He trembled; caught her hand in his;
   He snatch'd it to his breast, his lips;
He gave it a quick fervent kiss
                        Of eager hoping love.

"Ay, 'Hateful Hal' you still shall be,
   I'll always call you by that name;
For ' Hateful Hal' you are to me,
                        The 'Hateful Hal' I love!"

He took her in his arms so strong;
   He press'd her to his beating heart,
And held her there full soft and long:
                        Between them there was love.

A TIGHT LITTLE ISLAND.

I. A LANDING.

IT is a little surprise— not to say start—
when, after watching a distant light, expanding
slowly, from the deck of the steamer, the
skipper unexpectedly comes with a sort of
private light and lets off a cannon. At the same
instant the paddles are slowed. A delicious
night, the sea all molten drip, and not a breath
abroad. We are off Douglas: and the lighthouse
is now suspiciously turned on us like a
policeman's bull's-eye lantern.

That landing had quite a contraband and
smuggling air. Afar off are a few twinkling
lights, like pin-holes in cardboard, and disposed
in an arch. Off there they are all asleep, for
it has gone One. Now comes the splash of
oars, and here are the boats— boats broad,
large, and contraband-looking, and carrying
some twenty or thirty passengers. Here are
three or four of them drifting up alongside,
laden to the water's edge with trunks and dark
figures, and, like pirates about to board, each
boat-load seemed to glide up out of the darkness.
Then they poured in fiercely and overran
the decks, wildly making for berths and cabins
where there was no room, and where there was
a hot still atmosphere below, and every one
snoring or dozing. Humanity, by the way,
when it comes on board in this way, seems to
resent this apathy, and expects itself to be
welcomed wakefully and with a sort of jubilee.
We, meantime, descend the side into new
boats, look up a moment at the great black
side of the vessel dimly looming down on
us, with a red eye glaring out askance
on us, see a fresh boat laden with fresh
pirates and fresh mountains of baggage gliding
up out of the darkness, then push away for
shore.

Here another great bull's-eye lantern is
turned on us. A great pier, solemn and massive,
and along a flight or stone stairs, with the
touters, omnibus creatures, porters, &c., all
waiting for their prey. A hoarse clock chimes
half-past one. It is the most tranquil of nights.
In these days of trains running down screaming
and whistling beside piers, and of packets
coming up whistling beside railway platforms,
this seems delightfully barbarous and original
On the great flight of steps abundant discussion
takes place as to what is to be done with the
passengers— how the spoil is to be divided. The
old animosity rages between the " touts" of the
rival houses, the old contempt and " chaffing"
which it was thought obtained so notably at
Calais, and only at Calais. But this was soon
ended, and we, a trio called Messrs. Athos,
Aramis, and Porthos— who does not know those
names?— became the spoil of the daring brave
of the CASTLE MONA. We belonged to him as
of right. His rival— was it THE IMPERIAL, or
some such name, that he called himself?—
avenged his repulse by what seemed a delightful
piece of contempt. He would light his pipe;
and, in derision, ignited his fusee on Aramis's
own portmanteau. There was no vaunting in his
action— nothing, so to speak, offensive, out it
conveyed a world of meaning. We admired
him for it.

Then in the victorious bus through the most
narrow, ill-paved, jolting streets. Porthos
encouraged, moreover, by sudden drifts and whiffs
of unsavoury origin, born, perhaps, of a nightly
miasma, says it is singularly like coming into a
French town by night. The driver, too, cracks
his whip in the savage way common to French
drivers. Underneath sounds something hollow
and rumbling; still more like a French town.
Then at last on to Castle Mona, the disused
and degraded ducal residence, at precisely half-
past one o'clock in the morning.

Everybody is blear-eyed and half asleep, and
bundles in to bed anyhow; and so I, Porthos,
go to rest, pretty wearied, in " No. 50," not
knowing whether the window of " No. 50"
gives on the superb prospects the guide-book has
been raving about, or on a bald stack of chimneys.
Packets "come in" at this sea-girt
island at all sorts of irregular hours. They go
away, too, with the same awkwardness, coming
round the headland and firing their gun at three
o'clock and four o'clock in the morning. The
unhappy busman, and his more unhappy horses,
who must wait on these fitful visits, what a
time they must have of it! Boots, as a matter
of course, never sleeps, so it falls in naturallv
with his course of work. The morning that I
shake the dust from off my shoes, the " bus"
with busman, and the Boots, come jingling
round to great clatter and cracking of the
whip, with all their customary spirit, though all
the gas is flaring, and the clock in the hall is
striking three A.M.

II. OUR TOWN.

But it is very pleasant to find there is to
be no ground for misgivings. On awaking in
the morning, on coming thus to a new country,
it is a pleasant speculation to pause before
opening the shutters, and wonder what you are
to see, and what manner of picture is about to
open on you. Here I find, from the window of
"No. 50," a wide low-lying bay, faced with
soft headlands and broken into little coves, with
the houses huddled and clustering down the
hill to the beach, as if they were going to bathe;