Open the gate or a curse will fall on | ily and a daughter about sixteen years thee and thy name!" old. Rumors came to Ryan that the There was a feeble and timid resist-plague was raging. When Wraggles 'ance. Then Hammond marched on came in for orders he was unmistakstraight into the library, flinging the ably drunk. Ryan could not be blind door wide open, and stood before his to it; he clutched the fellow's collar landlord swinging his rattle with a and shook him violently. "Thou limb strong arm. of Paul!" he cried. "Is it a time to walk in excess of wine, revellings, and banquetings when the Gospel has never been preached to them that are dead and thou art one of the dying?" For once in his life Wraggles Behold me! I have re-pot-valiant dared to make answer. nounced the perversions of the tent-"That's all very fine, master. You're maker. I am of Peter; not of Paul, a jolly Peterite, you are! If there neither of Apollos!"

The suddenness and oddity of the attack threw Ryan wholly off his guard. He stared blankly.

"Simon Ryan, I come to give thee glory. Thy light has shone in upon my heart.

A few months after this Mr. Ryan's privacy was again invaded; Harry Clarke appeared with another gentleman, a representative of the bankers with whom his account was kept. Some heavy cheques had been drawn on the account, beginning at 201., and followed by several for larger sums in rapid succession. At last a cheque for 1,000l. was presented by a tall man dressed as a Quaker. Payment was refused and the cheque detained.

Harry Clarke on being referred to, unhesitatingly pronounced the signature a forgery. Ryan's wrath fell upon Harry Clarke. Prosecute? Not for all the world. Prosecute his one convert. Never!

"It is we who prosecute," said the banker. "You will be compelled to appear as a witness, Mr. Ryan!"

But Hammond was never more seen or heard of, and of course was never put upon his trial.

ain't no Gospel, you go and give it 'em! That's all I say. You'd want a drop too if you saw 'em in among them cottages o' yourn!"

It was a call to Simon Ryan. He did go among the dying and the dead. He seemed to bear a charmed life. The scenes he saw were indescribably horrible. Mr. Merrison, the Baptist minister, was smitten; he died in frightful agonies. The miserable and penniless widow followed her husband to the grave after laying him in his coffin with her own hands. She recovered from the cholera herself, only to die a week later from sheer exhaustion. "Dolly, my darling!" she kept saying during those last hours. "Dolly, do everything that God and Mr. Ryan bid you. Between the two you'll never come to harm. Dolly! Do as they two bid you, and specially do what Mr. Ryan tells you is right!"

Then she fell asleep and never woke. The girl was stunned.

After the funeral, Dolly found herself an inmate of Mr. Ryan's house, It must have been, I think, in 1832 she did not know how. She had one that the cholera broke out in Carlton. of the little bedrooms. It was hot It fell with awful violence upon Mr. summer, and she wanted no better Ryan's tenants. There were eight or apartment. Wraggles had fallen a vicnine cottages, crowded dreadfully, and tim to the cholera. The drink had the hovels were in a shameful state. helped that on; and Dolly and Mrs. Fifty yards or so from this rookery Wraggles were drawn together in a stood a small house tenanted by the kind of sad friendship. They were Baptist minister, whose chapel was a both bereaved ones and forlorn. Somemile off. He was a fair specimen of how the old strict and terrible discihis class and he had a wife who had pline of the household had relaxed. been a governess in a gentleman's fam- Mrs. Wraggles had demanded help in

she poured forth many a gentle commonplace, which yet it was a comfort to speak and a comfort to listen to.

All that day Simon was restless. He walked up and down the aisle for hours. As the time for dinner drew near he went to the door and left it wide open. Mrs. Wraggles was ordered to bring in the tray. An hour later she came back; Simon was still walking, and the dinner was untouched. She ventured to ask him if she should warm it up. He looked at her dreamily. "Tell Miss Merrison that this room is open to her."

the house; Simon had granted her | lap, the good woman mingling her tears two under-servants on condition that with the girl's, and softly stroking the neither of them ever entered the glossy hair of the beautiful head while library, and that neither ever appeared in his presence, nor were their voices ever to be heard. He himself would never be their master, or be referred to. Mrs. Wraggles must engage them and dismiss them as she pleased. Ryan's walks in the grounds became less regular. He missed Wraggles, and the new bailiff jarred against his feelings. He began to walk out at all times of the day. The harvest had set in. Ryan actually went and looked on at the reapers there were real reapers in those days. He mused shyly, speaking to none, only silently bowing in response to the greetings. "Largess, mas'r! Largess!" broke out from some voices. The cry grew to a general shout, and the men, sickles in hand, came crowding about him. He put his hand in his pocket, and drew out a golden guinea.

