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16 following; and as the trees are growing fast, considers that it might now be valued at the same price per acre. Sir John considers, from experience in his own plantations, that planted beech will do as well as when naturally seeded. His old woodman, now dead, was for long of a contrary opinion, but changed his mind latterly from his own experience.

It is necessary to say something about the actual conditions and returns from the Buckinghamshire beech woods, which have been held up by some writers as an example of what may be done by following the system known as jardinage in France, which consists in thinning out the saleable trees every ten or twelve years and allowing natural seedlings to come up in their places.

During a visit of the Scottish Arboricultural Society on July 30, 1903, to this district, in which I took part, it was stated by one of the principal land agents in the district that £2 per acre was a common return over an average of years on woods managed on this system, which seems to have grown up during the last sixty years, partly through the legal disability of the owners to make clear fellings, and partly owing to the regular demand for clean beechwood of moderate size for chair-making. But what I saw myself led me to believe that though such a return may have been obtained for a short period on the best class of beech woods, it is not likely to continue, and that if an owner had a free hand and was not liable for waste, clear felling of the mature timber about once in 60–100 years would probably in the longrun be a better system. And this opinion was confirmed by Mr. George James, agent for the Hampden estate, who thinks that 15s. per acre, which is about the average rateable value of these woods, is as much as they are actually worth, and that when you get fine timber clean and well grown, as on Mr. Drake's estate at Amersham, many natural seedlings do not occur, but that on Earl Howe's estate at Dunn where, forty years ago, all or nearly all of the timber was cut, there is a good growth of young seedlings.

Professor Fisher of Cooper's Hill has written a very instructive article on the Chiltern Hill beech woods, in which he states that these are probably the northern and western British limit of the indigenous beech forest, which was probably eradicated during the glacial period in the north of England; though remains found in the submarine forest-bed at Cromer, in Norfolk, prove that it existed before this period farther east. He quotes measurements taken by Mr. A.S. Hobart Hampden, now director of the Forest School at Dehra Dun, India, which show that on the average it takes ninety years in this district for beech to attain 3 feet in girth at breast height, and that a full crop of seed cannot be expected from trees much younger than eighty years when grown in dense order. He agrees with me that in many of the woods, including those which belong to Eton College, overthinning has been prevalent, and states that rabbits and brambles have in many cases prevented the natural regeneration from being as complete as it must be to keep such woods in profitable condition under the decennial selection system. And as


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9. 4

the green herb have I given you all.  But flesh with the life thereof, which is the blood thereof, shall ye not eat.  And surely your blood, the blood of your lives, will I require; at the hand of every beast will I require it: and at the hand of man, even at the hand of every man's brother, will I require the life of man.  Whoso sheddeth man's blood, by man shall his blood be shed: for in the image of God made he man.  And you, be ye fruitful, and multiply; bring forth abundantly in the earth, and multiply therein.

And God spake unto Noah, and to his sons with him, saying,  And I, behold, I establish my covenant with you, and with your seed after you;  and with every living creature that is with you, the birds, the cattle, and every beast of the earth with you; of all that go out of the ark, even every beast of the earth.  And I will establish my covenant with you; neither shall all flesh be cut off any more by the waters of the flood; neither shall there any more be a flood to destroy the earth.  And God said, This is the token of the covenant which I make between me and you and every living creature that is with you, for perpetual generations:  I do set my bow in the cloud, and it shall be for a token of a covenant between me and the earth.  And it shall come to pass, when I bring a cloud over the earth, that the bow shall be seen in the cloud,  and I will remember my covenant, which is between me and you and every living creature of all flesh; and the waters shall no more become a flood to destroy all flesh.  And the bow shall be in the cloud; and I will look upon it, that I may remember the everlasting covenant between God and every living creature of all flesh that is upon the earth.  And God said unto Noah, This is the token of the covenant which I have established between me and all flesh that is upon the earth.

And the sons of Noah, that went forth from the ark, were Shem, and Ham, and Japheth: and Ham is the father of Canaan.  These three were the sons of Noah: and of these was the whole earth overspread.

And Noah began to be a husbandman, and planted a vineyard:  and he drank of the wine, and was drunken; and he was uncovered within his tent.  And Ham, the father of Canaan, saw the nakedness of his father, and told his two brethren without.  And Shem and Japheth took a garment, and laid it upon both their shoulders, and went backward, and covered the nakedness of their father; and their faces were backward, and they saw not their father's nakedness.  And Noah awoke from his wine, and knew what his youngest son had done unto him.  And he said,

And Noah lived after the flood three hundred and fifty years.  And all the days of Noah were nine hundred and fifty years: and he died.

Now these are the generations of the sons of Noah, namely, of Shem, Ham, and Japheth: and unto them were sons born after the flood.

The sons of Japheth: Gomer, and Magog, and Madai, and Javan, and Tubal, and Meshech, and Tiras.  And the sons of Gomer: Ashkenaz, and Riphath, and Togarmah.  And the sons of Javan: Elishah, and Tarshish, Kittim, and Dodanim.  Of these were the isles of the nations divided in their lands, every one after his tongue, after their families, in their nations.

And the sons of Ham: Cush, and Mizraim, and Put, and Canaan.  And the sons of Cush: Seba, and Havilah, and Sabtah, and Raamah, and Sabteca; and the sons of Raamah: Sheba, and Dedan.  And Cush begat Nimrod: he began to be a mighty one Rh

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18

Sir Hugh Beevor has sent me a photograph of a remarkable avenue of beech trees called Finch's Avenue, near Watford, which is composed of straight, clean, closely planted trees up to 120 feet high (Plate 2).

As an avenue tree the beech is one of the most stately and imposing that we have; but probably because of the difficulty of getting tall, straight standards from nurseries, and their tendency to branch too near the ground when planted thinly, they are not so much in vogue as they were two centuries ago. One of the finest examples I know of in England is the grand avenue in Savernake Forest, the property of the Marquess of Ailesbury. This was planted in 1723, and extends for nearly 5 miles from Savernake House to the hill above Marlborough. It is described and figured in the Transactions of the English Arboricultural Society, v. p. 405, and though the trees are not individually of quite such fine growth as those at Ashridge, yet, forming a continuous green aisle meeting overhead, for such an immense distance, it is even more beautiful than the elm avenue at Windsor, or the lime avenue at Burghley, and surpasses both of them in length. The Savernake avenue, however, is not like those above mentioned, planted at regular distances, but seems to have been cut out of a belt.

The beech avenue at Cornbury Park, the property of Vernon Watney, Esq., to whom I am indebted for the following particulars, is, on account of the great size of the trees, one of the most imposing in England. It was probably planted or designed by John Evelyn, whose diary, 17th October, 1664, says: "I went with Lord Visct. Cornbury to Cornbury in Oxfordshire, to assist him in the planting of the park, and beare him company, dined at Uxbridge, lay at Wicckam (Wycombe)." They reached Cornbury the following day, and among the entries for that day is the following: "We designed an handsom chapell that was yet wanting as Mr. May had the stables, which indeed are very faire having set out the walkes in the park and gardens." This Lord Cornbury who, after his father's death, became Lord Clarendon, records in his diary, "1689, September 25. Wednesday.—The elms in the park were begun to be pruned." This avenue is 800 yards long, and runs from the valley where the great beech grew, up the hill to the house. Many of the trees seem to have been pollarded when young at about 15 feet high, but have shot up immense straight limbs to a height of 100 to 110 feet, some even taller.

The Ten Rides in Cirencester Park affords a good illustration of the value of the beech for bordering the broad rides through a great mass of woodland; but the trees here, as at Cornbury and in so many of our old parks, have seen their best days, and when blanks are made by wind or decay, it is beyond the power of man to restore the regular appearance of such a vista.

Whatever pains may be taken to replant the gaps, the trees never seem to run up as they do when all planted together, and the art of planting avenues does not seem to be so well understood or so much practised now, as it was in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.


text: Emacs Chats

title: Emacs Chats


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20 girth of perhaps 8 feet up to a great height. I have no doubt this tree contains 700 to 800 feet of timber.

At Knole Park, near Sevenoaks, there are some splendid trees of the park type, with very wide-spreading limbs, two of which are known as the King and Queen Beeches. The King Beech is surrounded by a fence, and many of its branches are supported by chains. Strutt, who figures it, gives its height as 105 feet by 24 in girth at 13 feet. When I measured it in 1905 it was about 100 feet by 30 in girth at 5 feet, with a bole 10 feet high. It has the largest girth of any beech I know of now standing in England (Plate 12). The Queen Beech is 90 to 100 feet high and 28 feet in girth. I am not sure whether this or the last is the one recorded by Loudon, iii. 1977, as having a diameter of 8 feet 4 inches, a height of 85 feet, and a spread of branches of 352 feet diameter.

