Dr. Firm read out every word of the letter without comment. Without speaking he refolded it, returned it to the envelope, and sat a full moment, his large eyes fixed on the carpet.

His sister aroused him.

"Well, Benny, what will you do?" she questioned. "You'll send the boy some money, won't you?"

"Of course I will!" he said, and straightway went off to forward funds to the teacher of English in a German school.

Mean while there came a vacation, in due course, in the school mentioned. Morton had secured a trifling sum in the course of his teaching. Upon depositing his watch with the head of the school, he received a certain sum for that, and thus equipped he started on a pedestrian trip of two hundred miles. By the time of his return he trusted to get a letter from Dr. Firm.

He had taken care to inform himself of the exact locality of every asylum for the insane in the region he intended to pass through; but Morton Cloud was altogether too young in years, and too transparent in soul to make use of the art which an elder person would have done to effect the given object. He never for a moment imagined that his fellowman could be guilty of keeping his mother concealed from her son, therefore he went boldly to the entrances of the asylums and desired to see the persons in charge. He had sought his mother in similar places until a dumb kind of answer seemed to precede the reply, invariably given, that his mother was not there.

One day he had traveled from early morning over a wild region, whose inhabitants were few and poor. He had been directed to take it as the shorter way to reach a certain town in the northern part of Germany.

He had dined poorly and early, and had not broken his fast for hours.

Night was drawing near, and his vital forces were so far spent that he could have thrown himself down under the cover of a thicket of fir-trees and slept. Feeling the need of excitement of some

kind, to keep him up until he could reach a place where he could rest, he began to shout out the chorus of a college song. His voice was clear and strong, and penetrated freely through the lonely highway. Suddenly a noise behind caused Morton' to turn about in time to see the approach of a traveling-coach, the driver of which was urging his horses through the heavy sand at their utmost speed.

As the carriage rushed past, the youth caught sight of a face and heard sounds that caused him to follow the carriage with what haste he might. He had managed to keep in sight of the vehicle for a half mile, when there came into view the same building to which Mr. and Mrs. Cloud had drawn near months before.

Now, Morton had been distinctly told by a person that morning that no institution for the insane existed within many miles of the place, and he was urging himself on to get fifty miles further, where, he had been informed by the same person, was an asylum with a great number of English patients.

Morton witnessed at a distance the struggles of the man he had seen in the carriage, as he was overcome by his attendants and carried in. He saw the great doors shut and the coach pass on.

There came through the roadside thicket a white-haired boy of not more than seven years. The boy had been tending sheep, and was anxious to get home to his supper. Morton hailed the little fellow, and asked him in German what building he saw, pointing to the large house in view.

"Bad place, sir-very," said the boy. "I run to get by afore the dark catches me," and he would have run on had not Morton held him back.

"Boy! I want to know what it is," he said, "and you must tell me."

"The folks there roll their eyes, and swing their arms, and talk queer," said Seven Years. "O let me go afore it gets dark; I'm afraid of them folks."

"Do you live near here?"

"No! a good bit, and across the lake. My sister that's Minnie, will be tired

waiting in the boat to row me over the lake. Don't go to that place, it's bad, very, all bad-maybe they won't let you out again." And the boy went on a little way, then he ran back, saying, "Are you going up to the village to-night, sir."

"Perhaps I may, why?" inquired Mor

ton.

In a short time the lake was reached, but no boat was seen. They wandered along the shore until the time grew near to darkness, and still neither boat nor Minnie appeared. Suddenly the boy started off in a certain direction, and Morton, following him, found him talking to a man, whom he instantly recognized, by the boy's description, as the doctor. No sooner had the doctor espied Morton than he went hastily to the place where he waited and demanded his right to be intruding on that shore. Morton scarcely

"O dear!" said the boy, "that's too bad, a great much too bad, but I haven't got the letter yet, it isn't give to me. She said she'd come and walk by the lake to-night. She is a nice one-she don't roll her eyes, nor snap her teeth, nor do any of them awful noises either. I likes her, I do."

