"Come home at once. Lucas found dead. Will forthcoming, made by you." Jack went home by the next steamer. He went straight to his father's office. "What's the meaning of this will business?" asked his father sternly. "How came you to make a will for the man without my knowledge ? ”

"He insisted on it, sir, and on my secrecy. I don't know why, but somehow he seemed to mistrust you."

Mr. Wilbraham looked a little queer; he recalled his interview with Mat Lucas, and the old man's sudden appearance.

"It's a stupid sort of will," he said hastily; "I don't see what he meant by it. It hampers the girl."

"Is there is there any one that you think—that she seems likely to marry?

"Oh, of course there have been plenty buzzing about her; but the old man kept a sharp lookout. I suppose he was ambitious for her. Well, you're one executor, you know; that parson, Mr. St. John, is the other, and he's staying with her. I was to send you there as soon as you arrived. Miss Bell was very keen on that."

"How is she, poor girl? lonely, very much upset?"

He looked fixedly at her-so fixedly that she could not bear his gaze.

"Bell," he whispered" Bell, look at me, and tell me what is in your heart. I didn't mean to say it-I can't bear to be the man to rob you every one will think a lie of me — but I must have it out. Look at me - tell me-could you marry a fellow who hadn't the money your grandfather spoke of, so that you had to give up half of yours? Would you be willing -to marry -me?" She turned nestling to him, and hid her face against his heart.

"Willing?" she cried, half sobbing, but in a tone of ecstasy. Why, I'd marry you, Jack, if we had to work for every penny. You ought to have known I'd never have any one else."

The Lucas Almshouses at Ebrington are an accomplished fact, and a perpetual eyesore to Mr. and Mrs. Matthew Lucas, who cannot speak of poor Peter and very old "that crafty little madam," as they call Mrs. Jack, with"Oh, of course," Mr. Wilbraham out becoming abusive. Still, as they replied, with disgusting indifference, can't get any more, they accept the ten "dreadfully upset. The old man was found dead in his bed. That precious son of his turned up for the funeral, hoping, I suppose, there was no will, and that he would step into the property. You should have seen his face when the will was found! He cursed and swore like a trooper. I had to pack him off sharp to chew the cud of resentment at home.'

Jack did not wait to hear more, but hurried off with a fast-beating heart to see Bell.

66 My poor little girl," said he, when, a few minutes later, he found himself sitting beside her on the sofa, "I'm so sorry for you."

shillings a week which the old man's scorn bequeathed them, and are SO sordidly thrifty that no doubt they will die well-to-do.

As for little Mrs. Jack Wilbraham, she thinks herself the luckiest little wife in all London. Prosperity, which spoils so many not born to it, has not spoilt her, and she thinks as fondly as ever of the poor old grandfather who loved her.

From The National Review. THE GARDEN THAT I LOVE.

II.

"But you've come back," she said; IF it were spring perpetually, who "it won't be so dreadful now. How would trouble himself to have a gar could you let him make that silly den? When I say this, Veronica will?" smiles incredulously, for she believes

Perhaps I should be accused of exaggeration were I to describe the effect produced on my no doubt not impartial gaze by the Anemone apennina and the Anemone fulgens now in full bloom in the garden that I love. Professional gardeners will tell you, in their off-hand way, that these will grow anywhere. They will not; being, notwithstanding their hardiness in places that are suitable, singularly fastidious as to soil and situation, and even sometimes unaccountably whimsical in our uncertain climate. The Anemone fulgens, or shining windflower, is common enough no doubt, where it chooses to thrive, and you may see it in bloom in open and favorable springs as early as the month of February, while, with proper arrangement of aspect, you can prolong

that if the whole world were a garden I should still want to have a particular and exclusive plot of my own. It is one of Veronica's superstitions that she knows every winding and recess of my mind. Perhaps it is one of mine that she does not. But, in truth, I am much more inert than she imagines, and would much rather have my gardening done for me, provided that the result were in accordance with that qualche idea che ho in mente, which Raphael said, in answer to an enquiry as to where he had found the type of his Madonnas, was their true origin. Veronica, who is perhaps no more energetic by temperament than I am, but who is more conscientious, likes to see work being done; partly, no doubt, out | of curiosity as to the method of it, but still more in order that she may assure its dazzling beauty well into May. But herself it is being done properly. I like to come upon the ground and find the work out of hand and complete. Rather, however, than it should be done wrongly, I will impose on myself any amount of trouble.

