the elder is fired with the energy displayed in his last sentence; there is a look of determination too about the lines of the mouth which speaks well for the keeping of his word. That of the younger is softening every moment as he meets the old man's gaze. struggling to control himself in a way that I alone can understand. Surely, surely it is the most momentous moment of his life! Rising, he stands close in front of the baronet.

He is

"Sir Charles Waresley, your nephew is before you now, for I am he! But, remember, he does not hold you to your word. Uncle!" he exclaims scarcely above his breath, while he holds out both hands, raising his eyes half questioningly, half defiantly, to meet those of the old man. The latter, looking the embodiment of wonder and amazement, starts up, seizes the extended hands in his and grips them warmly. "Good heavens! is it possible?" he cries.

"It is quite true," says Mr. Smith, " and equally impossible for me to deceive you longer. You desired me to find your nephew-I can but produce him in myself. That I am he I have ample testimony with me to prove. You shall see my proofs at once, for I have neither the right nor wish to be believed only on my bare word." "I will see your proofs-to-morrow.

"Ha!

In the meantime you

Your father's name was Smith-I had forgotten that. It is strange I never once associated your name with his."

"We are too numerous a family, sir," answers the newly found nephew, laughing. "No one ever thinks of our being related to each other-we Smiths."

"Mr. John Smith appears to have two other names, Sir Charles," I say. "Perhaps he will explain what the C. W. stands for?" "Charles Waresley," he answers promptly.

As I had guessed.

Mr. Smith insists on producing the proofs of his identity at once, which I need only say are incontestable; and uncle and nephew are shortly on the closest terms of kinship and cordiality. That my presence may in no way interfere with their amicable communications I have removed my seat and my book to a remote corner of the room and it is almost dark when I start up suddenly with the knowledge that Mr. Smith is standing close beside me.

"Miss Dalton, will you come with me and--look at the new moon?"

He asks this seemingly irrelevant question with the greatest gravity imaginable, but Sir Charles's laugh makes my face grow red as I glance from one to the other.

"Go, my dear, go," says the master encouragingly. "My nephew is king here. Whatever he asks, neither you nor I must say him nay.

Remember that!"

Mechanically I obey. Mr. Smith is already holding open the door.

"It is 'lucky' to look at the new moon at the New Year," he whispers, then leads the way across the hall, and taking up a warm wrap lying there, he puts it round me. The next moment we stand outside, and I am staring up into the star-spangled sky.

"There is the moon,' "" he says; "two days old." And following with my eyes the direction in which he points I see the slenderest of silvery crescents, and say laughingly :

"I suppose we ought to wish a wish and turn our money. I don't know what to wish, and I have no money."

"But I can supply the money and wish too," he whispers eagerly. "Shall I do it for us both ?"

"Yes. If you like."

But as I say these words, quite suddenly I repent; for, in a moment, he has caught one of my hands in his.

"Mr. Smith!" I say, indignantly.

Ah, I know you do not like the name. But, am I only Mr. Smith to you? I will drop it and be Charles Waresley from this hour, provided that you will share it with me."

"But this is all so sudden. I scarcely know you

"I have known you long enough to love you, Amy; and to feel that no other woman in the world will ever be to me what you are." "You may think this, but

"I took a fancy to you even the first time we met. I would not allow my mind to dwell upon it while I had nothing but my love to offer you, for it is impossible to live on that alone. Hitherto I have had to earn my bread by work

"I too have had to work," I say involuntarily. somehow seems to draw me nearer to him.

And this thought

"And I have loved my work right well," he adds with firmness, "but all that is changed. Now I am my own master and my uncle's heir. Miss Dalton-Amy-I am a determined man! I have turned my money and wished a wish for both of us with your consent, so now I tell you this: so sure as yon new moon is shining in the sky, before this year is ended you will be-my wife."

That night I give him no decided answer. But time, since then, has passed swiftly, and to-morrow his prophecy will be fulfilled. He is standing by me while I write these last few lines. And he whispers in my ear:

"Dear Amy! All this has happened through an old man's dream!'

475

THE

CHRISTMAS IN A CARAVAN.

BY C. J. LANGSTON.

HE idea that ever I should possess a house upon wheels never entered my imagination; and that I should spend one of the happiest Christmas Days in it seemed still more improbable. And yet here am I, on this my twenty-fifth birthday, whilst the Advent bells are shouting through the shutters the best of good news, ready to narrate, with a bumper of '47 port in my hand, how it all came about.

I was down on my luck. My father, a gentleman-farmer, had given me a good education, "among the nobs," as he prided himself, at Rugby. Latin and Greek were more familiar to me than my mother tongue, French I knew by sight, and German from hearsay on the Margate sands. I could hunt, shoot, box, and play cricket with any fellow of my form. In fact, I could do anything but the one thing needful—that is, get my own living. But where was the necessity for that?

The curriculum at Rugby completed, I entered another curriculum at Shrub Hill Station, Worcester, where my father and sisters welcomed me with delight; and we drove, with a fresh tiger in a brandnew livery, to Manor Farm, some three miles west of the faith

ful city.

That was in 1872, when Plutus or Midas, or some of those fellows, rocked the cradle of Agriculture, and there was no cry except from repletion. The hops newly planted throve vigorously; pasture and arable vied in their abundance; the cattle multiplied until the gambols of the lambkins made one dizzy; and the stream of Pactolus seemed to murmur, "I flow on for ever.

