"Kate is a sensible girl," said Frederic, goodhumouredly. "You think as I do, don't you, Kate?"

"Do not be too sure of that, Fred," she answered. 'The fact is, your conversation has put me in mind of a fanciful tale, written some years ago by an old schoolfellow; and I am almost resolved to inflict upon you the penalty of reading it, as a punishment for your heresy." "No, no," replied her brother; "read it yourself, and welcome-that is, if our friend here is willing to listen."

Of course I expressed a wish to hear the story, and-here it is.

"THE UNSEEN HAND.

Eli Ben Amram was one of the richest of his tribe. He had risen from humble circumstances to high honour,-from poverty to great wealth. His ships floated on many seas; his merchandise was the produce of numerous lands; his fame resounded through all his nation. Yet did not the fortunes of Eli Ben Amram cause him to forget the God of his fathers; he was learned in the law of Moses, and in the traditions of the Elders. He observed every feast and every fast; he paid tithes and gave alms; moreover, he built a synagogue. Rich was the smoke of his morning and evening sacrifices, and frequent were his devotions.

"But where is the perfect man? One precept did Eli Ben Amram forget to cherish in his memory: Beware lest thou say in thine heart, My power and the might of mine hand hath gotten me this wealth.' He had sustained his aged parents in comfort; he had given his sister Keturah in marriage, with a princely portion; he had bestowed on his younger brother, Jorah, a thousand pieces of silver wherewith to traffic; many had he befriended, and he thought himself better than they, inasmuch as he had wisdom to amass riches. He praised his God for blessings bestowed, while yet his soul vaunted itself in that he had turned those blessings to his own advantage-not remembering that the Lord his God had given him the power to get wealth.

"When Jotham, Ben Amram's eldest son, had attained the age of manhood, his father gave him a purse of gold, and bade him go and make merchandise therewith.

follows the hand of the diligent.'

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Ben Amram was angry because his brother had become poor; and he said to his son Jotham,

"I will send him six times as much as he asks, but withal I will rebuke him sharply; for he hath been negligent. A wise and pradent man will guard against evil, or, foreseeing it, he will hide himself. It is the fool alone who, passing on, is punished. He will thrive well who looketh to his own affairs. Go, my son, entertain the messenger until I have written to my brother.'

"So Ben Amram wrote a letter to his brother, full of bitter words; and putting into a bag three hundred pieces of silver, which afterwards he secured with his own signet, he sat down to await the return of the messenger.

"Suddenly the spirit of slumber fell upon Ben Amram, and glimpses of the invisible were revealed to him in visions. Before him stood a youth, of noble and commanding form, and clothed in foreign garb. In his hand he held a wand of ivory. A strange awe oppressed the mind of Ben Amram as he gazed on the visitant. Nevertheless, though subdued, his spirit sank not in utter dismay.

“Eli Ben Amram,' said the stranger, 'canst thou avoid the poverty into which thy brother Jorah hath fallen ?'

"Ben Amram smiled proudly as he replied, 'I have avoided it.'

"Hitherto thou hast,' said the stranger; 'or, rather, hitherto God hath prospered the work of thy hands, and given thee wealth: He may also withdraw it.'

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'The blessing of God,' answered Ben Amram, 'is on the diligent and prudent man.'

"Wealth is not always a blessing,' replied the stranger, inasmuch as mortals sometimes use it to their own hurt. Yet it is one of the good gifts of God, which He bestoweth on one, and withholdeth from another. Eli Ben Amram, look on the past!'.

"The visitor waved his wand, and passed his hand over the eyes of Ben Amram. Then did a thick mist fill the apartment, while a cold thrill agitated for a moment the frame of the boastful merchant. The mist divided, and Ben Amram saw in distant perspective the home of his childhood. Youthful forms were sporting round the well-remembered hearth. He knew them to be his brother Jorah and his sister Keturah, while with another shadowy form he felt himself to be identified. thoughts and feelings of childhood returned, and he lived, as it were, a double life: a grave and thoughtful man, and a simple, reckless boy. In that mysterious moment, not only did his actual life pass in review before him, but shadowed on that mist were the good and evil influences by which, in those earlier stages of existence, he had been surrounded.

The

"He saw that boy environed by perils and temptations; heedless and unconscious of them all, yet escaping them. Another step in that course would have brought him within the grasp of death, when suddenly it was abandoned. Another movement in this direction would have plunged him into errors as fatal to the spirit, when, without adequate apparent cause, he stopped, and turned aside.

"Why doth the child avoid the dangers he knoweth not of ?' asked Ben Amram.

"Look more closely,' said the stranger. "And when Ben Amram looked, he saw, hovering above and around the boy, dim and shadowy, yet becoming more distinct the longer it was gazed on, the form of a HAND. It was this HAND, he now saw, which guided and upheld; interposed when danger was near, and averted the threatened stroke.

