pressed to a woman's heart. The wind had torn her cloak and hood free; her dishevelled hair, stiff with the frozen spray, nearly hid her face.

With a shudder of horror Thaddeus gazed upon the two faces. It had, indeed, been "a short cruise," and Nate's head was pillowed upon his dead sweetheart's breast.

Thaddeus Macy hurried. His knock at the cottage door brought no response, and thinking the sooner to find some one, he opened the door into the living-room. The fire was dead; a burned-out candle stood upon the window-ledge; and old Hiram Fisher sat in his accustomed place. He roused as if from sleep, and asked feebly: "Is thee come, 'Rita? been dark a very long time."

It has

HONOR AND THE FOURTH

BY HARRIET PRESCOTT SPOFFORD

H!" cried Honor, as some sort of a gun again made her start and cover her little pink shells of ears with her white hands. "Oh, why wasn't I born under a despotism!"

The doctor was coming down the stairs and he heard her.

He paused a moment in a bewildered way, as if his own ears had played him false, or as if, familiar as he was with this language not his own-so familiar that he spoke it more accurately than most of those do whose mother-tongue it is he must have mistaken its meaning now.

Honor would hardly have cared to be overheard by this person, had she thought before she spoke, for his unknown history, his grand manner, and his heroic build had caused many a fancy of hers to flutter round him. With his youth, his learning, his great stature, his fair, cold beauty, his bold and noble cast of countenance, he had seemed to Honor more like some Scandinavian god than an ordinary mortal; and she saw in his slightest action indications of a fineness of breeding which spoke of very different usages from those about him now.

Dr. Basil had not been long in the town, to which he had come quite unheralded; but he had already conquered his place there, and had then exhibited, to those desiring or deserving it, certain credentials which announced, in a way admitting no dispute, that Dr. Basil was a man of family, of honor, and one whose word was intrinsic truth itself. Of course, there were all sorts of wild rumors afloat concerning him in the large, old country town-he was a Russian, he was a prince, he was a revolutionist. But at length the popular belief had accepted the fact that he was merely a Polish student who had been too much interested in politics, and had come to this country to better his fortunes. But, whatever he had been or was now, he went about his professional work with a concentration of purpose that

gave him small time for play; and no woman in all the place, save Honor herself, had ever seen that blue eye of his lingering on her, or that face softening and gravely stern again as he addressed her. And now it was she whom he heard uttering that profane sentence in this consecrated air, on this holy day! "Oh, why wasn't I born under a despotism!"

"Honor! Honor! Honor!" rose the response from the whole family, at least from so many of them as had breakfasted together, for Florio had just gone out, and Tom had not yet come in, and Ben had already gone to bed hors de combat-it was his head the Doctor had been called to sew up. "You, Honor," said the father," the child of a free country!" "I wonder where you'd be,” cried the indignant and patriotic Ted, “if you had been born under a despotism? Picking the buttermilk out of your teeth!"

"Theodore!" said the horrified mother, who had just left Ben with the Doctor and the boy's Aunt Mercy, Florio's mother, impressing upon him the fact that they who take the sword must perish by the sword-and had come down for a late cup of coffee.

"She'd have been nobody and nothing," muttered Teddy, irrepressibly. "And hear her! on the Fourth of July morning!" "Oh, Ted finds his own account in his patriotism," said Honor.

"I'm afraid he has the right on his side," said his father, "for all his rude expression. I must say I am shocked myself."

"I have been shocked," rejoined Honor, "I have been shocked all night long, and all this morning, and shall be all day. It has been one succession of shocks since midnight. There were the whole crew of the grammar-school boys on the fence yelling for Ben, firing off pistols and blowing horns, till he and Tom tumbled down and out with them. I think such mothers as theirs ought to be kept without sleep for a week!"

"I was one of them," meekly suggested her own mother, leaning her tired head on her hand.

