awaking from his siesta he had called his wife, | pany it, that you have of your own accord and somewhat alarmed by her absence, had de- wrecked forever the happiness, and embittered scended the stairs alone, and attracted by the the whole existence of the man you profess to sound of voices, of which, with the acuteness of love. But it is not for my happiness but your hearing peculiar to the blind, he at once recog- own that I now speak. I think you over-estinized his wife's as one, had felt his way through mate your own courage, Ninette; for you cannot the open door of the room, from which the sounds but see that, even granting your view of duty to had proceeded. Unheard during this excited be the right one (which, remember, I deny), yet, conversation, he had entered and partially over- however easy of performance that duty may have heard the latter part of it, as he stood there, with been to you, so long as you believed the dreams his head painfully stretched forward, and an ex-of your youth and the hopes of life to have perpression of impotent alarm on his face, such as Iished in an early grave, it will henceforth be renhave heard described to be the look upon a dered far, far otherwise by the thought that these horse's face in the vicinity of some tiger's lair, have once more bloomed for you, and that you when the wild beast is preparing to spring down. have yourself rejected them forever. Ninette, "I congratulate you, madam," said Dessert, you must see that the choice is between the hapwith a glance of scornful disappointment at Ni-piness or the despair of a lifetime; nor that for nette, who was sobbing convulsively upon the old yourself alone, but for both of us. For I will man s breast; "and you, sir," he added, turning not hide from you how much the happiness of to Montmar," I leave with the best possible wish- my whole life, perhaps that life itself, must dees, to your wife's affection and your own thoughts. pend on your decision. If you, indeed, choose They will both avenge me yet," he muttered, as to be mine, and to trust in me, no power on earth he strode out of the room. shall keep me from you; if you decide otherwise, one word from you will be sufficient to banish me forever.

CHAPTER XII.

Ir was in the dusk, towards the evening of that eventful day, Ninette was still sitting alone and weeping bitterly, when she was aroused by a little knock at the room door.

"May I come in?" said a low voice, and looking up she saw her husband beside her. He had till now judiciously left her to herself. He felt that for the present all words would be painful. "I have brought you a letter, dear," he said, placing a note upon the table.

"A letter!" she repeated.

"Yes," he said, "the servant who brought it up stairs, didn't like to disturb you. I heard him inquiring after you, and asked him what he wanted, when he gave me the note. I am very sorry this has happened. But pray try to think, as I shall myself, that this letter has never passed through my hands, and that I am ignorant of its ever having been sent."

He was leaving the room softly as he spoke. "Stay!" she cried.

While I write there are horses waiting in the stable, and before moonrise we might be far from hence. I await your answer with a beating heart.

My poor child," said her husband, tenderly laying his hand upon her shoulder, "I feel for you, deeply."

"This letter," she said, after an effort, but still speaking with great difficulty," contains nothing but a request which I cannot comply with. I will not read it to you," she added, " because— because-it would only give you unnecessary

She could not continue.

"You will answer it, my child?" he said.

"Yes," she replied. There was a scrap of paper lying on the dressing-table. She took it up and wrote with the little pencil which was attached to her watch-chain two words-"Farewell, Hubert!"

That was all she dared trust herself to write. "You will send it for me?" she said, folding up, "Stay," she added, opening the little note again, "I forgot to sign it; and she wrote her name at the bottom-" Ninette Montmar."

it

How much was there in that subscription of her husband's name?

"I have been hasty. I have hurt you, and I did not willingly do so. Forgive me; I did not mean this. But O, Ninette, how could I lose Five minutes after the letter had gone, she you calmly, and forever? You, too, by this will heard the sound of horses' hoofs in the court behave had time to reflect upon that irrevocable low. It was Hubert Dessert. She recognized doom to which this morning you were willing to his slight spare figure beneath the horseman's sentence both yourself and me. I know that the cloak, as he passed under the dark archway.— step which I still urge upon you must look a She strained her aching forehead against the grave one to a woman, but it is really far less so window-pane, and looked vaguely out upon the than it appears. The words with which this night. Dessert did not once look up. She soon morning you strove to fortify your résolution lost sight of him in the darkness, and the sound have indeed a sound of authority, but it is, be- of his horse's hoofs grew momentarily more and lieve me, a false one; and, alas! my poor friend, more faint along the distant bridge. She felt what compensation is there in these for a break-that henceforth there was the whole wide world ing heart and the knowledge which will accom-between them.

CHAPTER XIII.

