of half the county in his hands, came to Markland to see her, and any idea there might have been of Geoff's lessons had to be laid aside. He had to be dismissed even from his seat in the window, where he generally superintended almost everything that went on. With an internal reflection how much better it would have been had Theo begun his labors, Lady Markland sent the boy away. "Take care of yourself, Geoff. If you go out, take Bowen with you, or old Black." Bowen was the nurse, whom Geoff felt himself to have long outgrown, and Black was an old groom, whose company was dear to Geoff on ordinary occasions, but for whom he felt no particular inclination to-day. The little boy went out and took a meditative walk, his thoughts returning to the question which had been put before them last night: Theo Warrender for his tutor, to come daily for his lessons, and then to go away. With the unconscious egotism of a child, Geoff would have received this as perfectly reasonable, a most satisfactory arrangement; and indeed it appeared to him, on thinking it over, that his mother's suggestion of a payment in kindness was on the whole somewhat absurd. "Kindness!" Geoff said to himself, "who's going to be unkind?" He now proceeded to consider the subject at large. After a time he slapped his little thigh, as Black did when he was excited. "I'll tell you!" he cried to himself. "I'll offer to go over there half the time." He paused at this, for, besides the practical proof of kindness to Theo which he felt would thus be given, a sudden pleasure seized upon and expanded his little soul. To go over there: to save Theo the trouble, and for himself to burst forth into a new world, a universe of sensations unknown, - into freedom, independence, self-guidance! An exhilaration and satisfaction hitherto unexperienced went up in fumes to Geoff's brain. It was scarcely noon, a still and beautiful October day; the

sky as blue as summer, the trees all russet and gold, the air with just enough chill in it to make breathing a keen delight. Why not now? These words, Geoff said afterwards, came into his mind as if somebody had said them; but the boldness and wildness of the daring deed suggested by them' ran through his little veins like wine. He rather flew than ran to the stables, which were sadly shorn of their ancient splendor, two horses and Geoff's pony being all that remained.

"Saddle me my pony, Black!" the boy cried. "Yes, Master Geoff" (the old man would not say, my lord); "but the cob's lame, and I can't take Mirah without my lady's leave." "Never mind. I'm going such a little way. Mamma never says anything when I go a little way." Was it a lie, or only a fib? This question of casuistry gave Geoff great trouble afterwards; for (he said to himself) it was only a little way, nothing at all, though mamma of course thought otherwise. "You'll be very careful, Master Geoff,” said the old man. Black had his own reasons for not desiring to go out that day, which made him all the more willing to give credence to Geoff's promise; and the boy had never shown any signs of foolhardiness to make his attendants nervous. With an exultation which he could scarcely restrain, Geoff found himself on his pony, unrestrained and alone. When he got beyond the park, from which he made his exit by a gate which the servants used, and which generally stood open in the morning, a sort of awful delight was in his little soul. He was on the threshold of the world. The green lane before him led into the unknown. He paused a moment, rising in his stirrups, and looked back at the house standing bare upon the ridge, with all its windows twinkling in the sun. His heart beat, as the heart beats when we leave all we love behind us, yet rose with a thrill and throb of anticipation as he faced again

towards the outer universe. Not nine till Christmas, and yet already daring adventure and fortune. This was the consciousness that rose in the little fellow's breast, and made his small gray eyes dance with light, as he turned his pony's head towards the Warren, which meant into the world.

Geoff was very confident that he knew the road. He had gone several times with his mother in the carriage direct to the Warren; one time in particular, when the route was new to him, - when he went clinging to her, as he always did, but she, frozen into silence, making no reply to him, leant back in Mrs. Warrender's little brougham, like a mother made of marble. Very clearly the child remembered that dreadful drive. But others more cheerful had occurred since. He had got to know the Warren, which was so different from Markland, with those deep old shadowing trees, and everything so small and well filled. And they had all been kind to Geoff. He liked the ladies more than he liked Theo. On the whole, Geoff found ladies more agreeable than men. His father had not left a very tender image in his mind, whereas his mother was all the world to the invalid boy. It occurred to him that he would get a very warm reception at the Warren, whither he meant to go to convey to Theo his gracious acceptance of the offered lessons; and this gave brightness and pleasure to the expedition. But the real object of it was to show kindness which his mother had suggested

as the only payment Theo would accept. Geoff in his generosity was going to give the price beforehand, to intimate his intention of saving Theo trouble by coming to the Warren every second day, and generally to propitiate and please his new tutor. It was a very impor tant expedition, and after this nobody would say that Theo's kindness was not repaid.

The pony trotted along very steadily so long as Geoff remembered to keep his attention to it; and it cantered a little, surprising Geoff, when it found the turf under its hoofs, along another stretch of sunny road which Geoff turned into without remembering it, with a thrill of fresh delight in its novelty and in the long vista under its overarching boughs. Then he went through the wood, making the pony walk, his little heart all melting with the sweetness and shade as he picked his way across the brook, in which the leaves lay as in Valombrosa. The pony liked that gentle pace. Perhaps he had thoughts of his own which were as urgent, yet as idle, as Geoff's, and like the boy felt the delight of the unknown. Anyhow, he walked along the smooth, level stretch of road beyond the wood; and Geoff, upon his back, made no remonstrance. He began to get a little confused by the turnings, by the landscapes, by the effect of the wide atmosphere and the wind blowing in his face. He forgot almost that he was Geoff. He was a little boy on his way to fairyland, riding on and on in a dream.

