and then a day of remarkable brilliance and beauty; while in Margaret's inner life there was something like the same alternation, with the same proportion of shadow and gloom, against which she bore up with a bravery peculiar perhaps to healthy and vigorous natures such as hers. Not to believe anything on the evidence of a bad man, was the defence she continually made against such reports as reached her to the disadvantage of her friend Harry Dunlop; and if she could only ward off this trouble, others might the more easily be endured. Besides which, some of her other troubles were now beginning to diminish. Archy was improving in health, and with renewed strength of body there came a healthier tone of mind-healthier and happier too-with occasional gleams of hope which lighted up his sweet countenance, as the landscape and the sea were lighted up by fitful gleams of sunshine passing over the scene.

The fishing season at the little town of Eastwick was always a time of lively interest, especially this year, when the season was ushered in by winds and storms which threatened danger as well as loss to many poor families in the place and neighbourhood. James Halliday boasted that he was better off than the others, for he had nobody to care for him, so it mattered little whether he weathered the storms or not. His old craft, he said, would not stand much more beating about. And whether he meant himself or his boat, every one who knew him was aware that old age and long exposure to hardships of the severest kind, were telling upon his once sturdy frame, perhaps more than he would have been willing to allow, had the same things been said of him by others which he often said himself.

It happened on one of these cloudy and tempestuous days towards the end of September, that Margaret, in one of her long walks by the sea, was overtaken by a sudden downfall of sharp heavy rain, which made her look eagerly around for shelter. doing so, she perceived by the blackness of the clouds which came sweeping on, that it was not merely a shower, but a tempest, which was bursting upon her; and, as the

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wind lay directly against the coast, there could be no shelter from the cliff. Suddenly she recollected that Peggy Rushton's cottage was situated on a height almost immediately. above her, and she knew that by vigorous effort that might be reached in a scramble up a rugged path of only a few minutes. She instantly decided to seek shelter there; and it was well that she did so, for the rain fell in torrents, while the wind increased to a perfect hurricane, such as seldom had been known, even on that stormy coast.

Storms of every kind were occasions of great excitement to the occupant of that solitary cottage; and Margaret found the old woman rushing wildly backwards and forwards, with her hair streaming in the wind; now shivering by her own fire; and then climbing up to her point of observation, in the vain attempt to see what vessels were on the sea, or, as she often fancied, to catch the first glimpse of her son cast upon the shore. Often and often had her dim eyes perceived something which she construed into the figure of a man lying half-drowned among the rocks and seaweed; and there were times when she had actually gone down to the beach herself, after a storm, believing that she should find the body of her son, perhaps half covered by the drift which the tide had left.

Few people had so much patience as Margaret with this poor demented creature. But on this occasion even Margaret could scarcely speak otherwise than sharply when remonstrating with her against the absurdity of standing out in the splashing rain, while the violence of the tempest was such as to prevent any object being distinctly seen.

Margaret herself was engaged in drying her wet clothes by the fire, and before this was entirely completed, she had the satisfaction of seeing a sudden break in the blackness overhead, which, although but momentary, and followed immediately by darkness deeper than before, afforded hope that the rain might be abating, even though the wind was, if possible, more furious than before. Another gleam of light soon followed the first, and then the rain fell more gently, until it almost entirely ceased. Margaret,

who always felt a kind of invigoration in watching a rough sea, went out to the point of observation herself. It was not a recent disturbance which raised the billows mountains high. The storm which came on suddenly had been raging all night, and, as the wind had changed at the same instant to the quarter from whence it was now blowing, there was but too much reason to fear that it might have caught some vessel lying near the coast, and especially some of the fishing boats as they were returning home.

Anxieties of this kind spread rapidly amongst those who are eyewitnesses of a common danger, and are shared by many who have nothing of their own at stake. Margaret had been a feeling participator in this pervading interest. She knew personally many of the wives and children of the fishermen, and it was not without a large share in their anxieties that she now strained her sight across the heaving mass of waters, and along the narrow strip of shore, to see if any trace or symptom of human life or human death was mingled with the awful

scene.

