dazzled her parents with his good looks and manners, with the elegance of appearance borrowed from his master's wardrobe, and the graceful ease with which he lost and won his money at the card-table. The Marquis forgave the escapade, on condition he never set foot again in his friend's house. "Eh bien, monsieur le marquis, I will remain a bachelor!'

Another anecdote was of a graver kind. The Comte de Brienne, talking of the violence of some masters towards their servants, said that on one occasion, having corrected his valet for some grave dereliction of duty, he had forgotten the matter when, the next morning, while shaving him, the man suddenly held the razor to his throat, saying: 'Whose turn is it to-day, Monsieur le Comte?' A moi toujours; continue,' was the calm reply. 'He finished shaving me, and we were mutually pleased with each other'; but relations became somewhat strained after such an incident, and the Comte gave him a hundred louis and his dismissal. 'Never beat your servants, young men,' he concluded; 'your lives are at their mercy, and you would find it hard, as I did, to owe it to one of them.'

The Comte de Brienne, together with his three adopted sons, was guillotined on May 10, 1794.

MISS SOPHIA'S PRESCRIPTION.

I.

THE LOSING OF IT.

MISS SOPHIA DREW had risen at five, as was customary with her on a Monday, and had plodded through her usual weekly washing.

She had restrained her feelings with an iron hand until the two collars and one pair of cuffs, which were her weekly allowance, had been duly clear starched and rolled up in a towel for tomorrow's ironing.

'And now,' she said, pausing on her way upstairs to take a look round her tiny parlour, 'I don't mind owning, just to myself, that I feels terrible middling.'

Her eyes rested longingly on the solitary easy-chair, which, for more than thirty years, had shivered under its narrow strip of crocheted antimacassar, and stretched out lean arms towards the cold hearth.

'Maybe a bit of fire would take away the musty smell,' said Miss Sophia, sniffing here and there about the room; 'but dear, dear! whoever heard tell of a fire in the parlour and October not half out !'

Nevertheless, before the autumn day had darkened half a dozen sportive flames leaped up the narrow chimney, and Miss Drew, with a shawl drawn closely about her shoulders, leaned back in the easy chair and resigned herself.

For thirty years,' she soliloquised, 'I've lived in this village, always aiming to be a burning light in the midst of darkness. I've visited them as was "under the rod," and warned them of judgment to come, and now, if I'm to be chastised myself, I must look for the cause.'

She indulged in no useless longing for the company of a fellow-creature, but, as the night darkened about her, a vague sense of duty stirred within her, and she reached down the rosewood tea-caddy from the mantelpiece, and searched diligently among its varied contents.

'This,' she said presently, as she drew forth a slip of paper, carefully preserved since the days when she had been housekeeper

for old Squire Powley, 'will do me more good than all the newfangled medicines put together, if only that giggling young doctor, whose face I can't abear, has the gumption to mix it right. I'll watch for William Tarry, anyway, and get him to go for it before bedtime.'

It was not long before a remarkably heavy footstep announced William's approach, and Miss Sophia attracted his attention by a sharp rapping at her window. William was tall and angular, his uncouth features were singularly devoid of expression, and his slowness of speech and movement were proverbial in the village, where, however, he commanded a certain amount of respect as having been 'the doctor's man' ever since young Gilbert Lyall came home from college and the hospitals and set up for himself.

'I've never trusted anybody but old Robinson, of Winterby, to make up this prescription,' said Miss Sophia, as she solemnly handed out an unsealed envelope, but if your master can do it I should be glad of it to-night.'

'I've never knowed him beat,' returned William with a wide grin.

'Tell him,' said Miss Sophia, 'that Squire Powley paid three guineas for that prescription. And make it plain that he isn't to call. I don't want bills running up for nothing.'

William thrust the envelope into a capacious pocket, and Miss Sophia, already suspicious of his reliability, retreated to her parlour, and watched until the usual ruddy gleam issued from his doorway, and a trio of youngsters seized him by the legs.

'Suffy Drew's bad,' he observed laconically to his wife. 'She's give me a three-guinea prescription to get made up.'

'Let's see it,' said Emma, suddenly interested.

William, as in duty bound, produced the envelope, and Emma drew forth the paper and scanned it dubiously.

