placid look at the white ceiling, which had
passed away. The moon began to rise, and I
thought of the pressure on my hand when I
had spoken the last words he had heard on
earth,

Estella was the next to break the silence that
ensued between us.

"I have very often hoped and intended to
come back, but have been prevented by many
circumstances. Poor, poor old place!"

The silvery mist was touched with the first
rays of the moonlight, and the same rays
touched the tears that dropped from her eyes.
Not knowing that I saw them, and setting
herself to get the better of them, she said quietly:

"Were you wondering, as you walked along,
how it came to be left in this condition?"

"Yes, Estella."

"The ground belongs to me. It is the only
possession I have not relinquished. Everything
else has gone from me, little by little, but I
have kept this. It was the subject of the only
determined resistance I made in all the wretched
years."

"Is it to be built on?"

"At last it is. I came here to take leave of
it before its change. And you," she said, in a
voice of touching interest to a wanderer, "you
live abroad still?"

"Still."

"And do well, I am sure?"

"I work pretty hard for a sufficient living,
and therefore—Yes, I do well."

"I have often thought of you," said Estella.

"Have you?"

"Of late, very often. There was a long hard
time when I kept far from me, the remembrance
of what I had thrown away when I was quite
ignorant of its worth. But, since my duty has
not been incompatible with the admission of
that remembrance, I have given it a place in my
heart."

"You have always held your place in my
heart," I answered. And we were silent again,
until she spoke.

"I little thought," said Estella, "that I
should take leave of you in taking leave of this
spot. I am very glad to do so."

"Glad to part again, Estella? To me, parting
is a painful thing. To me, the remembrance of
our last parting has been ever mournful and
painful."

"But you said to me," returned Estella, very
earnestly, "'God bless you, God forgive you!'
And if you could say that to me then, you will
not hesitate to say that to me now—now, when
suffering has been stronger than all other teaching,
and has taught me to understand what your
heart used to be. I have been bent and broken,
but—I hope—into a better shape. Be as
considerate and good to me as you were, and tell me
we are friends."

"We are friends," said I, rising and bending
over her, as she rose from the bench.

"And will continue friends apart," said
Estella.

I took her hand in mine, and we went out of
the ruined place; and, as the morning mists had
risen long ago when I first left the forge, so the
evening mists were rising now, and in all the
broad expanse of tranquil light they showed to
me, I saw the shadow of no parting from her.

THE END OF GREAT EXPECTATIONS.

OUR readers already know that the next number of this Journal will contain the first portion
of a new romance by SIR EDWARD BULWER LYTTON, which will be continued from week to week
for six months. On its completion, it will be succeeded by a new serial story by MR. WILKIE
COLLINS, to be continued from week to week for nine months.

The repeal of the Duty on Paper will enable us greatly to improve the quality of the material
on which ALL THE YEAR ROUND is printed, and therefore to enhance the mechanical clearness
and legibility of these pages. Of the Literature to which we have a new encouragement to devote
them, it becomes us to say no more than that we believe it would have been simply impossible,
when paper was taxed, to make the present announcement.

ADVENTURES OF MONSIEUR MIRES.

IT was in the ancient city of Bordeaux, and in
the month of December, 1809, that Jules Isaac
Mirès, the offspring of Jewish parents, first saw
the light. His father, a money-changer and
watchmaker, kept one of those little shops which
line the Exchange of Bordeaux; but the proverbial
success of his nation does not seem to have
accompanied his operations, as he left nothing
to his son when he died, but the charge of
supporting three penniless sisters. When six years
old young Mirès was sent as a day-scholar to pick
up what education he might at the feet of a
learned professor named Jolly. This Gamaliel,
however, did not give himself much trouble
with his pupil, or his pupil took little pains to
learn; for Monsieur Mirès tells us that when he
left school, at the ripe age of twelve, he had
acquired but a very imperfect knowledge of the
French language. It is most likely that the elder
Mirès had never heard of Dogberry's theory,
that "reading and writing come by nature;"
but he acted as if he had no great faith in
tuition, removing Jules at the age aforesaid from
Professor Jolly's care, and placing him in the
shop of Monsieur Beret, a dealer in glass. It
is not on record that, like Alnaschar, Jules
Mirès kicked down his fortunes in a fit of
presumptuous castle-building, but he admits that
visions of future greatness made the details of
the glass-trade distasteful to him, and dreaming