There are many fine tall beeches in the park of Earl Bathurst at Cirencester, of which Plate 1 gives a good idea, and shows the reproduction from seed in this part of the park to be very good, though a considerable number of other trees, such as ash and sycamore, are growing as well or better than the young beeches under the shade of the tall ones, which in this view are not so remarkable for their size as for their clean cylindrical trunks.

At Ashridge Park, Bucks, the property of Earl Brownlow, are perhaps the most beautiful and best grown beeches in all England, not in small numbers, but in thousands. Though the soil is neither deep nor rich, being a sort of flinty clay overlying limestone, it evidently suits the beech to perfection, and in some parts of the park there is hardly a tree which is not straight, clean, and branchless for 40 to 60 feet, whilst in other parts, where the soil is heavier and wetter, and where oaks grow among the bracken to a great size, the beeches are of a more branching and less erect type.

The largest and finest beech, from a timber point of view, at Ashridge, known as the King Beech, was blown down about 1891, and was purchased for ₤36 by Messrs. East of Berkhampstead. Loudon says that this tree in 1844 was 114 feet high, with a clear trunk of 75 feet, which was 5 feet 6 inches in girth at that height. Evidently this was less than its real height. Mr. Josiah East tells me that as it stood it had about 90 feet of clean trunk, of which the lower 15 feet was partly rotten and not measured. The sound part was cut into three lengths as follows:—

The branches were partly rotten and much broken in falling, so that they were only fit for firewood. But the celebrated Queen Beech remains, and though in one or two places it shows slight signs of decay, it may, I hope, live for a century or more, as it is in a fairly sheltered place, and has no large spreading limbs to be torn off by the wind. This extremely perfect and beautiful tree was photographed with great


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 these, a girl who had deserted her husband and was living with a temporary successor came to live in Luna’s household. She and Luna were constant companions, and Luna, quite easily and inevitably took one lover, then two, then a third—all casual affairs. She dressed younger than her years, emphasised that she was still a girl. Some day she would marry and be a church member, but now: Laititi a'u (“I am but young”). And who was she to give up dancing.

Her cousin Lotu was a church member, and had attended the missionary boarding school. She had had only one accepted lover, the illegitimate son of a chief who dared not jeopardise his very slender chance of succeeding to his father’s title by marrying her. She was the eldest of nine children, living in the third strictly biological family in the village. She showed the effects of greater responsibility at home by a quiet maturity and decision of manner, of her school training in a greater neatness of person and regard for the nicety of detail. Although she was transgressing, the older church members charitably closed their eyes, sympathising with her lover’s family dilemma. Her only other sex experience had been with a moetotolo, a relative. Should her long fidelity to her lover lead to pregnancy, she would probably bear the child. (When a Samoan woman does wish to avoid giving birth to a child, exceedingly violent massage and the chewing of kava is resorted to, but this is only in very exceptional cases, as even illegitimate children are enthusiastically

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Index talk:Bible (1901 American Standard Version).pdf

Formatting Guidelines
This is a work in progress, so these are subject to change. That being said, there are some topics to cover:

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Then the text is ready for proofreading.
 * I'll make a very quick round for the even pages, first.
 * then for the odd pages. - ✅ Dick Bos (talk) 08:59, 31 January 2024 (UTC)
 * then do the italics etc. for all pages. ✅ Dick Bos (talk) 11:25, 14 February 2024 (UTC)
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The plates to this volume are in a separate part: The Trees of Great Britain & Ireland/1 - Plates. This part has chapters that are the same as the chapters of the text part. --Dick Bos (talk) 16:29, 22 February 2024 (UTC)


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 boys of her own village relieved the monotony of life between visits from her preferred lover. Fala, the youngest, was content to let matters drift. Her lovers were friends and relatives of the lovers of her cousins and she was still sufficiently childlike and uninvolved to get almost as much enjoyment out of her cousins’ love affairs as out of her own. All three of these girls worked hard, doing the full quota of work for an adult. All day they fished, washed, worked on the plantation, wove mats and blinds. Tolu was exceptionally clever at weaving. They were valuable economic assets to their families; they would be valuable to the husbands whom their families were not over anxious to find for them.

In the next village lived Luna, a lazy good-natured girl, three years past puberty. Her mother was dead. Her father had married again, but the second wife had gone back to her own people. Luna lived for several years in the pastor’s household and had gone home when her stepmother left her father. Her father was a very old chief, tremendously preoccupied with his prestige and reputation in the village. He held an important title; he was a master craftsman; he was the best versed man in the village in ancient lore and details of ceremonial procedure. His daughter was a devoted and efficient attendant. It was enough. Luna tired of the younger girls who had been her companions in the pastor’s household and sought instead two young married women among her relatives. One of

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 from school, and the boy is now a man of twenty-four with high intelligence and real charm, but a notorious moetotolo, execrated by every girl in his village. Familiarity with sex, and the recognition of a need of a technique to deal with sex as an art, have produced a scheme of personal relations in which there are no neurotic pictures, no frigidity, no impotence, except as the temporary result of severe illness, and the capacity for intercourse only once in a night is counted as senility.

Of the twenty-five girls past puberty, eleven had had heterosexual experience. Fala, Tolu, and Namu were three cousins who were popular with the youths of their own village and also with visitors from distant Fitiuta. The women of Fala’s family were of easy virtue; Tolu’s father was dead and she lived with her blind mother in the home of Namu’s parents, who, burdened with six children under twelve years of age, were not going to risk losing two efficient workers by too close supervision. The three girls made common rendezvous with their lovers and their liaisons were frequent and gay. Tolu, the eldest, was a little weary after three years of casual adventures and professed herself willing to marry. She later moved into the household of an important chief in order to improve her chances of meeting strange youths who might be interested in matrimony. Namu was genuinely taken with a boy from Fitiuta whom she met in secret while a boy of her own village whom her parents favoured courted her openly. Occasional assignations with other

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Rh humor. His translation of the first six books of the Odyssey, published in 1825, was the first attempt at a Danish version of Homer. In 1826, he was appointed professor of philosophy in the university at Christiania, and a few years later he returned to Denmark to fill a similar position in the Copenhagen University. While connected with these universities he wrote several excellent philosophical treatises

(1796-1876) was Poul Möller's step-brother, and he was also intellectually related to him. He had already become conspicuous by student songs and by contributions to periodicals, all of which were brimful of exuberant animal spirits, when in 1828 he published his first large collection of poems, a volume which was at once received with signal favor. It contains among other things fine descriptions of popular life, to which compositions he gave the very appropriate name "Wood-cuts." In course of time there followed a large number of lyrical poems and romances, through which he acquired a large circle of friends and admirers. Some of his tales did not become very popular on account of their dismal contents, while others, as for instance, "Ristestenen" (the furrowed stone), "Et Aftenbesog" (an evening visit), and "De to Peblinge" (the two schoolboys), must be ranked as excellent and most delicately sketched genre pictures. Both in his prose and in his verse Winther is a perfect master of style.

In 1855 appeared his chief work, the cycle of romances called  "Hjortens Flugt" (the flight of the stag). The poet transports himself to the time of the Danish middle age, and giving loose reins to his glowing imagination presents to our eyes in ever-changing panoramas a series of most charming and highly colored pictures.

All of Christian Winther's poetical productions are marked by great naturalness in the very best sense of the word. To his cheerful temperament all life is "a merry feast" to which


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 fatalism as if all men had a set of slightly magical, wholly irresistible, tricks up their sleeves. But amatory lore is passed down from one man to another and is looked upon much more self-consciously and analytically by men than by women. Parents are shy of going beyond the bounds of casual conversation (naturally these are much wider than in our civilisation) in the discussion of sex with their children, so that definite instruction passes from the man of twenty-five to the boy of eighteen rather than from father to son. The girls learn from the boys and do very little confiding in each other. All of a man’s associates will know every detail of some unusual sex experience while the girl involved will hardly have confided the bare outlines to any one. Her lack of any confidants except relatives towards whom there is always a slight barrier of reserve (I have seen a girl shudder away from acting as an ambassador to her sister) may partly account for this.