Near to the point of cliff which formed the northern boundary of the curve of shore which they overlooked, Margaret half fancied she could distinguish some object like a boat struggling with the breakers; but she uttered no exclamation, nor in any way communicated her apprehensions to her companion, fearing to add to the excitement by which she was agitated. Soon, however, the woman's eye was caught by the same object, and with a wild shriek, she began to wave her signal in the wind.

Margaret felt sure that at one time she had seen a man in the boat, but now when it appeared again, after having been apparently swallowed up by the waves, the boat was empty, and it soon became evident that it was tossing on the billows without any human hand to guide its movements. But she still looked on in silence, while the woman gesticulated with strange cries and movements, all which added to the terrible wildness of the scene. At length after a sudden pause, almost awful in its silence, during which the woman stared with fixed

intentness at one particular spot below, she clasped her hands together, and shrieking, "He is there at last!" rushed past her astonished companion, and flew to the spot where a rugged and now perilous path led down to the shore.

For some minutes Margaret remained looking earnestly down upon the sands ascertain whether there was really anything to occasion this commotion in poor Peggy's wandering mind. The tide was now receding, and each wave, as it went back, left bare a long stretch of sand, while the next brought with it occasionally some scattered frag ments of what looked like a recent wreck. Amongst these, and lying a considerable way up amongst the weeds and fragments left by the tide at its height, there was something so much like the figure of a mi, either dead, or it might be dying, that Margaret determined to go herself down to the beach, and if this shipwrecked sailor, as she supposed him to be, was past help, she might at least render some assistance to the poor woman whose descent by the only available path must be dangerous in the extreme. Margaret had no fear for herself: she was young and agile; but how the now aged and enfeebled woman was to find footing in her wild unsettled state of mind, it was difficult to imagine.

The rain had now entirely ceased, but the wind was scarcely less violent, and dark angry-looking clouds were flying across the sky, filling the whole space at times with portentous gloom, at other times parting for a moment so as to allow a gleam of sunshine to light up the troubled scene, making the deep hollow of the dark curving billows more visible, and their foamy crests almost luminously white.

But Margaret was not now in circumstances to stop and contemplate the scene. The rocky path was so slippery with the rain, and the wind so fitful and violent, that she began to apprehend some serious danger to Peggy Rushton, as well as to the sailor who might have been struggling in that lonely boat against the storm. While these apprehensions filled her mind, and urged her onward, she was at length relieved by

seeing the old woman far below her on the =sands, running at her wildest speed in the =direction of the object which had awakened this more than wonted excitement.

When Margaret approached the spot, she became still more sure that the figure of a man was lying amongst the black weeds on the sand; and with a sensation of horror, such as she had never experienced before, she stooped to examine the features, and to ascertain if any spark of life remained, so as to render any effort on his behalf availing. Her first impulse was always to render help; and occupied with these thoughts, she did not at first observe the terrible reaction which had taken place with poor Peggy Rushton, who had been the first to recognize the features of the man as those of James Halliday.

It was evident that this last disappointment was too much for the exhausted powers of the poor woman, and when Margaret called to her, with a hasty cry, that the man was not dead, she neither rose from the ground where she had sunk in an attitude of complete despair, nor evinced the slightest interest in what Margaret said. She had thought the shipwrecked man was her son, and to find him even dead on his native shore would have satisfied the long craving of her soul.

In vain did Margaret call to her for help. She could make no impression; the woman remained heedless, and apparently insensible either to entreaties or commands. One of them must run to the nearest house. Margaret looked eagerly along the shore, and then up the long ridge of cliff, but could see no living form. The tide was ebbing, and for some hours the man would be safe from

the sweeping waves. She must go herselfthere was no alternative, and when she was once gone, the woman perhaps would rouse herself.

Acting promptly on the conviction that the best thing she could do was to obtain assistance from those who were more adapted for such service than herself, Margaret hastened along the shore towards the nearest opening where James Halliday's own cottage stood; and here she was fortunate enough to meet with some fishermen, and others connected with their calling-some having come to look after their own craft-some to inquire about James Halliday, who had been known to put out to sea the day before, and might, as they justly supposed, have been caught by the sudden squall which had caused other disasters along the coast.

