For He who hushed the waves of old,
And walked the foam-white lee
To where the lonely fishing bark
Lay tossing on the sea,
At the wild cry of man's despair,
Or woman's wilder wail,
Shall never more with mortal feet
Come walking through the gale.—
Yet, angels waited round that wreck,
And God, unseen, was on the deck!

NORTH AND SOUTH.

BY THE AUTHOR OF MARY BARTON.

CHAPTER THE THIRTY-FIRST.

THE chill, shivery October morning came;
not the October morning of the country, with
soft, silvery mists, clearing off before the
sunbeams that bring out all the gorgeous beauty of
colouring, but the October morning of Milton,
whose silver mists were heavy fogs, and
where the sun could only show long dusky
streets when he did break through and shine.
Margaret went languidly about, assisting
Dixon in her task of arranging the house.
Her eyes were continually blinded by tears,
but she had no time to give way to regular
crying. The father and brother depended
upon her; while they were giving way
to grief, she must be working, planning,
considering. Even the necessary arrangements
for the funeral seemed to devolve
upon her.

When the fire was bright and crackling—
when everything was ready for breakfast,
and the tea-kettle was singing away, Margaret
gave a last look round the room before
going to summon Mr. Hale and Frederick.
She wanted everything to look as
cheerful as possible; and yet, when it did so, the
contrast between it and her own thoughts
forced her into sudden weeping. She was
kneeling by the sofa, hiding her face in the
cushions that no one might hear her cry,
when she was touched on the shoulder by
Dixon.

"Come, Miss Hale—come, my dear! You
must not give way, or where shall we all be!
There is not another person in the house fit to
give a direction of any kind, and there is so
much to be done. There's who's to manage
the funeral; and who's to come to it; and
where it's to be; and all to be settled: and
master Frederick's like one crazed with crying,
and master never was a good one for
settling; and, poor gentleman, he goes about
now as if he was lost. It's bad enough, my
dear, I know; but death comes to us all;
and you're well off never to have lost any
friend till now."

Perhaps so. But this seemed a loss by itself;
not to bear comparison with any other event in
the world. .Margaret did not take any comfort
from what Dixon said, but the unusual
tenderness of the prim old servant's manner
touched her to the heart; and, more from a
desire to show her gratitude for this than for
any other reason, she roused herself up, and
smiled in answer to Dixon's anxious look
at her; and went to tell her father and brother
that breakfast was ready.

Mr. Hale came—as if in a dream, or rather
with the unconscious motion of a
sleepwalker, whose eyes and mind perceive other
things than what are present. Frederick
came briskly in with a forced cheerfulness,
grasped her hand, looked into her eyes, and
burst into tears. She had to try and think of
little nothings to say all breakfast-time, in
order to prevent the recurrence of her
companions' thoughts too strongly to the last
meal they had taken together, when there
had been a continual strained listening for
some sound or signal from the sick-room.

After breakfast, she resolved to speak to
her father about the funeral. He shook
his head, and assented to all she proposed,
though many of her propositions absolutely
contradicted one another. Margaret
gained no real decision from him; and was
leaving the room languidly, to have a consultation
with Dixon, when Mr. Hale
motioned her back to his side.

"Ask Mr. Bell," said he in a hollow voice.

"Mr. Bell!" said she, a little surprised.
"Mr. Bell of Oxford?"

"Mr. Bell," he repeated. "Yes. He was
my groom's-man."

Margaret understood the association.

"I will write to-day," said she. He sank
again into listlessness. All morning she
toiled on, longing for rest, but in a continual
whirl of melancholy business.

Towards evening, Dixon said to her:

"I've done it, miss. I was really afraid
for master, that he'd have a stroke with
grief. He has been all this day with poor
missus; and when I've listened at the door,
I've heard him talking to her, and talking to
her, as if she was alive. When I went in he
would be quite quiet, but all in a maze like.
So I thought to myself, he ought to be
roused; and if it gives him a shock at first,
it will, maybe, be the better afterwards. So
I've been and told him that I don't think
it's safe for Master Frederick to be here. And
I don't. It was only on Tuesday, when I was
out, that I met a Southampton man—the
first I've seen since I came to Milton; they
don't make their way much up here, I think.
Well, it was young Leonards, old Leonards
the draper's son, as great a scamp as ever
lived—who plagued his father almost to death,
and then ran off to sea. I never could abide
him. He was in the Orion at the same time
as Master Frederick, I know; though I don't
recollect if he was there at the mutiny."

"Did he know you?"said Margaret,
eagerly.

"Why, that's the worst of it. I don't
believe he would have known me but for my
being such a fool as to call out his name. He
were a Southampton man, in a strange place,