"The boy became a man, and the HAND was still near him, protecting, restraining, controlling, supporting, directing. In the intricate paths of youth, in the rougher ways of manhood, its powerful yet gentle influence was alike felt. Ben Amram remembered circumstances of perplexity in which he thought he had been guided by his own wisdom, but in which, as he now saw, the shadowy HAND had pointed to a right decision. Sometimes he had spurned its influence, and had fallen. Then the HAND had raised him, succoured him, and continued its unwearied task. Sometimes its movements were involved in mystery; the mist would gather round, and he could see neither its operations nor its object.

"Ben Amram saw that HAND pouring wealth at his feet, which he might gather at

will. It prospered his traffic, and removed his rivals from his path. It gave him ships, and sped them safely and prosperously over the ocean. It defended him from losses, and assisted his schemes. It guided him in the choice of a residence, and directed him to the partner of his life. It gave him the desire of his heart. It raised him to honour and fame. "He saw the HAND beckoning as his brother's messenger drew near; and then the scene was obscured-the mist again filled the apartment.

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Eli Ben Amram,' said the visitor, 'thou hast seen the sign of the Invisible, upholding the hand of the diligent through the past. Look now upon the future!'

"Again he waved the wand, and placed, for an instant, his hand upon the eyes of Ben Amram. The mist once more divided. He saw his brother, worn with poverty and wasted by sickness. He marked the anguish of his spirit as he read the reproachful letter. He saw the shadowy HAND over him also; but again the scene was changed.

"A ship sailed on a distant sea. That HAND raised the waves and winds to a storm, and impelled the vessel to destruction. The owner was impoverished;-and he was indebted to Ben Amram for the sum of four thousand pieces of silver.

"And now the shiftings of the scene increased in rapidity; yet still the HAND was there. Jorah repaid the three hundred pieces of money; while Ben Amram's eldest daughter Rachel returned a destitute and mourning widow to her father's house. The ship in which Jotham sailed was attacked, the passengers were robbed and taken captive, and an exorbitant ransom was demanded. Ben Amram paid the sum, and Jotham returned in nakedness and want. Fire devoured the possessions of one debtor; blight and mildew destroyed those of another. Famine and pestilence wasted the land; the sources of commerce failed. Ben Amram's boasted sagacity seemed to forsake him. Perplexed and bewildered, he felt himself unable to stem the current of adverse circumstances. His younger son, Eliab, risked his patrimony in a commercial adventure; it failed, and he lost all. His daughter Miriam was sought in marriage by one whose character and prospects appeared promising. The influence of the warning HAND were disregarded, and Ben Amram discovered too late that he had bestowed the darling of his heart on an unprincipled adventurer.

Human help there was none at first sight. But, at the sharpest crisis of the agony, a Dutch farmer galloped down to the sea on an Arabian mare that was like another life to him that had carried him through all the hazards of the wide world and its wilder beasts, and seemed to share her master's intelligence, and divine as well as obey his will. She had swum rivers and waded morasses with him on her back; and now he spurred her through the crowd, and, without a moment's pause, plunged into the sea with a rope attached to her tail. The brave creature shrank not an instant from the fierce wrestle with the baying waves. She struck them down with her ironed hoofs, and breasted her way to the ship's side. It was but a minute's stay, and she was making for the shore again, trailing a row of men and women clinging to the rope. The shouts of the crowd awaiting to receive them seemed to thrill her strained muscles with a new vigour; and when her feet struck the earth, and she mounted on the beach and shook the salt water from her sides, she looked around upon the half-drowned beings she had dragged to land and life, and it seemed given to her of the God of us all to know that she had done a good act. Her master patted her on the neck, as when they had faced lions together in the desert; he patted her with eyes turned towards the ship.

It was but a minute's pause: "Once more, my Jenny, darling; once more!" and she turned her head and plunged again, without touch of spur, into the sea. Once more she ploughed through the surge, snorting over its briny crest. Once more she wheeled at the ship's side, and headed for the shore, trailing another row of men behind her. Many times her head dipped above her nostrils in a breaking wave; many times she neighed as for help, as she struck out heavily with the long load dragging her down. She neared the land, but more slowly than before, and staggered up the ascent with trembling limbs.

The second long and desperate tug through the surge had strained every nerve and muscle to its utmost tension, and she stood quivering, blown and exhausted. There were several more human beings left behind on the crashing, broken hull. The darkness was closing in upon them, and certain death with the darkness. The brave-hearted Dutchman heard that bitter cry, and saw the harrowing sight. Could he do more? Could he try it again? 'Jenny, my darling! Jenny, can you do it?"

and he put his arm around her neck fondly and tenderly. She rubbed her head against his cheek, as if she said, "Master, if you will it, I'll try." He mounted her back, and, without sense of spur or rein, she turned and walked straight into the foaming sea. Slowly, painfully, with weakening strokes, she made her way to the ship, and once more headed for the shore with the last passengers clinging to the rope. With hands and voices uplifted stood the crowd on the beach: O God of mercy and might, give the poor creature strength for this once!" Her head is lost for a moment. "It's the wave between. There! she rises! see her mane on that white-cap. O God, be merciful! Do you see her now ?” "No; but I see good Diedrich's hand above the water, reaching towards us. Now it's gone! Oh, poor, good man! he's gone down with his noble horse, and all the men he tried to save. Noble Diedrich! God bless his widow and fatherless children. Dear good man! he was thinking more of other men's widows and fatherless children than of his own when he made his last ride into the sea!"