M. O. W. Oliphant.

R. K. Munkittrick.

THE mysterious charm of ancestry and yellow parchment, of petitions to the admiralty and royal grants of land, of wild scenery and feudal loyalty, of rough living and knightly etiquette, has long clustered round a little island off the coast of Maine, called on the old charts Passamaquoddy Outer Island. Moose roamed over the swamps and looked down from the bold headlands; Indians crossed from the mainland and shot them; straggling Frenchmen, dress ing in skins, built huts along the northern and southern shores, till civilization dawned through the squatter sovereignty of two men, Hunt and Flagg. They planted the apple-trees whose gnarled branches still remain to tell of the winter storms that howled across the plains, and converted the moose-yards into a field of oats; for the wary, frightened animals vacated their hereditary land in favor of these later usurpers. Their mercantile skill taught them how to use, for purposes of trade rather than for private consumption, the shoals of fish which it was firmly believed Providence sent into the bay.

While the Passamaquoddians who ate fish were living in huts, and those who sold it were dwelling in houses, on the distant waters of India was a man, William Owen by name, whose destinies were to be linked with this little English island in America. As naval officer, he had been "in all service and enter prise where ships, boats, and seamen were employed;" had labored at Bengal in the reëstablishment of the affairs

of the East India Company; and had fought under Clive. At the blockade of Pondicherry he lost his right arm, and the Sunderland, to which he belonged, having foundered, he was ordered to England. There, in 1761, he petitioned the Lords of the Admiralty "for Gratuity, Pension, or Preferment," as their lordships might deem him to deserve. He did receive special thanks and promise of promotion, and at last, through the intercession of his friend, Sir William Campbell, Governor-General of Nova Scotia, he obtained possession of the island which Hunt and Flagg had civilized.

As it embraced more land than could then be granted to one person, Owen induced others to join him in asking for the grant, that the whole island might eventually be under the control of the Owen family. Consequently, in 1767 the island was deeded to William Owen and his cousins, Arthur Davies, David, and William Owen, Jr., who, in grateful compliment to Campbell, changed its name from Passamaquoddy Outer Island to Campobello.

William Owen immediately brought over from the mother country a colony of seventy persons; stationed his ship at Havre de Lute, a Franco-Indian corruption of Harbor of the Otter; and, having settled his people according to his lik ing, returned to England, but soon left it again on public service, and died with the rank of Admiral.

David Owen acted as agent for the grantees, and was a veritable lord of the

isle. His house had even more roof than the usual sloping, barnlike home of former days. He built a rude church, read the service, and preached. What matter if a sermon was oft repeated, or now and then was original! Could not he, though a layman, best tell the needs of his congregation? He played the fiddle at dances, married the people, scolded them as self-constituted judge, kept a journal of island events in microscopic chirography, wrote for the Eastport Sentinel, was interested in protect ing the fisheries, and died, leaving his share of the island to William Owen, Jr. This younger Owen sold Campobello, which now had come into his sole possession, to William Fitz-William, who as the natural son of the Owen of Pondicherry fame could obtain possession only through purchase of his father's original grant.

A curiously pathetic life was that of William Fitz-William, from the time when, a boy of five years old, an inmate of the artillery barracks, he replied, on being asked his last name, "I don't know; mother can tell you," to his old age, when, dressed in admiral's uniform, he paced back and forth on a plank walk, built out into the bay, over the high cliffs of the shore, in memory of the quarter-deck of his beloved ship. Conceited and religious, authoritative and generous, humorous and ceremonious, disputatious and frank, a lover of women more than of wine, his fame still lingers in many a name and tradition.

When very young, a friend of his father's took him away from the barracks and from his mother, of whom he never again heard. He was boarded and punished in various homes in North Wales, but as recompense wore a cocked hat and a suit of scarlet made

from an old coat of his father's. He learnt the catechism and collects, repeated the Lord's Prayer on his knees, and thought of raising the devil by saying it backwards; though in after-life

he regretted that, as a boy, he "had no other distinct idea of our Lord Jesus Christ than that he was a good man." His belief in the direct interposition of the Creator on his behalf frequently solaced him in these youthful days of loneliness and misdemeanor. The literal and instant fulfillment of two dreams on special and unthought-of subjects were convincing proof, to quote his own words, that "they were sent by God Almighty himself, as a simple way of assuring me that as I was under his eye he would himself take care of me."

So he grew up to be presumptuous, adventurous, resolute, and strong. In 1788 he embarked as midshipman of a line-of-battle ship, and "from that time for forty-three continuous years served under every naval man of renown, and was honored by the friendship of Nelson." At forty-four he married a Welsh lady, and wrote, "I thought myself a tolerably religious man, but knew myself to be as Reuben, unstable as water; at fifty-seven my worldly ambition was barred by corruption in high places; at sixty-one I became the Hermit."

Years before he had adopted the pseudonym of Quoddy Hermit, he had cruised in the Bay of Fundy, engaged in its survey. The man-of-war which was stationed for three years at the Campobello headland of that name must have belonged to his fleet. The crew spent much of their time ashore, tending a little garden, brilliant with dahlias and marigolds, which they presented in the season, in overweighted bouquets, to the few island belles, who, in return for such unexpected courtesies, consented in winter to dance on the ship's deck, regardless of their frozen ear-tips. Two of the midshipmen were as dauntless in pedestrianism as in love, and for a wager started on a perilous walk around icy cliffs, which threw them headlong. Their comrades buried them under the gay flowers, and sailed away from the henceforth ill-omened garden.