Had caught Ned there red-handed, with a gun and the peddler's gold,

And we went in a crowd to the station, where the rest of the tale was told.

The facts against Ned were damning. When they got the peddler round,

His wound was probed, and a bullet that fitted Ned's gun was found.

He'd been shot from behind a hedgerow, and had fallen and swooned away,

And Ned must have searched his victim, and have robbed him as he lay.

They kept it back from the farmer, who had taken at last to his bed.

Eve came, red-eyed, and told him that she'd had a quarrel with Ned,

And he'd gone away, had left them, and perhaps he wouldn't come back.

Old Bradley said he was sorry,-then asked for his boy, his Jack.

And Jack, white-faced and trembling, he crept to the old man's side,

And was scarcely away from the homestead till after the farmer died.

On the night that death crossed the threshold, one last long, lingering look

At the face that was his dead darling's the poor old farmer took.

As the shadows of twilight deepened the long ago came back, And his weak voice faintly whispered: “Lean over and kiss me, Jack;

Let me take your kiss to heaven, to the mother who died for you."

And Eve sobbed out as she heard him: "Thank God, he never knew."

In his lonely cell a felon heard of the old man's end

In a letter his faithful sweetheart had conquered her grief

to send;

And the load of his pain was lightened as he thought of what might have been,

Had Jack, and not he, been taken that night upon Parson's green!

Five years went over the village, and then one mid-summer

eve

Came Ned back here as an outcast,-out on a ticket o' leave.

And all of the people shunned him, the Bradleys had moved

away,

For Jack had squandered the money in drink and in vice and play.

Poor Eve was up at the doctor's,—his housekeeper grave and

staid;

There was something about her manner that made her old flames afraid.

Not one of them went a-wooing, they said that her heart was dead,

That it died on the day the Judges sentenced her sweetheart, Ned.

"Ticket o' Leave” they called him after he came back here. God knows what he did for a living, he must have been starved pretty near;

But he clung to the village somehow,-got an odd job now and then,

But whenever a farmer took him there was grumbling among the men.

He was flouted like that a twelvemonth, then suddenly came

a tale

That a man out of our village had been sick in the county gaol.

Sick unto death, and dying, he had eased his mind of a sin, Hoping by that atonement some mercy above to win.

We knew it all that Sunday,-for the parson right out in church,

Had wiped away in a moment from Ned the felon smirch. He told us his noble story how following Jack that night He had seen him shoot at the peddler, and rob him and take to flight.

He had seized the gun and the money from the rascal's trembling hand.

Jack fled at the sound of footsteps, and the rest you can understand.

The word that he might have spoken he kept to himself to

save,

For the sake of the dying father, the pitiful thief and knave. He knew that the blow would hasten the death of one who had done

More for him than a father,-who had treated him as a son. And so he had suffered in silence, all through the weary

years,

The felon's shame and the prison, and the merciless taunts and jeers.

Hark! there's the organ pealing, see how the crowd divides; Room for the best of fellows,-room for the Queen of Brides. Look at their happy faces-three cheers for the faithful Eve, And three times three and another for Ned, the "Ticket o' Leave."

HOW THE PARSON BROKE THE SABBATH.

On the grave of Parson Williams

The grass is brown and bleached;

It is more than fifty winters

Since he lived and laughed and preached.

But his memory in New England

No winter snows can kill;
Of his goodness and his drollness
Countless legends linger still.

And among those treasured legends
I hold this one as a boon;—
How he got in Deacon Crosby's hay
On a Sunday afternoon.

He was midway in a sermon,

Most orthodox, on grace,

When a sound of distant thunder
Broke the quiet of the place.

Now the meadow of the Crosby's
Lay full within his sight,

As he glanced from out the window
Which stood open on his right.

And the green and fragrant haycocks
By acres there did stand!

Not a meadow like the deacon's
Far or near in all the land.

Quick and loud the claps of thunder
Went rolling through the skies,
And the parson saw his deacon
Looking out with anxious eyes.

"Now, my brethren," called the parson,
And he called with might and main,
"We must get in Brother Crosby's hay;
'Tis our duty now most plain!"

And he shut the great red Bible,

And tossed his sermon down:
Not a man could turn more swiftly
Than the parson in that town.
And he ran now to the meadow,
With all his strength and speed;
And the congregation followed,
All bewildered, in his lead.

With a will they worked and shouted,
And cleared the fields apace;
And the parson led the singing,

While the sweat rolled down his face.

And it thundered fiercer, louder,

And the dark grew east and west;

But the hay was under cover,

And the parson had worked best.

And again in pew and pulpit
Their places took, composed;
And the parson preached his sermon
To "fifteenthly," where it closed.

THE CHILDREN WE KEEP.

The children kept coming, one by one,

Till the boys were five and the girls were three, And the big brown house was alive with fun From the basement floor to the old roof-tree. Like garden flowers the little ones grew,

Nartured and trained with the tenderest care;
Warmed by love's sunshine, bathed in its dew,
They blossomed into beauty, like roses rare.
But one of the boys grew weary one day,
And leaning his head on his mother's breast,
He said, "I am tired and cannot play;

Let me sit awhile on your knee and rest."
She cradled him close in her fond embrace,

She hushed him to sleep with her sweetest song, And rapturous love still lighted his face

When his spirit had joined the heavenly throng. Then the eldest girl, with her thoughtful eyes,

Who stood where "the brook and the river meet,"

Stole softly away into paradise

Ere "the river" had reached her slender feet.
While the father's eyes on the grave are bent,

The mother looked upward beyond the skies;
"Our treasures," she whispered, "were only lent,
Our darlings were angels in earth's disguise."
The years flew by and the children began
With longing to think of the world outside;
And as each, in his turn, became a man,
The boys proudly went from the father's side.
The girls were women so gentle and fair

That lovers were speedy to woo and win;
And with orange blossoms in braided hair,
The old home was left, the new home to begin.
So, one by one, the children have gone,-

The boys were five and the girls were three;
And the big brown house is gloomy and lone,
With but two old folks for its company.
They talk to each other about the past,
As they sit together in eventide,

And say, "All the children we keep at last
Are the boy and the girl who in childhood died.”

GOING TO SCHOOL.

"The cause of education be hanged!" he muttered, as he sat down on the curbstone.

He was a lad of thirteen. His pants were supported by a piece of wire clothes-line girted around his waist, his hat was ancient and greasy, and his big flat feet seemed to be waiting for a thunder shower to wash them clean.

"That's what ails me!" he went on, as he pushed his toes into the wet sand. "I don't believe in a feller diffing in and learning all there is to learn, and not letting other folks have a chance. There's lots of other folks in this world besides me, and I ain't a going to be a hog, and try to learn all there is to learn."

After a minute he went on:

"Don't I know 'nuff now? Three times two are six,