you than apart."

knees beside me.

no right to take that from me. If I must suffer, better -better a thousand times that I should suffer with And she sank once more on her "Oh, Wilfred! my only comfortmy only hope in this world-cast me not from you. Let me be your wife, to watch, tend, and cherish you, until-until you go away, and then to follow-soon, oh, soon!"

I opened my arms, crying, "Lilias, come." And thus, in one long embrace, silent as death-or love, we plighted our troth to each other.

A week after I and my wife were in the midst of the wide ocean, on our way to Madeira.

Reader, you do not wonder now that it was almost heaven to me to lie silent on the twilight-shadowed deck, doing nothing, save look into the eyes of my Lilias.

:

They were eyes, now bright with hope as well as love for it seemed as though the shadows of doom were passing away from mine. I drank in the soft breezes of the southern sea; they gave me new life, as all said. But I knew, O my wife! that this new life was brought by that precious love of thine.

CHAPTER II.

It was a pleasant voyage-by day under the sunny heaven, by night beneath the stars. Many a time Lilias and I sat for hours together on the deck, hand

in hand like little children, pleased with the veriest trifles—a cloud on the sky, a flying fish on the water— talking sweet idleness, half sense, half nonsense, as loving and happy ones ever will; and then my wife would shake her head with a mock reproof, and say, we ought to be ashamed of ourselves-we, burthened between us with the conjoined weight of nearly fifty years. She was so happy, that she even used to sport with me, sometimes jesting about my having compelled herself to become the wooer at last. She kept buzzing about me like a merry little bee, her blithe voice lulling me either by song or speech, until, still feeble, I often sank to sleep on the deck, with my head on her lap. And then, many and many a time did I wake, feeling my hair wet with the dew of passionate tenderness which had rained on me from those dear eyes. "Thank God, thank God, for the blessedness of love!" was all my heart could cry. But thus it did cry, day and night, in a loud paan of joy that even angels might hear.

Friend reader, I dare say thou thinkest we were a couple of simpletons! We smile on thee calmly. Poor fool! thou hast never loved.

One night we watched the twilight into starlight, and could not tear ourselves from the quiet, lonely deck. It was a strange and awful thing to be sweeping in the darkness over that vast, desolate sea, with not a sound near us, save the flapping of a sail and the wind in the cordage singing almost like a human voice, or one which, though all spiritual now, yet comes

laden with the echo of its remembered mortal wail. Our converse partook of the character of the scene, and glided from the sweet trifling of contented earthly love, into the solemn communion of two spirits, wedded not only for life but for immortality. We spoke of the deep mysteries of our being, of the unseen and immaterial world. All these things were ever to me full of a strange fascination, in which Lilias shared. Why should she not? All our lives we had thought alike, she following whither I led. But she ever walked meekly, knowing that the man is the head of the woman. Her wisdom was born and taught of love, as a woman's should be. And to me it brought not weariness but strength; I thanked Heaven that the wife of my bosom was also the wife of my soul !

In the midst of our talk there came by our only fellow-passenger, a German doctor. He startled us both, as he moved from behind a sail, the setting moon lighting up his always pallid face and long, gray hair. He seemed to us, in our present visionary mood, almost phantom-like in his appearance.

Lilias started, and then laughed. "It is only Herr Foerster. Let us speak to him."

He was

"No," I said, for I did not like the man. a mystic. He vexed me with his wild aspect, his floating locks, and his perpetual harangues about Kant and Swedenborg, and Jacob Boehmen. Dear Lilias combated my prejudice in her own gentle way. Where I condemned the eccentric philosopher, who hung out

his wisdom as a sign to catch men's eyes, she pitied the strange old man, half-mad, and wholly desolate.

"See, Wilfred, how wistfully he is looking out over the waters. We know not what sorrowful thoughts may be in that poor brain of his. You will let me speak to him, dearest ?"

She had her way, for it was the right way, and I knew it. In a few minutes the old German was sitting with us, inclined to begin his fantastic lore. But the mood had changed since yesterday, and his speech was less mystic, and more full of dreamy poetry. I was thankful that he had forgotten Kant. As his countenance lighted up, and his speech grew earnest, I began to feel that there was sincerity even in his eccentricities, and method in his madness.

"You were standing mute and absorbed when I spoke to you, Herr Foerster," said Lilias. "Were you thinking about home?”

"I have no home."

There was scarcely any sorrow in his eye or tone. He had passed these human weaknesses.

"But I was watching for a home, a true home-one in search of which I have traversed these seas for ten years. I shall find it some time-I know I shall.”

Lilias looked at him compassionately; and then glanced involuntarily first to the sea, then upwards to the starry, steel-blue sky.

"No: you mistake;" and the old mystic shook his head with a half-scornful smile, "I seek nothing so vague as that: I have no wish to die. Perhaps❞—

and his voice grew mysterious-"Perhaps I never may die."

My wife crept nearer to me, and gazed earnestly on the man whom I now thought surely mad; but there was no sign of frenzy in his manner. Reassured, Lilias again spoke.

"Where and what is this home you seek?"

He pointed to the young moon just dipping into the western sea, amidst a bank of fantastic clouds-"Look there! do you not see beyond that pale crescent, where sea and sky meet, a luminous verge, resembling white hills and shining towers? Resembling, did I say? Nay, it is! That is the very spot I seek-the land beyond sunset-the Island of the Blest."

Surprised and somewhat startled by his sudden vehemence, neither Lilias nor I made any answer. He went on, changing abruptly from the energy of enthusiasm to the calmness of eager reasoning.

"You will doubt this, I know. You will think me mad. Many have done so-but I smile at them. The same was said of the great Ithacan-of Columbus—of other noble spirits who have set out on a like track." "But none have ever found its ending, Herr Foerster," said I. "No man ever yet reached the Island of

the Blest."

"Rather say, no man ever came back from thence. How should he?" And the German smiled a calm superior smile. As he went on, his plain, well-arranged arguments almost staggered my doubts as to his insanity. His speech was so like truth.