"And she is going to meet you down by the lake to-night, you say. Then I will go with you and see her maybe," said Morton.

you

"He'll be along somewhere, he most always is, and I don't believe he will let see her; but you can come along, and Minnie will put you over the water, and that's a nearer way to the village," said the boy.

"Who is he, my boy?"

"He is the doctor; the little man 'thout any hair on top of his head. He lets this one walk on the bank, and once he let her take a row with Minnie and me."

During the questions and answers given the child had been hurrying along the walk, keeping a nervous lookout toward the huge building he feared so greatly. When they had passed it in safety, he said confidentially, "I'm always afeard to get by there. I think some of 'em is coming out the windows to gobble me up like."

"Did you ever know any one that was gobbled up?" asked Morton, with a serious air.

"Oh, you ought to hear 'em talk, and I wonder if you wouldn't run too," said the boy.

"Oh, sir!" said Morton, "will you please tell me if you have among your patients a lady from America, Mrs. Cloud?"

"What right have you to inquire?' asked the doctor, in tones that would have made most men throb with a heartquake.

"What right, sir!" repeated Morton; "the right I have because she is my mother, and I have searched everywhere I know to find her."

"Young man," said the doctor, “have you any proofs of your identity to offer? Even were Mrs. Cloud here, how could I accede to your demand, having no proof that you had a right to make inquiry."

"Oh, sir! I am so sorry; but if she were here you would know me by my resemblance to her."

A sound of oars smote their hearing. "It's Minnie coming," said the boy. The doctor took a peculiar whistle from his pocket and sent backward toward the asylum notes from it. He then ordered Morton from the spot, threatening to have him arrested and confined for intruding on private grounds, but Morton's eyes were fixed on the row-boat nearing the shore.

"There she is-in with Minnie now!" said the boy.

It was almost dark, but the figures on the sands could be seen. The doctor looked around for help, none was in sight. He raised his cane and was about to strike at Morton, when a voice from

the boat rang along the shore, "Morton! Morton, my boy-it is my Morton!" Morton sprang forward and plunged into the lake. He was a good swimmer, and without permitting the boat to draw near the shore he gained it, and three minutes later the doctor stood helpless with a hundred feet of water between himself and his patient.

"Morton, Morton!" gasped Mrs, Cloud, "don't go on! don't go on ! You do not know what you are doing."

"Yes I do, mother, I am carrying you away from this place forever. I have been looking for you too long to let you go now." Minnie began to cry and to utter powerful plaints in the German tongue about her poor brother left on the bank.

At a safe distance from pursuit, Morton drew in his oars to listen to his mother's words.

"Morton," she said, "I promised not to run away without fair warning, and I cannot tell a lie. Go back! Go back! Give me up now and trust to the future to restore my liberty."

Night grew to darkness and still the little boat lingered on the lake. Mrs. Cloud determined to go back, and Morton trying to convince her of her folly, while shouts and commands for their return were borne across from the bank. was the excitement in the asylum. patient had escaped, and not a boat was at hand for the capture.

Great

A

"Mother!" at last said Morton, "if

you go back there I shall never be able to rescue you, all the toil and trouble I have had will be for nothing. He told her how destitute he was, how destitute he had been, and put before her the despair that would follow him if she insisted on keeping a promise so foolish, "one," he added, "that no man would have made."

At length Minnie gathered up the oars, and in good stout German accents signified that she was going.

"I shall go back, Morton," said Mrs. Cloud, "if not now, on the first opportunity."

Morton regained the oars and slowly turned the boat about. The party on the bank kept breathless silence as the dip of the oars drew near.

Mrs. Cloud was the first to land. She stepped from the boat the instant it touched, and a step or two brought her face to face with the irate little doctor.

"I have returned because I would not tell you a lie," she said.

