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PUZZLEDOM.

I.

The above represents a character to whom a love-song was addressed.

II. ENIGMA.

A thing that has three feet, but no legs; is all body, but has no limbs; has no toes or heels on its feet, and no head; it has also nine hands, but no fingers, and yet it has sixteen nails; moves about a great deal, but never uses its feet for that purpose; it has one foot at each end, and one foot in the middle of its body. This is a queer creature, and is very popular among ladies and among some gentlemen. It never walks, but goes on one foot, and drags the other after it; these feet have no bones in them.

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SCRIPTURE ENIGMA.

1. "A wise son maketh a glad father."

2. "God saw that it was good."

3. "Thy name is as ointment poured forth."

4. "He is my refuge and my fortress."

5. "I am not better than my fathers."

6. Two are better than one."

7. "The word of God was precious in those days."

8. "This ointment might have been sold for much and given to the poor.'

One word taken out of each of the above texts forms part of a verse in the Book of Ecclesiastes.

1. A vowel.

V.

FRITZ FOSTER (104).

DIAMOND PUZZLE.

3. A musical instrument. 5. A bird.

2. A conjunction. 4. The answer. 6. An insect.

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VII. ENIGMA.

I am dark, and I am light,
Rough and smooth, and dull and bright,
Oft I'm lost, and oft I'm found,
I am dug from out the ground.
Sure there's no man in this land
But has had me in his hand!
Prince and beggar, rich and poor,
Without me could ne'er endure;
Ah! I'm very hard to win,
And I'm oft the means of sin.
I am strong as strong can be,
None can travel without me.
Children prize me here and there,

Thieves for me your house will dare.
Ladies wear me, so do men,

I'm of value great, I ken.

VIII.

ELEANOR E. ARCHER.

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Variety will be a needful qualification, and the specimens should be grouped in the form of a bouquet. The names must be also appended.

We hope all our readers, in town and country, will enter for this Competition.

We offer a PRIZE OF BOOKS TO THE VALUE OF ONE GUINEA, and a SECOND PRIZE TO THE VALUE OF HALF A GUINEA, to all Competitors under Twenty-four, for the best

PAINTING OF A SCENE FROM NATURE. The above may be either in water-colours or "oils." We would recommend our young artists to be more careful in packing their productions, as many specimens arrived, last time, in a sadly crumpled and crushed condition. We reserve to ourselves the right of retaining any of the specimens sent in, for private or public exhibition.

We offer BookS TO THE VALUE OF HALF A GUINEA to Competitors under Twenty-three; a SECOND PRIZE TO THE VALUE OF SEVEN SHILLINGS AND SIXPENCE to those under Seventeen; and a THIRD PRIZE TO THE VALUE OF FIVE SHILLINGS to those under Fourteen, for the best paper on

MY FAVOURITE HOBBY.

MSS. must not contain more than 1,200 words: Competitors must count their papers, and affix the number of words at the end of the last page.

General conditions applicable to the above Competitions :— All specimens must have name, age, and address attached. Must be guaranteed as original by parent, guardian, minister, or teacher.

Must be sent in not later than 18th June.

All papers must be fastened together, but different competitions must be kept separate.

No specimens will be returned unless accompanied by a stamped and addressed envelope or wrapper.

We would call special attention to

OUR SUNDAY-SCHOOL LIBRARY COMPETITIONS, in which Prizes to the value of

TWENTY-ONE POUNDS

are offered to Competing Sunday-Schools. Full particulars (with coupon) will be found on the yellow cover.

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CHAPTER XXI.-My Friends in Trouble.

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works themselves palisaded. We increased the number of our redoubts, and made them much more formidable. We reared on a peninsula, called Mount Batten, a fort of very great strength. This peninsula, kwhich is made into an island at high tide, is just below that Mount Stamford where one of our very earliest memorable engagements with the malignants took place. The fort there-I mean on Mount Stamford remained slighted; the ground we now held extended from Mount Batten in the east to Mount Wise in the west, a distance of at least three miles. At Mount Wise a guard was stationed.

made good use of the pause in our active operations, caused by the slothfulness of Sir Richard Grenville, after the taking of Saltash, to repair our fortifications and to extend them. At Gasking and East Gates we added half-moons to our defences; our chain of earthworks and their several communications were strengthened, and the earthNo. 22.-JULY, 1888.

I think the readiness of the good townsfolk of Plymouth to take an active part in their own defence deserves to be recorded by me.

For,

whereas I have read of special kinds of soldiers, such as sappers and miners, and the like, to be necessary for the making of fortifications and the repairing of breaches, here, in this godly town, when the walls were battered by the besiegers' guns, or a weak point in the outer line of defence needed palisading, the tradesmen went and did the work as readily as if it were the building of an ordinary house, yea, even more willingly; and sometimes it was necessary that we soldiers should stand defending them at their work, and now and then they even hazarded their lives in this good service.