Rome in the months of February and March, and I recollect a good Samaritan putting the finishing touch to my convalescence, after a visitation of Roman fever, by bringing to my room a large posy of this exquisite flower, varying in color from sky-blue to pure white, and springing out of the daintiest, most feathery foliage imaginable. Perhaps, therefore, it is in some degree the spell of association which makes me feel tenderly enthusiastic concerning the Apennine windflower. I do not say it prospers in our latitudes as it does in the sunshine-shadow of the Appian Way. But, in most years, it maintains itself against rude winds, unkindly leaden clouds,

the Anemone apennina, which I have known some people call the stork's-bill windflower, is, as far as my experience goes, rarely seen in English gardens. It used, an indefinite number of years ago, to be sold in big basketsful by Spring is the most skilful of all gar-dark-eyed, dark-haired, dark-skinned deners, covering the whole ground flower-girls in the Via Condotti in with flowers, and shading off the crudest contrasts into perfect harmony; and were it April, May, and June all the year round, I, for one, would never again put spade or seed into the ground. I should select for the site of my home the heart of an English forest, and my cottage should stand half-way up an umbrageous slope that overlooked a wooded vale, from which majestic trees and coverts again rose gradually up to the horizon. One would make just clearance enough to satisfy one's desire for self-assertion against nature, and then she should be allowed to do the rest. What are all the tulips of the Low Countries in point of beauty compared with the covering and carpeting of the wildwood celandine? Your cultivated globe-flower and shepherd'sbane are well enough; but they have a poverty-stricken look when paragoned with the opulent splendor of the marshmarigold, that would then grow along the moist banks of the low-lying runnels of my natural garden.

And Amazonian March with breast half bare,

And sleety arrows whistling through the air.

It asks for some but not too much shelter, and I have had to lighten the natural heaviness of my ground, in

her re

order to humor it, with well-pulverized | spring would garden for me, without soil and a judicious contribution of wage, for fully three months in the sand. year. For I have not by any means But, with all my partiality for these enumerated and exhausted domesticated windflowers, I will not sources. She could, and should, do for pretend that they can hold a feather to me in my intra-sylvan home far more undulating stretches of sylvan anem- than I have as yet described. Just as ones; and in April these would be as one begins to feel a little sad because numerous as the pink-and-white shells the wood-hyacinths pale, the red camof the seashore, which, in color, they pion takes a brighter hue and holds up curiously resemble, around my forest a bolder stalk, determined to see over abode. Blending with them in the the heads of the now fast-shooting most affable manner would be the wild green croziers of the bracken; aud or dog violets, destitute of scent, but before these unfurl themselves and get making amends by their sweet sim- too high, the sleepy foxgloves suddenly plicity for the ostensible absence of remember that it is June, and dapple fragrance. Where they rule the wood- the lush dingles with their spires of land territory, the earth is bluer than freckled bells. All flowers seem to the sky. Persons of limited experience contain a secret; I suppose because concerning nature's elastic methods they are silent. But the foxglove has have sometimes asked me if Veronica's Poet is not inaccurate in giving the wild windflowers precedence of the primroses in one or two passages of his. Were they as familiar with the seasons as he, they would know that it is beyond guessing to say when the primrose will exercise that sovereignty which it never fails to assert over all the wild flowers at some period or other of the spring. I have gathered primroses in basketsful on Christmas day. Sometimes I have had to hunt for them even in March. They will at times follow the footsteps of June till its very close; yet in another year they will vanish before May is out. In some favored seasons they will come and go, and then come again. There is no bounds," to use a favorite phrase of my gardeners, to their fascinatingly fickle behavior. It may please them to accompany, and rather take the shine out of, the ladysmocks. A twelvemonth later they will show a decided partiality for the society of the dogviolets; and it may so happen that they will elect to wait and enter into competition with the bluebells. Then, indeed, the glory of the heavens is nothing to the glory of the earth. Nature thus rings the changes on her various vernal notes, and does the same thing year after year, but differently. But, in any case, you see,

