clasps; which delighted her with its beauty, and of which she was a good deal in need, her own being very much worn; while she wished Ned to take his mother's with him.

"I chose this for you," said Arthur, "because I did not know of anything else you would like better, and because I owe to you my first real appreciation of a book that I value now more than I ever thought I should have done."

"I am so glad of that," said Katie, earnestly; "and I hope you will always value it, and take it as your guide." "I hope so," Arthur replied, very gravely; "and if so, it will be in a great degree owing to your example, and from seeing what its guidance has been to you."

Katie was both thankful and yet troubled, for she could not feel that she had any right to the distinction assigned her; and then she exclaimed

"Oh, how I wish I had something for you; but I have nothing that seems worth giving, except mamma's old copy of the "Christian Year"-if you will take that; but it is rather faded and old."

Arthur said he would be very happy to take it, if it were not that he would be depriving her of what he knew she so valued. But she said it would only be a pleasure to her if he would keep it as a memento of their intercourse; and this he thereupon willingly agreed to do.

After her brother and the friend who had been almost like a brother, were really off, and Clara, as it happened, away before them, Katie felt very much the blankness and desolation of the word "gone;" especially as so many things were always recalling them, and making her realise over and over again how much she missed them. But she

wisely kept herself occupied with the various duties she had undertaken to discharge for Helen, which were as much as her strength was equal to; and for the rest, sustained herself by trying to act the part of a daughter to Mr Grey in the long October evenings. Snap was always her companion when she was alone, and he had now become so much attached to her that he rarely, with his own consent, lost sight of her for many minutes. And thus the time passed, not so very slowly after all, till a few weeks brought the welcome tidings of the arrival of the young travellers at their destination, and in good spirits, after a pleasant and prosperous voyage. The next letters told of Ned's being settled with his uncle in Edinburgh, after a kind reception, and of Arthur's being fairly established in his college at Oxford.

very

Before these letters arrived, however, Helen had returned home. She had met Mr Russell again, and Katie, from various things she noticed in her manner and appearance, soon suspected,-what Mr Russell's own arrival shortly afterwards confirmed,—that she had promised some day to be his wife. The "some day" was left very indefinite ; and Katie soon found from Mr Russell that it was chiefly because Helen could not make up her mind to leave her father, or to tax Katie with her duties, should she relinquish them. But Katie represented most strongly, though her heart rebelled all the time, how well Mr Grey and she would get on together, and how all that she should have to do would only be an interest for her, and work she should enjoy. She was Mr Russell's most efficient ally, as he gratefully acknowledged, and their joint representations

succeeded so far as to induce Helen to consent that the marriage should be fixed, if all were well, for the following summer. When it was all settled, and Katie had received Mr Russell's warm thanks, and been claimed as his sister, and had heard Helen declare that she could not have left her father but for knowing his adopted daughter would be with him, she felt as if she really were of some use and importance, after all.

Helen and she spent a quiet, happy winter together, though a little saddened by the thought of the approaching separation. They had plenty of work, and books full of interest, to occupy them at home, and there was always something to be done abroad, as much as they could overtake. They mixed very little in society. Katie was seldom at Pine Grove in Clara's absence, and Caroline herself spent most of the winter away from home, on a visit to one of her sea-side friends, and engrossed with a round of gaieties. When she returned, it was rumoured -truly, as it proved-that she was soon to leave home finally as the wife of Lieutenant-now Captain-Ainslie.

The two weddings took place in the following June. Clara came home from school to be one of the bridesmaids at her sister's, which was the first, and remained to officiate in a like capacity at Helen's. Caroline's was in the church, of course, and was a very gay affair; Katie being present as a spectator, but not as one of the guests. The bride looked extremely pretty and graceful, and the wedding presents were declared to be "splendid,” as well as the wedding breakfast.

Helen's was as quiet as it could well be. Katie had

shrunk from the idea of being a bridesmaid, but Helen so much wished to have both her and Clara, that she yielded; and she did not find it so formidable, after all, especially as the groomsmen were Mr Russell's two younger brothers. The Elliotts and Mrs Duncan were almost the only guests; but the occasion seemed to be pervaded with the quiet, hopeful happiness which they have most reason to expect who desire, above all things, the approving presence of the Heavenly Guest, who alone can turn life's water into wine.

Katie thought, as she watched Mr and Mrs Russell drive away, how much preferable was the quiet, peaceful, domestic life, to be filled with noble work for God and man, that lay before them, to the career of frivolous excitement and fashionable dissipation to which Caroline Ainslie was looking forward,

It had, of course, been rather a trial for Helen to leave the church in which she had been brought up, and to which her early associations so tenderly clung, for that which she must now join, as the church of her husband. But she had always loved and admired the Church of England service; and she felt too strongly of how little importance, comparatively, is the mere outward form of our connexion with Christ's kingdom, provided he is the chief object of our attachment, to indulge in any repining over so very small an alloy as this in a cup so full of blessing.

T might have been thought that Katie's life would have been a very sad and lonely one after her friend's marriage and departure, and she had once feared this herself, but it was not so. Her heart was too full of the peace which cannot be taken away, and her time too full of thought and work for others, to leave her much leisure for realising the sense of her loneliness, though she did continually miss Helen, as well as her brother, from whom, however, she had regular and satisfactory letters that helped not a little to preserve her cheerfulness. She tried to keep up as much of Helen's visiting and other work as, with her limited strength, she could overtake, and at home she always had Martha's watchful care and Mr Grey's genial kindliness, as well as abundance of interesting