i beholding Clara's limpid eyes and soft As for her well, of course, no prop. esly conducted damsel ever does fall in love at first sight. Such a thing is unheard of, and the lightning darts I spoke of can only be supposed to affect the coarser sex, just as in a forest of mixed trees the thunderbolt will always select the sturdy oak to fall upon, while it glides harmless betwixt the smooth beech stems. Thus Clara, beech-like, considered her self intact, and hardly noticed how, in the course of the thirty-six hours they had travelled together, she had imperceptibly glided into intimacy with her countryman, and had unconsciously initiated him into all the little events of her uneventful life. She had told him all about her rather melancholy childhood, the dull home with a peevish old aunt, then her journey to Russia, the short bright summer with all its pleasures, and the sudden collapse of her hopes when her little pupil had died. The only thing she had not happened to mention to him as yet was about her money, not from any want of confidence, but simply because there had been no occasion for so doing. They had had various other travelling companions for short stages at a time two old ladies, an invalid gentleman with a servant, a friar, a fat horsedealer, and some nuns; but these had all successively dropped off, and on the second morning Hugo and Clara were the only inside occupants of the stage-coach. At least, that you have never told me. "I did not speak of people," he replied with emphasis. "I only spoke about you. I have never tried to guess the thoughts of another woman." He spoke so earnestly that Clara felt herself coloring under the directness of his gaze. In her embarrassment she made an effort to turn off the subject "At any rate, I am not quite as transparent as you seem to think. I can keep secrets when I choose. For instance, I will lay any wager that you do not know where I have put my money?" "Will you give me three guesses, as in the fairy tale of Rumplestiltskin?" "Oh, yes; thirty guesses if you like," laughed Clara. "I am quite safe." "I only ask for three; and what will be my reward if I guess correctly?" "You will never guess; besides, I have no rewards to give." "You have something to give," said Hugo very low. "But I am willing to take my chance and trust to your generosity. Let me see, the money is in your trunk hidden under a false bottom." Clara shook her head. "In the sole of your left boot," said Hugo, after some apparent meditation. "Wrong again," she cried. "Now for the last guess." Then, without preparation, he quickly said, "It is in your fur cap. I knew it all along." Clara now stared at him dumfoundered. It was not that she had any objection to his knowing her secret, for, had he failed to guess, she was on the point of telling By this even-him herself. Besides, he looked so upright, so honest, that she was beginning to feel herself ready to trust him with something far more precious than gold. But that he should have guessed her secret appeared to her little short of supernatural, for she did not know that every lover is a magician, and that his eyes are allseeing. "How easy travelling is after all!" she "Yes, I know you were afraid," an- Nobody. I don't always require to be told things," said Hugo in the same tone. "I know a great many things about you "How could you have known? "Nothing simpler," said Hugo, smiling a little at her consternation. "I noticed how very careful you always were to make sure that your fur cap was firmly secured on your head, and that you never by any chance laid it aside for a minute, even when resting in the heated inn parlor. In your sleep, too, you never forgot it, and instinctively put up your hand to feel if it were safe whenever the carriage jolted." "Well, since you affect to be all-knowing, perhaps you can likewise name the exact amount of money my head is at present worth?" "How can I put a price upon what is priceless?" "Nonsense," said Clara petulantly, feeling provoked with herself for not being more mistress of the situation, for try as she would to be evasive everything she said seemed only to drive the conversation more surely into one momentous groove. "That is not what I mean, but what is the amount of the fortune I carry inside my cap? Can you tell me that? "Well, no," replied Hugo. "Here I must confess myself worsted at last, for even if you are transparent, grey fur is not, and so it may just as well be hundreds as thousands, or else glittering diamonds, which are sewed into your cap. Only if they are diamonds " he added laughing "they must be very hard and uncomfortable, and are likely to give you a headache if their value is something very overpowering." Clara now laughed also in her former natural manner, forgetting the momentary embarrassment. "Well, no, unless you are cruel enough to count me for nothing. Am I, indeed, nothing?" Nothing! Clara suddenly remembered that he had been everything and done everything ever since they started. He was so thoughtful and quicksighted in anticipating her wants and comforts, in guessing all her wishes, that she had hardly noticed it, and had grown already to feel his protection as quite natural and as a matter of course. She had not thought about it till now, and all at once she began to perceive what it really meant. Her heart was beating very fast, for she felt that a crisis was at hand. She hardly knew whether the sensation was pleasant or the reverse, and was only conscious of a girlish shrinking, which made her wish. to put it off at all events. Not to-day, not just now, not in this dreadful jolting vehicle. How could she think clearly and know her own mind while the rough motion of the diligence seemed to be jumbling up all her thoughts together? "But you are you, and I am