Black night lay over sea and land; there was a low continuous murmur round the rocks and shores; and out here, at the end of the little wooden quay, two men were slowly pacing up and down in the dark. They were the serious-visaged Coinneach Breac and his taller and younger companion Calum-a-Bhata. The whereabouts of the village, across the bay, was revealed by a solitary light in one of the windows: no doubt the man who looked after the pier was enjoying the comfort of his own home as long as was possible, before coming down to make ready for the expected steamer.

But that was not at all the view that Fred Stanley took of this amazing and incomprehensible incident. "There's some trick in it, Frank," he said vehemently, as he hurried his friend along with him, on their way back to the house. "There's some underhand trick in it, and I want to know what it means. I tell you, we must get the keepers, and go up the hill at once, and see what is going on. There's something at the bottom of all this jugglery."

On a certain sunny afternoon in May, when all the world and his wife were walking or driving in Piccadilly, two figures appeared there who clearly did not belong to the fashionable crowd. Indeed, so unusual was their aspect that many a swift glance, shot from carefully impassive faces, made furtive scrutiny of them as they passed. One of the strangers was an old man who might have been a venerable Scandinavian scald come to life again-a man thick-set and broad-shouldered, with features at once aquiline and massive, and with flowing hair and beard almost silver-white.

And at first Vincent was for rebelliously thrusting aside and ignoring this information that had reached him so unexpectedly. Was he, on the strength of a statement forwarded by an unknown correspondent in New York, to suspect-nay, to condemn unheard-this proud and solitary old man with whom he had all this while been on terms of such close and friendly intimacy? Had he not had ample opportunities of judging whether George Bethune was the sort of person likely to have done this thing that was now charged against him? He went over these past weeks and months.

One evening Mr. Courtnay Fox, the London correspondent of the Edinburgh Chronicle, was as usual in his own room in the office in Fleet-street, when a card was brought to him. "Show the gentleman up," said he to the boy. A couple of seconds thereafter Vincent Harris made his appearance. "Mr. Fox?" said he, inquiringly. The heavy-built journalist did not rise to receive his visitor; he merely said- "Take a chair. What can I do for you?"

"I am gathering myself together for a great leap, Jack." "Don't look so sad about it, then. Take it as you would one of your Berkshire fences, Harry, with a firm seat and a cool hand." "If I only knew what was on the other side, Jack-that bothers me." "By the way, did you hear of the dinner at old Thornhill's on Tuesday? I declare everybody was drunk but the dogs; and they were turned out at night to find their way home by themselves. The Squire got very, very bad-port and brandy alternately-tumbled twice off his horse before he got out of the gate; and then, half an hour after, when the rest...

It was a fair, clear, and shining morning, in the sweet May-time of the year, when a young English damsel went forth from the town of Stratford-upon-Avon to walk in the fields. As she passed along by the Guild Chapel and the Grammar School, this one and the other that met her gave her a kindly greeting; for nearly every one knew her, and she was a favorite; and she returned those salutations with a frankness which betokened rather the self-possession of a young woman than the timidity of a girl. Indeed, she was no longer in the first sensitive dawn of maidenhood-having, in fact, but recently...

One chilly afternoon in February, while as yet the London season had not quite begun, though the streets were busy enough, an open barouche was being rapidly driven along Piccadilly in the direction of Coventry Street; and its two occupants, despite the dull roar of vehicles around them, seemed to be engaged in eager conversation. One of these two was a tall, handsome, muscular-looking man of about thirty, with a sun-tanned face, piercing gray eyes, and a reddish-brown beard cropped in the foreign fashion; the other, half hidden among the voluminous furs of the carriage, was a pale,...

"Innocently to amuse the imagination in this dream of life is wisdom." So wrote Oliver Goldsmith; and surely among those who have earned the world's gratitude by this ministration he must be accorded a conspicuous place. If, in these delightful writings of his, he mostly avoids the darker problems of existence-if the mystery of the tragic and apparently unmerited and unrequited suffering in the world is rarely touched upon-we can pardon the omission for the sake of the gentle optimism that would rather look on the kindly side of life. "You come hot and tired from the day's battle, and this...

When the curtain fell on the last act of "The Squire's Daughter," the comedy-opera that had taken all musical London by storm, a tall and elegant young English matron and her still taller brother rose from their places in the private box they had been occupying, and made ready to depart; and he had just assisted her to put on her long-skirted coat of rose-red plush when an attendant made his appearance. "Mr. Moore's compliments, your ladyship, and will you please to step this way?"