"That," I cried, with bitter feeling,
"Is from woe to woe to flee,
Say, for death itself what healing?"
She replied—"Eternity!"

NORTH AND SOUTH.

BY THE AUTHOR OF MARY BARTON.

CHAPTER THE SIXTH.

THE last day came, the house was full of
packing-cases, which were being carted off at
the front dour, to the nearest railway station.
Even the pretty Iawn at the side of the house
was made unsightly and untidy by the straw
that had been wafted upon it through the
open door and windows. The rooms had a
strange echoing sound in them, and the
light came harshly and strongly in through
the uncurtained windows, seeming already
unfamiliar and strange. Mrs. Hale's dressing-
room was left untouched to the last; and
there she and Dixon were packing up clothes,
and interrupting each other every now and
then to exclaim at, and turn over with fond
regard, some forgotten treasure in the shape
of some relic of the children while they were
yet little. They did not make much progress
with their work. Down-stairs, Margaret
stood calm and collected, ready to counsel or
advise the men who had been called in to
help the cook and Charlotte. These two last,
crying between whiles, wondered how the
young lady could keep up so this last day,
and settled it between them that she was not
likely to care much for Helstone, having been
so long in London. There she stood, very
pale and quiet, with her large grave eyes
observing everything,—up to every present
circumstance however small. They could
not understand how her heart was aching all
the time, with a heavy pressure that no sighs
could lift off or relieve, and how constant
exertion for her perceptive faculties was the
only way to keep herself from crying out
with pain. Moreover, if she gave way, who
was to act? Her father was examining
papers, books, registers, what not, in the
vestry with the clerk; and when he came in
there were his own books to pack up, which
no one but himself could do to his satisfaction.
Besides, was Margaret one to give way before
strange men, or even household friends like
the cook and Charlotte! Not she. But at
last the four packers went into the kitchen to
their tea; and Margaret moved stiffly and
slowly away from the place in the hall where
she had been standing so long, out through
the bare echoing drawing-room into the
twilight of an early November evening.
There was a filmy veil of soft dull mist
obscuring, but riot hiding, all objects, giving
them a lilac hue, for the sun had not yet fully
set; a robin was singing, perhaps, Margaret
thought, the very robin that her father had
so often talked of as his winter pet, and for
which he had made, with his own hands, a
kind of robin-house by his study window.
The leaves were more gorgeous than ever;
the first touch of frost would lay them all
low on the ground. Already one or two kept
constantly floating down, amber and golden,
in the low slanting sun-rays.

Margaret went along the walk under
the pear-tree wall. She had never been
along it since she paced it at Henry
Lennox's side. Here, at this bed of thyme
he began to speak of what she must not
think of now. Her eyes were on that late-
blowing rose aa she was trying to speak;
and she had caught the idea of the vivid
beauty of the feathery leaves of the carrots
in the very middle of his last sentence. Only
a fortnight ago! And all so changed!
Where was he now? In London, going
through the old round; dining with the old
Harley Street set, or with gayer young
friends of his own. Even now, while she
walked sadly through that damp and drear
garden in the dusk, with everything falling
and fading, and turning to decay around her,
he might be gladly putting away his law-
books after a day of satisfactory toil, and
freshening himself up, as he had told her he
often did, by a run in the Temple Gardens,
taking in the while the grand inarticulate
mighty roar of tens of thousands of busy men,
nigh at hand, but not seen, and catching,
ever at his quick turns, glimpses of the lights
of the city coming up out of the depths of the
river. He had often spoken to Margaret of
these hasty walks, snatched in the intervals
between study and dinner. At his best times
and in his best moods had he spoken of them;
and the thought of them had struck upon her
fancy. Here there was no sound. The robin
had gone away into the vast stillness of night.
Now and then a cottage door in the distance
was opened and shut, as if to admit the tired
labourer to his home; but that sounded very
far away. A stealthy, creeping, cranching
sound among the crisp fallen leaves of the
forest beyond the garden seemed almost close
at hand. Margaret knew it was some poacher.
Sitting up in her bedroom, this past autumn,
with the light of her candle extinguished,
and purely revelling in the solemn beauty of
the heavens and the earth, she had many
a time seen the light noiseless leap of the
poachers over the garden-fence, their quick
tramp across the dewy moonlit lawn, their
disappearance in the black still shadow beyond.
The wild adventurous freedom of their life
had taken her fancy; she felt inclined to
wish them success; she had no fear of them.
But to-night she was afraid, she knew not
why. She heard Charlotte shutting the
windows, and fastening up for the night,
unconscious that any one had gone out into the
garden. A small branch it might be of
rotten wood, or it might be broken by force
came heavily down in the nearest part of the
forest; Margaret ran, swift as Camilla, down
to the window, and rapped at it with a