I," she began, rather lamely trying to ward off what she dreaded. "I mean that it is only by chance that we have been travelling together. You have been very kind, I know, for you are not obliged to take care of me.' But, in her innocent confusion, Clara had just conjured up the very danger she was trying to avoid. Hugo seized her hand, which, after a weak resistance, remained in his. "But if I desire no greater happiness than to take care of you through life? If my only hope, my only wish is to be allowed The heavy jolting vehicle here came suddenly to a standstill, and the guard putting in his head at the window startled | take you there far quicker than the dilithem by the information that the diligence gence could have done." could not possibly get up the next hill "I knew it; 19 unless lightened of its occupants. Hugo had speedily dropped the young girl's hand, and jumped out determined to bully, or if necessary beat, the driver into proceeding, but a glance at the scene showed him that this was no imaginary difficulty. So engrossed had they been with each other's society during the last hour of the drive, that neither of the coach inmates had perceived the change which had come over the landscape. The snow had been getting deeper and deeper as they proceeded, and now the horses had come to a standstill, unable to drag the unwieldy vehicle any further uphill. There was nothing for it but to get out and perform the ascent on foot, and Hugo found himself obliged to lend his assistance in pushing the carriage from behind. Luckily there was a village, or rather a wretched hamlet, at the top of the hill, and here, within the dirty kitchen of the rustic pothouse, our travellers were forced to take refuge along with coachmen, peasants, servants, and such like objectionable indi viduals. Great was their consternation when they were informed that the diligence could not possibly proceed further that day. This early fall of snow had surprised them all before the sledge stage-coaches had been got into working order, and a wheeled vehicle could not possibly work its way through the snowdrift which encumbered the road in advance. The diligence coming from the opposite direction had been brought up in the same manner, and was likewise waiting its release some miles ahead. "How far is it to K- ?" asked Hugo. cried Clara triumphant. "Have you got a sledge, and can you drive us? "How should old Isaac not have a sledge, my pretty lady? As good a sledge as you can wish to see. I am going to drive a gentleman to K-to-day; we shall start in an hour, and if the lady chooses to go with us there is plenty room.' Hugo, soon after returning to the room, was surprised and not overpleased to find Clara in deep conversation with the illlooking Hebrew. "It is all settled,” she called out to him gleefully, and she gave the gist of what the Jew had told her. "But the road you speak of leads through a deep forest, does it not?" said Hugo, consulting his map. He did not appear to be altogether delighted with the scheme. "A forest, noble gentleman? Only a few trees there may be, perhaps. And what if there is a forest? The snow will be less deep in the wood, and the wind less cold. May my body be burned in eternal fires if the road be not a good one." "Yes, yes," said Clara impatiently, "it is all right; let us have the sledge by all means. "I beseech of you, Fräulein, to let me speak a few words to you alone, before deciding," said Hugo in a low voice; "I have something important to say to you." But Clara, feeling sure that she knew what it was he was about to say, feigned not to understand. 66 'No, no, what is the use of delay, let us decide at once; if we lose our time we shall not arrive by daylight." "But indeed it would be better to wait "About eight hours when the road is for the diligence to-morrow. It would be clear, but in this weather out of the ques-ever so much more comfortable and more tion. The gentlefolk will have to stay safe," urged Hugo with a last effort at here over night." dissuading her. "Impossible!" cried Clara, looking ready to cry. "We cannot stay in this dreadful hole an hour longer. Is there no other way of getting on?" A very unprepossessing Jew with red hair and a squint now stepped forward and joined the conversation. Hugo had meanwhile left the room to reconnoitre for more congenial quarters. "Yes, gracious lady, there is another way. By leaving the highroad and taking a sledge you can be at K- this evening. There is a country track which will "More safe!" said Clara scornfully. "What can happen to us in a sledge? The worst can only be an upset, and that is nothing in the snow." Perhaps the gentleman is afraid of wolves," put in the Jew facetiously. "See, see! the beautiful young lady is by far the best man of the two, she is not afraid." Hugo merely shrugged his shoulders, as though it were not worth while to as sert his valor before such vermin, and merely said, "I have got my revolver, which will be answer enough for either wolf or man who comes in my way; but, all the same, I am of opinion that it would be wiser to wait for the diligence to-morrow." "No, no," said Clara, slightly nettled at his obstinacy on this point, and perhaps flattered by her courage being praised even by a ragged Hebrew. "I have quite made up my mind. I shall go by the sledge, at all events. You can do as you please; I told you I was able to travel alone," she finished playfully. A very attentive observer might have fancied that a shade of something, either displeasure or disappointment, had passed over the red-haired Jew's face at mention of the revolver, but whatever it may have been it was gone instantly, as he glided from the room with obsequious alacrity to get ready the sledge. From Macmillan's Magazine. BY MRS. OLIPHANT. "FRIEND