hands and feet to keep his head from contact with the rock, he would grow weary after an hour or so and begin to wish to go home, or, at any rate, to the hotel; but the more his desire to see daylight again took shape and clearness, the more bewildered he would become, and farther and farther he would prob

ably wander from the small opening in | action of air, frost, and water. While the side of the hill. Thus he might at members of learned societies discuss length hear the moan of water, and if such questions with upturned noses, a it did not scare him he would see by rock above them will sometimes be the glimmer of his solitary candle the unable to keep its own countenance, gleam of a stream rushing madly along, but, simulating without flattery one of then plunging deeper into the earth, to the human visages below, will wear an reappear nobody knows where. This expression of humor fiendish enough cavern offers little of the beauty of to startle the least superstitious of stalactite and stalagmite; but the roof men. in many places has a very curious and fantastic appearance derived from layers of flints embedded in the solid limestone and exposed to view by the disintegration of the rock or the washing action of water. They can be best likened to the gnarled and brown roots of old trees, but they take all manner of fanciful forms.

Upon the lower part of my rock is hanging the wild rose in flower, and above it is a patch of grass that is already brown, although we are in the first week of May; then upon a higher grass-grown steep is a solitary ilex, looking more worthy of a classic reputation than many others of its race. Its trunk appears to rise above the

yet glittering foliage are marked against the sky that is blue like the bluebell, as motionless as if they had been fixed there by heat, like a painted tree on porcelain.

The little house in which I am living uppermost ridge of bare rock, and the stands almost on the spot where some outspread branches with the sombre particularly precious skeletons, attributed to prehistoric men and women, were dug up about twenty years ago, when the late Mr. Christy was here busily disturbing the soil that had been allowed to remain unmoved for ages. On the other side of the house is a The over-leaning rock, which is sep- small balcony that looks upon the road, arated from my temporary home only the peaceful valley, and the darkly by a few yards, probably afforded shel- wooded cliffs just beyond the Vézère. ter to generations of those degraded During the brief twilight- the twilight human beings from whom the anthro- of the South, that lays suddenly and pologist who puts no bridle on his hobby- | almost without warning a rosy kiss horse is pleased to claim descent. Near upon the river and the reedy pool - I the base is one of those symmetrically sometimes watch from the balcony the scooped-out hollows which are such a striking peculiarity of the formation here, and which suggest to the irreverent that a cheese-taster of prehistoric dimensions must have been brought to bear upon the rocks when their consistency was about the same as that of fresh gruyère. According to one theory they were washed out by the sea, that retired from the interior of Aquitaine long before the interesting savages who made arrow-heads and skin-scrapers out of flints, and needles out of bone, came to this valley and worked for M. Lartet and Mr. Christy. Others say that the sea had nothing to do with the fashioning of these hollows, but that they were made by the breaking and crumbling away of the more friable parts of the limestone under the

barefooted children of the neighbors playing upon the white road. Poor village children! As soon as a wanderer gets to know them, he leaves them never to see them again. Living in a great city is apt to dull the sensibility, and to close men up in themselves. In a village you become forcibly interested in surrounding humanity, and enter into the lives and feelings of others. A young woman died yesterday in child-birth and was buried to-day. Everybody felt as if the awful shadow that descended upon the lonely house across the river had passed close to him and her and left a chill in the heart. When the uncovered wagon bearing the deal coffin wrapped in a sheet, and having at the head an upright cross of flowers and leaves that