The fact that educating one sex in detail and merely fortifying the other sex with enough knowledge and familiarity with sex to prevent shock produces normal sex adjustments is due to the free experimentation which is permitted and the rarity with which both lovers are amateurs. I knew of only one such case, where two children, a sixteen-year-old boy and a fifteen-year-old girl, both in boarding schools on another island, ran away together. Through inexperience they bungled badly. They were both expelled

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 * ; in 7 volumes; with separate parts for plates
 * Volume 1 (1906)
 * Plates to vol 1 (1906)

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 Yes, probably she would marry some day if her chief so willed it, and was that the baby crying? She was the stuff of whom devoted aunts are made, depended upon and loved by all about her. A malaga to another village might have changed her life, for Samoa boys sought strange girls merely because they were strangers. But she was always needed at home by some one and younger girls went journeying in her stead. Perhaps the most dramatic story was that of Moana, the last of the group of girls who lived outside the pastors’ households, a vain, sophisticated child, spoiled by years of trading upon her older half-sister’s devotion. Her amours had begun at fifteen and by the time a year and a half had passed, her parents, fearing that her conduct was becoming so indiscreet as to seriously mar her chances of making a good marriage, asked her uncle to adopt her and attempt to curb her waywardness. This uncle, who was a widower and a sophisticated rake, when he realised the extent of his niece’s experience, availed himself also of her complacency. This incident, not common in Samoa, because of the great lack of privacy and isolation, would have passed undetected in this case, if Moana’s older sister, Sila, had not been in love with the uncle also. This was the only example of prolonged and intense passion which I found in the three villages. Samoans rate romantic fidelity in terms of days or weeks at most, and are inclined to scoff at tales of life-long devotion. (They greeted the story of Romeo and Juliet with incredulous

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258 no guest comes too late, who still feels himself young. He sings of “the broad leaves on the slender stem of the vine, that is shaded by clusters of golden grapes;” but above all he sings of the glowing, intoxicating love, of “all the rapturous joy that can bloom between man and woman,” and of nature, for the beauty of which he had the enthusiastic yet also the critical eye of the lover. When he sings of these things his song strikes a mellow and sonorous note, and stands unrivalled in Danish literature.

Winther is a genuine national poet both as regards form and substance, for he always seeks his materials on his native soil. He has also sketched a few pictures from the South, which he visited in the vigor of his manhood, and though he had a keen eye with which to discern the beauties of southern nature, still he did not succeed so well here as when he extolled the beauties of his own country. In descriptions of nature he is a master. Nothing escapes his glance, and he faithfully reproduces every detail in most charming pictures. And yet he is far from striving after realistic correctness in his representations or plunging into details to such a degree as to destroy the unity of the composition. His pictures of nature may be compared with those of a skilful landscape painter, in whose pictures all the details are pervaded by the conception of the whole, while they at the same time contribute to giving bold relief to the total impression. In Winther we find no general, conventional descriptions; there is nothing indefinite or confused, but all the nuances, of which he presents an abundance, receive their pregnant and perfectly appropriate expression. This is the reason why, in perusing Winther’s descriptions of nature, we feel as it were wrapped in poetical fragrance, for by entering so deeply into the details he makes us understand the spell with which nature unconsciously binds us. Winther is particularly the interpreter of the Zealand nature just as Blicher interpreted for us the Jutland scenery. Winther was especially fond of that which is soft and harmonious in nature and in human life, while Blich-


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 ontempt.) But Sila was devoted to Mutu, her stepfather’s younger brother, to the point of frenzy. She had been his mistress and still lived in his household, but his dilettantism had veered away from her indecorous intensity.  When she discovered that he had lived with her sister, her fury knew no bounds, Masked under a deep solicitude for the younger girl, whom she claimed was an innocent untouched child, she denounced Mutu the length of the three villages.  Moana’s parents fetched her home again in a great rage and a family feud resulted.  Village feeling ran high, but opinion was divided as to whether Mutu was guilty, Moana lying to cover some other peccadillo or Sila gossiping from spite.  The incident was in direct violation of the brother and sister taboo for Mutu was young enough for Moana to speak of him as tuagane (brother). But when two months later, another older sister died during pregnancy, it was necessary to find some one stout-hearted enough to perform the necessary Cæsarian post-mortem operation. After a violent family debate, expediency triumphed and Mutu, most skilled of native surgeons, was summoned to operate on the dead body of the sister of the girl he had vioLated. When he later on announced. his intention of marrying a girl from another island, Sila again displayed the most uncontrolled grief and despair, although she herself was carrying on a love affair at the time.

The lives of the girls who lived in the pastor’s

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 household differed from those of their less restricted sisters and cousins only in the fact that they had no love affairs and lived a more regular and ordered existence. For the excitement of moonlight trysts they substituted group activities, letting the pleasant friendliness of a group of girls fill their lesser leisure, Their interest in salacious material was slightly stronger than the interest of the girls who were free to experiment. They made real friends outside their relationship group, trusted other girls more, worked better in a group, were more at ease with one another but less conscious of their place in their own households than were the others.

With the exception of the few cases to be discussed in the next chapter, adolescence represented no period of crisis or stress, but was instead an orderly developing of a set of slowly maturing interests and activities. The girls’ minds were perplexed by no conflicts, troubled by no philosophical queries, beset by no remote ambitions. To live as a girl with many lovers as long as possible and then to marry in one’s own village, near one’s own relatives and to have many children, these were uniform and satisfying ambitions

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there no conflicts, no temperaments which deviated so markedly from the normal that clash was inevitable? Was the diffused affection and the diffused authority of the large families, the ease of moving from one family to another, the knowledge of sex and the freedom to experiment a sufficient guarantee to all Samoan girls of a perfect adjustment? In almost all cases, yes. But I have reserved for this chapter the tales of the few girls who deviated in temperament or in conduct, although in many cases these deviations were only charged with possibilities of conflict, and actually had no painful results,

The girl between fourteen and twenty stands at the centre of household pressure and can expend her irritation at her elders on those over whom she is in a position of authority. The possibility of escape seems to temper her restiveness under authority and the irritation of her elders also. When to the fear of a useful worker’s running away is added also the fear of a daughter’s indulging in a public elopement, and thus lowering her marriage value, any marked exercise of parental authority is considerably mitigated. Violent outbursts of wrath and summary chastisements do occur


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 XI

THE GIRL IN CONFLICT

WERE there no conflicts, no temperaments which deviated so markedly from the normal that clash was inevitable? Was the diffused affection and the diffused authority of the large families, the ease of moving from one family to another, the knowledge of sex and the freedom to experiment a sufficient guarantee to all Samoan girls of a perfect adjustment? In almost all cases, yes. But I have reserved for this chapter the tales of the few girls who deviated in temperament or in conduct, although in many cases these deviations were only charged with possibilities of conflict, and actually had no painful results,

The girl between fourteen and twenty stands at the centre of household pressure and can expend her irritation at her elders on those over whom she is in a position of authority. The possibility of escape seems to temper her restiveness under authority and the irritation of her elders also. When to the fear of a useful worker’s running away is added also the fear of a daughter’s indulging in a public elopement, and thus lowering her marriage value, any marked exercise of parental authority is considerably mitigated. Violent outbursts of wrath and summary chastisements do occur

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 but consistent and prolonged disciplinary measures are absent, and a display of temper is likely to be speedily followed by conciliatory measures. This, of course, applies only to the relation between a girl and her elders. Often conflicts of personality between young people of the same age in a household are not so tempered, but the removal of one party to the conflict, the individual with the weakest claims upon the household, is here also the most frequent solution. The fact that the age-group gang breaks up before adolescence and is never resumed except in a highly formal manner, coupled with the decided preference for household rather than group solidarity, accounts for the scarcity of conflict here. The child who shuns her age mates is more available for household work and is never worried by questions as to why she doesn’t run and play with the other children. On the other hand, the tolerance of the children in accepting physical defect or slight strangeness of temperament prevents any child’s suffering from undeserved ostracism.

The child who is unfavourably located in the village is the only real exile. Should the age group last over eight or ten years of age, the exiles would certainly suffer or very possibly as they grew bolder, venture farther from home. But the breakdown of the gang just as the children are bold enough and free enough to go ten houses from home, prevents either of these two results from occurring.

The absence of any important institutionalised

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 to the community is perhaps the strongest cause for lack of conflict here. The community makes no demands upon the young girls except for the occasional ceremonial service rendered at the meetings of older women. Were they delinquent in such duties it would be primarily the concern of their own households whose prestige would suffer thereby. A boy who refuses to attend the meetings of the Aumaga, or to join in the communal work, comes in for strong group disapproval and hostility, but a girl owes so small a debt to her community that it does not greatly concern itself to collect it.