NINETTE did not die, as she might have done, of a sudden paroxysm of consumption, nor did she waste away with a broken heart towards an early grave, nor even did she fall into a violent fever or delirium. A severe headache, which lasted two or three days, was the only apparent effect which followed the event which I have described. Yet she did suffer, nor that lightly nor briefly.

led skeleton of the little bed in which she had slept as a child; or stood shivering, with the grass growing high above her feet, beneath the mildewed roof of the ruined summer-house, where she had so often sat as a girl with Hubert Dessert. Indeed, she could only dimly realize that fact-that she, the solitary, pale-faced, faded, withered thing she knew herself to be, had ever really sat in that same weed-worn, dismal garden, under that same worm-eaten roof, a beauNeither did Montmar die forthwith, as by all tiful and joyous girl, conscious in and confident laws of romance he ought to have done, to make of her own youth, with her young lover's breath room for his wife's marriage with her former lov-upon her warm cheek, and his arm about her er, and so bring about a happy ending of things, happy waist, wondering what golden years the with "virtue rewarded," etc. The old man did, future had in store for her. Alas! as she wanindeed, feel deeply for the pain which he had in- dered from place to place with a restless step, voluntarily caused; and he deplored it, not with- and her short, feeble cough sounding painfully out bitter self-accusation. Divorce, is, as is well distinct through the silent rooms, pausing here known, a most difficult, next to impossible thing and there to gaze at some old remembered object to obtain in Roman Catholic countries, but Ni. of furniture, and then with a little shiver drawnette's husband offered to make every effort in ing her shawl more closely about her thin and his power to obtain her release from a tie which drooping shoulders, she looked far more like he said she had contracted under a false impres-some ghost come back from restless wanderings sion of her freedom. She would not, however, over the world, to visit that old, forsaken house, hear of this; and they continued to live togeth- than a respectable matron in the first year er for many years, much in the same way as be- of her widowhood for a tiresome old husfore; with this difference only perhaps, that Montmar, as he grew older and weaker, became very querulous, and rather selfish, as old men sometimes are. Poor Ninette, however, bore everything with quiet cheerfulness, and a hasty or unkind word never passed her lips.

Alas! whatever he might be, and whether cross or kind, he was all she had to love and care for. They had no children. She never heard of Hubert Dessert, and was even ignorant whether he were in France or not.

I dare say he has long since married another," she used to think, "and in some happier affection has by this time forgotten the pain and disappointment of his first love. I suppose we shall never meet again."

At last, after many years, Colonel Montmar died, and Ninette was now free; but, alas! what a change had those years worked upon that once fair face of Madam Montmar! She was now a pale, thin, and shrunken woman, with a constant stoop, and that frequent and painful cough which marks consumption in its last stage. There was scarcely a trace of her former beauty left, and into that soft, brown, lustrous hair of hers, years of anxious thought and constant suffering had woven threads of premature silver.

After an absence of many, many years, Madame Montmar now returned to the long-deserted home of her early childhood.

The old faces she had known in youth no longer greeted her to her native village. There were few there who recognized in the faded form and hollow check of the widow, the once blooming girl, whose beauty, many years ago had been the boast of their neighborhood, and there were fewer still who cared to remember these things.

band.

It was late one summer evening that Ninette, who had lingered there longer than was her wont, was still sitting in the little arbor, which she had caused to be restored; for she had been dreaming of past days, and the sun had set unnoticed by her.

"Alas!" she cried, in the intensity of her reflections thinking aloud, "men are so different! I dare say he has never understood that sacrifice. Ah, me!" she added, "I dare say he has seldom thought of it."

The light leaves rustled round her as she spoke, and through the falling dews a soft voice, tremulous with deep emotion, murmured

Yes, O woman, too precious for this low life. The past has, indeed, been understood at last. Ninette! Ninette! will you refuse forgiveness to one who has waited long and wandered far to ask it-one who, in his deepest penitence, owns himself unworthy of a love he dares not claim, but which he yet he hopes to win back?"

It was Hubert's voice; and in a moment more he was kneeling at her side. She was not surprised or startled. It seemed to her so natural that he should have come back at last and found her there, in the old arbor, at sunset, just as he had left her.

"Alas! my poor Hubert," she said, sorrowfully, laying her hand gently on his head, and gazing down into his eyes-"you have, indeed, waited so long, that there is little left to ask for worth the having. This poor shrunken body, this faded face are but a poor reward for years of patient pain. Will they, alas! be any longer dear to you, Hubert?"

