Suddenly, just before the dawn, she called out
aloud, still in sleep,

"'The cold and dark shadow has passed away
from me, and from Allen—passed away from us
both for ever!'

"And from that moment the fever left her; the
breathing became soft, the pulse steady, and the
colour stole gradually back to her cheek. The
crisis is past. Nature's benign Disposer has
permitted Nature to restore your life's gentle
partner, heart to heart, mind to mind—"

"And soul to soul," I cried, in my solemn joy.
"Above as below, soul to soul!" Then, at a
sign from Faber, the Child took me by the hand
and led me up the stairs into Lilian's room.

Again those dear arms closed round me in
wife-like and holy love, and those true lips kissed
away my tears;—even as now, at the distance of
years from that happy morn, while I write the
last words of this Strange Story, the same faithful
arms close around me, the same tender lips
kiss away my tears.

THE END OF A STRANGE STORY.

AN ENLIGHTENED CLERGYMAN.

AT various places in Suffolk (as elsewhere)
penny readings take place "for the instruction
and amusement of the lower classes." There is
a little town in Suffolk called Eye, where the
subject of one of these readings was a tale (by
MR. WILKIE COLLINS) from the last Christmas
Number of this Journal, entitled "Picking up
Waifs at Sea." It appears that the Eye
gentility was shocked by the introduction of this
rude piece among the taste and musical glasses
of that important town, on which the eyes of
Europe are notoriously always fixed. In
particular, the feelings of the vicar's family were
outraged; and a Local Organ (say, the Tattle-
snivel Bleater) consequently doomed the said
piece to everlasting oblivion, as being of an
"injurious tendency"!

When this fearful fact came to the
knowledge of the unhappy writer of the doomed tale
in question, he covered his face with his robe,
previous to dying decently under the sharp
steel of the ecclesiastical gentility of the
terrible town of Eye. But the discovery that he
was not alone in his gloomy glory, revived him,
and he still lives.

For, at Stowmarket, in the aforesaid county of
Suffolk, at another of those penny readings, it
was announced that a certain juvenile sketch,
culled from a volume of sketches (by Boz) and
entitled THE BLOOMSBURY CHRISTENING, would
be read. Hereupon, the clergyman of that place
took heart and pen, and addressed the following
terrific epistle to a gentleman bearing the very
appropriate name of Gudgeon:

Stowmarket Vicarage, Feb. 25, 1861.

SIR,—My attention has been directed to a piece
called the Bloomsbury Christening which you
propose to read this evening. Without presuming to
claim any interference in the arrangement of the
readings, I would suggest to you whether you have
on this occasion sufficiently considered the
character of the composition you have selected. I quite
appreciate the laudable motive of the promoters of
the readings to raise the moral tone amongst the
working class of the town and to direct this taste
in a familiar and pleasant manner. The Bloomsbury
Christening cannot possibly do this. It trifles with
a sacred ordinance, and the language and style,
instead of improving the taste, has a direct tendency
to lower it.

I appeal to your right feeling whether it is
desirable to give publicity to that which must shock
several of your audience, and create a smile amongst
others, to be indulged in only by violating the
conscientious scruples of their neighbours.

The ordinance which is here exposed to ridicule
is one which is much misunderstood and neglected
amongst many families belonging to the Church of
England, and the mode in which it is treated in
this chapter cannot fail to appear as giving a
sanction to, or at least excusing, such neglect.

Although you are pledged to the public to give
this subject, yet I cannot but believe that they
would fully justify your substitution of it for
another did they know the circumstances. An
abridgment would only lessen the evil in a degree,
as it is not only the style of the writing but the
subject itself which is objectionable.

Excuse me for troubling you, but I felt that, in
common with yourself, I have a grave responsibility
in the matter, and I am most truly yours,

T. S. COLES.

To Mr. J. Gudgeon.

It is really necessary to explain that this is
not a bad joke. It is simply a bad fact.

ST. GEORGE AND THE DRAGOMAN.

MY one-eyed Cairo dragoman, Abool
Hoosayn, calls himself thirty, but, from a certain
snipyness of waist and cranyness of leg, I should
have set him down as forty, at least. Certain
white tufts in his spare beard would also have
led me to the more unfavourable supposition,
had he not accounted for that peculiarity in a
narration which I may here abridge, imitating as
well as I can Abool's rather imperfect English.

He told me the story one evening, at Suez,
coiled up in his wadded quilt, his capote over
his head, his sceptre of power—a crooked jessamine
chibouk-stick—in his signet hand; his
Cairene merkhoob, or Turkish slippers, framed
of leather dyed yellow with the juice from
the rind of pomegranates, on his feet; that
glorious star, Canopus, or, as the Arabs call it,
"the uncle of the moon," sparkling above his
red and yellow bound turban.

"All this, effendi (rubbing the stunted beard
on his yellow chin), came sixteen year ago, when
Arab ship went down-stairs in the Red Sea, two
days journey from Aden."

"As how?" said I.

"El Arakee—Bedowee village, two days'
journey from Aden."

Here I may observe that Abool Hoosayn's
knowledge of English is of that peculiar kind
that it never enables him to give a right answer
to anything I ask him: while my knowledge of
Arabic is of that kind that, although I can utter
an incredible number of questions, rebukes,