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hour's peace. I lost heart in my parish; I lost faith in myself."

A long pause fell between them. It was broken by a rap at the door.

Lawrence went to open it. It was a servant from the hall. Lord Lemwall was very ill; the physician had pronounced his injuries to be of a serious character; he asked to see a minister.

CHAPTER III.

LAWRENCE set out at once on his melancholy errand. With what strangelymingled feelings he threaded his way on foot up the broad avenue of oaks to the hall-door. A light snow shrouded the thick masses of dead leaves; the stars glimmered down through the rushing rifts of clouds; an intense mournful stillness, undisturbed even by a gust of wind among the naked branches of the oaks, brooded over the park.

The old porter admitted him, and the housekeeper, already in waiting, took him up to her master's chamber. She stopped at the door. "My lord has fallen into a light sleep," she whispered; "you will wait till he awakes ;" and Lawrence went in.

It was a large apartment, sumptuously furnished, as were all the modern rooms of Lemwall house. The new wing had been built and fitted up in the first year of the viscount's marriage, when his purpose then lay in returning and building up a home in England instead of the long, unlooked-for residence abroad. It was the dressing-room through which Lawrence had passed, glittering with costly Parisian mirrors, decked with furniture of glossy black walnut, and embellished with all the rich appurtenances of the toilet; here, in this inner chamber, the pale rose hangings shed a ghastly reflection over the white face on the couch supported by a mass of pillows.

The viscount was alone; his servant had just quitted the room.

Lawrence took his place not far from the bedside, not in the luxurious easychair whose cushions of crimson velvet seemed to invite repose, but in a halfreclining position against the dark oak mantel.

Everything around bore traces of hurry and confusion. A part of the unfortunate nobleman's toilet lay where it had been flung by the hands of his valet over a chair opposite the couch; half the contents of a phial had been carelessly spilled over the flowers of the rich Turkey carpet, leaving a long dark stain; and a vase of deep pink roses, culled the day before from their master's conservatory, drooped down on the little side-table which had been pushed up near the couch to support the stand of phials, their satin leaves withering in the dry air of the close chamber.

Lawrence's eyes turned toward the bed, first with a repressed shudder, then with a steadily gathering composure. There was a shadow of pain over the sleeper's face, upon the high marble brow, and around the white lips.

We have said Lord Lemwall was a young man, that he bore his years well. He was such no longer. In one day, the freshness and bloom of youth had gone out from his countenance, and he looked what he was, a prematurely old man. There were the lines of vice, of unrest, of grief, brought out distinctly under the iron hand of suffering.

Lawrence stood gazing down upon him, a cold shudder creeping over him where he stood. Was this his friend, the boy he had loved as a brother, the man trusted and served, later, obeyed and clung to in evil, and later still, the wicked plotter who had sought the ruin and destruction of his daughter,-his one little cherished lamb, and now, at last, stricken down in the very hour of his high-handed crime? Oh, what a lesson of human life!

The sleeper moved and woke. He tried to raise his hand to his temples to clear recollection; the nerveless fingers fell, and he lay still.

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Lawrence moved, and took a step for ward. My lord!" he said in a subdued voice.

The viscount turned upon him a startled glance, and averted his face.

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Lawrence understood. My lord," he said, "I will leave you, God forbid I should force myself upon you at this hour! but first, there are two things for your own peace. For the wrong you sought to do my child, I forgive you, owning myself a sinner deserving of punishment before God. Second, I will release your mind from a great anxiety. Your marriage with the late Lady Frances was as strictly legal as her ladyship at that time believed it to be."

"How?" said the viscount, forgetting all his pain in the eager interest which these last words inspired, and half rising from his pillow," how?"

"My lord," resumed Lawrence, "I myself performed the funeral services over the grave of the first Lady Lemwall in the week following my own marriage. I was then on my wedding tour in Devonshire."

The viscount clasped his hands together; a look of strange relief blended with wonder crept over his face. "You were silent, Mr. Lawrence?" he said, looking up suddenly at his curate.

"How should I know, my lord," said Lawrence, with some embarrassment, "that this was so unknown to you, least, at the time?"

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of softening impressions, and it may be that, in that hour, his life spread out before him, wasted and weary, with a dim picture, side by side, of what it might have been.

