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Arthur, I've bad news for you. I'm dreadfully sorry. I did what I could. I couldn't stop her.

I knew nothing she broke away from me she" At this moment Lady Betty's figure came into dim view at the bottom of the path, and was joined by another. Arthur, looking that way, saw them, and left his cousin without a word, running his best. Mabel sat down by the wayside, and pondered, I suppose, on human fortunes.

When Arthur reached the cove the boat was just floated, and Herbert Mardon, jumping in, sat down to the oars. He did not row, however, and the boat drifted slowly seaward.

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Mardon laughed. "My dear man, your idea is primitive,— but I remember I set you the example some weeks ago. Some other time I should be delighted; at present I'm afraid Lady Betty couldn't manage the boat alone. You must admit that there are occasions when one must postpone even the pleasure of your society. I'm afraid you're getting wet." Fairbrother stood in the sea, the water over his yellow boots, and lapping his neatly creased trousers. You cad!" he shouted. Lady Betty spoke to Mardon in a low voice, and Mardon said, "Very well." "Mr Fairbrother," he said, more seriously, "I'm doing you an injury, and you are right to be angry. Believe me, I honestly think it is the only thing to be done. If you like to follow me to France, and adopt the customs of the country, I'll meet you; though I think we should cut a ridiculous figure, and I'm sure you will admit that in calmer blood. But we can't brawl now. Goodnight!"

"Cad!" Fairbrother shouted

again, and Mardon's manner again changed to flippancy.

"Your vocabulary's limited," he said: "I have no desire to bandy Billingsgate with you. Confound it, man!" he said more warmly; "be a "be a gentleman. This lady has decided to marry me : it is for you to accept the fact without a fuss. Oh, look, my dear man, look at the blue sea and the sky with the stars beginning to shine, and these splendid old rocks! It's nearly twenty years since Betty and I first looked at them together. Isn't it a night for romance? Don't stand gibbering in the water: don't, for God's sake, don't turn it all into a farce! You would be quite in the picture if you shot me; but you've not got a pistol, and it's no use throwing your straw hat

at me. God be with you! Good-night!"

He bent to the oars and shot the boat seawards. Fairbrother stood helplessly a moment, and then he pulled himself together and took off his hat. "Good-bye, Betty!" he called. Mardon rested on the oars again and took off his hat with no more offence, and Lady Betty turned in the stern and waved her hand. "Good-bye, Arthur!" she called. "We could not be happy together. Forgive me. Nobody's to blame but I: your cousin did her best to stop me. Good-bye!"

Fairbrother stood silently, until a voice called his name, pleasantly and familiarly, on the path above him. Then he turned his back on the wild things in the boat, and walked up the path to his proper mate.

ON the day of Mrs Roden's death I think that most of us knew that a princess had fallen in Israel, and a great woman had gone to her last home. But I doubt whether any one of us had entirely gauged the enormous influence which she exercised in the parish. Exactly one week has elapsed since her funeral, and to-day we still find our village in the position of an infant state which, having prospered for years under what I may on the whole term a beneficent tyranny, is painfully awaking to the fact that it has suddenly become autonomous, and is expected to make its own way in the world.

We have got a parish council of a sort, but up to the present date, to borrow Job Billing's phraseology, "It ain't been of no count at all alongside of Missus Roden." Indeed nothing but the contempt that the good lady felt for the parish council as a modern institution prevented her from claiming the presidency thereof as a matter of right in default of assuming the dignity in person, she graciously delegated the office to a subordinate, her cowman. At least that is, I believe, the position which our chairman holds in the deceased lady's establishment. And she so far condescended to take a personal interest in the election as to drive some hundred electors by detachments to the poll.

"Now, there you are," she said, as she deposited each suc

cessive cargo, ' and you knows what you've got to do. In you goes and you plumps for Tummas, and if so be as Tummas don't come out top of the poll I shall know as you've voted wrong, and then!'

The aposiopesis might be taken to imply anything: the effect of it was that the redoubtable Tummas was returned at the head of the poll by an overwhelming majority; and on the strength of further dark hints thrown out by Mrs Roden was at the initiatory meeting of the council unanimously elected chairman. Having so far gained her object, Mrs Roden further trampled on the feelings of the council by letting it be known far and wide that, in her opinion at all events, "parish councils was nothing more nor less than nincompoops," and cautioned Tummas that if there were "any messing with the rates or "muddling with the charities," she would be under the necessity of looking out for a new cowman.

So it has come to pass that up to the present date the people's senate can hardly be said to have felt its legs, and has, under the able guidance of the chairman, refrained from taking any legislative action in the administration of parish matters. I cannot but regret that Tummas should have thought fit, on the very day of Mrs Roden's funeral, to celebrate his manumission by get