After a little, I lifted up my head and rose
from the cold earth. I stepped out of the
dark shadow into the light of the level sun,
and then I knew how near my husband
stood!

What could I do? I did not dare look up.
I watched how, as he stood, his shadow
reached just to the edge of the little grave.
I had not long to doubt, or watch. Our little
girl was in his arms, he put her down very
gently! "Ask mamma to speak to poor
papa?" he said. Then I looked up; my sad
eyes were gladdened by his old dear smile; I
cried out that I could not bear it, and I
felt myself clasped fast in his arms.

And was this how we met? Yes! it was
more than I could bear. I was weighed upon,
burdened, bowed down, and humbled to the
dust.

And Harold—it was long before I could
look up at his dear face—and then I saw it
changed. On the white brow were scars,
thank God, none so ghastly as those of my
dream; and the black hair was thinner, and
its blackness dimmed. Round his eyes—but
it was not at first I could meet them—were
lines of care. All this was my work and
not time's, and he took me at once into his
arms, bent down over me, pitied me for my
distress, mourned over my frail looks, whispered
kind words of hope and joy, and—but
he was good. O Harold! Harold! and I
thought you could be stern, and cold, and
unforgiving to your poor sinful wife!

And was my future to be saddened by nothing
but my own heart's remembrance of its
sin? Was this great love of my husband's
mine yet? Was there no atonement to be
made, no forgiveness to be painfully won, ere
it could return to me?

It was this that humbled and softened me,
more than all; the mercy shown me was so
infinite.

I soon learnt—though I asked nothing, being
so satisfied with what I knew—why I had
waited in vain so many days for the tidings
that did not come.

Harold had risen too hastily from a bed of
convalescence to pay that visit to his dying
little girl, to shed those tears over his dead
boy; he had been fettered by a promise not
to speak to me, told that I still thought him
dead, and warned that any sudden shock of
surprise, might make me a mad-woman, or
an idiot for life. But he had had too great a
struggle with himself to restrain the impulse
to rush to me, and take me in his arms when
he saw me kneeling, and so wan and ghastly
by the pale light of the moon. The excitement
and fatigue had been too much for
him, Doctor Ryton had hurried him away
and had kept him a prisoner till the day we
met.

I do not think there was no shadow over
my husband's love for me then; but his
tenderness was greater than ever, and the
shadow has passed quite away now.

That evening in the holy church-yard,
kneeling by our boy's grave, we celebrated a
second marriage—a second marriage, more
sacred, more spiritual, and more happy than
the first. I had found my rightful place then,
at my husband's feet. Was he not most
nobly and grandly good? I had learnt
to reverence him, and so found rest on
earth.

My happiness was ever sobered by memory
of the past, and chastened by the looking
forward to a future, to which the angel-hand
of our dead boy pointed us: but I was O,
how happy!

In all this I have expressed but little of
my gratitude. My history shows what
boundless mercy I had to be grateful for—
it is my life that must tell if I am grateful.

You know why I have written this for you.
God bless you, I can say no more, no better!
You saw how I shrank from your innocently-put
questions about my early married life;
but I told you they should be answered, and
they are.

It is very many years since I had the foregoing
narrative from the writer:

Beating heart and burning brow,
They lie very quiet now.

The husband and wife are dead. I need
not write this woman's eulogistic epitaph,
for "her works live after her:" her memory
is held sacred in many a home. I
should like stern lips to quiver, and proud
eyes to fill with tears reading her words: it
can do no harm, and may do good—so here is
that poor Wife's Story.

CHIP.
WHAT SHALL A RAILWAY-CLERK HAVE FOR
DINNER?

IT is an admitted fact that the stomach,
—or, as Rabelais calls it, the great gaster,—
is an unruly but invariable companion of all
branches of human nature. Railway-clerks
are branches of human nature, and are just
as much favoured by this raging organ
as lords who legislate about Sunday beer,
and dine at clubs on that day if they
please.

The railway-clerk is sufficiently well paid
to be able to obtain a dinner—at least, if
he avoid Epsom races, eschew irregular
companions, and look at her Majesty's effigy
steadily in the face before he throws
away that precious picture wantonly. Yet
some railways give their half-hour for the
digestion or indigestion of a bad dinner in
the middle of the day; others—the great
Ichthyosaurio-Megatherian line, for instance
—delay the dinner-hour till five o'clock;
after which our railway-clerk (especially if