The opportunity to experiment freely, the complete familiarity with sex and the absence of very violent preferences make her sex experiences less charged with possibilities of conflict than they are in a more rigid and self-conscious civilisation. Cases of passionate jealousy do occur but they are matters for extended comment and amazement. During nine months in the islands only four cases came to my attention, a girl who informed against a faithless lover accusing him of incest, a girl who bit off part of a rival’s ear, a woman whose husband had deserted her and who fought and severely injured her successor, and a girl who falsely accused a rival of stealing. But jealousy is less expected and less sympathised with than among us, and consequently there is less of a pattern to which an individual may respond. Possibly conditions may also be simplified by the Samoan recognition and toleration

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 of vindictive detraction and growling about a rival. There are no standards of good form which prescribe an insincere acceptance of defeat, no insistence on reticence and sportsmanship. So a great deal of slight irritation can be immediately dissipated. Friendships are of so casual and shifting a nature that they give rise to neither jealousy nor conflict. Resentment is expressed by subdued grumblings and any strong resentment results in the angry one’s leaving the household or sometimes the village.

In the girl’s religious life the attitude of the missionaries was the decisive one. The missionaries require chastity for church membership and discouraged church membership before marriage, except for the young people in the missionary boarding schools who could be continually supervised. This passive acceptance by the religious authorities themselves of pre-marital irregularities went a long way towards minimising the girls’ sense of guilt. Continence became not a passport to heaven but a passport to the missionary schools which in turn were regarded as a social rather than a religious adventure. The girl who indulged in sex experiments was expelled from the local pastor’s school, but it was notable that almost every older girl in the community, including the most notorious sex offenders, had been at one time resident in the pastors’ households. The general result of the stricter supervision provided by these schools seemed to be to postpone the first sex experience two or three years. The seven girls

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western wind is blowing fair

Across the dark Ægean sea,

And at the secret marble stair

My Tyrian galley waits for thee.

Come down! the purple sail is spread,

The watchman sleeps within the town,

O leave thy lily-flowered bed,

O Lady mine come down, come down!

She will not come, I know her well,

Of lover's vows she hath no care,

And little good a man can tell

Of one so cruel and so fair.

True love is but a woman's toy,

They never know the lover's pain,

And I who loved as loves a boy

Must love in vain, must love in vain.

O noble pilot, tell me true,

Is that the sheen of golden hair?

Or is it but the tangled dew

That binds the passion-flowers there? 109

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 Good sailor come and tell me now

Is that my Lady's lily hand?

Or is it but the gleaming prow,

Or is it but the silver sand?

No! no! 'tis not the tangled dew,

'Tis not the silver-fretted sand,

It is my own dear Lady true

With golden hair and lily hand!

O noble pilot, steer for Troy,

Good sailor, ply the labouring oar,

This is the Queen of life and joy

Whom we must bear from Grecian shore!

The waning sky grows faint and blue,

It wants an hour still of day,

Aboard! aboard! my gallant crew,

O Lady mine, away! away!

O noble pilot, steer for Troy,

Good sailor, ply the labouring oar,

O loved as only loves a boy!

O loved for ever evermore! 110

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apple trees are hung with gold,

And birds are loud in Arcady,

The sheep lie bleating in the fold,

The wild goat runs across the wold,

But yesterday his love he told,

I know he will come back to me.

O rising moon! O Lady moon!

Be you my lover's sentinel,

You cannot choose but know him well,

For he is shod with purple shoon,

You cannot choose but know my love,

For he a shepherd's crook doth bear,

And he is soft as any dove,

And brown and curly is his hair.

The turtle now has ceased to call

Upon her crimson-footed groom,

The grey wolf prowls about the stall,

The lily's singing seneschal

Sleeps in the lily-bell, and all

The violet hills are lost in gloom. 111

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 met a good many in my time who professed to know a lot about Sir Nicolas Steele. I am not going to contradict them here, nor do I wish to write the life of a man whom I have served, on and off, for more years than I care to remember. If ever that's to be done, it must be the business of one who got his learning at school. All that I can speak about is that which I saw with my own eyes and heard with my own ears during the days when I was servant to him. And if my word can do any thing to set him right before the world, in so far as he can be set right, I give that word willingly, as is his due.

No man, they say, is a hero to his own valet. Maybe they speak truth, though, for my part, I wouldn't pass that for a good saying. Scandal goes as the crow flies, while a reputation for what they call virtue is often long on the road. Sometimes she never gets there at all—a trick, I fancy, she played upon Sir Nicolas Steele. The world has called him

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 most things, from blackmailer down to thief. There aren't many mortal sins which have not been written against his name at one time or other. I alone, perhaps, know the man as he was; know his weaknesses and his strength, his good deeds and his bad. What I shall write in these papers can add nothing to the calumnies which have been put upon him by lying tongues. It is even possible that they will serve him—which is the hope of a man who has to thank him for much!

I have said that, in attempting this task, I don't mean to write a book full of all the odds and ends which those who write novels busy themselves with. My purpose is to speak of some of those curious adventures into which fortune led us together, and in which I played as much the part of a friend as of a servant. For the matter of that, I had not been a year in Sir Nicolas's service before it was plain to me that he stood in need of just that sort of help which I could give him. Daring, and nerve, and generosity, and recklessness—all these he had; but the mind to foresee, and to scheme, and to invent—that he lacked. How far I was able to make up for this, it is not for me to say; my writing must speak for itself upon that point.

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 Street, and God alone knew where the next sovereign was to come from. We had just returned from Ireland then—it was four years ago—staggering under lies heavy enough to sink a ship. There weren't four doors in all London open to Sir Nicolas; hardly a friend who did not cross the road when we met him. Even some of those he had most right to count upon were the first to show their backs to him. As for enemies, a sum wouldn't have numbered them. You couldn't open a society paper without finding some chatter, which was like fuel to the fire of their talk. Old Lord Heresford swore he'd horsewhip him in the club; the Dublin people posted him for a swindler; there was a dozen versions of the card trouble which had driven us out of Ireland; a hundred tongues could tell you all about Margaret King, the woman who was the first to set the scandal going. Most men would have sunk under circumstances such as these; Nicky Steele did nothing of the sort. He took a two-pair back by Gower Street, and waited for a fairer wind.

"A snap of the finger for the lot of them!" said he; it was the second night we were back. "Let them bark, and be dd to them. Would I run away because some poor devil of a journalist is making a half a crown by me affairs? They'll shout themselves hoarse in a week, and I'll be on the road again."

"If you took my advice, sir," said I, "you'd be on the road now. You don't forget that Easter is three

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 weeks off. There's plenty who'd be glad to see you in Paris just now."

"'Tis truth ye speak," he replied, "and if I had the money, this very night should see me moving. But what would I do in Paris with a five-pound note for my luggage? 'Tis greedy as a woman is that same city. And ten days yet to the, quarter! The devil take the luck we're having!"

"You don't hope to hear from Mr. Ames, sir?"

"'Twould be a miracle if I did, for 'tis two hundred that he owes me. Bedad, an artist who pays his debts should be put in a museum. And Jack Ames is likely to get no such distinction. But I'll be off after quarter-day, and thankful enough to shake my heels at this dirty country."

He said it all in his careless way, and he never was a man to show the white feather; but I knew that he was hit hard enough, and dreaded the days that must pass until he got his money and we were moving again. All said and done, there's no cure for a trouble of this kind like a bit of travel; and if Paris won't lift the gloom off a man's mind, he may say good-by to the doctors. I feared every hour to hear of him doing something foolish in London; and I know that he slept bad, for more than one night passed and he never got out of his arm-chair. As for the days, those he spent moping over the fire, a picture of dejection that cut your heart to see. Save one little woman—and God knows what he owed to her—there wasn't a human being in all the city who cared a button

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 whether he was alive or dead. But Lilian More was a friend in a thousand. I believe that she saved the life of Sir Nicolas Steele.

He had met her some years before, I don't exactly know where; and it happened that they ran against each other at the corner of Oxford Street on the night after he had spoken to me about going away. She was a slim little thing, not one you would have picked out on a stage as a beauty, but a wonderful woman for kindness, and just as sweet-tempered as any creature I ever clapped eyes on. When she came into a house it was like opening the front door to a breeze of laughter. She had a bright word and a smile for every one, just the prettiest possible smile you could see; and this was the more surprising since her face was the face of a woman who had suffered much and was suffering still. I remember once going into our little parlor, where she had been taking tea with Sir Nicolas, and finding her sitting over the fire with her head resting in her hands; and when I lighted the gas quickly, and she looked up, there were tears in her eyes. My master had gone into the other room to write a letter at the moment; and, of course, I pretended to see nothing. When he came back in a few minutes' time, the whole place was rippling with her laughter. For that was the way of her,—then and always, I don't doubt,—high spirits for others, and misery for herself. How many women must play a part like that!

