youth, and in the confidence of natures
unacquainted with harshness or repression, look
boldly forth upon the future from the warm
shelter of home. But once launched into
the wide pitiless world, how the heart remembers
the sweetness of the love left behind! As
we may fancy that some fledgling bird, when first
it tries its trembling pinion, may faint and yearn
for the soft safety of the mother's nest.

Mabel leant back against the ship's bulwarks,
and looked at her past life. First among
its memories, came the shadowy image of her
dead father, kept alive in her heart chiefly by
the fond faithful praises of Aunt Mary, who was
unwearied in her gratitude to and love for
"John's brother." Then, while she was yet
too young to feel the separation very keenly,
came the parting from her mother, and her
sojourn in her uncle's home. She remembered
cousin Polly, a tall merry good-humoured
girl of nearly fifteen years; she remembered
Jack, terrible in the matter of torn jackets,
and costing unheard-of sums in boots, but
generous, warm-hearted, and able to draw
the most wonderfully beautiful pictures—so
they seemed to Mabel's admiring eyes—with
the most unpromising materials. Then, there
was Uncle John, always an object of the
tenderest care to all the family, erect and portly,
with a placid gentle smile upon his sightless
face, and usually to be found, at home or abroad,
with Janet's tiny hand fast clasped in his, and
Janet's earnest childish voice translating into
words for her father's ear all that came under
the inspection of her grave observant eyes.
Lastly came Aunt Mary, the sun that warmed
and lighted this domestic system. Cheerful,
active, hopeful, unselfish: the soul of simple
kindliness: Aunt Mary, whose genial, honest
nature no poverty could embitter, and who,
as Mabel well remembered, would in the
midst of her own struggles not only freely utter
the charitable word that consoles, but hold out
the charitable hand that helps, to many a
comrade in distress.

All that old time came back to Mabel as
she sat on the vessel's deck beneath the stars:
the lessons read aloud to Uncle John, and
elucidated by his comments; the rambles, under
Jack's guidance, in broad country meadows;
the queer humble lodgings in provincial towns;
the shabby clothes, and threadbare little gloves,
and sunburnt bonnets, and the light-hearted
disregard of all such short-comings; the Sunday
afternoon excursions, in which Aunt Mary
often (but not always) had leisure to join,
when, after church-time, the whole family would
sally forth, carrying cold meat and bread in a
basket, and would pic-nic in some quiet nook
miles out in the country, returning, dusty, tired, and
happy, through the glimmering summer twilight;
the occasional visit to the boxes of the theatre,
and the breathless interest and delight awakened
by some thrilling melodrama: an interest in no
degree rendered less keen by personal acquaintance
with all the performers, or by a certain
knowledge that Mr. Montmorency, who enacted
the villain, was not dead when the captain of
the guard fired, and when he fell with a crash
upon the stage, uttering a yell of rage and
anguish, but would get up presently and go
comfortably home and eat a hot supper.

How it all came back to Mabel, the pathos
and the fun, the poverty and the contentment,
the smiles and the tears, as she sat there on the
vessel's deck beneath the stars!

Then followed the news of her mother's
marriage, and the parting from her relatives, and
the five years of school-life passed chiefly in an
old-fashioned roomy house in a country village,
where the schoolmistress, a pleasant stately
gentlewoman as unlike Mrs. Hatchett as
possible, had been so kind and motherly, and where
she had first met Augusta Charlewood. Augusta
Charlewood! At the recollection of that name,
and all the associations it conjured up, Mabel
felt the blood tingle in her cheek, and the
hot tears well up into her eyes. "He is very
good and generous," she murmured. "Very
noble-minded and unselfish! I hope he may
not quite forget me. I should be sorry to be
quite forgotten by him. And I hope—oh! I
do hope, with all my heart—that he may find
some girl to love him very dearly, and to make
him a good wife!"

Then the slides of that most magical of magic
lanterns, called Memory, became peopled with
a throng of oddly assorted figures, that passed
vividly before her. Miss Fluke, and her father
and sisters, marched past busily; little Corda's
pale face looked up out of her bed, at Mr.
Saxelby, upright and dapper, picking his way
over the wet stones to church; the draggled
gown of Mrs. Hutchins appeared side by side
with Mrs. Charlewood's costly velvets; Penelope
and young Trescott, the mild old clergyman
at Hazlehurst, Mrs. Hatchett and the ugly Swiss
governess, were all flitting backwards and
forwards pell-mell. And amidst them all, there was
ever her mother's graceful delicate form, and
the bright golden curls that she had loved to
fondle on Dooley's innocent brow.

But surely her memory held no such figure
as this that stood before her: a bluff red-faced
man wrapped in a pea-coat, and holding
between his lips a great cigar, that glowed through
the darkness like a railway signal!

It was the captain of the vessel, to whose care
she had been specially consigned on leaving Liverpool
by some friends of the late Mr. Saxelby,
who had met her there and put her on board.

"I thought I would prefer to stay on deck,
Captain Duff. It is so much pleasanter here
than in the close cabin."

"Ay," was the answer in the broadest Scotch:
"it's like a good many other pleasant things,
not altogether prudent. Why, were ye thinking
of passing the neecht up here? Hoot, my
dear young leddy, joost take my advice, and go
away down to bed. Ye're half way to the Land
of Nod the noo'; and I'll undertake that ye'll
not be five minutes in the warm cabin before
ye'll be sleeping joost as peacefully as possible."
"I won't be obstinate, captain," said Mabel,