It was during this time that I was again gladdened by receiving news from Brier Grange. Ever since I had received the tidings, on my return from Cornwall, of the death of my honoured and beloved father in the battle of Marston Moor, I had felt it impossible to seek the house of Lucy Woollcombe, and I had only seen her on the two occasions I have mentioned the day when she and I stood in the presence of the King, and she afterwards returned to her home under my escort; and when the ducking-stool had been administered to Betty Smith, and she had come to the assistance of that dishonoured and unhappy

creature.

Yet I had been conscious all along of a yearning that only she could satisfy, and a terrible agony of heart at the knowledge of the great gulf which the blood of my father, and of many another brave and dauntless man, seemed to fix between her and myself. I recalled sometimes with remorse, sometimes with a wild joy that nothing could stifle, the knowledge that I could not undo the past, that I could not draw back with honour from the words of the little note I had written to her on the eve of my departure from Plymouth with the Lord Fairfax, and that she could not deny the feelings that had prompted her to throw the spray of cluster roses at my feet, with the kindly words entwined around their stem.

How had she felt all these long weeks of my cruel silence, of my studied neglect? Had she explained them away by the necessities of my position, by the difficulties I had to encounter in visiting her? Had she heard of my sorrow? I did not believe she had. If by any means she had been made acquainted with the fact that I was in trouble, it was not in her sweet nature to withhold her hand from a few words at least .of comfort. The longer I stayed away from her, and nourished the idea that thus I was taking vengeance for the slaying of my father by the malignants, the less was I inclined to break through the crust of reserve I had myself created. How ungenerous I was to her, my darling, and what self-imposed misery I endured! Now and then Dick Tonkin, who, I sometimes fancied, guessed my feelings pretty plainly, rallied me playfully on my doleful countenance; at other times he looked a little anxiously at me, as I engaged in some noisy exhibition of insincere mirth. He asked me often during these weeks to the pleasant home in Southside-street, and never had Mrs. Tonkin shown herself more kind, more forbearing, and more motherly to me than now.

And then my letter came; it was from Lettice, and it was full of news. My sister Miriam was married, and happily settled with her good husband. "My mother feeling it advisable to have a man in the family near at hand during such times as these,"

upon the

Lettice rather quaintly said, as if poor Miriam's wishes had not been the chief matter of moment. Jonathan Thorp had been so upset ever since my father's death that he had been good for little at the farm. and now he had mounted and gone to the war himself. Poor Jonathan! "And mother really thinks we do better without him." Again Lettice's letter made me smile. Grandmother was ailing; "she never complained of the news from Marston Moor, and yet I think it broke her dear heart; she keeps to her bed, and says she has only one thing more to live for, to see you come back to your home, dear Ben! Have you the least faint hope of this, that I may cheer her with it? Oh, Ben! with father and grandmother gone, the farm will never seem like home again to me." Here I was fain to do as I think Lettice had done before me, to lay my head page and weep, such tears as Lucy had told me it was not unmanly to shed. There were brighter words after this: "We are all so proud of you, dear Ben; mother looked cheerful for the only time since she heard how father died, when we read about your promotion. She says she rejoices that she has a son to follow in the footsteps of his father, and to think nothing too good for the cause of God. We heard the news first from General Cromwell, who has pro mised mother, for father's sake, not to lose sight of you, if you prove yourself worthy, and he thinks you will. What a great, good man he is. Oh, Ben! it you had seen the holy comforting words he wrote to mother, you would learn that he is indeed a man of God. I took his letter, Ben, and went out and s down under father's tree' in the orchard, and thought it all out as best I could, in the light of th letter and God's promises, and I begin to understand it a little now. But oh, Ben dear! I grow Coward in regard to all fighting, when I remember that every death upon every battle-field may mean to someone. at the very least, what this one death means to me. and I can only cry from my very heart, God help and pity all!' Someone has told us that on mary slain bodies of the Cavaliers there were found love tokens hanging round their necks by silken cords, and placed above their hearts, such as locks of ladies hair and trifles of that kind. Poor ladies! I think dear father carried a bigger love-token; the happiness of us all was bound up in his heart."

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Here I felt my own pulses throbbing, for did I wear next my heart one of Lucy's cluster roses, fadr now, yet precious still? Cavalier and Roundhead. we are all very human, it would seem, with our dreams and our loves, and, alas! also, our terribe hates.

I was interrupted in the reading of my letter by the entrance of Dick Tonkin into my quarters. answered his well-known knock by my customary "Come in," but directly he entered I saw ge plainly there was something amiss.

"

"What is it, Dick? your mother"Oh, no!" he said, much more cheerfully ther expected; "nothing personal to me, Ben, but I kr you will be troubled, because it touches your friends I saw it in a moment, as by a flash of light. L was accused of aiding the malignant cause, in person of the King; yet I could not utter a w My tongue felt dry and parched. I only gazed s him stupidly, waiting for his next word." It was

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