my word, we were wondering, I can tell you.
We thought you had given us the slip, my dear
friend. If you had not left Miss Margaret
behind to answer inquiries, I don't know what
odd stories would have been set afloat. What
on earth have you been doing?"

Dacres repeated this question in a half-
bantering, half-insolent manner, that on
another occasion might have seemed to Mr.
West a little offensive. He heard only the last
words. He was now recovering, and answered
mechanically:

"I had some business—some private
business."

The young girl looked at him reproachfully,
and then said suddenly:

"You know Colonel Vivian? Of course you
heard of the wreck? No, you had gone away."
And then she introduced them.

"Oh!" Dacres went on, "here's old Blacker
flourishing up. See what he'll say. I wish
you heard his private opinion. You may be
sure the story lost nothing in his hands. And
I tell you what I think you forgot to bring
over with you, my dear boy," continued Mr.
Dacres, in his most offensive familiarity—" that
little article known to mankind as the tongue.
Ha, ha!"

"I think we had better go home, Gilbert
dear," said his sister, anxiously. " You must
be tired—and there is the luggage."

"Yes," he said, abruptly, " I am tired. Let
us go."

Brother and sister both turned away
hurriedly.

"Was that Dacres?" said Mr. Blacker,
pushing hurriedly by. He had secured possession
of the new family.

Mr. West did not speak for a few moments.
He then said, a little wildly:

"What is this? What does all this mean?"

"Oh, my poor Gilbert," said his sister, with
quite a tone of agony in her voice, "you
must prepare yourself for a trial; for they say
she is to be married to him."

HISTORY OF A SACK OF CORN.

SECOND CHAPTER.

THE tender shoots of the young wheat are
beginning to appear through the half-frozen
ground; and the long dismal eight months of a
Russian winter are drawing to a fitful and
boisterous close. Tall trees are blown down
in scores by the tempestuous March winds;
great floods are out; and wandering peasants
or poor travellers get lost in quagmires, and
never heard of more. The dull-eyed, stolid
women of the hamlets on the steppe begin to
come out of the smoky holes and caves in
which they have passed the cold season between
listlessness and drink. The snow upon the
cabin roofs, which helped to keep out the
winter storm, is beginning slowly to melt and
trickle down on the kirpitch floor, to the
surprise of the myriad tribes of insects and vermin
who have harboured there since last summer.
The short sharp hailstorm pelts pitilessly
upon ill-fed, feeble children, huddled in heaps
near the stove, which serves for bed, kitchen,
and comfort; and the partially melted
hailstones form in half-frozen pools in every
hole about the hut. Drunken and brutalised
boors are seen sleeping stupified in the
streets, instead of hiding themselves in earth-
holes and stables, to avoid being frozen to
death;—then, with the first signs of approaching
spring, my princely friend, Dooyoumalsky,
perceives that there is another stroke of work
to be done in his line of business. He has got
advances upon his corn at Yassy and at
Nicolaiev. He has sold it altogether, the whole
crop, to Mr. John Anderson, a year ago, at
Odessa. The prince smiles in a peculiar way
as he looks at the name of the north-country
gentleman, signed in a slow precise hand, on the
formal and binding agreement which concluded
this happy transaction.

Mr. John Anderson is a brisk confident young
Scotchman, who went down from Constantinople
especially to buy my prince's corn; and
who has been thinking of his great bargain ever
since. The brisk young Scotchman is so
delighted with his splendid acquaintance, and the
enormous profit he expects upon commercial
dealings with him, that he has written to his
correspondent, a cautious old uncle residing at
Glasgow, to the effect that he has opened up
a new trade which must enrich them in a few
years; and that he naturally expects to
obtain a partnership as the well-earned
reward of his business-like intelligence. His
mother has been gladdened with news even
still sweeter, and has had her heart startled
back into fresh life by the lavish promises
which the Russian magnate has made to her son.
The prince, her boy writes, has even gone so
far as to hint that his highness has a princely
relative of the female sex, who has seen the
Scotchman coming up the staircase of the French
hotel on the day he bought the corn; and the
douce laddie has been encouraged to believe it
not wholly impossible that the new alliance
between the respectable family of Anderson and
the stately line of Dooyoumalsky may be some
day cemented by warmer and closer ties than
those of commerce. John does not say any more;
he is too manly and modest. But it transpires
many years afterwards, partly over an extra
glass of toddy, and more immediately and fully
from a story told with much humour by the
prince, that a great deal more was said to him.
Dooyoumalsky is still fond of relating, amidst
shrieks of club laughter, that, having spent the
fortune of an aunt of his, this mature princess
determined to follow him day and night, and
never to lose sight of him till she got some of
it back again. He had been already set upon
for six weeks by the resolute lady, when the
stars decreed that he should meet with a
protector.

"Monsieur Andairson" the prince always
declares with delightful good nature, "wos one