Feeling that the occasion was not one in which she could be of much farther usenot at any rate of so much as the agency she might put in action, Margaret told these men her story; and seeing them set out in considerable force towards the spot which she described, she returned home, but not without some serious questionings in her own mind by the way as to whether, if the man had been any other than James Halliday, she should have left him there.

The answer of her conscience was satisfactory, even admitting a strong feeling of repulsion from this quarter; for it told her that the efforts of a girl like herself would be more likely to hinder than to help under such circumstances, and that if anything could be done by her in the way of real service, it must be in the after-hours of the man's life, if he should survive this accident.

HO wants to see how the world can change its face? Let him wander for an hour around Covent Garden, through Russell Street, down Drury Lane and Wych Street to St. Clement Danes; and try as he saunters to verify descriptions of that neighbourhood written by those who knew it as it was a little more than two centuries ago.

One can never forget his first pilgrimage through those streets and lanes. Deeply reverent towards hallowed memories, ready to pay homage to any lingering relic of those leafy shades where genius, learning, and devotion once found a retreat, willing to catch inspiration from the faintest trace of a sacred footprint, the pilgrim's soul found itself bewildered and nauseated by turns, as the fact was realized that the scene of verdant freshness, comfortable ease, and calm retirement, which he had always imagined as belonging to Drury House, had passed away just as some happy dream melts before the breath of a foul spirit, leaving the vacancy to be quickly filled with murky, squalid, and unwholesome creations. What a change had come over that Drury Lane which was once the approach to Drury House! Now, on both sides of the dingy, greasy, noisy street, above and below the dark-looking old theatre, there were the strangest associations and the most grotesque groupings. Here, was a butcher's shop, with indescribable arrangements of stale bits and scraps, and next door an exhibition of equally digestible varieties of old iron. There, was a shaving shop, with its old songs and questionable pictures. Now, a grocer's; now, a shoeshop; and now, a druggist's or quack-medicine stall. Then came groups of filthy women, and grimy children regaling themselves in the gutter; while costermongers are bawling, and cat's meat and old clothes and dry fish are mingling their fumes. One queer old bookstall there was, and beyond, around the corner, a tobacco shop stood next door to a coffin maker's, as if to account for those likenesses to death's heads which haunt the streets with stenchy pipes between their jaws. Near the coffin maker's was the "Royal Olympic Theatre," pent between the dim storehouse of

an "ecclesiastical metal-worker" in front, and a darkling gin-shop in the rear,

What an advance in civilization from the time when Drury House stood on this very spot, and afforded repose to the gentle con templative poet and divine! Is this what people call progress? and must this human process of wilderness-making go on? Then the mischief must work out its own correction. So it has been, and so it will be again. By overdoing, men undo; and overgrown cities, like other monster sins, have the sentence of death within themselves. In due time the soil is rid of oppression, nature again recovers her balance, and the land enjoys her Sabbath.

There I stood with my eyes fixed on that Olympic Theatre, trying my fancy at the work of restoration, till I fairly fell into a condition approaching somewhat to that of an ancient Buddhist in the Samádhi state of medi tation or abstraction; a mist and confusion came over the objects of the outer sense; and out of that mist, by and by, the scenes of a former time became apparent to the mind's eye, showing themselves in mysterious light, like visions in a magic mirror.

There was the green lane which came from St. Giles's-in-the-Fields down to the Strand on the river bank; and still further to the left was the enclosure of Covent Garden, the remains of the old Convent pleasure-ground, with its mingling cottages and trees: and St. Martin's Lane, offering an embowered way up towards the hills of Hampstead and Highgate, and bordered by open fields, with pleasant pathways, enticing ramblers to open-air plea sures. Then, the nearer garden beauties of Bedford House; and nearer still, the pleasant sheltering wood around Drury House, whose picturesque gables are seen peeping from their leafy cover. Peace to thy memory, kind Sir Robert Drury! Thy house was thrown open the poor afflicted scholar and his wife, when they escaped at last from their "hospital at Mitcham;" and in thee the suffering John and Anne found "such a friend as sympathized with him and her in all their joys and sorrows."

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John and Anne Donne at this period began to rise above the clouds of trial; and now, Anne's stern father melted, and added his