thought she would die; then we thought she would go mad; I am not at all sure that her brain was not touched. The captain left no provision for his wife and child, and people wondered- as they always do wonder on such occasions-what the poor young thing would do. She was an orphan herself; her father had been a north country clergyman, poor but well born. She had no relations of her own that ever I heard of and none on her husband's side, save some far-away and unknown kindred in Spain, of whose whereabouts she knew absolutely nothing. The poor child was in despair; she could not leave her baby, yet she could scarcely find employment if she kept him with her. Then in my madness I told her that I loved her, and would gladly marry her and be a father to her boy. She would not listen to me, and ever after she avoided One day a great nobleman, having wandered out of his road, stumbled somehow on Rosthwaite. He was a strange-looking man, handsome, haughty, taciturn, and reserved to sullenness, the last man you would have imagined as likely to become a hero of roBut all men are alike in that particular; the beauty of woman is the snare of man. This proud man, resting for one night at the humble inn of Rosthwaite, took a morning stroll under the cliffs, and saw our Helena, the lovely child-widow.

me.

mance.

"How it all came about I scarcely know, but this nobleman, instead of going away before noon as he had arranged in mine host's shandry, lingered on day after day, as he said, for sketching and fishing, but as it was soon ascertained for the sole purpose of paying his court to the lonely village beauty. The girl was circumspect enough; she never admitted the Marquis to her little cottage, and when she went out walking she took with her a rude sort of fisher-woman who acted as duenna. Still people talked, and it was said, and it might have been truth, though I can hardly think it, -she was so pure a creature, so sacred in her character of widow and mother, and her child was always in her arms,-it was like the images of the Madonna one is always seeing, the child an invariable adjunct of the mother, it seemed impossible that any one should dare to utter baseness in her presence, but it was said that the first proposals of the Marquis were not honourable. However that might be, they were safely and legally married at last; the wedding was very private, almost secret, but every regulation of the English marriage law was strictly observed. I saw to that, for I distrusted the Marquis altogether. But married they were as fast as the English Church could marry them, and Helena went awaymy lady,' though without a single attendant."

"Did she take her child with her?" I inquired, hoarsely. Too well I knew to whose story I was listening.

"Yes; the last time I saw her she cut by the Marquis in the

chaise that had been sent from St. Bees, and her boy was in her lap. But she was not to keep him; she told me all about it, for we became friends again, just before our final separation-she was to give him up entirely; a handsome settlement was made upon him. He was provided for as a gentleman's son! But henceforward she was to be as one dead to him! Her proud husband could not brook the remembrance of her former relations with a poor, unknown sea-captain, and this child, I believe, he absolutely loathed, as the inconvenient offspring of a marriage which he had determined to ignore. So the child was to want for nothing, only he was never, never to know or be acknowledged by his mother! The Marquis made her swear that she would never, under any circumstances, reveal to her boy their mutual relations. She was never to try to see him, and he would have had her promise never to inquire of his fate, or hear of him! But to this last clause she would not submit-she would from time to time know that her child was alive. It is for his sake I do it,' she said, poor brokenhearted thing, when I spoke to her for the last time the night before the wedding. Ah! she had better have married me! I would never have parted her from her child, and her child never would have known the loss of father or mother."

"What became of the child?"

"I know no more than you do! But I did hear that he was confided to the care of an elderly couple who lived in one of the most remote mountain villages. My tale is ended. I left Rosthwaite, and since then I have heard nothing of either mother or child. The Marchioness's name I see sometimes in the English papers, that is all. The boy may be dead. It is a strange story, is it not? but true as the Bible."

Yes, I knew that! and I knew now that Lady Dovercourt was really my own dear mother. When she said she had not a mother's rights she meant that she had forfeited them. But she was my mother-my long-lost mother-for all that!

(To be continued.)

GLIMPSES THROUGH THE CLERESTORY;

OR, SIDE LIGHTS OF THE CHURCH.

BY TIMOTHY B. VANE, ESQ., LL.D.

CHAPTER VII.-A history of the organ of Salem, wherein is narrated the manner in which the said organ was purchased, builded, played, and blown.

THE singing difficulties, as was hinted in the last chapter, became more serious as time advanced. The breaches in the choir were

be

healed, but the place of healing was too conspicuous. It is said that a man who has lost his leg will in after-years often feel the shooting of corns which were upon that member, although it doubtless has long ago crumbled into original dust, as a kind of pledge to the earth that the other leg, and the trunk, and the arms will be sure to follow. I know very well that quondam sore places upon my back, where the sons of Galen operated by means of blister, and leech, and lance, when I had the accident which has made me a confirmed invalid, will often seem to open and give sundry twinges, though even the scars of the wounds have almost disappeared. So was it with the troubles of the singing pew. There was peace, but doubtful concord. Poor Mr. Cutem had to very careful how he selected this or the other young lady for an especial part. The tenor was not always very even tempered, while the bass had a happy facility of occasionally being quite silent, and through a whole service never opening his mouth, to the great dismay of little Yardman, the draper, who sat quite close to the choir, and sang bass, following the gentleman who undertook that part, but necessarily about half a note behind. When, however, the bass was not sung, poor Yardman was dreadfully troubled, and was then content with chapel bass-a part in sacred music which my readers may not quite understand, but which they may readily detect in any congregation. Chapel bass is the singing adopted by certain male Christians who are not accomplished musicians, and is the air of the tune sung at least an octave lower than the proper pitch. At times of course this will necessarily descend to depths which the aforesaid male Christian throat cannot fathom. The singer is then reduced to his lowest note, along which he drags a terrible and awe-inspiring tone, relieved immensely by the closing cadences, if they mercifully ascend towards the key-note, wherein he disports gracefully by a vigorous outpouring of the fifth, gliding to his much satisfaction into the octave once again as the verse concludes. This being generally a bass that is very base indeed, there is a sense of much relief and delight at all events at the apparent part-singing which marks the last bar. There is also a chapel tenor which more rarely may be heard; but as this exists generally only in the last bars of the tune, where the tenor notes are taken in a kind of triumphant shout, it does not call for a more detailed description.

