"But I tell you I do please to cut 'em off; so there's an end of that!" said she, as the severed ringlets fell in a shining heap on the kitchen floor. "And do, for creation's sake, stop talking about 'dead folks;' and now eat your breakfast, if you want it. I forgot you had n't had any. There's some the children's left; if you're hungry, it will go down; and if you ain't, you can go without."

Poor Allie! the daintiest morsel would n't have "gone down." Her eyes filled with tears that would n't be forced back, and she sobbed out, "I must cry, if you beat me for it; my heart pains me so bad."

'H-i-t-y T-i-t-y! What's all this?" said a broadfaced, rosy milkman, as he set his shining can down on the kitchen table. "What's all this, Miss Fetherbee ? I'd as lief eat pins and needles as hear a child cry. Who is she?" pointing at Allie, "and what's the matter of her?"

"Why, the long and the short of it is, she's a poor pauper that we've taken in out of charity, and she's crying at her good luck,-that's all," said the lady, with a vexed toss of her head. "That's the way benevolence is always rewarded. Nothing on earth to do here, but tend the baby, and amuse the children, and run to the door, and wash the dishes, and dust the furniture, and tidy the kitchen, and go of a few errands. Ungrateful little baggage!"

Jemmy's heart was as big as his farm, and that covered considerable ground. Glancing, pitifully at the little weeper, he said, skilfully, "That child's going to be sick, Miss Fetherbee, and then what are you going to do with Besides, she's too young to be of much use to you. You'd better let me take her."

her?

"Well, I should n't wonder if you was half right,"

said the frightened woman. "She's been trouble enough already. I'll give her a 'quit-claim.""

"Will you go with me, little maid?" said Jemmy, with a bright, good-natured smile.

66

"If you please," said Allie, laying her little hand confidingly in his rough palm.

"Sit up closer," said Jemmy, as he put one arm round her to steady her fragile figure as they rattled over the stony pavements. "We shall soon be out of this smoky old city. Consarn it! I always feel as if I was poisoned every time I come into town. And then we'll see what sweet hay-fields, and new milk, and clover blossoms, and kind hearts will do for you, you poor little plucked chicken! Where did you come from when you came to live with that old Jezebel?”

"From my mother's grave!" said Allie.

"Poor thing! poor thing!" said Jemmy, wiping away a tear with his coat-sleeve. "Well, never mind. I wish I hadn't asked you. I'm always running my head ag'in a beam. Do you like to feed chickens, hey? Did you ever milk a cow, or ride on top of a hay-cart, or go a-berrying? Do you love bouncing red apples, and peaches as big as your fist? It shall go hard if you don't have 'em all. What's come of your hair, child? Have you had your head shaved?"

"Mrs. Fetherbee cut it off," said Allie.

The old vixen! I wish I'd come in a little quicker. Was it your curls them young 'uns was playing with? Well, never mind," said he, looking admiringly at the sweet face before him, "you don't need 'em; and they might get you to looking in the glass oftener than was good for you.

Well, here we are, I declare; and there stands my old woman in the door-way, shading her eyes from the I guess she wonders where I raised you!

sun.

"Look here, Betsey; do you see this child? The earth is fresh on her mother's grave! She has neither kith nor kin. I have brought her from that old skinflint of a Fetherbee's, and here she is. If you like her, it's well and good; and if you don't, she'll stay here just the same. But I know you will!" said he, coaxingly, as he passed his brawny arm round her capacious waist. "And now get her something that will bring the color to her cheeks; for, mind you, I'll have no white slaves on my farm!"

How sweetly Allie's little, tired limbs rested in the fragrant lavendered sheets! A tear lingered on her cheek, but its birth was not of sorrow. Jemmy pointed it out to his wife, as they stood looking at her before retiring to rest.

"Never forget it, Betsey!" said he. "Harsh words ain't for the motherless. May God forget me, if she

ever hears one from my lips!"-FANNY FERN.

AVE MARIA.

A BRETON LEGEND.

N the ages of faith, before the day

IN

When men were too proud to weep or pray,

There stood in a red-roofed Breton town

Snugly nestled 'twixt sea and down,
A chapel for simple souls to meet,
Nightly, and sing with voices sweet,

Ave Maria!

There was an idiot, palsied, bleared,
With unkempt locks and a matted beard,
Hunched from the cradle, vacant-eyed,
And whose head kept rolling from side to side;
Yet who, when the sunset glow grew dim,
Joined with the rest in the twilight hymn,
Ave Maria!

But when they up-got and wended home,
Those up the hillside, these to the foam,
He hobbled along in the narrowing dusk,
Like a thing that is only hull and husk ;
On as he hobbled, chanting still,
Now to himself, now loud and shrill,

Ave Maria!

Others might plough, and reap, and sow,
Delve in the sunshine, spin in snow,

Make sweet love in a shelter sweet,

Or trundle their dead in a winding-sheet;

But he, through rapture, and pain, and wrong, Kept singing his one monotonous song,

Ave Maria!

When thunder growled from the ravelled wrack, And ocean to welkin bellowed back,

And the lightning sprang from its cloudy sheath And tore through the forest with jagged teeth, Then leaped and laughed o'er the havoc wreaked, The idiot clapped with his hands, and shrieked, Ave Maria!

Children mocked, and mimicked his feet,
As he slouched or sidled along the street;
Maidens shrank as he passed them by,
An weary mothers eschewed his eye;

And half in pity, half scorn, the folk
Christened him, from the words he spoke,

Ave Maria!

One
year,
when the harvest feasts were done,
And the mending of tattered nets begun,
And the kittiwake's scream took a weirder key
From the wailing wind, and the moaning sea,
He was found, at morn, on the fresh-strewn snow,
Frozen, and faint, and crooning low,

Ave Maria!

They stirred up the ashes between the dogs,
And warmed his limbs by the blazing logs,
Chafed his puckered and bloodless skin,
And strove to quiet his chattering chin;
But, ebbing with unreturning tide,
He kept on murmuring till he died,

Idiot, soulless, brute from birth,

Ave Maria!

He could not be buried in sacred earth;
So they laid him afar, apart, alone,
Without or a cross, or turf, or stone,
Senseless clay unto senseless clay,
To which none ever came nigh to say,

Ave Maria!

Hunchbacked, gibbering, blear-eyed, halt,
From forehead to footstep one foul fault,
Crazy, contorted, mindless-born,
The gentle's pity, the cruel's scorn,
Who shall bar you the gates of day,

So

you

have simple faith to say,

Ave Maria!

ALFRED AUSTIN.