angel, it will speak to God for thee. Nay,
don't sob a that 'as; thou shalt have it again
in Heaven; I know thou'lt strive to get
there, for thy little Nancy's sake—and listen!
I'll tell thee God's promises to them that are
penitent only—doan't be afeard.'

Mrs. Leigh folded her hands, and strove to
speak very clearly, while she repeated every
tender and merciful text she could remember.
She could tell from the breathing that her
daughter was listening; but she was so
dizzy and sick herself when she had ended,
that she could not go on speaking. It was
all she could do to keep from crying aloud.

At last she heard her daughter's voice.

'Where have they taken her to? ' she
asked.

'She is down stairs. So quiet, and peaceful,
and happy she looks.'

'Could she speak? Oh, if God—if I might
but have heard her little voice! Mother, I
used to dream of it. May I see her once
again—Oh mother, if I strive very hard, and
God is very merciful, and I go to heaven, I
shall not know her—I shall not know my
own again—she will shun me as a stranger
and cling to Susan Palmer and to you. Oh
woe! Oh woe!' She shook with exceeding
sorrow.

In her eagerness of speech she had
uncovered her face, and tried to read Mrs.
Leigh's thoughts through her looks. And
when she saw those aged eyes brimming full
of tears, and marked the quivering lips, she
threw her arms round the faithful mother's
neck, and wept there as she had done in many
a childish sorrow; but with a deeper, a more
wretched grief.

Her mother hushed her on her breast; and
lulled her as if she were a baby; and she
grew still and quiet.

They sat thus for a long, long time. At
last Susan Palmer came up with some tea and
bread and butter for Mrs. Leigh. She
watched the mother feed her sick, unwilling
child, with every fond inducement to eat
which she could devise; they neither of them
took notice of Susan's presence. That night
they lay in each other's arms; but Susan
slept on the ground beside them.

They took the little corpse (the little
unconscious sacrifice, whose early calling-home
had reclaimed her poor wandering mother,)
to the hills, which in her life-time she had
never seen. They dared not lay her by the
stern grand-father in Milne-Row churchyard,
but they bore her to a lone moorland graveyard,
where long ago the quakers used to
bury their dead. They laid her there on the
sunny slope, where the earliest spring-flowers
blow.

Will and Susan live at the Upclose Farm.
Mrs. Leigh and Lizzie dwell in a cottage so
secluded that, until you drop into the very
hollow where it is placed, you do not see it.
Tom is a schoolmaster in Rochdale, and he
and Will help to support their mother. I
know that, if the cottage be hidden in a green
hollow of the hills, every sound of sorrow in
the whole upland is heard there—every call
of suffering or of sickness for help is listened
to, by a sad, gentle-looking woman, who rarely
smiles (and when she does, her smile is more
sad than other people's tears), but who comes
out of her seclusion whenever there's a
shadow in any household. Many hearts bless
Lizzie Leigh, but she—she prays always and
ever for forgiveness—such forgiveness as
may enable her to see her child once more.
Mrs. Leigh is quiet and happy. Lizzie is to
her eyes something precious,—as the lost
piece of silver—found once more. Susan is
the bright one who brings sunshine to all.
Children grow around her and call her blessed.
One is called Nanny. Her, Lizzy often takes
to the sunny graveyard in the uplands, and
while the little creature gathers the daisies,
and makes chains, Lizzie sits by a little grave,
and weeps bitterly.

THE SEASONS.

A BLUE-EYED child that sits amid the noon,
   O'erhung with a laburnum's drooping sprays,
Singing her little songs, while softly round
   Along the grass the chequered sunshine plays.

All beauty that is throned in womanhood,
   Pacing a summer garden's fountained walks,
That stoops to smooth a glossy spaniel down,
   To hide her flushing cheek from one who talks.

A happy mother with her fair-faced girls,
   In whose sweet spring again her youth she sees,
With shout and dance aud laugh and bound and
   song,
Stripping an autumn orchard's laden trees.

An aged woman in a wintry room;
   Frost on the pane,—without, the whirling snow;
Reading old letters of her far-off youth,
   Of pleasures past and joys of long ago.

SHORT CUTS ACROSS THE GLOBE.

To a person who wishes to sail to California
an inspection of the map of the world reveals
a provoking peculiarity. The Atlantic Ocean
—the highway of the globe—being
separated from the Pacific by the great western
continent, it is impossible to sail to the opposite
coasts without going thousands of miles
out of his way; for he must double Cape
Horn. Yet a closer inspection of the map
will discover that but for one little barrier of
land, which is in size but as a grain of sand
to the bed of an ocean, the passage would be
direct. Were it not for that small neck of
land, the Isthmus of Panama (which narrows in
one place to twenty-eight miles) he might save
a voyage of from six to eight thousand miles,
and pass at once into the Pacific Ocean.
Again, if his desires tend towards the East,
he perceives that but for the Isthmus of Suez,
he would not be obliged to double the Cape
of Good Hope. The Eastern difficulty has