for a ball supper for a hundred guests, 'all the birds and beasts she knew, and many more beside,' entirely without cost to herself.

From here and there and everywhere

The happy creatures came,

The Fish alone could not be there.
(And they were not to blame.
"They really could not stand the air,
But thanked her just the same.')

The Lion, bowing very low,

Said to the Ant: 'I ne'er
Since Noah's Ark remember so
Delightful an affair.'

(A pretty compliment, although

He really wasn't there.)

They danced, and danced, and danced, and danced;

It was a jolly sight!

They pranced, and pranced, and pranced, and pranced,
Till it was nearly light!

And then their thoughts to supper chanced

To turn. (As well they might!)

The same motive recurs in a poem called 'The Lion's Tour;' and when one considers the manners of wild beasts, it is not

extraordinary that a poet who keeps an eye on the object should have to devote a great deal of his observation to their meals. It is found also, with a difference, in the following so-called 'Fable,' though what exactly the moral may be the fabulist does not tell us.

Here is another Cat and Mouse poem, this time with a plain moral:

It was a tragic little mouse

All bent on suicide
Because another little mouse

Refused to be his bride.

'Alas,' he squeaked, I shall not wed!
My heart and paw she spurns ;

I'll bie me to the cat instead,

From whence no mouse returns.'

The playful cat met him half-way,
Said she, I feel for you;
You're dying for a mouse, you say,
I'm dying for one too!'

Now when Miss Mouse beheld his doom,
Struck with remorse, she cried,

In death we'll meet! O cat, make room
For one more mouse inside !'

The playful cat was charmed; said she,

'I shall be, in a sense,

Your pussy catafalque!' Ah me!
It was her last offence!

Reader, take warning from this tale,
And shun the punster's trick;

Those mice, for fear lest cats might fail,
Had eaten arsenic !

Mr. Herford's latest volume is entitled an Alphabet of Celebrities;' but the fun here, depending upon the bringing together of incongruous people, is perhaps intended to lie more in the pictures than the poetry, which is of this sort: C is Columbus who tries to explain

How to balance an egg-to the utter disdain
Of Confucius, Carlyle, Cleopatra, and Cain.

The humour here may be understood to lurk in giving Cain the features of a popular novelist of the same name, and putting Carlyle and Cleopatra on the same sofa.

URBANUS SYLVAN.

THE ISLE OF UNREST.

BY HENRY SETON MERRIMAN,

AUTHOR OF THE SOWERS,' 'WITH EDGED TOOLS,' 'IN KEDAR'S TENTS,' ETC.

CHAPTER X.

THUS FAR.

'There are some occasions on which a man must sell half his secret in order to conceal the rest.'

'THERE is some one moving among the oleanders down by the river,' said the count, coming quickly into the room where Lory de Vasselot was sitting, one morning some days after his unexpected arrival at the château.

The old man was cool enough, but he closed the window that led to the small terrace where he cultivated his carnations, with that haste which indicates a recognition of undeniable danger, coupled with no feeling of fear.

'I know every branch in the valley,' he said; 'every twig, every leaf, every shadow. There is some one there.'

Lory rose, and laid aside the pen with which he was writing for an extended leave of absence. In four days these two had, as one of them had predicted, grown accustomed to each other. And the line between custom and necessity is a finedrawn one.

'Show me,' he said, going towards the window.

'Ah!' murmured the count, jerking his head. 'You will hardly perceive it unless you are a hunter-or the hunted.'

Lory glanced at his father. Assuredly the sleeping mind was beginning to rouse itself.

'It is nothing but the stirring of a leaf here, the movement of a branch there, which are unusual and unnatural.'

As he spoke he opened the window with that slow caution which had become habitual to his every thought and action.

'There,' he said, pointing with a steady hand; 'to the left of that almond-tree which is still in bloom. Watch those willows

Copyright, 1899, by II. S. Scott, in the United States of America.

which have come there since the wall fell away and the terrace slipped into the flooded river twenty-one years this spring. You will see the branches move. There there! You see. It is a man, and he comes too slowly to have an honest purpose.' 'I see,' said Lory. 'Is that land ours?'

The count gave an odd little laugh.

'You can see nothing from this window that is not ours,' he answered. As much as any other man's,' he added, after a pause. For the conviction still holds good in some Corsican minds that the mountains are common property.

'He is coming slowly, but not very cautiously,' said Lory. 'Not like a man who thinks that he may be watched from here. He probably is taking no heed of these windows, for he thinks the place is deserted.'

'It is more probable,' replied the count, that he is coming here to ascertain that fact. What the abbé has heard, another may hear, though he would not learn it from the abbé. If you want a secret kept, tell it to a priest, and of all priests, the Abbé Susini. Some one has heard that you are here in Corsica, and is creeping up to the castle to find out.'

6

And I will go and find him out. Two can play at that game in the bushes,' said Lory, with a laugh.

'If you go, take a gun; one can never tell how a game may turn.' 'Yes; I will take a gun if you wish it.' And Lory went towards the door. 'No,' he said, pausing in answer to a gesture made by his father, 'not that one. It is of too old a make.'

And he went out of the room, leaving his father holding in his hand the gun with which he had shot Andrei Perucca thirty years before. He stood looking at the closed door with dim reflective eyes. Then he looked at the gun, which he set slowly back in its corner.

'It seems,' he said to himself, 'that I am of too old a make also.' He went to the window, and, opening it cautiously, stood looking down into the valley. There he perceived that, though two may play at the same game, it is usually given to one to play it better than the other. For he who was climbing up the hill might be followed by a careful eye, by the chance displacement of a twig, the bending of a bough; while Lory, creeping down into the valley, remained quite invisible, even to his father, upon whose memory every shadow was imprinted.

'Aha!' laughed the old man, under his breath. One sees