My own pew at this time was in the vicinity of two gentlemen whose singing powers were largely developed under the influence of the impulse given to our part-singing by the schoolmaster. As these performers produced a great effect upon myself (and the reader will hereafter find that the writer was largely concerned in causing the decision to obtain an organ), it may not be uninte

resting that their mode of joining in the service should be described. One of them was a little man of very singular appearance, rendered all the more remarkable by the care with which he adorned his person on the Sunday. On week-days, when he was habilitated in his usual working-clothes, he looked simply what he was-an insignificant man. If you had seen him in a crowd you would not have been struck by his appearance, and I doubt if the test applied by Sydney Smith of meeting a man who, with yourself, has taken refuge from a shower under an overhanging roof, and in a few minutes' conversation discovering that he was no ordinary personage, would have been of much avail with little Judkins. How many inches above five feet he towered I cannot say, never having measured him, but, without his boots, which were remarkably high in the heel, I doubt very much whether he was more than that odious height of five feet nothing. His hat was always very glossy, and he usually wore a band. For whom he was in mourning I never could discover, unless it was for his lost stature. His coat was a brilliant blue, with worked and quilted facings. He rejoiced in a yellow waistcoat, and not unfrequently appeared gorgeous in large tartan inexpressibles. He was a bachelor of many years' standing; had been, if not exactly unfortunate in his matrimonial attempts, at all events unsuccessful. There was hardly an eligible young lady in Salem to whom little Judkins had not made advances, but by whom little Judkins was indignantly repulsed. Even ineligible-no longer young-ladies had refused him, and there seemed to have been a conspiracy upon the part of that portion of our race without whom there can be no marriage to condemn the poor fellow to everlasting celibacy. At last he accepted his position. The hairs upon his head were whitening, at least those whitened which did not fall off. The wrinkles upon the forehead left their marks and lines. There was an evident increase in girth which told of a body not willing to take that exercise which is supposed to preserve at once genteelness of shape and vigour of health, and, altogether, Judkins was getting on towards middle age, but without any lessening of the size of the breast-pin, or any toning of the brilliancy of the colours which he affected. But it must not be supposed that he was not a very good fellow in his way. He was a capital man of business; and Miss Pinter, the daughter of a respectable publican, would have had a much more comfortable home if she had consented to become Mrs. Judkins instead of taking the name of that most disreputable scamp young Charley Furroughes, a son of one of the farmers in our neighbourhood. Judkins would be kind, too, if you met him at the right time. He has often assisted me when in earlier days I used to venture for a walk farther than I ought to have done, and could scarcely find

strength to crawl home again. And I have known many instances of his kindly and generous spirit acting in benevolent and even self-sacrificing deeds; so that whilst the little man was a constant object of my amused contemplation I could not withhold a certain amount of genuine admiration. But there was one thing that Judkins could not do, and that was-sing. He had no voice, and very little ear, and not much knowledge. But the plague of it was that he thought he had, and so whilst his silence would have been quite golden, his speech, or rather song, which was, moreover, constant, was anything but silver-rather brass, or even tin, and that cracked. Oh! how he shook and quavered, rattled and screamed! If his voice had ever been anything it must have been a somewhat high-pitched tenor, but as it was it was wretchedly cracked and discordant. You know the effect of a tremolo stop upon the harmonium-even in a good instrument it is somewhat trying to the nerves, but in a bad one, and that out of tune, the effect is excruciating. Now that was Judkins, and he sat in the pew next to mine. He may have praised with the heart, he certainly did not with the understanding, and whatever melody there may have been in that aforesaid organ, there was not even a trace of it in the lips which it supplied with blood. Even as I write I can hear the shake, though many years have elapsed since Judkins poured forth his music, and the mere recollection sets every tooth on edge.

But our little friend was not alone; he had next to him a stout and portly brother-one of Salem's staunch supporters. He kept a kind of general shop of ironmongery, grocery and haberdashery -store, as it would be called in America or the colonies; or rather, I should say, the shop kept him, and very comfortably; and not only him, but his wife and three or four chubby daughters, with a couple of sons about entering upon men's estate. Indeed, Steel was a well-to-do citizen of the borough of Drayton, and a most constant member of our church. Steel also would sing, but Steel could not sing. Even Judkins was harmony and melody, everything that is musical compared with Steel. Steel had no idea of singing. He had no voice, no knowledge, no ear. I doubt if he could have had the proper arrangement of epiglottic membranes, tendons, muscles, &c., whereby sound at all approaching music could be emitted. Certain is it that it was not. I have heard profane boys liken his singing to an old cow, but I would not desecrate these pages by making such a comparison, especially owing to the very vulgar nature of it, though my passion for truth compels me to acknowledge that there was no small resemblance between the singing of Steel and the lugubrious utterance of an ancient specimen of the genus bos (feminine in gender). It had absolutely no