one-yet we should have cheerfully made it twice over for the sake of the perfect beauty of the view from the farther shore, where Pic Malibierne unexpectedly flashed on us, framed in the double line of natural granite walls rising steeply above the torrent. It was a faultless bit of Alpine landscape, pure and fresh in all its tones, with nothing about it to hint at corruption or decay. The flaming tufts of rhododendron rooted in the cracks of the granite walls, the madly foaming torrent in the foreground emphasising the peaceful majesty of the distant snow-peak, the little bays of flowery green sward scattered here and there along the margin of the torrent, the firs that stretched their coppery arms above it-everything in the picture was harmonious. When at length we set our faces for Venasque that evening it was with minds fully made up to camp out here next night under the firs and climb Pic Malibierne the day after, Crooke having satisfied us that the summit exceeded by some yards MacAlpin's ideal of 10,000 feet.

WE wandered in the morn of life, as flew
Wing-footed hours quick by in sunny haze,
And talked of all our past and future ways.
Oh, how we loved that time when love was new,
And how it lasted, ever fresh and true,

Throughout the day! For when the noontide blaze
Throbbed with fierce heat, we sheltered in a maze
Of amorous bowers, while love still stronger grew.
We never dreamed of parting. We were bound
As one together--vow was given for vow,
Love begat love, until we grew profound
In wedded mysteries.-Alas! but now

Dark night has fallen. Alone I tread the ground.
I go, I know not whither, care not how!

ONE MAIDEN.

MORGAN EVANS.

I SAW her stand by the garden-door

In her snowy robes, with her glistening hair,
And I thought as I gazed on her angel face
That no other maiden was half so fair!
There's a wondrous depth in her sweet dove eyes,
There's a golden sheen in her lustrous hair,
There's a nameless beauty in all her ways,
And no other maiden is half so fair!

She never stands by the garden-door,

In her snowy robes, with her listening eyes;
There's an awful stillness upon the earth,
And a brooding shadow across the skies;
She never treads on the flowery ground,

With the sunlight kissing her golden hair,
But I know, and I feel, with a solemn pride,
That the angels in heaven are not more fair.

RUSSELL GRAY.

A HERO BY ACCIDENT.

JAMES SINCLAIR was almost the personification of moral and physical cowardice; yet he was not absolutely an objectionable personage. At school he had tamely submitted to being knocked about and bullied by his companions, and when he grew to man's estate he allowed the world to knock him about and bully him as much as it deemed fit. He had never even felt a desire to assert himself. He knew he was an arrant, an unmitigated coward; or, perhaps it would be more correct to say he knew the world regarded him as such, and he dared not attempt to quarrel with the opinions of the world.

At twenty-eight he was called to the Bar, and soon afterwards some well-disposed friend was silly enough to entrust him with a brief.

When Sinclair stood up in court, with a brief in his hand, for the first time, he felt dreadfully agitated and confused. He was not, unfortunately, aware that immediately behind him was a low, swinging panel, and after giving vent to a few unimpressive coughs, he leant back for temporary support against this panel. It swung backwards immediately, and Sinclair, wig, gown and brief, measured their length on the floor of the court. This was the young barrister's last appearance in a hall of justice.

Luckily, he possessed a small private income. Were he obliged to be dependant upon his own exertions for a livelihood, he would, in all probability, have gone to the dogs rapidly, and without a struggle.

Sinclair decided to settle down in a quiet town, which he had frequently visited on the coast of Devon. The mildness of the air and the placid-looking waters of the little bay, fringed by the town, had always had a soothing effect upon him; and now that his public career was virtually at an end, he could think of no better spot of earth in which he might prolong an indolent and purposeless existence.

It was early in the autumn when he hired furnished apartments in Coombehurst, and at the end of a month his acquaintances numbered only five-the rector, the rector's wife and two daughters, and a hirer-out of pleasure boats. It may seem strange that Sinclair should have formed an acquaintance with an old man of the sea, whose whole nature, he might naturally conclude, would be impregnated with a spirit of reckless daring; but

owing to some extraordinary influence exercised over him by Maggie Beauchamp, the rector's younger and prettier daughter, he was on one occasion tempted to entrust himself to the mercies of the deep; and having once, after a deal of persuasion, made a short cruise around the bay, in the company of Maggie and her sister Polly, he began to feel that, perhaps, after all it was not absolutely necessary that he should be drowned, if he ventured temporarily to desert terra firma. On his first boating excursion, and indeed on many a subsequent one, he had taken the precaution to wear, secretly, a swimming belt, of enormous and uncomfortable dimensions. In about a month he summoned up sufficient courage to travel over the bosom of the bay beltless. He was perfectly astonished at his pluck.