Nicky met her just when he was most in want of

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 a cheering word. He had not been out of the house for three days, and when he did go out it was only as far as Oxford Street to buy one of the papers which was telling some new story about him. Directly he got back I knew that something had happened. He was a different man from what he had been twenty minutes before, and the lines in his face seemed almost to have been wiped out by his walk.

"Hildebrand," he cried, pretty well before he was in the house, "ye'll lay out my clothes, please; I'm going to the theatre."

"To the theatre, sir?" exclaimed I, just as astonished as a man could be.

"'Tis so," he went on; "and I'll be supping away after. Ye may set out the glasses, and go to bed when you please. Do you remember me speaking of little Lilian More, that I used to know in Birmingham? Well, she's playing at the Royalty, and she's asked me down. I'm to sup with her and her one-armed brother-in-law at Chelsea. Sure, 'tis as good as quinine to hear her laugh, any day."

I said nothing in answer to this, though I was very glad to think that he had met some one who would take his mind off the trouble. Though I did not know Lilian More then, I began to hope he was not going to make a fool of himself, for he put on his dress-clothes anyhow, and such was not his way when he had the mind to please a woman, he being extraordinary vain, as some of my stories will tell. I knew well enough that an hour wouldn't have served

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 him at the glass if the lady had been any thing but a friend to him—and friend he regarded her right through to the end. What it was on her side is not for me to speak about. I believe that she loved him,—I shall believe that to my dying day,—and for love of him she paid with her life, as my story will show.

Well, he went to the theatre, and next day he got up at twelve, and was as busy as a man could be. Almost his first words were talk about Miss More, and that he kept up all the time I was shaving him.

"She has the spirits of twenty," he said; "there was never a brighter little woman born. 'Twas good luck that sent me to Oxford Street for sure! Ye'll see Mrs. Leverty about the lunch I spoke of, though I doubt she'll do much."

"You didn't mention no lunch to me, sir," said I while I helped him into his best frock-coat. "Are you looking for any company?"

"Indeed, and I am; there's Miss More coming, and her brother-in-law, Mr. Connoley—him that has one arm. A strange man he is, too, as full of tales as a bowl of good punch of whiskey. Ye must just talk sweetly to the old lady down stairs, and see what ye can do. 'Tis not much I have at the moment, but I'll not forget her when quarter-day is here."

"We've told her that pretty often already, sir," said I. "If she gets what I've promised her, Mrs. Leverty will be a rich woman on quarter-day."

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"Be hanged to that!" cried he. "Ye've a sweet way with you, and will persuade her. 'Twould never do to sit down to bread and cheese and kisses. Have I any cigarettes in the house?"

"You smoked the last in bed this morning," said I; "but we've credit at the tobacconist's, and that will be all right. Perhaps I can manage a couple of bottles of champagne from Williams. I'll tell him you've good company, and that we will recommend him. It's astonishing how many wine merchants live on recommendations, sir. One chap who can't pay recommends another who don't mean to pay, and so they keep the ball rolling. It's a beautiful trade, but I've no fancy for it myself."

He laughed at this, and I went off to get his lunch ready. It was hard work to talk over the old woman who let us the lodgings, but I made a bit of love to her, and when she was smoothed down, I got the champagne from Williams. By the time I was back again Miss More and her brother-in-law were in the sitting-room, and she was already busy putting his ornaments straight and arranging a few flowers she had brought him. It was astonishing to see how her laughing little face brightened up that dingy old apartment. She was here, there, and everywhere, like a butterfly in a garden, and I don't believe she stopped talking from the minute she entered the door until the hansom took her away again.

"Pat," I heard her say—all the women called him Pat—"what a place to get into, Pat! Do you know

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 I've a good mind to ask you where you keep the pig?"

"And wouldn't I be glad to tell you that he was under the table," said he; "'tis not me that has the money to think of pigs just now. Bedad, it's myself I'll be taking to market if times don't change. Will ye be smoking, Mr. Connoley? We've tobacco still in the ship, and that's something."

Connoley, you must know, was the queerest fish I've ever seen out of Billingsgate. He was a long, lean man, with his left hand cut off at the wrist, and his face tattooed by the roots of his beard until it looked like the chest of a sailor. Many's the queer tale he has told me in his time. To listen to him, you would think that no such fire-eating devil ever came out of Texas. Yet I discovered afterward that he was only a barrister on half-pay, so to speak, and that he had a wife and ten children in a little slum off Sloane Street. What work he did, or in whose service he did it, the Lord only knows. I never saw him, so far as my recollection goes, busy with any thing but a pipe—a great German pipe with a cherry stem, which he carried everywhere, like other men carry a stick. An odder figure than his you would never see. The first thing he did when he came to our rooms was to change his boots for a pair of carpet-slippers. Then he stuck himself in an arm-chair by the fire, and I don't think he opened his lips for an hour and a half. Food made no difference to him. He would take a fork in his left hand, and a

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 WILLIAM BLACK'S NOVELS

LIBRARY EDITION

Mr. Black knows so well just what to describe, and to what length, that the scenery of his novels — by comparison with that of many we are obliged to read — seems to have been freshened by soft spring rains. His painting of character, his conversa- tions and situations, are never strongly dramatic and exciting, but they are thoroughly good. He never gives us a tame or a tiresome chapter, and this is something for which readers will be profoundly grateful. — N. Y. Tribune.

A DAUGHTER OP HETII.

A PRINCESS OF THULE.

DONALD ROSS OF HEIMRA.

GREEN PASTURES AND PIC- CADILLY.

IN FAR LOCHABER.

IN SILK ATTIRE.

JUDITH SHAKESPEARE. Il- lustrated.

KILMENY.

MACLEOD OF DARE. Ul'd.

MADCAP VIOLET.

PRINCE FORTUNATUS. Ill'd.

SABINA ZEMBRA.

SHANDON BELLS. Illustrated.

STAND FAST, CRAIG -ROYS- TON ! Illustrated.

SUNRISE.

THAT BEAUTIFUL WRETCH. Illustrated.

THE MAGIC INK, AND OTH- ER STORIES. Illnstrated.

THE STRANGE ADVENTURES OF A HOUSE-BOAT. HIM.

THE STRANGE ADVENTURES OF A PHAETON.

THREE FEATHERS.

WHITE HEATHER.

WHITE WINGS. Illustrated.

YOLANDE. Illustrated.

12rao, Cloth, $1 25 per volume.

WOLFENBERG.— THE HANDSOME HUMES.

Illustrated. 12mo, Cloth, $1 50 per volume.

HIGHLAND COUSINS.

Illustrated. 12mo, Cloth, Ornamental, $1 75.

Complete Sets, 26 volumes, Cloth, $30 00; Half Calf, $57 00.

Published by HARPER & BROTHERS, New York.

The above works are for salt by all booksellers, or will be sent by the publishers, postage prepaid, to any part of the United States, Canada, or Mexico, on receipt of the price.

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 pipe in his right. When he did speak, it was to tell you how he killed three Bulgarians in Sofia, and had a mysterious fortune awaiting him in the East. He promised to take me there when the time was right, and I couldn't answer him for laughing.

But all this is outside my story. What I wanted to write down is that Connoley smoked, and Nicky Steele laughed, and Miss More told stories all the time our little luncheon party was on. When it was done, they went off together to the West End, and I saw nothing of my master until. one o'clock in the morning. He was lively enough then, and all his depression and melancholy seemed troubles of a year rather than that of twenty-four hours ago.

"Bedad," said he, as I mixed him a whiskey and soda and gave him his smoking-coat, "'tis the best little woman in London, she is, and the merriest. I haven't stopped laughing since I left the house; yet what I laughed at, God only knows. That's the way of a witty woman. Her laugh is like the song of a bird in spring. You don't ask why the bird sings, but you tune yourself up to the chorus. I'll forget that I was ever in Ireland if I am with her long."

"Is she living in London now, sir?" I asked.

"Indeed and she is, though 'tis a poor place of a cabin that she has. I'm to lunch there to-morrow at two. Ye'll not let me forget that—two o'clock sharp, and to the play afterward, if I can manage it"

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"You're not likely to have any engagement," said I.