Ah, me! the strange reversal came all too soon. Blight blackened the hops. "An adventitious source of income," said my father cheerfully; yet tiger's buttons flew off, and he reappeared in sober corduroy as "man-of-all-work!" Disease decimated the cattle. "Things at the worst are sure to mend," chirped the owner, whilst exchanging our chariot for a gig, because "it runs lighter on the road." Then followed three sunless seasons, drench and drought alternating, and the parental purse was as light as the parental heart. My sisters obtained situations; my venerable father divided his perplexities with a young lady of twenty-three. The delicate allusions of mamma number two to the fine climate of the Antipodes, and the appearance of a double perambulator in the hall, at length reminded me that I was "de trop."

What could I do? Rugby to the rescue. Every avenue to clerkships and starvation in broadcloth was thronged with applicants.

Intimate friends exclaimed "Emigrate! Van Diemen's Land is the

place for you." I was willing. arrivals to rest, was willing also.

My fond father, rocking the new
He borrowed thirty pounds from a

neighbour. "There, Dick," said he, handing me the money in the spirit of Artemus Ward, "bless you, my lad. Good-bye! good-bye! Don't be returned like a bad halfpenny." His wife pressed upon me six white handkerchiefs against influenza. The scene was touching. All was in readiness. The anchor of destiny was lifted. Another week and I should have been off: when, lo! a circumstance happened which caused my temporary home to be not on the ocean wave, but still within the compass of the wooden walls of Old England, in the more prosaic shape of a yellow caravan.

I went to Birmingham to take leave of one of the sweetest girls in the world. I am not usually sentimental; besides, people would only laugh at me were I to describe the fair maiden of nineteen summers whom I shall call "Lassie." "Think what a good wife should be, and she was that," says the old epitaph. Think what a blue-eyed angel would be in a polonaise and Dolly Varden hat, with flaxen hair floating down her shoulders, and a voice that would charm a bumblebee and civilize a Boer. To leave that precious gem among Brummagem jewellery was purgatory to me.

Now, it so happened that in passing through the Bull Ring I noticed near St. Martin's Churchyard a large, dusky yellow caravan, with the following concise inscription stuck over the door:

"THIS WAY TO BE SOLED IMMEDATE. APLY WITHIN."

Happy thought! I would turn showman for the nonce, and this should be the mansion of my adorable. Love, methought, in such close quarters as a lucky box upon wheels would be a perpetual movable feast. One never dreamt of Dickens's antithesis, "Aggrawashun in a cart is aggrawashun."

Before I could mount the short steps leading to the mahogany door with two brass knockers, a gentleman with a wooden leg and a short pipe jerked it back, and stared at me with some suspicion.

"What will you take for your caravan ?" said I, looking extremely amiable.

"Take for my wan," echoed Timbertoe, contemptuously. "Air you likely to buy it?" A few minutes' conversation convinced my querist that I was in earnest; and after bidding, Dutch auction fashion, backwards, I secured the van for one-third of the original cost, after certain workmen had certified the article to be in sound condition. We then adjourned to the neighbouring "Black Horse" to confirm the bargain, and my companion became communicative over whiskey toddy.

""Taint no good showing alone. You must tag yourself to some big circus or 'nagerie, and pick up the coppers. I've drummed for a 'ole evening, and my missus has got stiff jumping in bangles and

askin' folks to walk up; but jest ye get alongside some speckled hosses, or wild beasts, and there's a crowd at wunse, and the chaps that can't afford a tanner won't stand at a penny, 'tickly when their young wimmin is with 'em."

I thanked the man for his advice, and hurried onwards to a prim villa at Edgbaston, where my inamorata and her father lived-the latter a retired silversmith with plenty of money.

"Dick," said the old gentleman, who liked me well, "you are going abroad; here's fifty pounds for you to make a start with. Don't ask me for Lassie until you have trebled it by hard work; then we will talk the matter over. But I fear, Master Dick," added he jocosely, "you'll let her die an old maid."

'May I see her?"

"Oh, by all means; she is in the greenhouse."

Lassie was terribly grieved at the thought of parting. She had no mother to confide in; but a thoroughly fidgety, kind-hearted, shorttempered, good-natured maiden aunt Maria received her secrets.

Seeing Lassie's emotion, I took advantage, when the tear was in the eye, to urge immediate flight and marriage.

For five minutes it was utterly impossible; for another five minutes she did not see how it could be done; and during a further five minutes she would like to know how I thought of managing the affair.

"First," said she, "there is my father; he will never forgive me!" After showing that her father's anger was never known to last longer than a quarter of an hour, I reasonably concluded that to be angry with the being he most loved for more than a week was not to be thought of.

"Then there is Aunt Maria!"

The idea of Aunt Maria's thunderbolts made us laugh. "Besides, you have no home to take me to," concluded Lassie.

"That is just what I have, dearest girl," said I, removing some little tremor of the lips with the pressure of my own: "a delightful home; high and dry, bright, airy, cosey. Venetian blinds, front and back door, and all that kind of thing."

But I could not bear to deceive my darling, and I told her all about my rather striking arrangements. To my surprise she entered cordially into them, winding up with "We must tell Aunt Maria."

At first that lady's temper bounded to the north; cold, biting, gloomy; until a few tears from Lassie caused it to veer to the balmy west, and all was goodwill. The fact that we had honoured her with our confidence, and the remembrance of certain withered letters in her own escritoire, may have had something to do with it. It was settled that Lassie should visit a schoolfellow in Bath, where I would stay at a boarding-house during the publication of the banns, after which we were to be married in the Abbey Church. Our respective parents were still to think that I had gone abroad, and the letters of Lassie would favour the harmless deception originating from love.