skin, the large tropical eyes, that had almost made Antoine's sacred robes a mockery to him.

For a month or two Anglice was wildly unhappy in her new home. She talked continually of the bright country where she was born, the fruits and flowers and blue skies. Antoine could not pacify her. By-and-by she ceased to weep, and went about the cottage with a dreary, disconsolate air that cut Antoine to the heart. Before the year ended, he noticed that the ruddy tinge had fled from her cheek, that her eyes had grown languid, and her slight figure more willowy than ever.

A physician was called. He could discover nothing wrong with the child, except this fading and drooping. He failed to account for that. It was some vague disease of the mind, he said, beyond his skill.

So Anglice faded day after day. She seldom left the room now. Antoine could not shut out the fact that the child was passing away. He had learned to love her so!

"Dear heart," he said once, "what is 't ails thee?" "Nothing, mon père,' for so she called him.

The winter passed, the balmy spring air had come, and Anglice seemed to revive. In her little bamboo chair, on the porch, she swayed to and fro in the fragrant breeze, with a peculiar undulating motion, like a graceful tree.

At times something seemed to weigh upon her mind. Antoine noticed it, and waited. At length she spoke.

"Near our house," said little Anglice, "near our house, on the island, the palm trees are waving under the blue sky. Oh, how beautiful! I seem to lie beneath them all day long. I am very, very happy. I yearned

for them until I grew sick - don't you think so, mon père ?"

"Mon Dieu, yes!" exclaimed Antoine, suddenly. "Let us hasten to those pleasant islands where the palms are waving."

Anglice smiled.

"I am going there, mon père!”

Ay, indeed. A week from that evening the wax candles burned at her feet and forehead, lighting her on the journey.

All was over. Now was Antoine's heart empty. He had nothing to do but to lay the blighted flower away. Père Antoine made a shallow grave in his garden, and heaped the fresh brown mould over his idol.

In the genial spring evenings the priest was seen sitting by the mound, his finger closed in the unread prayer-book.

The summer broke on that sunny land; and in the cool morning twilight, and after nightfall, Antoine lingered by the grave. He could never be with it enough.

One morning he observed a delicate stem, with two curiously shaped emerald leaves, springing up from the centre of the mound. At first he merely noticed it casually; but at length the plant grew so tall, and was so strangely unlike anything he had ever seen before, that he examined it with care.

How straight and graceful and exquisite it was! When it swung to and fro with the summer wind, in the twilight, it seemed to Antoine as if little Anglice were standing there in the garden!

The days stole by, and Antoine tended the fragile shoot, wondering what sort of blossom it would unfold,

white, or scarlet, or golden. One Sunday, a stranger, with a bronzed, weather-beaten face like a sailor's, leaned over the garden-rail, and said to him:—

“What a fine young date-palm you have there, sir!” "Mon Dieu!" cried Père Antoine, "and is it a palm?" "Yes, indeed," returned the man. "I had no idea the tree would flourish in this climate."

"Mon Dieu!" was all the priest could say.

If Père Antoine loved the tree before, he worshiped it now. He watered it, and nurtured it, and could have clasped it in his arms. Here were Émile and Anglice and the child, all in one!

The years flew by, and the date-palm and the priest grew together only one became vigorous and the other feeble. Père Antoine had long passed the meridian of life. The tree was in its youth. It no longer stood in an isolated garden, for homely brick and wooden houses had clustered about Antoine's cottage. They looked down scowling on the humble thatched roof. The city was edging up, trying to crowd him off his land. But he clung to it, and would n't sell. Speculators piled gold on his doorstep, and he laughed at them. Sometimes he was hungry, but he laughed none the less. "Get thee behind me, Satan!" said the old priest's smile.

Père Antoine was very old now, scarcely able to walk; but he could sit under the pliant, caressing leaves of his tree, and there he sat until the grimmest of speculators came to him. But even in death Père Antoine was faithful to his trust. The owner of that land loses it, if he harms the date-tree.

And there it stands in the narrow, dingy street, a

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beautiful, dreamy stranger, an exquisite foreign lady whose grace is a joy to the eye, the incense of whose breath makes the air enamored. A precious boon is she to the wretched city; and when loyal men again walk those streets, may the hand wither that touches her ungently!

"Because it grew from the heart of little Anglice," said Miss Badeau, tenderly.

ALEC YEATON'S SON

GLOUCESTER, AUGUST, 1720

BY THOMAS BAILEY ALDRICH

THE wind it wailed, the wind it moaned, And the white caps flecked the sea; "An' I would to God," the skipper groaned, "I had not my boy with me!"

Snug in the stern-sheets, little John
Laughed as the scud swept by;
But the skipper's sunburnt cheek grew wan
As he watched the wicked sky.

"Would he were at his mother's side!"
And the skipper's eyes were dim.
"Good Lord in heaven, if ill betide,
What would become of him!

"For me

my muscles are as steel,

For me let hap what may;

I might make shift upon the keel
Until the break o' day.

"But he, he is so weak and small,
So young, scarce learned to stand

O pitying Father of us all,

I trust him in Thy hand!