-

"The end of all things is at hand!" he said. "Be ye therefore sober!" The lord of the harvest for in those days that functionary still had a recognized position in many parishes pulled off his hat, and, scarcely believing his eyes, took the shining coin, spun it high up in the air, and shouted with triumphant joy: "There's largess, mates! " There were shrieks of wondering rejoicing, and Mr. Ryan left them, to finish his perambulation.

As he approached the house, there was Dolly. She came to meet him swiftly in great agitation. "Mr. Ryan! Oh, Mr. Ryan! I've never found a word. I've never seen you - my heart is so very, very full! Oh, Mr. Ryan, mayn't I-mayn't I kiss your hand?" She dropped on her knees, and before he could prevent her she had caught his hand and kissed it again and again. He was utterly perplexed, and walked slowly on she sobbing as if her heart would break, trying to speak and finding no articulate utterance he silent and frightened by his own emotion. He passed into the library and shut her out. She went and hid her face in Mrs. Wraggles's

That room! That sacred, mysterious room, with the coffin standing grimly there did he mean it? When, Mr. Ryan ?" "Now."

The young girl, who had heard all about the coffin, and was prepared for it, came in without hesitation, all beaming with the joy of an immense gratitude, and met him in his walk. He turned from her and sat down upon the high-backed chair.

Why did they christen you Dolly?" They didn't christen me at all; I have never been baptized."

He started up with a look of horror on his face.

"Not baptized? Not a Christian? Everywhere the trail of the serpent! The great perverter still at work. The tent maker that boasted he had baptized none of them. Wretched girl!

"Whatever you bid me I will do, Mr. Ryan. What less could I do?"

Three weeks later the rector of the parish received a wondrous missive from Simon. He invited him to a conference. The rector was a well-meaning and earnest man, and, more than that, a man of robust good sense and tact. Somehow his pleasant voice and fearless outspokenness told with Simon. There were concessions made on both sides, and "Dolly" was baptized in the church, one week-day morning, and received the name of Electa.

"I very nearly christened our young

friend Electra," said the parson as he took off his surplice. "She has a new name in more senses than one."

To Electa the new life was full of revelations. The comparative luxury of the house as compared with the him severely. poverty she had been accustomed to; "New? Such are ye all-Paulicians the contact with a man of original

Simon looked at

every one. What know ye of the Word-ye that look as through a glass darkly? Ye who know nothing about those things of which the chief of the Apostles wrote save what you find in your mean and beggarly mother-tongue. New is it? New-that at Simon Peter's side at Babylon there sat the Lady Electa whom ye, after your fashion, call the Church,' forsooth. Ye who know not that John the son of thunder wrote his loving letter to that same Lady Electa in the years of her widowhood, when Simon Peter had been nailed to his cross."

his arms.

ideas, pouring out every moment some startling fact or suggestion such as she had never dreamed of before; the flashes of actual eloquence, lighting up the unintelligible jargon of philosophical and theosophic speculation, drawled out by the hour in a low, mysterious, sing-song till she knew not whether the speaker was human or divine, and her heart beat quick and her breathing well-nigh ceased as the sense of awe and mystery wrapt her round.

