hooked nose, a wrinkled face, and such eyes!
black, sparkling, restless, and vindictive. I
had often noticed the old woman as she crept
out, leaning upon a crutch-handled stick, to
warm herself in the sunshine, and at last she
had an attack of rheumatism, and I was sent
for to see her professionally. I soon found she
was not an ordinary person, and I spent part of
a summer's evening listening to her wild and
disconnected talk while the rays of the setting
sun produced wonderful effects in her glittering
old eyes. She was a firm believer, I found, in
planetary influences as affecting the lives of
mortals; in fact, she was an astrologer in a small
way. She said that Saturn, or some other
objectionable planet, had been the bane of
her existence. She longed to die, but the stars
were not yet ready for that consummation.
She spoke of a sister who had been " a bitter
weed " to her; and her eyes flashed and
deepened in the red sunlight when she mentioned
that sister's name. Strange to say, this old
woman, who has so many more of the
characteristics of a witch than Mrs. Redburn, is not
held in any fear or abhorrence. She appears to
be rather respected than otherwise by her
neighbours. Poor old soul! Hers is a sad and
solitary existence, and no doubt she will some
day be missed from her accustomed seat in her
cottage porch, and it will be found that she has
died, as she has lived, alone.

But to return to the witch proper. A few
months ago, all the neighbourhood of North-
street was thrown into astonishment by a most
unexpected occurrence. Old Mother Redburn,
in the seventy-second year of her age, took to
herself a second husband considerably younger than
herself. Of course she had bewitched him: not
in the benign but in the malignant sense of the
word, or how otherwise could any man have
been found with courage sufficient to marry this
terrible old woman? However this may be,
the banns were published, and the nuptials took
place, and, more wonderful still Mrs. Redburn,
(for she will always be known by that name)
left her ancient abode and removed into another
parish. What the dwellers in North-street will
do now for a witch upon whom to lay the blame
of all their ills, remains to be seen.

AN INCIDENT IN THE TROPICS.

THERE are certain moments in the lives of
many to which they look back with a sense of
surprise how it was possible they could have
gone through them and lived.

And now that I am once more, thank God, in
safe, quiet England, and hope to remain here
for the rest of my days, and that I can dare to
look back to a certain episode in my existence, I
do so, wondering how life or reason remained.

My husband and I were living in Jamaica at
the time to which I refer. He had a good
appointment there, and, as we had had a sore
struggle ever since our marriage to live in
England, we found but little inconvenience
from the climate (the chief among the various
disadvantages of the place to Europeans), we bore
the disagreeables with philosophy. Our house
was in a quiet spot on the outskirts of the town,
well blown through by the sea-breezes. It had
large airy rooms, and a broad-roofed stone verandah
running all round it. Here I had indulged
my passion for flowers by having constructed
large boxes which I had filled with the glorious
flowers, chiefly rich orchids and climbers, brought
from the beautiful treacherous swamps and giant
forests of South America, where vegetable life
revels in unspeakable luxuriousness, and where
man is stifled by the foul vapours on which
these flourish. Here, too, of an evening,
when my husband came home from his ofiice in
the town, we used to sit after dinner in the
heavy heat that rendered it next to impossible
to remain within, and, according to the custom
of the country, received any guests who might
choose to drop in, regaling them with tea,
coffee, little cakes, in which my Jamaica cook
excelled, and the never-failing beverage— iced
water.

The chief drawback to the life I found to be
that I was so much alone. My husband had to
go to his office every day almost immediately after
breakfast, and as people do not pay visits there
during the heat of the day— not that I have ever
found morning visits solacing to my solitude
anywhere, with rare exceptions— and that I had no
child (ah me, that was the solace and the society
I craved for!), I certainly did find the days —
when the unabating heat took away from me all
energy and activity, and the insects and my
foolish black servants tormented me— long and
monotonous. At mail times, too, twice a month
it sometimes happened that my husband was
detained until nine or ten o'clock, weary, worn
out, and hardly able to eat the dainty little
supper I had prepared for him.

At last, however, I began to have an inkling
that perhaps my loneliness might ere long be
broken in the way I had longed, and yearned,
and prayed for. Oh, the joy! the delight! the
hope fulfilled, the want done away with! What
cared I now for the long lonely hours, the heat, the
insects, the housekeeping worries, the stupidity,
of dull black Jim, the carelessness of grinning
black Joe, the grumbling of hoity-toity white
Jane, who turned up her nose at the place, and
the people, and the food, and, above all, at
"them nasty niggers"?

I had now somebody to be always thinking of
and expecting, somebody to be always arranging
and preparing and working for, somebody to
write to mamma and Katey, my married sister,
about. I cut up the prettiest muslins and laces of
my trousseau to make baby-clothes— I can't say
much for the shapes of them, though I will
maintain that the needlework was beautiful. I
planned what room was to be the nursery, what
change of furniture would be necessary to make
it thoroughly comfortable—in short, every day
and all day long this one great and glorious and