"More, O, immeasurably more,' he cried with passionate fervor, as he folded her to his heart, The poor woman, returning to her forsaken" than when, in this same spot, in boyhood, years home, found the garden choked with weeds, the ago, I first breathed to you, Ninette, of a love arbor broken, the house strange and desolate. It which time has since tried, and suffering, I hope, was with a sickening heart that she wandered exalted. O, I could not forget you; I have lived through the silent rooms, looked at the dismant-on for years in the hope of this hour. It has come

1

at last. My wife, my bride, look up! The long, long ordeal is over. It is no longer forbidden to be happy."

And Ninette was happy, indeed, as she felt the soft fold of that dear arm once more about her, as in youth; as her cheek, flushed with sweet and strange emotions long unfelt, and the proud consciousness that she was indeed still loved, and loved, perhaps, more deeply than of old. She did not attempt to restrain her happiness, but yielded quietly to the speechless and inexpressible joy of these sensations.

have just described; but in her last hours the arms she loved were about her, and when the long self-sacrifice of years was over, Death closed her eyes upon the bosom from which, in life, she had been an exile.

And Hubert? Well, I blush to own it, but the veracity of a historian compels me to admit that towards the close of his career he married another. He did not, indeed, marry for love; for he was of a nature that generally loves just once, and not again-a nature, indeed, of but little softness, and capable of thriving in barren "Yes," she said, after a long and delicious si- places. But when nearly fifty, he was still so lence, in which she seemed to have been drink- handsome, that a celebrated woman of his day ing in, as it were, the full and complete realiza- fell in love with him; and he married her for tion of the fact, "this is, indeed, happiness! the sake of position and fortune. He was often Alas! Hubert, I fear it comes too late." But he employed in an irregular diplomatic way, upon kissed away the fear; and to the old familiar special missions to foreign courts, by the Emper threshold of her girlhood's quiet home, Ninette or, with whom he always continued to be a favorand her lover wandered back along the summer ite; and I have myself seen him, when he was a grass, a pensive pair, too happy to speak much. very old man, covered with orders, and a great Behind them rose the warm, full moon, and be- bon-vivant. Such is life! Well, did I not say fore them love's own rosy planet lingered in the that this tale-in feeling, at least, if not in incidarkening west. dent-was of a kind very common in human life? I appeal to you, dear reader; and in the name of Hubert Dessert, I wish you a very good night.

Alas! poor Ninette had spoken truly: her happiness had come too late. She never lived to be Hubert's wife; and she died, indeed, not many days after the evening of that meeting which I

Swift, "It is the talent of human nature to run from one extreme to another," i. e. disposi tion, human nature is disposed.

This, we are told by Johnson, is an improper and mistaken use.

TALENTED.-J. R. G. does not appear to be without any ill talent towards the Church," i. e. aware that this word is, as Mr. Smart has observ-disposition, was not ill disposed. ed," a revived word." An instance of its use is introduced by Mr. Todd in his edition of Johnson, from Archbishop Abbott, who lived in the time of James I. I have heard it objected, that it is an abnormal formation, as we have not the verb "to talent." But the termination -ed is an adjective as well as a participial termination; that is, it may be added to a noun as well as to a verb. Two words now in common use are "moneyed" and "landed"-"the moneyed and landed interest." It is true we have the verb "to land," but not in the sense of the adjective. Various other such adjectives are common, e. g. "a crabbed fellow," "the bladed grass." "the lilied bank," "rubied nectar."

The Latin affectus, of Boethius, is by Chaucer
rendered talent. See the quotations from him in
Richardson.
Notes and Queries.

A STRANGE tale concerning the Knowledge and Devotion of Bees:

A certain woman having some stalls of Bees which yielded not unto her her desired profit, but did consume and die of the murrain, made her Chaucer, in his translation of Boethius, ap-moan to another woman more simple than herplies the substantive very differently from the self, who gave her counsel to get a Consecrated customary usage of more modern days. We ap- Host and put it among them. According to ply it to the talent delivered, the gift, the endow- whose advice she went to the priest to receive ment: Chaucer to the disposition of mind (man- the Host; which when she had done she kept it ifested by the different servants-the good and in her mouth, and being come home again, she wicked-to whom the talents were delivered). took it out and put it into one of her hives; In this he followed the example of the older whereupon the murrain ceased, and the honey French and Italian writers (see Cotgrave and abounded. The woman therefore lifting up the Florio). The etymologists seek for a different origin of the French aud Italian word (see Menage and Ducange; the latter withholds his assent), but their identity with our common word from the Latin talentum is obvious; and their application, "aliquantum deflexo sensu," as Skinner remarks, is without any difficulty.