after friend departs." It is one of the most painful circumstances of life when on the decline to see dropping upon the way from time to time another and another well-known figure. The young, too, lose their brethren and comrades now and then, but the effect is different. The slow disappearance one by one of contemporaries and companions, the tendency towards the grave which has set in draw ing us with it, the growing solitude in which we move, make us realize better than anything else that our cycle of life is rounding to its close. So was the gentle spirit of Dinah Craik liberated from mortal cares, as many like her have prayed to be. This is no time or place to speak of her work, which will no doubt have a variety of criticisms and interpretations; but about herself there is no conflict of testimony, and it is of herself her friends are thinking- her friends who are endless in number throughout all the three kingdoms, and reckoned in crowds less known and further off, to whom she has been familiar as a household word. To recall a little the actual look and aspect of a woman so widely known, yet so little of a public personage, so indisposed to put her own personality forward, is all that a friend can do. We were contemporaries in every sense of the word; the beginning of her work preceding mine a little, as her age did A month ago, or little more, the present so little as scarcely to tell at all. We writer sat on a lovely terrace shaded by were both young when we made acquaintgreat trees overlooking the beautiful, ance; she a slim, tall maiden, always surplacid Derwentwater Lake, which lay smil-rounded by a band of other ambitious and ing as if it had never known a storm admiring girls, of whom and of whose taltalking with Mrs. Craik of a tragedy, the ents and accomplishments she had always occurrence of a moment, which had deso- tales to tell with an enthusiasm not exlated the house behind us. We spoke cited by any success of her own. And with tears and hushed voices of the story yet even at this early period her literary never to be dissociated from that peaceful gifts had received much acknowledgment. scene. One young man arriving gaily on The early part of her life (she was but an unexpected visit; the other, the young twenty-three at the time of her first imhost, receiving him with cordial welcome portant publication, but her independent and pleasure; the sudden suggestion of career had begun long before) had been an expedition on the water, to which the full of trial and of that girlish and generlittle inland storm gave all the greater ous daring which makes a young, highzest. And then in a moment, in the twin-spirited woman the most dauntless creakling of an eye, all over, and the lake under the mother's windows become the death-scene of her only son. It seems strange that almost the next thing heard ture in creation. I do not know the facts of the story, but only its tenor vaguely, which was that, her mother being as she thought untenderly treated by a father 2 mands; but she was always the centre of an attached group, to which her kind eyes, full of the glamor of affection, attributed the highest gifts and graces. They were all a little literary-artists, musicians, full of intellectual interests and aspirations, and taking a share in all the pleasant follies, as well as wisdoms of their day. Spiritualism had made its first invasion of England about that time, and some families of the circle in which Miss Mulock lived were deeply involved in it. One heard of little drawings which a friend had received of the home in heaven from one of her infants lately departed there, and how the poor little scribbling consoled the sorrowful mother; along with many other wondrous tales, such as have been repeated periodically since, but then were altogether novel; and these early undeveloped séances formed sometimes part of the evening entertainments in the region where then we all lived, in the north of London towards Camden Town a man of brilliant attainments-whose Little parties, pleasant meetings, kind visits at intervals, form a succession of pretty scenes in my recollection of her at this period. Involved in household cares, and the coming and alas! going of little children, I had no leisure for the constant intercourse which youthful friendship de as if they were in Timbuctoo. Miss Mulock had a little house in a little street, full of pretty things, as pretty things were understood before the days of Heilbronner and Liberty, with all her little court about her. She sang very sweetly, with great taste and feeling, a gift which she retained long; and wrote little poesies which used to appear in Chambers's Journal, one in each weekly part; and knew a great many "nice people," and fully enjoyed her modest youthful fame, which was the climax of so much labor and pain, and her peaceful days. I don't know who her publisher had been for her first books, but she was (as is not unusual) dissatisfied with the results; and when "John Halifax" was about to be finished, she came to my house, and met, at a small dinner-party convened for that purpose, my friend Henry Blackett, another of the contemporary band who has long ago passed away, along with his still more dear and charming wife. They made friends at once, and her great book was brought into the world under his care the beginning of a business connection which, notwithstanding her subsequent alliance with a member of another firm, was maintained to a late period, a curious instance of her fidelity to every bond. This great book, which finally established her reputation, and gave her her definite place in literature, had then been for some time in hand. I am permitted to quote the following pretty account of various circumstances connected with its |