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"As a Christian minister, however unworthy," said Lawrence, breaking the silence, and speaking in a low voice, you must bear with me one word. Lord Lemwall, your wife's grave still stands unmarked among strangers, and her memory is a disgrace to all who loved her."

There was a painful struggle; the dying man's face showed the conflict plainly for a moment. It was soon over. "You are right," he said, slowly. "I thank you! it is the only atonement."

He lay back, exhausted. Lawrence went up and held a cup of cordial which stood on the little side-table to his lips.

The door opened softly; a servant looked in. "Mr. Rathlan has come, sir, - my lord's lawyer. Is he able to see

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It was their last parting. Lawrence had hardly reached home, in his slow walk, before a servant hurriedly followed to announce that Viscount Leinwall had just expired.

He found that Alice had revived; but her sorrow and self-reproach were painful to witness. Innocent as she really was of anything beyond girlish imprudence and too credulous trust, and tender as were the parents who, from their own deep suffering, knew how to deal gently with the anguish of others, she could not feel to forgive herself.

It was an imposing funeral, pageant which witnessed the remains of Viscount Lemwall laid away among his ancestors. A white marble shaft rose beside the others in the old church to mark the spot; but we turn to a lowlier grave among the secluded valleys of Devonshire.

Great was the surprise in that little hamlet when, one day in the early March, two or three strangers found their way into the old graveyard with a blue-veined headstone of Italian marble, which they

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"You wished to see me, sir, on important business?" said his host, so I think your paper stated." He fumbled at it slowly.

"I did, Mr. Seaton," said Lawrence, speaking with difficulty, "on business which concerns yourself." "I am at a loss," observed the old gentleman, slowly.

More than twenty years had passed since his feet had pressed these scenes, but few outward changes had taken place amidst the quiet country homes. The bare hedgerows were beginning to be crowded with swelling buds; the yeomen It is of a private nature," observed were driving abroad their sturdy teams; Lawrence, anxious to break the shock,pale blossoms here and there were strug-"of a family nature, I should say." gling up into bloom in shaded gardens.

He went on his way with hurried steps, stopping at last, when a few rods from the first cottage of the hamlet, before a gray old country edifice, the long branches of whose thick elms swayed gracefully down over the now grass-grown carriage-walk. His tread grew slower as he passed under them and wended his way toward the house. He knocked; and his voice wavered, in spite of himself, as he asked the old servant for Mr. Seaton.

She stopped, irresolute, with the door in her hand. "Mr. Seaton, sir, don't see visitors, — in a regular way, that is. Shall I take your name, sir?"

Lawrence took out his pocket-book, scribbled a few words under his address, and gave the paper to the woman.

His heart beat quick as he stood in the stillness awaiting her return. The gloom, the decay which surrounded him, combined with his errand, pressed heavily upon his spirits.

The servant's voice aroused him. She ushered him into a large room which had evidently once been the drawing-room, where, before a ruddy fire glowing in its open grate, his head reclining dejectedly on his hand, sat Mr. Seaton.

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"Ah?" Mr. Seaton looked up anxiously now, "If you refer to my late daughter"

"I do," said Lawrence, eagerly. "You say your late daughter, Mr. Seaton; you are then aware that she is dead?"

"I thought so," said the venerable father, pressing his hand upon his temples; I have long felt so. But who are you,

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sir, who dare to talk to me of her,mention her name in my presence?"

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"Not without cause, Mr. Seaton; bear with me! No one in passing from the world left a purer name, a fame more entirely freed from all taint and scandal, than your daughter. Alice was a wife; the world knows her to have been such to-day; it is written on her tombstone. I myself, a curate in orders, married her to Viscount Lemwall. He is dead, and in his last moments rendered her justice."

"I thank thee, O my God!" said the aged man, bending his face upon his hands. "I have not lived to fourscore years in vain; now I shall depart in peace."

Lawrence felt the weight and the gloom which had hung around him for many a long year strangely lifted, as he recrossed that threshold. Why it was,

he could not tell; but he felt that his late atonement was accepted by the dead.

The shades of night were falling, the last train had gone out from the station, and he took up his quarters at the village inn. Here he told to the wondering landlord the story of his errand. It was well that it was so. Here, in her own birthplace, to the lowliest as well as the highest, should Alice's long-blotted fame be cleared.

