Raymond's Heroine

Only one dwelling continued to be inhabited A GABLE-ROOFED, lattice-windowed house, -a miserable ale-house, still retaining the sign small and antique, but not the less solid and of "The Black Man," which it had assumed in comfortable, flanked by a laborer's cottage on compliment to its original patrons. The landone side and by a range of diminutive outhouses lord was an old man and averse to moving; and on the other, with a tiny flower garden in front though of regular customers he had now few or and a dark green background of trees rising up none, a road ran by his door along which on behind-such was Black Moor Farm five-and-market-days a sufficient number of thirsty drovtwenty years ago.

ers journeyed to make it just worth his while to keep his house open.

A smiling place enough in itself, but unfortunate in the prospect it overlooked. For the gate The road in question skirted the northern at the end of the pretty flower garden opened and western sides of the moor, joining the Lonon a flat, dreary expanse of moorland, which only don road near the southwest corner, not far a scanty covering of grass and a few clumps of from the place where, in hideous blackness, furze bushes redeemed from utter sterility. This yawned the entrance of the disused coal-pit. As was the Black Moor, thus styled from that pecu- may be imagined, this spot in particular was, held liar darkness of soil which tells its tale so plainly in evil repute by the country folk of the neighto those who have traveled through the coal dis-borhood, the pit-hole being known to them by tricts of the North of England. A sullen, desolate waste this same Black Moor was-a place where Nature seemed to be in perpetual mourning over the buried fertility of a ruined world. In its black eerie barrenness the plain appeared wider than it was; in reality not much more than a mile and a half can have intervened between the farm and a straggling row of deserted, half ruined looking cottages, which skirted the opposite or north side of the moor, and behind which rose a long low line of hills shutting in the horizon.

the ill-omened name of the 'Devil's Coal-cellar.' The uninhabited cottages looming on the northern horizon, spectral looking as they were, seemed less dreary to behold than the black abyss down which human beings had descended to meet a dark, horrible death in the hidden recesses of the earth. Even grown men, finding themselves near the Devil's Coal-Cellar after nightfall, were apt to pass with bated breath and accelerated pace; while, as for the children of the district, it was very rare that they ventured near the place at all save in large bands and in broad daylight. And, so far at least as the children were concerned, the superstition which taught them to eschew the spot was a very wholesome one, since a new accident might easily have happened there. The rough fence erected round the mine when the works were closed had been gradually broken down by time and weather, and had not been replaced, so that the mothers of the neighborhood were not unnaturally wont to view the hole as a kind of ogre's trap or pitfall set expressly for the ensnarement of their darlings. However, whether by force of instinct or parental warning, the dreaded catastrophe did not occur, and, no steed having been stolen, the stable door continued unlocked as before.

For any one versed in the local annals, the grimness of the scene was increased tenfold by the sight of those tenantless dwellings with their smokeless chimneys and broken windows. The Black Moor has a tragic history, and yonder empty cottages, while they stood, were ghastly mementoes of it. A coal-pit was worked here once, and those said cottages, built for the occupation of the pitmen, promised to become the nucleus of a large village, possibly of a prosperous town. But one day the miners were sursed at their work by a sudden blast of fireda.np; some scores of men who had seen the shining on the Black Moor that morning w its light no more, and the cottages were left utenanted save by weeping widows and or- It was about three quarters of a mile from ins, who in a few weeks were dispersed to the this inauspicious southwest corner that the ur winds to seek what lot might await them in Farm was situated, on the south side of the the absence of their bread-winners. The aban-moor, and directly facing the deserted hamlet of oned homesteads were never occupied again, North Hollsworth. Half a mile or so farther he damage caused by the accident being so ex-on, still following the southern border of the ensive that the works were not reopened; and waste, one came upon the village of Hollsworth he embryo village-already ambitiously dubbed proper, a snug, pleasant little place, peeping out North Hollsworth, after the flourishing little from a bushy green wood, in which it seemed

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a surprised glance from his wife. "Lord bless you, you needn't be afraid of my forgetting what the little legs are made of."

to be half imbedded. It was strange indeed to see how richly this cold, desolate Black Moor was fringed with verdure along the whole of its southern boundary-a juxtaposition of contrasted bar- "I am not afraid of your forgetting any thing renness and fertility only to be accounted for by where the children are concerned, or I either," a similarly abrupt diversity of geological forma- replied the wife, smiling up fondly into his face. tion. Thus Black Moor Farm and the neighbor-"You are a good father and a good husband, ing village of Hollsworth, sketched by a specta- John, if ever there was one." tor on the moor, would have made as pleasing a picture as an admirer of quiet rural scenery could desire; while, on the other hand, a view taken from the front windows of the farm or village would have been pronounced, if not precisely unpicturesque, certainly not smiling or pretty.

