she had been struggling to keep down, overflowed
her eyes, and began to trickle piteously down her
face, and drop on the coverlet of the bed.

Mabel could bear it no longer. "I really
must go, Miss Fluke," said she. "Mr. Saxelby
and mamma will be displeased if I am late for
dinner. Besides, I think Corda is not strong
enough yet to bear much talking to. I had
tired her already, before yon came."

Miss Fluke was very reluctant to quit the
scene of action; but she acknowledged to herself
that it was getting late in the afternoon, and
she had other duties to attend to. So she yielded
to Mabel's suggestion, and arose from the bedside
with another jerk.

"I shall come again next Saturday, please
God," said she to Corda "Meanwhile, read
this, and this, and this,"thrusting a packet of
penny tracts on the child. "I see you can
read. Now, good-bye, and try to profit by those
blessed words."

"I will try to come again," whispered Mabel,
bending over the sweet plaintive face. "Don't
cry, darling. The lady did not mean to be
unkind to you. I will send you some story-books,
Corda. Fairy tales. And you must tell me
about M. W., who gave you that book."

Mabel hastily arranged the child's head
more comfortably on the pillow, put her story-book
within reach of her hand again, and ran
down-stairs after the Misses Fluke.

On their way out of the house, they encountered
a strikingly handsome young man entering
it, who touched his hat somewhat sulkily,
and stood to stare long and fixedly after them as
they walked down the street.

STICK- (NOT TABLE-) TURNING.

MR. BARING GOULD, in his remarkable book
on Curious Myths of the Middle Ages,
devotes a chapter to the Divining Rod. He
adverts to the well-known passages in the
Bible, ascribing some mystic properties to a
rod or staff when in the hands of Jacob,
Moses, and Aaron; and to the regular establishment
of a belief in Rhabdomancy (divination by
means of a rod) at a very remote period of history.
Expressed briefly, the divining-rod, divination,
dowsing (as the Cornish people call it),
or rhabdomancy, relates to the use of a twig or
rod, generally of hazel, held in the two hands.
When the person holding it passes over a hidden
spring of water, a deposit of metal underground,
or the spot where a robbery or a murder has been
committed, the rod undergoes agitation without
any spontaneous action on the part of the
holder. Such is the theory.

In the last century, the divining-rod had many
staunch believers in the district of the Mendip
Hills, and they scarcely ever sank a shaft but
by its direction. Billingley, in his Agricultural
Survey of Somerset, said that dexterous dowsers
could mark on the ground the exact course and
breadth of the vein underneath, and, even if
blindfolded, they could, detect the same spot
twenty times over. Sir Walter Scott made
Dousterswivel (in the Antiquary) traverse the
aisles of a ruined structure, to demonstrate that
a forked rod of hazel would discover the locality
of hidden springs of water. The narrative of
the exploit is well worth reading, whatever Scott
himself may have thought of rhabdomancy.
William Hone records that a gentleman went
to see a young farmer near Bristol gifted
with this faculty. The farmer traversed a
court-yard, and found the twig move when
he came over a covered well, despite, as
he declared, of his attempt to hold it steady.
There was then placed a watch under one of
three hats. The farmer, without knowing it
previously, discovered the right hat by the bending
of the rod. The gentleman candidly owned
that when he tried the experiment it was a failure;
but the farmer accounted for this on the ground
that only a few persons possess the faculty.

It has been stated that Lady Noel was
one of those thus gifted; that on one occasion,
when at Warlingham, in the presence of
Mr. Dawson Turner and other gentlemen, she
passed along ground above springs invisible and
unknown to her; a hazel-twig which she held in
her hands turned down when she was over the
springs. She earnestly asserted that it did
so not only without her prompting, but against
her express attempts to keep it still: in proof
of which she showed marks on her thumbs and
fingers, as if they had been subject to great
pressure.

In Cornwall there has always been a firm
belief in the divining-rod: the theory being that
one person in about forty possesses the power of
using it. Mrs. Colonel Beaumont, early in
the century, is said to have had this peculiar
gift; at any rate, the rod did bend down in
certain instances, when she was passing over
concealed metals or springs. In an early
volume of the Monthly Magazine there was a
letter from a Mr. Partridge, of Boxbridge,
giving many instances of the discovery of hidden
springs of water by the divining-rod. He was
impressed with a belief that the power is
possessed by a much smaller number of persons
than some have supposed—only one in two
thousand.

A good deal of attention was paid by the
newspapers to certain alleged achievements of
two diviners, or dowsers, about twenty years
ago. They were West of England men, named
Adams and Mapstone. A farmer near
Wedmore, in Somerset, wishing for a supply of
water on his farm, applied to Mapstone.
Mapstone used a hazel-rod in the usual way, and
when he came over a particular spot, declared
that water would be found fifteen or twenty
feet beneath the surface. Digging was therefore
commenced at that spot, and water appeared
at a depth of nineteen feet. The other expert,
Adams, who claimed to have been instrumental
in the discovery of nearly a hundred springs in
the west of England, went one day, by invitation,
to the house of Mr. Phippen, a surgeon,
at Wedmore, to dowse for water. He walked