He

But with this intellectual ascendency that Simon had acquired over his disciple there can be no doubt that, quite The rector smiled and made no reply. unconsciously, he was exercising a Why should he argue with a madman? most potent mesmeric mastery over the Every morning during the previous girl. She had become his constant month Electa had been summoned into companion now in the mornings. At the library to be taught the mysteries two o'clock Mrs. Wraggles would bring of the true faith. Simon went on by in dinner for the pair. Now the cloth the hour, walking, talking, swinging was laid on the long writing-table and What a joy to have found a they sat opposite one another. disciple at last, one so docile and pa- with his eyes continually turned upon tient too, and growing day by day more her. She every now and then giving reverent, submissive, and over-awed him a bright, glad look of gratitude. It was a new life to the girl. Her After the meal she invariably withdrew father had been a hard, narrow man; a without a word and joined Mrs. Wragman of Scripture phrases, poured out gles. To the old woman Electa talked by the yard, a man of unctuous man- only of Simon, tried to repeat his lesner with Dr. Watts's hymns forever on sons, to explain his views, to show how his lips; a man of no knowledge, of Paul of Tarsus was a bad man, "the vulgar manners, which offended and cuckoo's egg that the roaring lion had at times disgusted his more refined laid in the nest of the eagle John and wife; a man too coarse in the grain to ousted Simon Peter, the real bird of have any tenderness. He swallowed Paradise, the hope of the race." Mrs. his victuals, spoke through his nose, Wraggles would go to sleep over the made long prayers in a loud, monoto- revelations. The truth is, she didn't nous voice, but left "the womankind," care a dump for all this "Peterite " as he called them, to go their own way, theology. Not she! She yawned, she and hurled Bible texts at them when, bustled about. She was glad when on his return from his long perambula- ten o'clock came, and blessed the Lord tions, he found them reading together she had no drunken husband now to out of the dozen or so volumes of disturb her rest, the rest which was so poetry, Milton, Cowper, Campbell's sweet. Then Electa would go to her "Pleasures of Hope," Gray, and a few little bedroom, and sleep such sleep others, which his wife had provided as she had not known a little while herself with in her younger days.

ago.

From The English Illustrated Magazine. THE MARBLE-WORKERS OF CARRARA.

BY HELEN ZIMMERN.

liberty attainable in that rude age. It appears as such in a treaty dated October 6, 1306, and made between the Bishop of Luni on the one part, and the Lord Franceschino Malaspina and his brothers on the other part, for the latter of whom Dante Alighieri acted as procurator or attorney. Dante was then in exile, and a guest of Morello Malaspina. The Malaspina castle, above Sarzana, has lately been restored by the present representative of that family.

WHOEVER has stood on the beach near Viareggio, at the spot where the body of Shelley was cremated, will remember the wondrous beauty of the scene, fit setting for a poet's pyre. The blue waves of the sea, the stretch of yellow sand, and the long line of the green Pineta form the foreground, while behind rise the great mountains, purple-tinted, many-peaked, with snowlike streaks falling down their sides. During the fourteenth and following These are the Carrara Mountains, but centuries a remarkable institution preit is not snow that streaks their flanks; vailed in the agricultural portion of the it is marble dust, the débris of the commune of Carrara. The inhabitants quarries which have furnished the of the little townships into which it sculptors of the world with their most was divided would unite into societies precious material ever since the days of called vicinanza, holding fields, oliveancient Rome. The Romans called mills, corn-mills, etc., in common, pasthis marble Lunensis, after the old turing their cattle on the common land, Etruscan port of Luna, long since crushing their olives and grinding their silted up by the encroaching sand and corn in the mills belonging to the assoits very site forgotten. The Roman ciation, which was managed by an poet Lucan, in his "Pharsalia," alludes | administrator, removable at will, who, to it as the abode of Aruns, the most after paying expenses and the taxes venerable of the Etruscan haruspices: "Aruns incoluit desertæ mœnia Lunæ." With the decay of the Roman Empire the quarries ceased to be worked, and though Theodoric, the Ostrogoth, and the Carlovingian and early German emperors made some attempts to re-subject were even thought of, and vive the industry, it was not until the Pisans, in the eleventh century, began the construction of their Duomo and other buildings, that the marble-works The marble quarries, which are four of Carrara received the impulse which or five hundred in number, are situhas lasted until the present day. As ated far above the town, in the midst soon as the infant commune felt itself of the grandest and most savage scenstrong enough it revolted against the ery. The soft aerial hues which disBishop of Luni, and rid itself of both tance lends to the mountains disappear his temporal and spiritual power. The on nearer approach. The great peaks bishop surrendered even his spiritual stand up against the sky in fantastic rights, and Carrara remained until the forms. No trees or verdure clothe eighteenth century outside any diocese, their naked sides, no flowers grow, no its church being served by the canons water flows to fertilize that soil. The of S. Frediano at Lucca, but the Car- six thousand quarrymen who are busy rarese are not a church-going people here appear as ants crawling on the to the present day. The town now vast hillsides. The marble is quarried constituted itself into an independent by dynamite. Every moment explocommune, with the usual republican sions rend the air, and huge fragments organization of consuls, militi, and fly up as if expelled from a volcano, populo, which was the highest type of Often the mine has to be placed in the