Before the weather finally became too boisterous for boating, he had learnt the art of rowing, his principal tutor being Miss Maggie Beauchamp. And when the boating trips were discontinued,

Sinclair found he had fallen head over ears in love with Miss Maggie. The discovery shocked him dreadfully. He fancied the young lady had learned his secret, and was laughing inwardly at him, so he could never meet her without a blush and a stammer, and at last he determined he would quit Coombehurst. The idea of paying his addresses to anyone seemed to him utterly preposterous, and he would as soon have decided to make a formal proposal as he would to storm a fortress single-handed. There was nothing for it, he decided, but to shift his camp.

Early in November the weather grew wonderfully mild, so mild that the little bay at Coombehurst was frequently dotted with pleasure boats. Sinclair, before leaving the town and Miss Maggie behind him, thought he would muster up courage to ask Maggie and Polly Beauchamp for a final row on the bay. They consented to accompany him, and one afternoon Sinclair shipped his sculls and courageously rowed away from the little pier. Almost unconsciously he brought the boat farther out to sea than prudence would warrant, for although a November day may happen to be mild, it is not the time of year to place unlimited confidence in the weather.

When the boat was about four miles distant from the pier, Sinclair suddenly thought it was high time to return, and, looking up at the sky, he saw to his infinite horror that something was about to happen. The something proved to be a very nasty squall, and before a mile of the homeward journey had been accomplished the waters in the bay grew very nasty; and Sinclair, with his heart in his boots, began to row like a maniac for the pier. The girls, too, were not a little alarmed, and with white faces sat very closely together in the stern of the boat. No conversation was carried on, but the three voyagers were pondering on the imprudence of venturing out so late in the year, and would severally and collectively have shrieked for help had they thought

Sinclair was

there would have been the slightest use in doing so. mentally mustering up courage to curse his folly for not having brought a swimming belt or a cork jacket with him, and at the same time he was pulling as no mortal man ever pulled a boat before or since.

Occasionally a dash of spray would come over the bows, drenching Sinclair, and causing the girls to give vent to a half-suppressed cry of terror. Suddenly Polly screamed

"The boat is filling with water. We are sinking. Oh, Heaven! help us."

With a half-suppressed howl, Sinclair, his face white from terror, let go his oars, and almost flinging himself on his knees near the stern-sheets, inade with one hand some rapid movement, the object of which was not clearly comprehended at the time by the girls. Then he gasped,

"For Heaven's sake will one of you take the oars, and let the other steer? I'll do my best to prevent the boat from sinking." When roused to a pitch of excitement, the most timid girl can often exhibit more courage and presence of mind than the pluckiest of men, and Maggie Beauchamp cautiously advanced to the oars and sat herself down in the seat vacated by the terrorstricken Sinclair, while Polly firmly grasped the steering ropes.

It is probably well known that in most small boats there is a vent hole situated at one side of the keel, in the neighbourhood of the stern sheets. This hole is usually plugged tightly with a cork or a wooden peg. When Polly cried out that the boat was filling, Sinclair at once saw that the plug had somehow been knocked out, and that the water was bubbling in through the hole; and when he made the frenzied dash for the stern sheets, he had, in sheer desperation, forced his thumb into the aperture.

The boat arrived safely at the pier, and the well-nigh exhausted crew disembarked. Then Maggie fainted in Sinclair's arms; and Polly, who was of a much stronger nervous temperament than her sister, loaded Sinclair with praises for his extraordinary courage and presence of mind. So did Maggie when she recovered; and before long Coombehurst rang with praises of the heroic Sinclair. And Sinclair, who now wore his thumb in splints, was SO carried away by the amount of hero-worship lavished upon him, that he actually summoned up courage to propose to Maggieand Maggie accepted him.

E. DOWNEY.