"Ye speak truth," he replied; "but the money it is that makes a free man. Maybe Jack Ames will pay me this week. I wish I could think so."

"Maybe we shall see a comet in the sky, sir," was my answer; and with that I took myself off to bed.

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 the next ten days it seemed to me that I did little but run backward and forward between Gower Street and Trafalgar Square, at Chelsea, where Miss More had her flat, A queer place it was too—just a bit of a studio, one of six, all built up a yard, which might have belonged to a stable; and as bare as a barn save for the merry little woman who lived in it. A right pleasant welcome she always gave me, I must say, and many's the glass of good Scotch whiskey I have drank in her parlor.

"We must do our best for your master," she would say while she took out her purse—and that she did every time I went to her rooms; "we must do our best for him, and see that he is not left too much alone. I know what it is to want friends myself. Things will come all right presently, and he will forget that this has happened. You must make it your business to see that he does not mope in the house. Encourage him to go out, and get him away to Paris as soon as possible—you understand what I mean?"

"I understand, miss," said I; "and thank you kindly for thinking of it. I wish it was all as nice and

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 straight as your words. But how a man who hasn't five pounds to his back is to cross the Channel, I really don't know. He isn't no Captain Webb, miss; and I don't forget that we're in the middle of March."

She laughed at this, but she was never one to laugh long when I was alone with her; and presently she became very serious.

"He did not tell me it was as bad as that," she said—and I could see that she was thinking hard—"but now I understand many things. We must find a way out of this, Hildebrand. I am sure we can do it between us. You won't forget the letter, and be sure that he comes to the theatre to-night. When one wants to cry, there is no place like a gloomy house to cry in."

"That's true, miss," I replied; "though, if you ask me, all the crying in Europe won't make a five-pound note of a tailor's bill when your credit has gone walking. I was never one to believe in the waterworks myself, nor is Sir Nicolas, I make sure. A wonderful light heart he has most times, though I must say that I never remember such a three months as this year has brought him. If it hadn't been for you, God knows what would have happened to him."

"Oh, I have done nothing," she answered—"nothing at all; any friend would have done as much. I cannot forget what I owed to him in Birmingham five years ago. He was very good to me then, and I should be ashamed not to try and help him here."

Now, this was news to me, for I knew nothing at

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 that time of any past relations between Sir Nicolas and herself, though I could quite imagine that any man would have gone out of his way to do a turn to so kind-hearted a creature. Yet what kindness he had shown to her, or in what position they had stood to each other, I knew no more than the dead. Her whole life seemed to me to be as great a mystery as any thing I had ever heard of. She had plenty of money, and yet she lived in a hovel where I wouldn't have stabled a donkey. She had the grace and fascination of twenty women, and yet there was not a whisper of a love affair in her life. They told you at the theatre of a hundred offers of marriage which she had declined; they spoke of the "opportunities" she had given the cold shoulder to; of the extraordinary silence which she maintained whenever her own life was mentioned. No nun in a convent could have blotted out her past more successfully. People declared that they worshipped her. They could say no more; and even the boldest of them never dared to put a second embarrassing question to the woman who knew so well how to keep her own secrets and to defend them.

I thought of all these things on my way from Chelsea to Gower Street, and while I could make nothing of them, I was far from easy about our own future. A big-hearted man like Nicky Steele, who never said no to a woman in his life, was always dangerous when there was a woman hanging about him; and I knew well enough that little Lilian

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 More worshipped the ground he trod on. It did not suit my plan at all that he should wind up by marrying a bit of a play-actress; for I felt his title would be worth money abroad, and abroad I meant that he should go. None the less was I sure that there was danger in the situation, and with that danger I determined to cope.

I saw this just when I arrived at our own place, expecting to find my master impatient for his lunch. I found him engaged with something much more important. He had a scrap of a letter in his hand when I came in; and he was walking up and down the parlor, still wearing his dressing-gown, but looking for all the world like a man who has been scared half out of his wits. Nor did he let any time pass before he told me what the matter was.

"Read this," said he, holding out the dirty, crumpled sheet of note; "read it, and tell me if you ever saw the like to it?"

I took the letter and found that it contained two lines of crabbed and winding writing, done in pencil. It was some minutes before I could make head or tail of the thing; but when at last I read it, I was just as much astonished as he was.

"If you are seen at Lilian More's again, I will blow your brains out."

This was all of it—no address, no date, no signature; note-paper which you might have bought at

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 a farthing the sheet, and a handwriting which might have been a parson's, and might have been a schoolboy's. And as if to blind us further, the postmark was Chancery Lane, which, as all the world knows, has nothing particular to do with Chelsea.

"Well," said Sir Nicolas, while I stood gaping at the letter like a board-school boy might gape at a slice of Greek, "can ye read it?"

"Oh, I can read it all right, sir," I replied; "it ain't a difficult handwriting to read."

"Indeed, and it is not. I call it altogether a very pretty production; 'tis worthy of the murdering scoundrel who had the impudence to send it."

"Then you know who sent it, sir?"

"Should I know who sent it? The devil take me if I have the ghost of an idea, unless it's the barrister with the one arm. 'Tis a queer letter entirely."

"That's true, sir; but I don't think Mr. Connoley wrote it. If he was having a bit of fun with you, he'd set about it different to that. You don't forget his three Bulgarians and his fortune in the East? What's more, he likes to see you at Chelsea. I'm as sure of that as of my own name."

"Then who the blazes would send such a thing?"

"That I can't say off-hand. Maybe one of the young men who hang about Miss More at the theatre. It isn't to be expected that all of them would see her come here and say nothing about it. You don't know of any friends that would have the right to speak for her, sir?"

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"Not the shadow of one. When I met her in Birmingham eight years ago, her father was living—a bookseller down at Oxford he was; but he died three years ago, and I never heard that she had a brother."

"Then it's one of her theatre friends," said I, "and, if he comes my way, I'll wipe him down with a hickory towel. Don't you trouble about that, sir. A young man in' love is fond of flying to pistols—when he don't fly to whiskey and soda. You toss the thing into the fire, and I'll do the rest."

He heard me out, and then he seemed persuaded.

"Bedad," said he, "I believe ye're right, and it's some jealous little boy out of the wings that is anxious to crow upon my own dung-heap. The impudence of the devil! 'Tis as good as a play that any one should think I would be marrying Miss More. They'll laugh finely at the theatre when I pass it round."

"I wouldn't do that for a bit, sir," said I; "we may as well try and find out how the land lies. There are plenty of lunatics walking about the world, and it's just as well to know what road they take"

"Would ye have me seek police protection, then? 'Tis funny I would look with a policeman at my heels for the matter of a penny letter from a maniac. Faith, I'll just put it in my pocket-book, and show it to Miss More when she comes. 'Twill be a good laugh for the pair of us."

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He seemed pleased with this idea, and, sure enough, when she came up with Connoley in the afternoon, the three of them had a rare laugh over it.

"'Tis to many we are, Lilian," said my master, reading the letter out aloud, while the one-armed barrister smoked harder than ever—"to marry we are, and here is the man who will forbid the banns, d'ye see? The murdering scoundrel, to want to blow me brains out!"

"He'll never do that, Nicky," said Connoley; "that's beyond him. He may excavate the cavity, but as for blowing your brains out, why, ye can't blow out what isn't there to blow. Now, when I was in Bulgaria—you remember the three men I shot there"

"Be hanged to your three men!" cried Sir Nicolas. "Is it not yerself that has shot them twenty times in this very room?"

"And why not?" says Connoley. "If there's a more curious story than mine since I met 'The Raven' in the Strand, I'd be glad to hear of it. But ye've no literary faculty, Nicky—not a trace of it."

"There was nothing so vulgar ever run in me family," exclaimed my master. "We never came lower than pathriots since I can remember. Ye'll not claim to be a cousin of mine, Roderick. Bedad, I'll change my name if you do. 'Tis a sweet name is More, and I would carry it finely."

He looked at Miss More when he said this, and all three of them laughed together.

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"You seem to think it a very good joke, Pat," said she.

"I have heard no better since I came out of Ireland!" cried he. "That they should want to blow out my brains! I knew it would amuse you finely."