due by each member, divided the remainder amongst them. This institution lasted for several centuries. Thus did the Carrarese solve the problem of co-operative agricultural production ages before the modern theories on this

hence he is not disinclined to renew the system, being convinced of its practicability.

heaven.

perpendicular face of a precipice. | the late "rebellion." Among the killed Then the workman is lowered by a in the revolt was a workman of hercurope and hangs suspended, "like the lean build, who had tattooed on his samphire-gatherer, 'twixt earth and arm a heart with the motto Libertà. A dreadful trade." About The piece of skin was cut out by the one hundred and sixty thousand tons doctor of Carrara and preserved as a of marble are annually exported, of souvenir. In the free Alsatia of the which much goes to America. The higher quarries, where gendarme and quantity is inexhaustible. The entire police-officer dare not show their faces, mass of the Monte Sagro, fifty-six hun- the men love to gather round the Sodred feet high, which dominates Car-cialist lecturer or Republican orator. rara, is solid marble. There under the free sky of heaven,

nobles,

From The Spectator. HERONS AT HOME.

One of the most famous quarries is with the silent mountains as witnesses, in the valley of the Polraccio. From the flame of liberty is nourished in this were extracted in Roman times those rude hearts, which one day will the seventeen hundred tons of marble leap from peak to peak of Apennine that served for the construction of Tra- and fire all the land. jan's column at Rome. Here Donatello got the block which he carved into his St. George, and Michelangelo the one for his Moses. From here also came the huge block mentioned in the memoirs of Benvenuto Cellini, which "THE old order changeth," and it is served for the colossal Neptune of Am- with a tinge of melancholy that the natmanati in the middle of the fountain of uralist feels that altered times forethe Piazza della Signoria at Florence. shadow the future extirpation of the Unlike the miner, who burrows under- race of our largest English bird, the ground, he works in a blinding glare of heron. No longer is it royal game as light. The fierce heat of the Italian in the days when falconry was the sun beats upon him in summer. The favorite pursuit of kings, princes, and cold blast of the tramontana rushing a pursuit in which Henry from the gorges of the Apennines chills VIII. nearly lost his life, for we read, him in winter. Constantly exposed to "the king one day when pursuing his danger, seeing his companions killed hawk at Hitchin, attempted, with the and wounded by his side, trained to assistance of his pole, to jump over a rapid action, and with every faculty of wide ditch full of muddy water, but the mind and body on the alert, accustomed pole unfortunately breaking, the king to dominate the rude forces of nature fell head over ears into the thick mud, - he has developed into an indepen- where he might have been suffocated dent and powerful type of man. had not one of his attendants, seeing The Carrarese marble-worker is a the accident, leaped into the ditch after staunch Republican, but not altogether his royal master and pulled him out.' a Socialist. He rather inclines to the Many of the great heronries have been Anarchic ideal of society, when every dispersed, the poor birds driven hither man will be a law unto himself, having and thither, and though there are now subdued nature to his will-lord of private settlements in various parts of this planet, free from the tyranny of the kingdom, the number is steadily on government, custom, and superstition. the decrease owing to constant persecuTo such a character, the summons to tion. The days are long gone by since join the regiments going to Sicily was certain breeds of falcons were claimed repulsive in the last degree. His proud by act of Parliament "to be reserved to and independent spirit rebelled at the his Majesty according to ancient cusidea of putting on the livery of a king tom," and when herons were strictly go and shoot down starving peasants preserved for the reason that they gave who asked for bread and work. Hence more exciting flights than any other

to