Rônin was hateful to him, and he would serve no other master than the Prince of Chôshiu; what more fitting place could he find in which to put an end to his life than the graveyard of these braves? This happened at about two hundred yards' distance from my house, and when I saw the spot an hour or two later, the ground was all bespattered with blood and disturbed by the death-struggles of the man.

HERE had been a funeral from a little, old, deep-windowed house in the chief street of Dingwall, Ross-shire. An old maid's funeral, attended only by a grave, decorous " writer," two young men, strangers in the place, and a girl, little Mary Dallas, who had no more right to that name than she had to anything else in this wide world of ours. A chance child," with a black veil over all her history previous to the day when the "writer," Duncan Gair, put her, a two-year-old baby, into the charge of worthy Miss Vass, with such sum of money as paid a little more than her expenses, but was not to be mentioned beside the value of the sterling godly up-bringing that she received.

66

Miss Vass had been a scrupulous and a proud woman, with the pride of a race of decent farmers; and she had taken two days of consideration before she had written her consent to Mr. Gair's letter, inquiring whether she would undertake the control of the worse than orphan baby. The payment for so pleasant and womanly a duty

was a sore temptation to her pinched table and thinning wardrobe, and her yearning clinging to the town and home of her birth. But, welcome as the money might be, Elspeth Vass was not the woman to do for its sake what she would not have done without it. She had referred to many good books and to sundry portions of Scripture, and had wrestled long in prayer. Elspeth was not one to display her mental processes, except as they involuntarily showed in the few dry sentences of her tardy reply :

"That, seeing what was done could not be undone, and that the Lord had expressly declared that he himself would not hold a child responsible for its parents' evil ways, unless it followed in the same, she did not see that it would be inconsistent with her duty as a Christian woman to undertake to do her best to direct the bairn to better paths."

She had added, "though it was overlike to be ill guided by its hereditary nature, if there was any truth in birth or breed," but under the double reflection that Ezekiel says nothing on that point, and that it was a queerlike thing for a single woman to write to a bachelor, she had drawn her pen through those lines, and fair-copied the letter without them.

It was no fairy child, of high-born grace and lustrous beauty, that Elspeth Vass took from the arms of Mr. Gair's old housekeeper. Just a thin-faced child, with gray eyes and light brown hair, coarsely dressed in a thick woolsey, with no mother's pride wrought into braiding or frilling.

"I didna think I could tak sae kindly to ony wean in

my auld age," said the Lowland housekeeper. "It's no in me to be unkind to a bairn, God forbid! but I've just passed them by like. An' she's no bonny, and she's backward wi' her tongue. Master says that that failin' will be worth a tocher to her if she keeps it when she's grown. It's the way men talk, Miss Vass, wantin' to have all the crackin' to theirselves, and us to mix the toddy to help them on. But if mony a ane canna help frae lovin' an auld dumb dog, that was never a beauty at his best, just because he loves them, what for am I a fule to be taken wi' a wean that tuk to me? She has a kind o' way as if she was thankful for little things that maist bairns take as their right. Ye'll hae an easy handfu' o' her, Miss Vass."

Miss Vass was rather doubtful. She could not forget the child's parentage; and, being accustomed to walk safe paths of antecedent and precedent, she was not sanguine enough to hope that she might have come across that exception which proves the rule. But with all her rigid strictness, she was not a prejudiced woman; and when the little girl showed herself gentle and docile, her kind old heart opened readily to her, though her strong principle never neglected to apply the wholesome discipline which her womanly consciousness taught her was most likely to check any dangerous tendencies in this hopeful shoot of a tainted tree. Mary was brought up in habits of punctuality and unremitting industry, of selfdenial and self-control. Miss Vass watched carefully over the subtle moral influences of conversation and general reading, even surrendering her national laxity of judgment upon Mary Queen of Scots; and to satisfy

the girlish yearning for a heroine of beauty, love, and pathos, supplied her place with the image and story of sweet, pure Magdalen of France.

And so, for full fourteen years, the young girl lived with the old woman in the little old-fashioned house, the only home they had either of them ever known. And truly happy had those fourteen years, been, albeit their quiet calendar of steady plodding in the common dayschool, little household duty, and diligent evening needlework had been enlivened by no red-letter days more startling than a drive to Strathpeffer, a tea-drinking at the manse, or a day's trip to Inverness.

Mary had grown up a healthy-looking, well-mannered girl, useful about the house, and clever at her needle, but with no more prettiness than good habits, good temper, and superfine neatness are sure to produce. As was only natural, Miss Vass had occasionally certain private cogitations. Mr. Gair had said not a word about her ward's parents, beyond the simple fact that they and their child were no credit to each other. She did not. know which of them supplied the funds the lawyer doled out. She could not form the slightest idea of their respective positions in life, nor whether Mary was far from the scene of her birth, or unsuspiciously near it. Like the wise woman that she was, she reflected that if she could not repress these wandering wonderments, much less could the child, so much more immediately interested. Therefore she resolved that no unwholesome mysteries should surround the secret, like ghouls about a corpse. There it was, a sad and serious truth, to be. recognized, and solemnly covered up, without prurient