luxuriance of a tropical forest, the creature can
do nothing but pass its life in fierce sullen isolation
—eat, drink, and die?

DIFFERENT PATHS.

I LATELY talked with one who strove
To show that all my way was dim,
That his alone—the road to Heaven;
And thus it was I answer'd him:

"Strike not the staff I hold away,
You cannot give me yours, dear friend;
Up the steep hill our paths are set
In different wise, to one sure end.

"What, though with eagle glance upfixed
on heights beyond our mortal ken,
You tread the broad sure stones of Faith
More firmly than do weaker men:

"To each according to his strength;
But as we leave the plains below,
Let us carve out a wider stair,
A broader pathway through the snow.

"And when upon the golden crest
We stand at last together, freed
From mists that circle round the base,
And clouds that but obscure our creed:

"We shall perceive that though our steps
Have wander'd wide apart, dear friend,
No pathway can be wholly wrong
That leads unto one perfect end."

ELEVEN O'CLOCK, AMONG THE
FIR-TREES.

NURSE PARKET had lived with us ever since
our mother's death, and we—my sister Bella,
myself, and little Lucy—loved her dearly. It
was she who had taken, us all to bid our dear
mother good-by, when, lying on her great high
bed, in the shade of its heavy curtains, she
looked so frail and transparent of form and hue
that we could be hardly persuaded she was not
already a spirit. To little Lucy, who was too
young to recollect her otherwise, she always
appeared afterwards, in memory and in dreams, as
she looked then. But Bella and I could remember
her when her soft gold hair hung in curly
clusters round a healthy smiling face, and
so sometimes we could see her fresh and blooming
as she used to be, though never without
a certain subdued light on her beauty:
thrown, as it seemed, neither by actual grief
nor actual trouble, but by a chastened memory
of both.

Nurse Parket, in a plain, homely, but deep,
earnest way, strove to fill our mother's place
towards us, her little orphans; for our father,
quiet country gentleman, given up to antiquarian
pursuits, though kind and amiable of heart, hardly
noticed us in an ordinary fatherly way. He was,
however, always ready to listen to Nurse Parket's
suggestions, and we had grown up, under
governesses whom she had reminded him to
secure, until Lucy was sixteen, when, the lesson-
book part of our education being finished, we
were left alone with our father and Nurse
Parket.

No; not quite alone. A gentleman, neither
young nor old, a very great friend, or rather
companion, of my father, as fond of antiquarian
lore as he, but not half as amiable, was in the
habit of making such long visits at Coombe
Uplands (the name of our old place), that he
might be said to live there for half the year. Mr.
Joachim was this gentleman's name—a gentleman
of a gloomy turn of character, and his aspect was
quite in unison with it. He had a grave, saturnine
expression about his long, dark face, and a
searching, suspicious look in his unfathomable
eyes, the colour of which could never have been
determined by the most scrutinising observer, but
wherein could be seen, at times, a dull glare, as
of smouldering fire never permitted to flash out,
that made me shrink involuntarily whenever I
looked at him, while, as for little Lucy—we
called her "little" because she was the youngest,
and our pet—she could hardly bear his very
presence.

It was far otherwise with Bella. She was
aIways a fearless, daring child, strangely
attracted towards anything peculiar (a part of her
character which she might have derived from her
father, though she was, in other respects, most
unlike him, he being quiet and grave, and she
high-spirited and full of life), and it was,
perhaps, on this account that she alone among us
liked our dark, strange visitor, Mr. Joachim.

It became quite certain, in the course of time,
that, in his own odd, undemonstrative way, he
liked her; for he proposed himself to her as a
husband, and, to our unspeakable regret, she
accepted him. I shall never forget the day she
did so, for Lucy, and I, and Nurse Parket,
when she came up into the nursery to be congratulated,
kissed and cried over her to that degree
that it might have been supposed she was going
to die instead of marry.

Bella cried too, at first, but after a while she
got almost angry with us for our compassion and
silence—for we could none of us say a word—
and went down to join her lover in the library,
where he was poring over some musty old books
with my father, who had recently purchased
them at a great cost. I think they must have
sent her up again, for she very soon reappeared
with tears in her eyes, very unlike those she had
shed before she went down. They had flowed
fast and free, as relieving her heart of the burden
of her new happiness, while those then on her
face were quiet and repressed, as if her heart
had been somehow hurt.

When we were going to bed that night, I said
to Nurse Parket, lingering behind with her in
the nursery,

"Nurse, dear, what do you think of Bella's
engagement?"

"My dear Miss Alice," she answered, "don't
ask me."

"Ah! then, nurse, I know you don't like
it!"

"Well, dear, we will hope for the best. Per-
haps, after all, Miss Bella mayn't marry him."