With this laugh they changed the subject; but during the afternoon I saw Miss More with tears in her eyes, as I have told you, and I am sure it was a very poor joke to her, though Nicky was blind to the end of it, and never so much as suspected what I knew all along. As for the silly letter, he forgot that as soon as he had torn it up. I heard him making an appointment to go down to Chelsea that very night, and get a picture of Lilian More in her theatre clothes. He was always messing about with photographs and stinking chemicals, and if he took one picture of that bright little woman, he took fifty. I have one now stuck on the mantle-shelf of my room here—I burned a dozen before he went down to Derbyshire and nearly married Miss Oakley there; but the photograph of Miss More in her theatre clothes is in the hands of the man who, in some sort of way, has the best right to it, though God help him when he looks at it, say I.

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 O risen moon! O holy moon!

Stand on the top of Helice,

And if my own true love you see,

Ah! if you see the purple shoon,

The hazel crook, the lad's brown hair,

The goat-skin wrapped about his arm,

Tell him that I am waiting where

The rushlight glimmers in the Farm.

The falling dew is cold and chill,

And no bird sings in Arcady,

The little fauns have left the hill,

Even the tired daffodil

Has closed its gilded doors, and still

My lover comes not back to me.

False moon! False moon! O waning moon!

Where is my own true lover gone,

Where are the lips vermilion,

The shepherd's crook, the purple shoon?

Why spread that silver pavilion,

Why wear that veil of drifting mist?

Ah! thou hast young Endymion,

Thou hast the lips that should be kissed! 112

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 In the mean while our host had drawn the cork, and, filling two of the goblets, offered them to the lady and myself. She at first made some objections, but the instances of Baptiste were so urgent, that she was obliged to comply. Fearing to excite suspicion, I hesitated not to take the goblet presented to me. By its smell and colour, I guessed it to be champagne; but some grains of powder floating upon the top convinced me that it was not unadulterated. However, I dared not to express my repugnance to drinking it; I lifted it to my lips, and seemed to be swallowing it: suddenly starting from my chair, I made the best of my way towards a vase of water at some distance, in which Marguerite had been rinsing the goblets. I pretended to spit out the wine with disgust, and took an opportunity, unperceived, of emptying the liquor into the vase.

The banditti seemed alarmed at my action. Jacques half rose from his chair, put his hand into his bosom, and I disco-


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 arrangement was that Sir Nicolas should go down and take the picture at half -past eleven that night.

"I'll take ye by the magnesium light, Lilian," said he; "and after that we'll go and get supper somewhere. 'Tis a beautiful light, if ye know how to handle it. Ye won't forget to put on the bull's eyes and the crown."

"Why not take Roderick, too, and call it 'Beauty and the Beast'?" said she.

"’T would be a libel on my race," said he; and with that they parted, she going to the theatre, while he went to get a bit of dinner in Old Compton Street.

Half-past ten had struck when he came back again. It never occurred to me that he would want my company, but such proved the case.

"Ye may help me to carry the camera," said he, while he began to get the dry plates ready; "and, if ye're not very tired, I'd be glad to take you as far as Miss More's place. 'Tis not afraid I am of a paltry threatening letter, but we couldn't do with a scene

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 just now, and there's plenty of fools ready to make one when they're a bit spoony over a woman. I won't keep you the half of an hour."

I was a little surprised at this, for he seemed to have forgotten all about the letter; but I went ready enough, and, what's more, I took a good thick stick in my hand when I started.

"If there is any puppy who desires particular to bark, I'm his man," said I to myself as I got in the cab. I knew well enough that he was right when he said that we could not afford to have a scene. There was too much talked of already for us to be advertising ourselves on the newspaper bills. And that I meant to prevent, all the puppies in London notwithstanding.

We were half an hour, I suppose, driving from Gower Street to Chelsea. It was near about a quarter to twelve when we arrived at Miss More's studio; but even then we seemed to have come too early. Her flat, as I have told you, was one of six, built up an entry. A housekeeper opened the outer gate, and, once inside the long passage, you saw six little front doors all standing in a row, like so many green shutters. Miss More's door was the last of these, and when we came up to it we found it locked.

"She'll be still at the theatre," said the old woman who showed us in. "’Tain't often as this 'ouse sees her before midnight, that I do know. I'll let you in, and you can bide till she comes."

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She opened the door with a key she carried at her waist, and we went into the studio, which was as dark as a prison and cold as a ship's deck on a winter's night. I judged by the feel of it that the place had not seen a fire since morning, and a curtain drawn over the glass window in the roof kept out the light like a shutter might have done. It was a room which did not strike comfort into you at the best of times; but a more cheerless apartment at such a time of night I never want to enter. I was shivering like a boy in a swimming-bath two minutes after the door closed upon us, and I don't believe Nicky was any better.

"The blazes of a place it is, for sure," said he. "To think that she lives alone in such a hovel as this. It can't be for want of the money; they say she's earning twenty pounds a week, and will earn more. Strike a light, will ye? I'd be more at home in a vault, I take leave to think."

"I'll have a light quick enough, sir," said I, "once I've got this camera down. Mind how you tread. There's a cushion here, or something—I feel it under my foot—and this is a couch, I suppose."

I had stumbled against something while I spoke to him, and when I put out my hand to see what it was, I had the greatest start that ever I can remember.

"Good God, sir," said I, the sweat starting sudden to my forehead, "there's some one lying on this sofa!"

"You don't mean that!" cried he.

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 vered the haft of a dagger. I returned to my seat with tranquillity, and affected not to have observed their confusion.

"You have not suited my taste, honest friend," said I, addressing myself to Baptiste: "I never can drink champagne without its producing a violent illness. I swallowed a few mouthfuls ere I was aware of its quality, and fear that I shall suffer for my imprudence."

Baptiste and Jacques exchanged looks of distrust.

"Perhaps," said Robert, "the smell may be disagreeable to you?"

He quitted his chair, and removed the goblet. I observed, that he examined whether it was nearly empty.

"He must have drank sufficient," said he to his brother in a low voice, while he re-seated himself.

Marguerite looked apprehensive that I had tasted the liquor. A glance from my eye re-assured her.

I waited with anxiety for the effects


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"As I'm a living man, I do. Hold the camera a minute, and let me see."

He took the camera out of my hands, and I struck a lucifer. Its poor passing light lit up our corner of the room maybe for ten seconds before we were in the dark again. But the sight which we both saw is one which I shall never forget to my dying day. Miss More herself lay huddled up on the sofa, her left hand touching the floor, her right hand supporting her head. Her face was the face of one sleeping restfully, yet so pale and unearthly looking that I knew she was dead. And in death all the kindness and sweetness of her nature seemed written ten times over upon her placid features. It might have been a child lying there—a child that had died laughing into a mother's eyes.

For some seconds neither of us spoke. I never remember a minute like that when we stood dumb and trembling in the face of death, and the dark seemed to hide the whole of the awful truth from us. When at last my master opened his lips, his voice was like a whisper of a man in a vault.

"Run for help and a doctor," said he. "God grant we are dreaming!"

He staggered out with me to the door, and our cries brought the old hag from the porter's lodge. She had a lantern in her hand, and she and my master went back to the studio together. When I returned in ten minutes' time—a doctor at my heels—I found the two together chafing the dead woman's hands,

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 and trying to force brandy between her lips. Nor do I know which was the whiter of the two—my master or the dead girl who had befriended him.

"Oh, for God's sake do something, doctor!" said he. "’Tis the sweetest creature in the world to die like this! Ye'll not tell me that there's no hope!"

But the doctor said nothing. He was listening for a beat of the heart—a thing I was sure he would never hear. Five minutes, perhaps, he bent over the little figure of the woman whose laughter had been music to every soul she knew. Then he rose like a man who has done all possible.

"I come too late," he said; "your friend is dead from laudanum poisoning."

A quick glance round the room gave strength to his words. There was a blue bottle upon the table, and a letter by it. The doctor picked up the bottle and smelt it; Sir Nicholas took the letter and read it.

"Pat [it said], take my picture for the love of auld lang syne; take it as I lie when you will see me, and send it to the man whose address is here. I can do no more for him. God bless all who have done me any kindness!"

My master shuddered.

"God forgive any one that ever did harm to so sweet a woman," said he.

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 was no sleep for either of us that night; nor, I think, did Sir Nicolas take off his clothes for two days after Miss More died. The black mystery of the whole thing, the extraordinary surprise of it, was more than he or I could cope with. We had seen the dead woman in the afternoon as merry and as light-hearted as a child; she had asked us to come down to her rooms and to take her picture just as one might ask a friend to pay a pleasant call. What had happened in the between time, what trouble or disappointment or sorrow had come upon her, I knew no more than the dead. That she loved Sir Nicolas Steele I was sure; that her death was in some way to be connected with the strange letter of warning my master had received was equally obvious. But who the writer of that letter was, and what was his claim upon Lilian More, I had yet to find out.