Lord Clarendon writes: "The nation was

hive at the due time, to take out the honey, saw there (most strange to be seen) a Chapel built by the Bees, with an Altar in it, the walls adorned by marvellous skill of architecture, with windows conveniently set in their places; also a door and a steeple with bells. And the Host being laid upon the Altar, the Bees making a sweet noyse, flew round about it.-Notes and Queries.

THE ARCTIC SEARCH EXPEDITION.

THE expedition to the Arctic sea in search of Dr. Kane and his companions, sailed on its mission on May 31st, from the Brooklyn Navy Yard. It consists of but two vessels-a bark called the Release, and the Arctic, a propeller. The bark was towed by her steam consort down the bay, receiving hearty cheers from every vessel that was passed on the way out of the harbor. They anchored on Thursday evening near Sandy Hook, and did not put to sea until Saturday. Friday, it will be remembered, is an unauspicious day, in the estimation of sailors.

Thou art
And while

not mine-upon thy sweet lip lingers
Thy mother's smile-

I press thy soft and baby fingers
In mine the while-

Exactly two years previous to Thursday, Dr. Kane with a crew of sixteen men, sailed in the small bark Advance, in search of Sir John Franklin. His vessel was outfitted for a cruise of three years; and it was supposed that by means I deem the spirit of thy mother gazing

of hunting and fishing, the time might be length

In the deep eyes so trustfully upraising
Their light to mine,

ing,

To my soul's shrine.

A mother's care;

A mother's prayer.

Not mine, yet dear to me, fair, fragrant blossom
Of a fair tree;

ened a year or more. Since July, 1853-six They ask me, with their meek and soft beseechweeks after his departure-the adventurer has not been heard from. He is thought to have entered Smith's Sound, and passed through to seek They ask a mother's kind and patient teaching, for the supposed open sea, that lies beyond, where he imagined Franklin had gone. The winter following being one of great severity, the conjecture is that the Advance was frozen in so firmly that the summer did not free the bark from its prison of ice. It was the intention of Dr. Kane to leave a supply of provisions at Cape Alexander before entering the Sound; and if he has since been released from the icebergs, and has escaped the fate of the voyager whom he sought to rescue, he is probably at this place at the pres

ent.

The commander of the present expedition is Capt. Hartstein, and his first officer Lieut. Simms. Every precaution had been exhausted in equipping the vessels. A prohibitory Liquor Law is kept in force on shipboard, although a store of spirits has been laid in to provide against emergencies. The experience of former navigators within the Arctic circle has been carefully collected, and the Secretary of the British Admiralty has furnished to Capt. Hartstein all the recent maps and charts of the North Polar Sea. The supplies of provisions have been personally superintended by Henry Grinnell, Esq.; who has taken great care to furnish a stock of preserved meats, in addition to the usual stores of exploring ships. The expedition goes out lacking nothing with which it could be supplied. If there is needed for any ship sailing on a mission of mercy, the sympathy and God-speed of those who occasion her departure, it is surely a vessel bound for a region where summer itself is a perpetual winter, and which is infested with perils more than any other spot on the surface of the sca. It is therefore hoped that not a few prayers have already reached the ear of him who ruleth the waters, and holds the winds in his hands, that these vessels-which though stoutly built and skilfully manned, are yet, amid the icebergs and tempests of the North Pole, as an egg-shell in the hand, may be divinely guided and protected on their voyage, and may rescue the noble mariner whom the fate of Franklin may not yet have overtaken.-N. Y. Observer.

Crushed to the earth in life's first, glorious sum-
Thou 'rt dear to me.

mer,

Child of the lost, the buried, and the sainted,
I call thee mine,

Till fairer still, with tears and sin untainted,
Her home be thine.

A BIRD AT SUNSET.
Wild bird, that wingest wide the glimmering

moors,

Whither, by belts of yellowing woods away? What pausing sunset thy wild heart allures Deep into dying day?

Would that my heart, on wings like thine, could pass

Where stars their light in rosy regions lose-
A happy shadow o'er the warm brown grass,
Falling with falling dews!

Hast thou, like me, some true-love of thine own
In fairy lands beyond the utmost seas,
Who there, unsolaced, yearns for thee alone,
And sings to silent trees?

O tell that wood bird that the summer grieves,

And the suns darken and the days grow cold; And, tell her, love will fade with fading leaves, And cease in common mould.

Fly from the winter of the world to her!

Fly, happy bird! I follow in thy flight,
Till thou art lost o'er yonder fringe of fir
In baths of crimson light.

My love is dying far away from me.

She sits and saddens in the fading west.
For her I mourn all day, and pine to be
At night upon her breast.

Poems by Owen Meredith.

From Bentley's Miscellany.

THE KAFFIR COMMANDO.