always seemed to me to possess more of the mystery of things than any of its sylvan compeers. Moreover, notwithstanding its almost gorgeous beauty, it calls no attention to itself, but loves solitude, secrecy, and the shade. Of course the primroses and the bluebells would be the reigning beauties of the natural garden. I know a wood of pollarded hornbeam - we are going to take Lamia and the Poet there a few weeks hence of many acres in extent, where the bluebells grew not only as lush and serried as grass, but well on to three feet in height. The wood has been left untouched and untrodden for years, and the accumulation of rotted leaves, conjoined with something peculiarly favorable in the soil, has produced this fairy world. But there the bluebells have usurped the ground entirely, and do not permit any other wild flower, even a primrose, to cross the frontier of their territory. Therefore, it is not to it I would exclaim :

O ye woods, spread your branches aspace!
To your deepest recesses I fly.

The wood I should want would have to be hospitable, as many a wood in truth is, to every child of nature that loved its protection. Nor let it be forgotten that this "desirable site " would have its natural orchard as well; the wild pear, the wild cherry, and the

wild crab, lighting up the woodland | one's gardeners and throw oneself on greenery with their gay and delicate the gratuitous bounty of Nature. I blossoms. Nor would eglantine and have heard people remark that the honeysuckle be wanting. On one side I think I should have a little pasture open to the sun, and coming up to my windows to salute me with daisies, and buttercups, and the milk-sweet breath of ruminating kine.

Italians seem to care little for flowers, and rarely tend their gardens with true northern affection. But, then, are not their glowing sunshine and their spacious atmosphere heaven-sent flowers and gardens in themselves? and they But spring has to make way for sum- feel for these much as I feel for the mer, summer for autumn, and autumn natural capacity of the vernal season, for winter, and only one of these knows would it only last, to wean me from how to garden, and it has to do so un- lawn, and border, and flower-bed der rather hostile conditions. Summer yea, even from the garden that I love. is absolutely ignorant of the craft, "Commend me, my dear Sage "" - it bringing everything on with a rush, is thus Lamia is pleased at times to and then having to content itself with christen me "commend me to the woods and copses of uniform green; wise for talking folly. Your natural or and, though winter is a great gardener wild-wood garden would pall before in one sense, since he makes untiring, the spring was out. Even the most if generally unnoticed, preparations for indolent of us like to assert ourselves future floral display, he has few flowers occasionally, and I can see the havoc to show of his own. Autumn, I grant, you would play with the free gifts of knows the art of gardening to perfec- April and the generous prodigality of tion, possessing the secret of careless May. Man is an interfering animal, grace even beyond the spring. There and, if you like, woman still more so. is an orderly negligence, a well-thought- In fact, man improves Nature, and out untidiness, about autumnal forms then woman improves man, or at any and colors no other season can match. rate compels him to improve himself, Even to the garden proper, the culti- in order to obtain her approbation.. vated plots of man, autumn adds such There is no such thing as beauty unwonderful touches of happy accident adorned. Nature, left to herself, is a that, when it comes, really comes, a wise man leaves his garden alone and allows it to fade, and wane, and slowly, pathetically, pass away, without any effort to hinder or conceal the decay. Indeed, it would be worth while having a cultivated garden if only to see what autumn does with it. What she does she seems to do unintentionally, and in those almost permauent fits of absence, during which, I suppose, she is thinking of the past. But this meditative touch of hers is more discernible in the cultivated garden than in the woodlands; and she makes the wild-wood too moist and chill with her tears for it to be the fitting accessory of a cheerful home. Spring may be a less mature artist, but spring's hopeful and sunny open-heartedness more than atones for some little lack of dexterity.

