spot as the most necessary of the witnesses;
of Mrs. Hazeldean, who had come from Glenluce;
and of Sir Archie, who was no longer
forbid to show his face in England. And
never fear but our Honourable Madge was of
the group.

Lady Humphrey gave up her claim to the
estates of Glenluce, and returned them with
compunction to Sir Archie. And Lady
Humphrey declared Hester to have been innocent
of all knowledge of any private plans of hers,
whether at the period of the girl's residence at
Glenluce, before that period, or since.

"Send your daughter Mary to me," she said
to Sir Archie, when her mind began to wander,
and she took him for his father who was dead.
"I saw her in a pretty parlour, with a black
veil upon her head. She had a crucifix hanging
by her side. Send her to talk to me. And
hark ye! tell her to bring the crucifix!"

"You are worthy to be a Munro, my dear!"
said the Honourable Madge to Hester on the
eve of her wedding-day. "And I don't know
that I could say anything more, unless I said
'You are worthy to be a M'Naughten.' An
Honourable M'Naughten. And of course you
never can be a M'Naughten now, so there is no
use talking about that. But you are going to
be a Munro, and Munros don't grow under
every hedge, I can tell you."

Lady Helen was present at the marriage; an
unhoped for piece of condescension. The only
thing she deplored in the whole affair at the
last, was the fact that propriety would not
suffer Hester to make her own dress for the
occasion.

"Such a finish as she would have given to it,
my dear!" she said to Janet; to whom she had
long been reconciled.

So Hester was married to Sir Archie, and
they went bravely back to settle in their desolated
glens. The village was soon restored to more
than its former thriftiness. Cottages rose on
the hill sides, and farmhouses in the valleys.
Yellow thatches shone once more in the sun,
and pigeons cooed again about the chimneys.
A new castle was built, but its site was chosen
far from the old one. The charred walls that
recalled the dreadful past were cleared away,
and the grass grows soft and green above its
cellars and foundations. Only the ancient draw-
bridge and the moat remain to mark the spot
where the former castle stood.

Lady Helen never returned to the glens.
Her nerves had received a shock, she said,
which would oblige her to live in London for
the future. Not so Miss Madge, who
consented with much joy to take up her abode with
Hester.

Said Hester, speaking of the new castle to
Mrs. Hazeldean:

"The best thing about it, in my mind, is, that
it is nearer by half a mile, than the old one, to
you."

Her arms were round Mrs. Hazeldean's neck.
Sir Archie was standing by. It was the first
day of their habitation of the new home of the
Munros.

But Hester's grandson lives now in that
castle, with his grandchildren.

THE END.

LEAVES FROM THE MAHOGANY TREE.
(CONCLUSION.)

PASTRY AND AN ENTREMET OF GREAT MERIT.

PUDDING à la citizen's wife; pudding à la
Richelieu; Chancellor's pudding (this is a very
pretty mess); pudding à la Reine; creams
aux fraises and aux framboises; jellies, ever
shaking their transparent sides at other people's
jokes; ices, masses of frozen perfume and
nectared sweetness; we salute you, one and all.

We feel as we begin to write that sort of
gastronomic satisfaction with which Adam, if
an epicure either in posse or esse, must have
regarded the great procession of animals that
defiled past him through Eden, on the first great
christening day that ever was. There was the
buffalo, rejoicing in his juicy hump, the cut-and-
come-again of generations as yet unborn. There,
too, small, yet alert, was the proud humble
bee, conscious of the one sweet clear drop of
honey in his little pouch, stored up by him
for millions of delighted school boys. Blandly
smiling came the turtle, beating his breast,
like the marriage guest when he heard "the
loud bassoon," in prophetic agony at the
tortures his decendants were to suffer at the hands
of greedy men. The pig, a mere good-natured
bag with a nose, eyes, and the power of motion,
strode by heedless of the part he would have to
play, in many a revolving sausage machine. The
ox "bellowed" defiance of Englishmen as yet
invisible, while the savoury green bull-frog
croaked protests against ante-natal Gaul with
no knife and fork yet in him. The Michaelmas
goose must have waddled by a mere superfluity
on the earth, while the oyster floating on his
back calmly past the contemplative and unconscious
first man, must have turned on him the
pale and sickly eye of thoughtful regret. It was
to be centuries before the first painted savage
of Colchester, according to the late Mr. Robert
Brough, ate in solemn revenge the spiteful and
hostile fish that had nipped his incautious
finger, and, in so punishing his enemy, made
one of the great discoveries that ever heaped
blessings on humanity. It took man two
thousand years, only think of that (shudder
Pride, cower Ambition!) before man's imperfect
brain discovered the never-to-be-forgotten
SCOLLOP. Strengthened by that
discovery, Science then made giant strides, and
a Napoleon of cooking, about the year 14B.C.,
struck out the great thought of diffusing
oysters throughout the juicy crevices of beefsteak
pies. On the principle of the illogical but
kindly old lady who, when she was told of the
introduction of gas into London for the purpose
of street lighting, exclaimed sorrowfully, "What
will become of the poor whales," so we pity the