That was the act of a Dutch Boer on the coast of Africa; of a man belonging to a class which many writers of history and romance overlook in seeking for great deeds of noble chivalry, or for lofty sentiments of philanthropy or patriotism. If ever some one of the class fitted for the task should undertake to write the history of common working men and women of the world, deeds and dispositions of the same order of merit might be found to fill a hundred volumes.

From the example of this half-Africanised Dutchman of the Cape of Good Hope, let us glance at a deed of daring for the lives of others by the young daughter of a humble lighthouse keeper, in the north of England, as it stands out even now as an act of unsurpassed qualities in the record of poor men's doings in the field of this unselfish heroism of

the heart.

On the Northumberland coast, some thirty years ago, a disabled steamer was blown at night into the iron-teethed jaws of a leash of jagged islands, tethered out a few miles from the mainland, as if to catch and tear in pieces lame and benighted vessels. The night was dark, the ship helpless, and the wind and tide pounded it with terrible blows, then lifted it up on the deep-notched molar of one of the black islands. And there at midnight, amid the fierce screeches of the hurricane, and the

vessel broke in twain; the after part going down with the captain and half the passengers and crew. The fore part stuck fast, impaled on the projecting rock. There, crouching at the bows, nine survivors watched for the morning as few human beings ever looked for its light. The wind and waves, as if more furious for their prey by what they had already gorged, smote the fragment of the hull blows that threatened to beat it from its holding every moment. Far up, in a forecastle berth, lay a woman just widowed by the wreck. In her arms lay two little children, cold and dead, drowned as she held them to her breast, by the inbreaking sea, which had nearly put out her own life within her. Hours, that seemed to the terrified watchers like whole years of ordinary suffering, passed one after the other; and the grey, cold light of the morning began to reveal the scene. Little by little, slowly-— oh, how slowly!—the dark curtain of the misty night was lifted, and the watchers descried the white tower of the lighthouse on Longstone Island, like a pillar of cloud let down from Heaven to their sight and salvation. And from the small, deep-set windows in that white tower, three pairs of human eyes were peering out with keenest search upon the foaming ridges of the angry sea and the black walls of the adjacent islands. God pity the poor seafarers driven on such a night into those terrible jaws! In the broken slumbers of the night that thought had moved each of those three human hearts with the secret pulse of a prayer between dreaming and waking.

A father, mother, and daughter made up the isolated family. In that grey solitude, just in dim sight of the green world they seldom visited, with no sound to break the everlasting silence but the voices of the sea around, and of the sea-birds and sea-winds above, they had lived from year to year. Amid these voices Grace Darling, the daughter, grew up from childhood to young-womanhood. The bare crown of the little iron-bound island was all her outdoor world, and the tall, hollow column of the lighthouse her only home. She was a goodly girl, was Grace Darling; and she had made the most of these few, but grand, companionships of nature. Their teaching, and such as good and honest parents and a small shelf of healthy books could give, had done much to give a pleasant and hopeful flowerage to a kind and gentle nature. For her nature was kind and gentle at twenty-two, notwith

and howling waves, and the midnight thunder of the sea-beaten walls of the island. She had been brought up as tenderly by her parents as their circumstances would allow.

Up to that morning she had never had occasion to put her hands to an oar, or put her life to the peril of the sea in any hazardous adventure. But now her girlhood's nature felt the thrill of the bravest manhood's strength and courage, as she sighted, through her father's telescope, after him, the broken hulk across the foaming channel. One by one she picked out with the glass the half-drowned men, clinging to the windlass. Perhaps she caught a glimpse of the woman with the dead children at her breast. The white-crested seas came thundering in from the German ocean, smiting the steep, black walls of the island. Could a boat live in such wild eddies? The father, who had wrestled with a hundred seastorms, was brave and strong, but he at first recoiled from the hazard. Then it was that the girl raised the latent heroism of his heart by the faith and courage of her own.

"Father, we cannot see them perish. Father, I will go with you in the boat."

And the mother, with the fearful seas before her eyes, helped them to launch the boat, and the next minute husband and daughter were among the yeasty waves.

Bravely and steadily Grace kept stroke with her father's oar. Many a time, and long at a time, the little wooden shell went out of the mother's sight, as she stood watching it with her all of this world staked in the venture. But every time it arose up out of the trough of the sea it was nearer the broken vessel. Slowly it approached; now it was near enough for the poor creatures on board to see who were coming for their deliverance. A few minutes more, and it was hard under the bows of the wreck, in imminent danger of being dashed to pieces like an eggshell on the pointed rocks. But the girl's faith steadied her father's thought and hand at this most critical of all the moments they were out on the boisterous flood. One by one the passengers and crew-nine in alleffected their descent into the boat, and the woman whose children had been drowned in her arms was with them. One of the weatherbeaten sailors took Grace's oar, and thought her an angel sent of God to save them; and they all gazed at her calm face with reverence and wonder as the boat rode over the white waves toward the lighthouse. And to none