offering to defer his arrival at the school-
house until our own time. Of course
that is impossible, and we go into Mr.
Swainson's lodgings at once."

"My dearest Marian, my own pet, I
hate to think of you in lodgings; I cannot
bear to picture you so!"

"You must make haste and get your
position, and take me to share it, then,
Walter!" said the girl, with a half melancholy
smile; "you must do great things,
Walter. Dear papa always said you would,
and you must prove how right he was!"

"Dearest, your poor father calculated on
my success at college for the furtherance of
my fortune, and now all that chance is
over! Whatever I do now must be——"

"By the aid of your own talent and industry,
exactly the same appliances which
you had to rely on if you had gone to the
university, Walter. You don't fear the result?
you're not alarmed and desponding
at the turn which affairs have taken? It's
impossible you can fail to attain distinction,
and—and money and—and position, Walter
—you must,—don't you feel it?—you
must!"

"Yes, dear, I feel it; I hope—I think!
perhaps not so strongly, so enthusiastically
as you do. You see,—don't be downcast,
Marian, but it's best to look these things in
the face, darling!—all I can try to get is a
tutor's, or an usher's, or a secretary's place,
and in any of these the want of the university
stamp is heavily against me. There's
no disguising that, Marian!"

"Oh, indeed; is that so?"

"Yes, child, undoubtedly. The university
degree is like the hall mark in
silver, and I'm afraid I shall find very few
persons willing to accept me as the genuine
article without it."

"And all this risk might have been
avoided if your father had only——"

"Well, yes; but then, Marian darling,
if my father had left me money to go to
college immediately on his death I should
never have known you—known you, I
mean, as you are, the dearest and sweetest
of women."

He drew her to him as he spoke and
pressed his lips on her forehead. She
received the kiss without any undue emotion,
and said:

"Perhaps that had been for the best,
Walter."

"Marian, that's rank blasphemy. Fancy
my hearing that, especially, too, on the
night of my parting with you! No, my
darling, all I want you to have is hope,
hope and courage, and not too much
ambition, dearest. Mine has been comparatively
but a lotus-eating existence hitherto;
to-morrow I begin the battle of life."

"But slightly armed for the conflict, my
poor Walter!"

"I don't allow that, Marian. Youth,
health, and energy are not bad weapons to
have on one's side, and with your lore in
the background——"

"And the chance of achieving fame and
fortune for yourself—keep that in the foreground!"

"That is to me, in every way, less than
the other, but it is of course an additional
spur. And now——"

And then? When two lovers are on the
eve of parting, their conversation is scarcely
very interesting to any one else. Marian
and Walter talked the usual pleasant nonsense,
and vowed the usual constancy, took
four separate farewells of each other, and
parted, with broken accents, and lingering
hand- clasps, and streaming eyes. But
when Marian Ashurst sat before her toilette-
glass that night, in the room which
had so long been her own, and which she
was so soon to vacate, she thought of what
Walter Joyce had said as to his future, and
wondered whether, after all, she had not
miscalculated the strength, not the courage,
of the knight whom she had selected to
wear her colours in his helm in the great
contest.

NEW LAMPS FOR OLD ONES.

IT is a fact, concerning the soundness of
which there can be no doubt, that we all keep
by us, among our possessions, a considerable
number of objects which we do not want, for
which we have no possible use, which are very
much in our way, and which we would be
exceedingly glad to be rid of, if we only knew
how. Some people, with little space at their
disposal, have been so encumbered in this way
with large accumulations of rubbish, inherited
from many generations of collectors, that they
have even been heard, after a day spent in
futile attempts to deal with these unvalued
possessions, to express, in the bitterness of
their souls, a longing for a "judicious fire" to
break out in the house. In default of that
great comfort, it would be an excellent arrangement
if a perambulating furnace could be
brought round, at certain intervals, and moored
for a time before our doors.

Incremation of this sort, however, is a way
out of the difficulty only available in certain
cases. Some kinds of rubbish are hardly suitable
for burning. Metallic rubbish, earthenware
rubbish, bone and ivory rubbish, old door