"Poor little mother! You couldn't help yourself, and you've reaped your reward already! Papa could have helped it. My quarrel is with papa; he'll go to sleep this afternoon when I read him the paper and never know he was awake all night. As for me, the moment I dropped into a little nightmare, a horn or a pistol or a long fusillade of fire crackers waked me; I was

all worn out when the joy-bells began to ring at five o'clock and kept it off for an hour, and then the cannon gave a salute for every State, and at every report Mrs. Norcross's baby shrieked in terror; and good gracious! papa, how many States there are! Oh, I wish half had seceded and Canada had swallowed the rest! And then there were guns and torpedoes and yells on every side, and a parade of Calithumpians with a band. of discords at that unearthly hour, and in comes Ben with his head laid open with a ramrod, and we shall be lucky if there are as many fingers and toes and teeth and eyes in the family to-night as we started with in the morning!"

"Oh, shall we?" said Ted, in a fine rage now.

"I think," she went on, "that old John Adams must have been beside himself when he advised that the Fourth of July should be celebrated with gunpowder. I am sure I wish I had been born under a despotism where they had nothing to celebrate, and didn't celebrate with explosions and accidents when they had!"

"No Queen's Birthdays," said her mother, "no royal salutes

"No broadsides, no bombs, no nothing!" said Ted. "You would rather have dynamite," said her father.

"At any rate, there'd be no floral procession for me to attend to now," returned Honor. "And I'm worn out with settling the claims of Persia' and of Greece' as to oleanders or roses on their platforms, and the pretensions of Italy' as to going before 'Spain,' and the determination of the girls in 'England' to go without a canopy for fear they won't be seen, and of the girls in Hindostan' to have a canopy for fear they'll be tanned. I must hurry now, in all this heat, and help start them. They're as happy as they can be, but I pity them. Aren't you coming, papa?"

"Do you think it will be worth while to see a parcel of anachronisms? And you in such a frame of mind!"

"Oh!" said Honor, laughing, and showing her teeth, white as rice-kernels. "I have scolded myself into the best of moods, and you needn't be afraid. I suppose another charm of this delightful day is that there'll be no dinner served."

"Why, Honor, you wouldn't keep the servants at home and at work to-day?"

We only

"Oh, no; it's Independence Day-it's all right. pay them for staying at home and at work to-day. It's part of

the free-country business. But, as I said, I wish I'd been born under a despotism!"

And she ran off for her hat and parasol and the starting-point of the flower-people's parade.

Poor Honor's ill-humor was not a very serious affair; the sunshine was always just behind the shower with her. But to-day it was not merely the loss of sleep, but in the great tent, where they were trimming the platforms for the procession, last evening and the evening before, had this young Dr. Basil come near her? After having brought her to the place by an accident that threw her into his charge, had he not left her, at Mrs. Scott's bidding, and then suddenly vanished?-and if it had been a patient that had called him out, had he taken the trouble to explain it? Instead, had he not simply stayed away from the whole thing, as if all engaged upon it were too trivial for his remembrance? And what had put her particularly in an ill-humor was the fact that she cared. And why should she care? Why should a stranger, coming to the place without friends, without money, have made himself such a power that his friendship was distinction to any of the men, his rare smile sunshine to all of the women? To all the women? To one of them, at least! A yellow-haired young giant, of despotic manner and strange learning, who had already done wonderful things in his profession, and who seemed wrapped in that or in his gloomy thoughts; he never sought her society, loitered by her side, or gave her, to her knowledge, a second glance. It was humiliating to a girl who had had all her little world at her feet, and-and-and it was heartbreaking!

Dr. Basil, who had stood in the doorway during these various remarks, looking from one to another a little wonderingly, came out of the house with her a cloud upon his face.

"When I have children," said he, with the least possible accent distributed over his words, "they shall always keep the Fourth of July with fire crackers, and toy cannon, and Greek fire, and

"And broken noses and torn fingers," said Honor, who had looked up in surprise, but accommodated herself to the medical point of view. "You will lose a great deal of practice on that day, then, for it will take your time to amputate their limbs, and bind up their bones, and cool off their burns."

"They will be Americans," said he. "They will be proud of their country. They will be glad of their freedom. They will