'It's all wrote foreign,' she said. 'I can't make a word out.' 'Let me see it, mother; oh, do!' cried Lottie, the eldest girl; and the slip of paper went the round of the small, eager-eyed family, while the elders discussed Miss Sophia.

'Now Lottie,' said Emma presently, 'you set down that paper this minute, and run to the back door with this saucepan. What's the good wasting time over that?'

Lottie obeyed, alas! too literally. She laid the envelope upon the old bureau, placed the paper above it, and made a sudden rush for the back door, through which, as it opened, the autumn wind

entered with a merry whirl, and, having set all available draperies a-flapping, seized the slip of paper, bore it jauntily to the floor, and thence, by easy stages, to the inmost corner of the recess beneath the bureau.

II.

VAIN APOLOGIES.

'HERE you be, sir, and I hope as how you'll be able to tackle it,' said William, with the freedom born of long service.

'You've brought the wrong one,' said the doctor, as he ran his finger from end to end of the envelope. This is empty.'

'Bless my soul, sir, it can't have flew away out of sheer aggerwation,' said William, fumbling excitedly in his pockets; ' and it can't have shook itself out in my other jacket pocket, sir. I'll go home and see, however.'

The subterfuge was transparent, for the jacket had not been changed since noon.

'It must certainly be found at once,' said the doctor, with severity.

'I'll be back with it just in twenty minutes, sir,' replied William, and escaped forthwith from the surgery.

Returning swiftly to his cottage, he inaugurated a domestic upheaval such as had never before shaken the foundations of his family circle. High and low, on hands and knees, on chairs and table-tops, in every drawer and corner of the bureau, in tins and boxes which had not been opened for weeks, and in the case of the American clock, he and his wife and all the children searched for the prescription with a desperation worthy of the cause.

When a full hour had elapsed, William propped his weary and perspiring frame against the bureau, and launched a tornado of wrath at Emma.

6

'I'll give it up,' he roared. A body might every bit as well look for a needle in a haystack. Such a place as this is, and such a 'ooman at the head on't, the curiousest, pryingest 'ooman as ever was; a 'ooman always a-wanting to make everybody's business her business. This all comes o' being married, this does. What did you want to see it at all for?' he resumed in a slightly cooler tone, the sound of a broken sob having penetrated his dulled ears. 'Here's I've got to go and tell the doctor all about

it; there'll be no slinking of him. As for Miss Suffy, I'll never go a-near her again. You'll go right along and tell her yourself first thing in the morning.'

Having thus exhausted his vocabulary, he banged the door behind him, and went forth unwillingly to meet his master's sodreaded wrath.

Arrived at the surgery, he made blundering confession, and stood passive while the storm broke unmercifully on his head. As much as he had given to Emma, so much and more he received unto himself, for young Gilbert Lyall had a temper, and could use his tongue to advantage on rare occasions.

When at last William was suffered to retire into the grateful silence of the night, he bore with him a bottle vaguely labelled 'The Mixture,' the which, if it did no good to Miss Sophia, was certainly calculated to do her no harm.

This was presently delivered by the hand of Lottie, and William sat stolidly by the fire till bedtime.

A night's rest and a brief supplementary search in the dim light of a foggy morning, failed to relieve the situation, and William evinced tokens of the deepest melancholy as he touched his hat and asked:

"The gig, sir, or the horse, sir?'

'The gig, for Farrel and Henderley, in twenty minutes,' returned the doctor shortly. 'I must see Miss Drew first, and explain this wretched business. Remember, sir, it's more than your place is worth to allow anything approaching this to happen again.'

'It never 'ool, sir; I'll take my oath on't,' replied William, with an upward glancing of the eyes.

A dawning sense of humour enlivened Gilbert somewhat, as he tapped at and opened the door of Miss Sophia's cottage.

She called down from the bedroom, bidding whoever was there to come up.

'I hope you are a little better this morning, Miss Drew,' he observed, with a brave attempt at cordiality.

'Better,' croaked Miss Sophia, with a most alarming hoarseness. 'Likely now, ain't it! And that,' pointing with a shaking finger to the still full bottle on the washstand, 'is no more like Squire Powley's prescription than it's like porter. You'll send back the paper directly, if you please, and I'll get old Robinson to make it up. He's done it before.'