yearn for one more sound from the tongue that death had silenced-all was mute and still: and when they had laid him gently down, the angry frown was still upon his brow, though the once warm heart had ceased to beat.

So Helen was left alone to pray beside the dead, and to take a sad and salutary lesson from the Great Teacher, who, abroad and at home, is ever forcing upon us His stern and unwelcome warnings; and lying in wait for us both at our goings out and at our comings

in.

43

CHAPTER II.

The web of our life is of a mingled yarn, good and ill together; our virtues would be proud, if our faults whipped them not; and our crimes would despair, if they were not cherished by virtues.'

ALL'S WELL THAT ENDS WELL.

HELEN LANGTON was the youngest of three sisters, daughters of a country surgeon, who had for many years been what is called a ' respected inhabitant' of a cathedral city. He was styled Doctor by the unenlightened, and his cure of bodies was extensive and lucrative: it had, moreover, descended to him in the way of inheritance, his father before him having been entrusted with the same important functions. Dr. Langton was a practitioner of the good old school: physicking and phlebotomizing, cauterizing and torturing, after the manner of his predecessor;

looking with an eye of suspicion on all things new, and in his opinion inexpedient; and growing fat and facetious on the diseases of his fellow-beings. It was said that the Doctor had made a power of money;' and so in truth he had, but what was more to the purpose, he had kept it well in hand: not spending his substance in vain attempts to make a figure in the world; nor being cursed with the fatal ambition of overtopping those who were of higher standing than himself.

The old-fashioned 'gig' in which the parent, to whose business he had succeeded, had been wont for nearly half a century to install his ponderous person when proceeding on his professional visits, was not deemed unworthy of conveying, on similar errands, the slimmer and more active son; nor was it till a sickly wife and two socially ambitious daughters insisted on the superior claims to respectability of a 'brougham,' that the time-honoured 'tilbury' was reduced to the inactivity that its advancing years demanded.

There was an encouraging cheerfulness in the Doctor's ruddy face, and a coaxing insinuation in his voice, that in a sick-room were invaluable and to judge by the expansive benevolence of both his words and manner, not even the double-sized heart of the great Dupuytren* could have been of larger dimensions, or more filled to overflowing with the milk of human kindness.

Perhaps at home, and viewed under the cold, wet blanket of reality, the popular provincial Esculapius night have appeared just a little less genial, a trifle less communicative, and, in a slight degree, more given to slumber and port wine than might have been suspected from his demeanour in public; but then it must be remembered, that moments of relaxation are absolutely necessary to hardworking professional men, and that those for whom they labour have no right (provided

* The heart of Dupuytren, the celebrated French physician, was ascertained after death to weigh as much as twenty ounces; the average weight of that organ in the human body being no more than twelve ounces.

their ailments are not neglected) to inquire into the secrets of a doctor's domestic life.

No one ever dreamt of calling the Doctor a bad father;' for though his whole soul was in his surgery, and what heart he had was centered in the dissecting-room, he rewarded his children for the straight limbs and rosy cheeks which did him credit, by allowing them full liberty of action; provided always that they did not encroach on his time, or . trouble him with complaints, which must necessarily be cured gratis. Under these circumstances the Doctor's parental character remained unimpeachable, only laying itself open to criticism on one point, namely, that he openly preferred his sons to his daughters, from the indubitable fact that the former might be eventually rendered useful as assistants; while the latter could only hope to be so as the possible partners of other men.

Mrs. Langton was one of that numerous body of rarely heard of and never seen women who are conventionally termed