ALBANY is still a queer old place, and shows some oddities of the olden time. A few years ago, and it was full of all sorts of Dutch tumble-down places, squatty houses with sharp-terraced roofs, laughable gables, with the one turret cocked like a turned-up nose at the apex of the roof, and with the date of the erection in iron letters. There is an old fabric now in North Pearl Street, with the black iron-lettered date on the small Holland bricks (brought over as ballast when Albany was Beaverwyck), a roof

sharp enough to split a log upon, and full of groceries. No question it was a brave mansion in its day, the residence of the captain of the garrison, or at least the mayor, albeit it boasts of naught but strings of sausages and onions, and "such like gear," now. It is the only one in the street. Yankee enterprise looking askew at Dutch stolidity has every now and then swept away the old Dutch relics, till but few survivors "of the good old days are left. Instead of the Dutch burgher and sturdy vrow, we have

the fine gentleman and mincing belle; the "stoop," with door parting in the middle, and the brass knocker, shaped like a beaver or dog's head, have given place to the stone steps, and polished silver bell and door-plate. "Where be the" meadows now, and the palisade, and the stone fort on the hill, and its stone guns or "steen-stucken?" You might as well ask where the modesty, and honesty, and industry of former times are hiding.

One relic of other days, however, "still lives"-the Burgoyne House. It is at the intersection of North Lansing Street with North Broadway. An old-looking fabric is it, with an elm battered as with a thousand storms, yet bearing on its broad stem, and lopped, sturdy limbs still a wreath of green foliage.

either side. Cattle were grazing in the meadows, and colts rambling, with trees scattered over the surface of the meadows. The landscape, touched with red and gold was smiling, and the river reflected red clouds and blue sky. Sloops were lazily drifting with the tide; here and there a snub-nose penangua glided past, with its one broad sail spread to catch the sundown wind. A bateau from the Mohawk was creeping down, with its red-sleeved boatmen poling it onward, pushing with their shoulders along the narrow platforms inside the heavy, clumsy craft. Altogether it was a busy scene and lovely. The purple haze of the season was thickening around the horizon, filming the near distances, while the woods winked through golden gauzes. The bells of the

"There's a battle going on somewhere!" said Dirk Steenkirk, the tailor, in October, 1777, laying his ear to the ground. "I thought I heard the sound before. It can't be an earthquake, I think; the jar is not heavy enough! There it is again. It must be some great battle or other. I guess Gates has met Burgoyne away up north."

"I always thought your ears were long, Dirk," said old Dominie Schnaaps, chuckling; "but, I must say, I didn't think they stretched from Albany up to ward Saratoga."

"It may not be Saratoga," said honest Dirk, he may have met Burgoyne closer to home. At all events, there's a battle going on somewhere, certain."

"I can't say I hear anything," said the Dominie, stooping his ear in turn to the ground. "Stop, though, I do hear a sound; I vow I think it's the sound of cannon too. I believe with you, Dirk, Gates is fighting Burgoyne."

"We'll hear in a few days," responded Dirk, and they separated.

The conversation occurred at the corner of the two streets mentioned. It was at sunset, and the broad meadows on either side were glowing in the rays of the level The two streets were merely wide grassy lanes, with wooden fences

sun.

pleasantly with the cattle-bells of the pastures. The gilded vanes, in shapes of sturgeon, codfish, and crowing roosters glittered, and the opposite hills were bathed in soft brilliance. Shrieking and whistling black urchins were driving home the lowing and loitering cows, the sleek coats of which gleamed like silk. Here and there a little imp, black as Satan, was urging a shaggy colt to a swift gallop by the halter, grinning like a catfish as he clung tight as a glove, bare-backed, on the sharp ridge of the animal's body, the colt now and then launching out his unarmed heels in the vain hope of dismounting his tormentor. Groups of female gossips were on the " stoops," or standing in the doorways, the upper and lower leaves of which were swung wide open. Numbers of honest burghers, with clay pipes long as yard-sticks, wearing broad buttons, and breeches with knee-buckles, that shone in the low light as if made of the precious metal itself, talked "Ya, mynheer," and "Nein, mynheer," and spoke of Gates and Burgoyne, and the chances of a battle; for all were not gifted with the keen ears of the tailor and the Dominie. A sweet scene and a peaceful was Albany that soft September evening-sweet as a pinkster blossom, and peaceful as the glassy Hudson creeping on its watery way to the ocean.