only to entreat you to take warning, lest one
day you repent in vain. Kate, you do not
know how bad the world is, and to what
danger you expose yourself. I will not say
any more now, lest you think me only selfish
but I implore you to think of my words when
I am gone."

"No, no, do not go," she said, holding my
arm. " You must hear me first. What is it
you accuse me of? But I know; I know
how it has all happened," she added, bursting
into tears.

"Two nights since,'" I said, "I came to
London the happiest man on earth. I thought
to take you by surprise; to make you as
happy as myself. But as I passed this
enclosure, I saw and heard that which has
destroyed my happiness for ever."

"I know what you mean," said Kate,
sobbing. " I will tell you the truth. The
stranger you saw was my brother."

"I cannot think you would deceive
me," said I, catching at her words. " But
he told me, himself, that he visited you as a
lover."

"It was a wicked falsehood," said Kate:
"a falsehood that might have ruined me; and
this, though I have been the only one who
forgave him, and was kind to him. But,
thank God! I can tell you the truth; and
you cannot be angry with me when you
know."

"But your father has told me from his own
lips," said I, " that he never had but one son;
and that that son is dead."

"It is a secret," she replied. " My father
would be much pained if he knew I had told
you; but I cannot conceal it now. My brother
has sinned, and my father has no forgiveness
for evil. One day he cast him off for ever;
and from that time he has always spoken of
him as dead. He dreads my father; and
dare not come here, save now and then, by
stealth, to see me."

"Forgive me, Kate," said I, "for not
having kept my faith in you in spite of all.
I oiight to have known you better: I might
have seen that your brother only told this
falsehood because I drove him to it. I had
judged you and condemned you in my mind
already; and I would not let him go until he
had confirmed me in my injustice. But you
must pardon me all this, Kate, and think how
wretched I have been these two days."

"Go now," she said. " We will talk
of this by-and-by. It would be so strange if
you were found here. Go and knock at the
door as if nothing had happened. Stay. Give
me five minutes to dry my eyes, and not to
look embarrassed. There!"

In a few minutes I was beside the fire in
the great parlour, and we were a happy circle
that night. Kate was a little thoughtful, and
her father rallied her; but Mrs. Thaine
begged him " not to tease the young people,"
and her little sister Ellen went and placed
her hand in hers. When we parted that
night, Kate said, " The thought of Henry,
and what he may become, will not let me
rest." Therefore, I set before all other things
the object of raising him, if possible, out of
his sad condition. The next time he came
into the street, I met him, and talked to him
with kindness, saying, that his father would
be glad to pardon him, if he saw any signs in
him of a real change for the better. Many
months had passed before I succeeded, through
my old introductions, in procuring his admission
sion to a merchant's counting-house.
Meanwhile, I had myself gained a footing in life.
Then came a marriage-day—the beginning of
long years of happiness for us. But, on the
evening of our marriage—for we had no
strangers there—the unforgiven son was
brought in, and the story of his reformation,
and the proofs of its sincerity, were told;
and thus we were all made happy that
evening.

REALLY A TEMPERANCE QUESTION.

AMONGST the good things looming in the
future, we may venture to name wine for the
million. We don't mean the dark-looking home
beverages concocted from dry raisins, sour
oranges, immature currants, and flavourless
grapes. They are doubtless all very good and
innocent in their way, but, from long habit
and prejudice, we have become habituated to
consider wine, in the broad acceptance of the
word, as indicating the rich, rosy contents of
that army of casks rolling and rollicking
about in the great stone yard of the London
Docks in such reckless wild confusion, that
one might well imagine them to have imbibed
rather more than is consistent with the
sobriety of well-seasoned pipes and hogsheads.

Foremost among the more astonishing
anomalies of this very astonishing age, may
be mentioned the legislative fact, that whilst
France, Spain, and Portugal have laid their
national heads together, and by high or
prohibitory Customs duties interdicted, to a great
extent, the importation into their territories of
the produce of our looms, our steam-engines,
and our collieries, preferring to use the inferior
and dearer productions of their own lands, we,
in our retributive turn, have placed such high
duties and such vexatious restrictions on the
importation of their wines, as most effectually
to shut them out from the possession of our
middling and lower classes. And this exists
in what is termed a Free Trade age.

It needs but the will of the nations to
demand a modification of this absurd state of
things, and at once place on the humblest
tables, generous, wholesome, wine; while, at
the same time, our friends across the Channel
would be enabled to supply themselves, at
half their present prices, with our cotton
fabrics and iron wares. Neither they nor we
would require money to effect all this: it
would amount to a simple case of barter, and
aoth would be infinitely the richer.