A new living, humbler indeed than Lanscott, but far happier, awaited Lawrence. The new master of Lemwall had another friend to settle in his curacy, and had this not been the case, other reasons would have prevented Lawrence from remaining. He went away to begin, in his declining years, a new and a much better life.

Alice ultimately married, married an honorable and worthy man, who, knowing, could compassionate and forgive her early imprudence. It was long, indeed, before she could forgive herself, long before she could bring herself to listen to an honorable suit; and perhaps the blight never fully passed from her life until, in her fuller years, she found herself surrounded by her children growing up to truth and goodness. Then, in the long lapse of years which bridged between, she could afford to forget the one bitter error of her youth.

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"Mother, you are weeping, weeping, —
Sobbing wildly o'er your boy;
See my body, shattered, bleeding!
Life to me could bring no joy.
Do not wish to keep me, mother!

Only think for what I die,-
For my trembling, quaking country!
Mother, mother, can you cry?

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HERO AND HEROINE.

By Mrs. C. A. Soule.

Do you really mean what you just now said, Ella? Is that no my final answer, -no hope for me?"

The young man looked keenly at the young girl, the expression of his eyes denoting an eager, anxious wish to read the heart whose secret he had thought he knew so well.

She did not lift her face, but she felt that searching glance, and it thrilled her as never before had the look of a human being. Every nerve tingled with new and delicious sensations. She yearned to have him take her hand within his own, clasp it between his palm and fingers, and press his lips mutely on the soft white skin; but he did not move. Like a statue he stood by the mantel, one arm resting lightly on the marble, and the other thrown across his heart, as if there was a pain there he would fain still by pressure.

The silence became oppressive. She would have given worlds to have had him break it; but his lips moved not. She would have given worlds to have had him look away; but his eyes moved not. She

must answer.

"I-I never thought of you but as a friend, Albert," she managed to stammer at last.

"But now that you know I am something more than a friend, Ella, now that you know I love you, that I want you for my wife, to love, cherish, and protect so long as we both do live,is that no my final answer, or may I hope?" Poor, romantic little girl! She had always said she would marry a hero or die an old maid. What her ideas of a hero really were it would be rather hard to tell. I doubt if she knew, herself; only she was sure of this: a hero was always a tall, stately, handsome man, with hair like a raven's plumage and eyes like an eagle's, and he must have done something very wonderful too,- risked his life climbing up Mont Blanc, or killed a bandit who attacked him in some lonely wood, or plunged into the seething ocean to rescue some mother's darling. As though

all the heroism of a man's life could be crowded into one or two or three acts of physical daring! As though there were no true heroes among the men who crowd the marts of trade or the fields of labor, or clamber up the hills of study.

She looked up now into Albert Grey's face. It wasn't handsome, too round and ruddy she thought and had always thought; and his eyes were blue and his hair light, and he was only medium height and stooped, and —a carpenter by trade. Ah! it was very hard for a young, romantic girl to make a hero out of such materials; for she forgot, or rather she had too little experience in life to know that the soul, and the soul alone, makes the hero.

"Don't trifle with me, Ella! Yes or no." The young man's tones faltered, and there was a convulsive twitching of the muscles about his mouth.

She hesitated a moment. He would get over this feeling for her, she said to herself; men never died of love, and she was so young, - only seventeen, it was too bad to throw herself away on a carpenter. She would wait for her hero.

So she said, "No;" but she did not look at him as she spoke, and there was a suspicious mist upon her eyes, while, her heart sunk all at once as if some one had plumped a ball of lead into its lava tides.

For some minutes, Albert Grey stood stock still. Then rousing himself, he said, solemnly, "It is a great blow to me, Ella; for I have loved you with all the tenderness and strength of my nature. But if you don't love me, if you can't love me, why-why,". he almost broke down, and two great tears rolled over his face,-"I-I must crush out my own affection. Good-by, and God bless you.”

Gone! Yes, he was gone. She heard the front-door clash after him; she heard the ring of his boots upon the flagstones. Gone!

She went to the window and listened,listened till the footfalls no longer sounded. Then she turned quickly and ran up-stairs, darted into her chamber, shut and bolted the door, stripped off her clothes, and hurried herself into her bed

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