BY A SIXTEEN YEARS' RESIDENT AT THE
CAPE.

There lay the three horses, and in one corner the stallion, all shot with arrows, which doubtlessly had been poisoned.

The Boor swore a fearful oath.

"Call the people, Claas!" he growled in a ON a sultry October morning, in 1851, a hoarse and trembling voice to the Hottentothungry-looking Hottentot was galloping on a "all the people!" And away Class ran to the large-headed, long-haired African horse to- Kraal, where the dwellings of the black serwards an isolated farm-house, whose gray vants were built, like huge beehives. buildings could be scarcely distinguished in In the mean while, the Boor's wife, a most color from the parched earth. He sprung cleanly-dressed, but extremely corpulent from the sheepskin which had served him as a Dutchwoman, had come to the door, and with saddle, threw the bridle over the head of the folded hands looked despairingly at her huspony, and disappeared in one of the buildings, band, who was walking with long steps and which, from its size, seemed to be the dwelling- angry gestures up and down the stoop. house. The horse remained patiently stand- "The vagabonds!" the Boor broke out; ing, in expectation of its rider's return. Amy stallion and three riding horses, and few huge, bastard tiger dogs, covered with twenty-four of my best oxen! By Heaven, broad scars, which they had obtained in their I'll make an example of them!" And he fights with the monkeys, rose lazily from the stamped his heavy gun on the ground. house-door, sniffed the horse's legs, and then "Piet," his wife at length stopped him— lay down to sleep again. A tame ostrich pa-"Piet, may not Claas have made a mistake? raded up and down with long steps, pulled the The oxen were feeding yesterday in the oppohorse's tail sportively and then sailed merrily site direction, on the Blaamd Kopies (Blue away. All then was silent and solitary as be- Hills.") fore; the wind whistled through the fan-shaped leaves of a few stunted syringas (Melia azedarach) which formed the entire verdure of the "place," while the horse hung its head lazily and sleepily. The Hottentot seemed to be is following them." making a report which did not please the "Good Heaven!" the wife exclaimed, Baas, for between the sentences resounded alarmed for her only son, "Jan will meet with the Boor's angry voice: "The villains!-but an accident. Oh, Piet, Piet, the Bushmen are in God's name, that is impossible!-Tanzter now so kwaad (daring.) I dreamed last night and Geschwind-the scoundrels!" and simi- of a great gray spider." lar exclamations, at which the pony pointed its ears, and sensibly looked at the little open window, where the heads of the two men were visible.

Suddenly the door was torn open, and out walked a tall, stately Boor, with angry gestures: he was followed by the Hottentot. The Boor was dressed, after the fashion of the Dutch African colonists, in a brown sombrero adorned with ostrich feathers, a linen jacket, leathern breeches, and long-haired moccasons, and carried in his large brown hand a Pavian's poot, about six feet long. Anger had converted his healthy, rosy complexion into a pale bluish red.

"Bring the horses, Claas, all three, and the stallion too," he shouted to the Hottentot. And away Claas bolted to the stable, but turned back at the doorway in evident alarm; then turned again, and gazed with outstretched neck into the stable.

"Oh, Baas, my dear Baas, all four horses are dead!"

"Dead!" the Boor repeated, in a tone more incredulous than alarmed. "The fellow is mall (mad)-my thorough-bred stallion, worth 2000 dollars! Ho, ho Claas is mall," but for all that hurrying to the stable.

"Quite right; the spoor comes from there. It is quite fresh; the oxen were driven off this very night. Geschwind and Tanzter have been tracked there. Jan is on the spoor, and

"Nonsense," the Boor growled, and shrugged his shoulders contemptuously.

At this moment a strange band, preceded by Claas as a marshal, came up from the Kraal; little black Bushmen, yellow, iean Hottentots, and brown, fat Betchuanas, men, women, and children, followed by a couple of dozen of half-starved dogs. The adults had a skin or old rag hanging over their shoulders; the children were perfectly naked. This dark group drew up silently before the stoop.

The Boor had already examined the band with a searching glance, and missed his two shepherds, on whom the suspicion lay of having stolen the oxen and killed the horses, for such marauders always destroy the horses to prevent immediate pursuit.

"And where are Geschwind and Tanzter ?" he exclaimed, furiously.

No one replied. Not a face moved a muscle, but the little, black, pig's eyes sparkled with meaning intelligence.

"Where are Geschwind and Tanzter?" the Boor repeated, now scarcely able to bridle his fury; you villains, you all know." "We don't know, Baas-we haven't seen them," was the reply at length. "You scoundrelly pack!" the Boor yelled