Again, I say, were it always April, May, and June, one would discharge

reactionist, always slipping back from worse to worse. Give me the hanging gardens of Ecbatana, and the flowers that are fostered by a thousand slaves. A garden! a garden! O yes, a garden! But then, it must be a Garden! The garden that you love is well enough; but I cannot lose myself in it, nor feel that supreme sense of satisfaction which comes of carelessly ruling a splendid kingdom. I want a garden like yours, enlarged and expanded into what Shelley calls a paradise of wildernesses; a garden where the garden is everything and the owner of it nothing.'

"There are many such, dear Lamia," I answered, "in this fair and varied England; and I can show you one whenever you wish to see it. But I fear the owner would count for something, and I must ask his permission before I do so.".

and

"Yes, there it is! The owner al- | poison, what I call your low tastes ways insists on obtruding himself, your taste for splendor, profusion, though he may not be wanted in the the pride of life. In your case, they very least. Girls marry yachts, town are not to be indulged in without what houses, country houses, and shooting- you spoke of as the accessory becoming lodges. Why can one not marry a gar- the principal, and the occasional the den ?" perpetual. The owner of a garden may not care for it in the least; but you cannot very well keep him out of it."

"So you can," I observed, "but on the same terms."

"But I do not want the same terms; nor are they necessary. The possessors of the things I named set much store by their houses, yachts, four-inhands, and salmon rivers. But they think nothing of their gardens, and take these as a matter of course, as producing vegetables, flowers, fruit, and opportunities for an occasional saunter. Why cannot I marry the Garden — the paradise of wildernesses, I mean- and treat all the rest, the owner included, as a matter of course, as an accessory, and a mere occasional appendage?"

"I will try to arrange it for you," I said. "But, meanwhile, be pleased to observe that, as you yourself note, the owners of what you describe care next to nothing for their garden."

"And, if I married one, perhaps I too should not care for it."

Lamia is always so submissive to my sermons, that I rarely preach one. She brought this to a close with the observation, "Of course you are right," and we passed together into the orchard.

It must not be supposed that the orchard, as it now is, is the orchard I happed on that day when I discovered my lifelong home. That, with the exception of some five vigorous survivors, has disappeared. For one of the burning questions that arose when I took in hand the making of the garden that I love, and its immediate surroundings, was what to do, and how to deal with, the orchard. The whole world through, there is no lovelier sight than a well-planted, well-grown English orchard, whether in its full spring blossom or in the mellow richness of its autumnal crop. In its one aspect it "Precisely. The moment I enter a represents, as nothing else in nature garden, I know at once whether it is does, the innocence, the irresponsible the owner's garden or the gardeners' freshness, the irresistible gaiety of garden. Nearly all large and costly simple childhood. In the other, it regardens are gardeners' gardens, and calls and reflects the grave fruitfulness for my part I would not take them as of mature and resigned wisdom. Wana gift. I don't think I ever remember dering in an orchard, either in midenvying the gardens of the great; but May or in early October, one feels a I continually see cottage gardens, little desultory and indefinite but all-satisvillage or secluded plots, cultivated and fying sense of peace, such as I think made beautiful by the pathetic expe- one feels nowhere else. One never dients of the poor, which seem to have wants to be elsewhere, for one seems a charm mine cannot rival. Almost to have got to the heart and centre of every garden, and certainly my own, things. An orchard at once robust and sins against the law of economy. venerable with years has a great adThere are too many flowers; and vantage over one whose branches have effect, surprise, and suggestiveness are but a decade or two of growth; and lost. I have seen one clambering rose, the one I then found had all the majone lingering hollyhock, glorify a cot-esty of manhood, with none of the detage home, arrest one's step, and pro- crepitude of age. But, as I pointed long one's meditations, longer than out to Veronica, it completely cut off all the terraces of Chatsworth. Dear the house, and would cut off the garLamia! cultivate simplicity and ten-den that was to be, from the park, with derness, and crush out, as deadliest all its wealth and world of splendid