Still, sunshine and spring weather will always go some way toward lighting up the weirdest scene; and even the view over the Black Moor might almost have been called pleasant as, on a fine evening in early spring some five-and-twenty years ago, a woman stood at the gate of the pretty flower garden in front of the farm-house, holding a little girl by the hand, while together they looked with smiling eyes over the waste. Following the direction of their gaze, there might have been descried athwart the level sunbeams two figures, a man and a child—a little girl this also who hand in hand came toward them across the moor.

"See, Amy dear," said the woman, "there are father and Minnie coming back at last. Poor child! I hope the walk hasn't been too much for her, but I could not keep her at home when she begged so."

Amy wanted to go too," reproachfully pouted the little one, a tiny, brown-haired, browneyed thing some four years old. "But mother wouldn't let Amy go-not even when father said please."

"Because Amy isn't big enough to have her own way in every thing-not even when father says please," returned the mother fondly, stooping down to stop the child's mouth with a kiss. "Wait till you are as old as Minnie, and you shall get long enough walks then. There, run and ask Minnie how she liked it."

She held open the gate for the child, who ran out eagerly toward the new comers, and in half a minute more was lifted high from the ground to receive a big kiss from father. Another minute, and the three-father and daughters-had reached the gate where the mother stood with beaming eyes waiting to welcome them.

"Well, John dear, so you are back at last! I hope you have not quite knocked up my little Minnie."

"No he hasn't," said Minnie stoutly; "I'm never tired when I'm with father. I am sure Amy would have been, though, wouldn't she, father? It was such a very long way, you know, and Amy is so little."

And Minnie tossed a graceful little head over which six winters had barely passed.

Her father looked at her proudly, and began twisting a rich golden curl round one of his large sunburnt fingers.

"Did you ever see such a puss as it is!" he chuckled exultingly. "Why, we've walked six mile if we've walked a step, and yet the monkey won't cry tired, nor wouldn't if it was twice as far. Any thing to be with father, hey, lass? I carried her a bit at times, so you needn't look so scared, Polly," he added suddenly, answering

"I'm glad you think so, Polly, I'm glad you think so. I try to be, God knows-and with such a wife and such children as I've got, it would be hard if I didn't succeed. But take us inside, my girl, and let us have our tea. Minnic and I are starving, pretty near, ain't we, little 'un ?"

He drew his wife's arm within his own, and went with her toward the house, the two children bounding before them.

They were a good-looking couple, this husband and wife-he with his manly bronzed features and powerfully framed figure, she with her gentle face and graceful feminine bearing. And yet, good-loooking as they were, and happy as they seemed together, a superficial observer, unaware of the perfect love which united them and smoothed down all apparent disparities, would scarcely have pronounced them a well-assorted pair. There was a refinement about the wife, both in manner and appearance, which was wanting to the husband, who-partly because he could not help it, partly from mere carelessness and defiance of the world's opinion—looked and spoke a great deal more like the rough honest-hearted yeoman that he was than like the polished gentleman that he was not.

Not

So far it might be said that the marriage er the part of the wife was a mésalliance; and indeed the same had been said pretty loudly by her friends at the time it was contracted. that she had come of a stock much superior to his own, but her father had made a fortune in business of which she inherited her due share; and John Haroldson when she married him was only a farmer's son, with few worldly possessions save a handsome honest face, a warm heart, and a quick temper. The last of these speedily brought him into trouble with his wife's only surviving relations, a brother and sister, who, never disposed to look on him with favor, soon found, or said they found, that there was no getting on with him. He would not brook being advised by them, and they could not, or would not, keep their advice to themselves; so, as Mrs. Haroldson always took part stoutly with her hus band, all communication between her and her family had been given up for years. The brother, with his ample inheritance, had betaken himself to Australia, where he was reported to be amassing a large fortune. The sister had married a wealthy merchant of St. Austin's, a large northern sea-port from which Hollsworth is not more than twenty miles distant; but in spite of their comparative proximity, the two sisters, Mrs. Fanshawe and Mrs. Haroldson, lived as estranged as though half the globe had separated them.

Perhaps John Haroldson's shortcomings might have been looked upon by his wife's relations with more lenient eye if he had succeeded better than he did in worldly matters. But semel, he was not cut out to be a prosperous man. Aft er his marriage he made an attempt to

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Raymond's Heroine, المجلد 1