I say that I had yet to find out, and this is true. A jury returned a plain verdict,—a merciful verdict, you may be sure,—and the police, who had taken charge of the writing we found in the room, could

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 which the beverage would produce upon the lady. I doubted not but the grains which I had observed were poisonous, and lamented that it had been impossible for me to warn her of the danger. But a few minutes had elapsed, before I perceived her eyes grow heavy; her head sank upon her shoulder, and she fell into a deep sleep. I affected not to attend to this circumstance, and continued my conversation with Baptiste, with all the outward gaiety in my power to assume. But he no longer answered me without constraint. He eyed me with distrust and astonishment, and I saw that the banditti were frequently whispering among themselves. My situation became every moment more painful: I sustained the character of confidence with a worse grace than ever. Equally afraid of the arrival of their accomplices, and of their suspecting my knowledge of their designs, I knew not how to dissipate the distrust which the banditti evidently entertained for me. In this new dilemma the


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 add no information to our own. They went to the house to which we had been asked to send the photograph, and found it in a slum in Hammersmith—an empty house, once kept by a woman who let lodgings, but then deserted and almost in ruins. Nor was there any friend of Miss More who could add to what we knew. As for Connoley, he had gone to Scotland the very day his sister-in-law died. No one knew his address, and we took it that he saw nothing in the papers. Indeed, he told me, when I met him in Paris a year later, that he never learned the news until a month after his kinswoman was dead.

All this did not help me in getting at what I wanted; nor was my master any readier in doing what I could not do.

"’Tis a story of trouble, ye may be sure," he said to me on the second morning, "but I doubt if any man will write it. Whatever it was, it must have happened after I gave her the promise to take her picture. 'Twould be terrible to think that she meant it otherwise."

"That's so, sir," said I. "Yet, when a woman is driven to that state, God knows what she won't think of! Be sure of this, that she wanted somebody to know she was dead, and this was the queer idea she had of telling him."

"Would it be the man who wrote me the murdering letter?" he asked.

"I have no doubt of it—her husband, very likely,

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 if she had one. At least, that's what appears on the face of it."

"I never thought of that," he said quickly. "It may be as you say, but he'll go wanting the picture, any way. I wouldn't have taken it for a thousand down."

"There you're wrong, sir," said I; "if we're prudent men we'll find out who this person is, and what he has against us. And the picture may help us. It's here, in my pocket, any way."

I never saw a man more astonished.

"Ye had it taken, then?" he cried.

"That's so, sir. I called in a photographer yesterday, and here's the print."

He took the picture and looked at for a long time.

"Well," said he, "we must all come to that, some day or other. Good God! it makes me cold to think of it. And the sweetest little woman that ever drew breath. Ye won't leave it about the place? I couldn't sleep with a thing like that in my rooms."

I told him that I would not, and I put the picture away. It was clear that I could do nothing with it until he should give me some information which I did not then possess; and, as it turned out, I had almost forgotten the affair when that information came to me. Indeed, three weeks had passed and Jack Ames had paid the two hundred, and we were on the eve of going up to Yorkshire, when, just as Nicky had left Gower Street one night to dine

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 at the Green House Club, there came a ring at our bell and a tall man stepped into the hall and asked for him. There was only a bit of a gas-flare burning in the passage then, and the man being in the shadow, I couldn't very well see his face; but I noticed that his clothes were very shabby and that he wore a rough overcoat which was a size too small for him. And his hat was an old silk one; but so black inside that a regiment of heads might have worn it.

"You desire to see Sir Nicolas Steele?" said I, not much liking the look of him, for he stood there just like a mute.

"I want to see him," he answered in a thick, husky voice, "and to see him at once."

"Well," said I, not liking his manner, "I've a notion that you can't do that, since he isn't in the house."

"Not in the house!" cried he, losing his temper all in a minute. "Oh! I'll soon know about that. Come, no lies—where is he, and where is the other?"

With this word, he took a step forward into the passage, and I saw his face for the first time. It was the face of an exceedingly handsome man, but there was a queer look in the eyes, such as I have never seen in the eyes of a human being before or since. Try as I might I couldn't describe that strange expression of his. Anger, determination, cruelty, all these were in it, but there was something beyond, a look as though the man had no power to keep his

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 thoughts on any one thing for two minutes together; not the peering gaze of the madman, but the glance of one weakened by long illness until the nerves were shattered and the brain unhinged.

"Where is your master?" he repeated, forcing his way up the hall. "I mean to speak to him."

"Then you'll have to come to-morrow," said I. "You don't suppose I'm going to work a miracle for your particular benefit! I tell you that he isn't in the house'"

"Oh!" said he, drawing back and seeming to think of it. "Do you know if he has gone to Chelsea?"

"To Chelsea?" cried I, though his words sent me cold all over. "What would he do at Chelsea?"

"He would be with Mrs. Hadley," said he, though I could see that his mind did not follow his words.

"That's a name I never heard before, so I really can't say," I replied.

"You know her as Lilian More," he exclaimed, turning his eyes upon me quickly. "He is with her now! Don't tell me lies, or I will serve you as I mean to serve him!"

"Sir!" said I quickly, for his words shocked me, "Miss More died three weeks ago."

Now at this he did not break out or make any scene, as I thought he would do. It was wonderful to watch the manner of him; his brain seeming to grasp the truth for a minute, only to let it go in the next. As for his eyes, they were never still, and his look passed unceasingly from one object to the other.

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"Three weeks ago," he said, just like a man dreaming, while he took up his hat mechanically. "That could not be; I was with her then."

"Then you are a relation?" said I.

"I am her husband," he replied; and the remembrance of that fact caused him to hold himself erect and to look me straight in the face. "I am her husband, and if any thing like that had happened, should not I be the first to know of it?"

"Properly you ought to be, sir," said I, "but perhaps you weren't in London then."

"I have been in London for three months," he answered, raising his voice suddenly. "I know you are telling me a lie—by God! how dare you?"

"It is no lie," I replied; and sorry for him I was, for the tears were now running down his face like rain. "If you are the lady's husband, sir, it is you who ought to have the picture I have been carrying about with me since the day after Miss More died. I'll fetch it for you."

With this I ran upstairs to my room and took the photograph out of my box. I was away a couple of minutes, perhaps; but when I came down again he was still standing fingering his hat in the hall, and he didn't appear to have moved a foot since I left him. I was half frightened to give him the picture, so strange was his manner; but the dead woman had wished it, and I meant to respect her words.

"Here it is, sir," said I. "It was her wish that you should have it, and no thought of ours."

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 friendly Marguerite again assisted me. She passed behind the chairs of her step-sons, stopped for a moment opposite to me, closed her eyes, and reclined her head upon her shoulder. This hint immediately dispelled my incertitude. It told me, that I ought to imitate the baroness, and pretend that the liquor had taken its full effect upon me. I did so, and in a few minutes seemed perfectly overcome with slumber.

"So!" cried Baptiste, as I fell back in my chair, "at last he sleeps! I began to think that he had scented our design, and that we should have been forced to dispatch him at all events."

"And why not dispatch him at all events?" enquired the ferocious Jacques: "why leave him the possibility of betraying our secret? Marguerite, give me one of my pistols: a single touch of the trigger will finish him at once."

"And supposing," rejoined the father, "supposing that our friends should not arrive to night, a pretty figure we should make


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He made no answer, but snatched the frame out of my hand. His restless eyes seemed to fall upon the portrait for a minute, then to rest upon the floor, and after that again upon me! It was plain that his dazed brain was only beginning to find the truth.

"She was my wife," he said very slowly, after a long pause. "Oh, God, help me! I shall never hold her in my arms again."

He saw this, and thrusting the picture into his breast, he turned to leave the house.

"Shall I give my master any message, sir?" I asked.

"Tell him that I came here to strike him dead," said he; and, before I could answer, he had disappeared down the street.

It was the first and last time I ever saw Robert Hadley—for that was his full name; but ten days later he wrote a letter from Charing Cross Hospital to Sir Nicolas, and begged my master to go and see him. And this was the way his story came to us, and with it the story of Lilian More.

She had married him in Birmingham, a year after Sir Nicolas met her there. He was a well-to-do widower then, with one little child—a girl three years old; but six months after his marriage he began to nip with his business acquaintances, and in a year he was a confirmed dipsomaniac. Business, friends, wife, and child—all these became nothing to him. He went down the ladder of self-respect fast, until he had no longer a home, and his wife was

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