by his request. Listlessly his fingers began to wander over the strings, and beneath their touch grew, somehow, a strange, wild melody, as if spirits were playing upon the chords. It was like the story of his life. It began in feeble, uncertain cadence. It swelled into love, ambition, hope. Then it grew feebler, slower, more mournful. Low, and sweet, and tremulous, yet wild, it thrilled along the strings, until, at last, with a long sob, it grew mute. With the soul of the music had departed the soul of Joseph Thorne.

His mother soon followed him. Their graves are green under the sunshine of this peaceful summer. Mabel Emerson's work is not yet done. She is wedded to a hope and a memory. Bold, indeed, must the man be who would dare to speak to her of love. Wherever trouble is, wherever hearts are struggling with sorrow, her presence is at the door; and she whom Joseph Thorne used to call the angel of his life, will go to her last rest crowned with the blessings of those ready to perish. "Her works they shall follow her."

Olive Winchester Wight.

Nothing but lifeless flesh and bone,

That could not do me ill;

And yet I feared him all the more

For lying there so still.

HOOD.

Oh! thou dead

And everlasting witness! whose unsinking

Blood darkens earth and heaven! what thou now art
I know not! but if thou see'st what I am,

I think thou wilt forgive him, whom his God
Can ne'er forgive, nor his own soul-farewell!

BYRON (Cain).

OLIVE WINCHESTER WIGHT.

THE

IE story began far away back among the dim mists of my boyhood. I was not more than fourteen, and my brother William was just sixteen when Olive Winchester first came among us.

My father was dead, and had left his large property to be pretty equally divided between myself and my elder brother. William was to have, on coming of age, the old ancestral home-La Plaisance; my mother, who was a French woman, had named it, cherishing, among the rocks and hills of New England, the memory of her French birth-place. I was to receive for my share, in bank stocks and other kindred investments, a sum nearly equivalent. My mother's jointure being sufficient for our present support, the estate was, during our minority, steadily increasing in value.

My mother, who clung to us passionately in her lonely widowhood, could not bear to send us from her, and so we received our educations at home, reciting daily to the rector of our village church. By these lessons my brother William profited more than myself. He was a studious youth, not sickly, but never very strong. Nothing in the world had such charms. for him as books; while I, on the other hand, honestly detested study, and found my pleasure, even in boyhood, in athletic exercises-riding, climbing, and swimming.

No two brothers were ever more widely different in personal appearance as well as in mental organization. I had a full, yet firmly-knit figure, ruddy cheeks, sunburned hair, and thoroughly masculine countenance. William was slight and pale; his features were delicate and regular; his eyes a clear gray, full of softness and tenderness; his hair dark and wavy, and his hands small and fair as a woman's. From my earliest recollection I had exercised a sort of protecting care over him. In all disputes with the village boys I had been his champion, and he, in turn, had labored faithfully to assist my duller comprehension in mastering the mysteries of science. God knows that, in those days, we loved each other, ay, and we should have always, had not Olive Winchester come.

My mother was summoned, on the April in which my fourteenth birthday fell, to the death-bed of the most cherished friend of her youth, and she returned, bringing with her that friend's orphan daughter. The girl's father and mother were both dead, and, but for us at La Plaisance, she was, at twelve years, utterly alone in the world.

It was a sullen, stormy April day, the one on which we saw her first. We had had no intimation of the time of my mother's return, and I came back from a long gallop over the hills, in the very teeth of the storm, and found her quietly seated in the parlor, with my brother beside her. At a window stood a tiny figure dressed in the deepest mourning-a child she seemed-looking out there, watching the wind and the rain. She turned and came forward when my mother, after her affectionate greeting to me, called her by name.