Then Crossley disappeared, and the change in the scenery, as Will Tunster's horse turned up a by-lane, was as striking, when compared with Crossley, as the difference between Bagdad and the enchanted regions which surrounded that famous city of romance. In place of coal pits and pitmen's hovels, there were now tall hedgerows and trees, and rich pastures. On one side of the road there was a rude stone footpath, fringed by a stream of clear water, which irrigated a numberless variety of cresses; and on the other a long verdant streak of grass stretched into the distance, where a small house lay half concealed by a wood.

"Oh, how pretty!" said Jacob involuntarily, as this bit of rural fairyland opened up before him.

"Ah, it's a noice tune enough; I've blown it for years," said Will Tunster, taking Jacob's remark as a compliment to the echo passages in "Tom Moody." "We've gotten to stop here to take up Miss Dorothy Cantrill, your schoolmester's housekeeper, and somebody else's housekeeper that is to be when the toime comes," continued Will as he pulled up opposite the house amongst the trees.

The door was opened as the mail stopped. An elderly woman handed out a bonnet box, and a man brought forth a portmanteau covered with a very rich drawing-room paper. Next came a shawl,

an umbrella, another little box, and a bunch of flowers; and then the passenger herself, a comely looking woman of about thirty, with whom Will Tunster shook hands, and whom Will Tunster carefully assisted into the cart.

"Here's the young gentleman who is to have the honour of living wi' you, Dorothy," said Will Tunster, directing her attention to Jacob.

"How do you do, Sir?" said Dorothy, settling herself into a seat, her face beaming with good nature. "I hope Mr. Tunster has been kind to you."

"Thank you," said Jacob; "yes, he has been very kind."

"I've played him 'Tom Moody' with variations, and told him all about the pits and foire damp, and colliery accidents, haven't I, Mester Jacob?" said Will, touching up his mare as he spoke. "Yes, Sir," said Jacob.

Dorothy waved her handkerchief to her father and mother, Will flourished his whip and played the echo passages in "Tom Moody" very loudly, Jacob waved his cap to the old people, the mail-cart turned another bend in the road, and then the schoolmaster's housekeeper began asking Will a variety of questions concerning the news of Middleton and Crossley. Will told her how he had been to

the parson's at the latter town, to hear a lecture on fire damp, a recent explosion at one of the pits there having destroyed a hundred men and boys.

"Dear me," said Dorothy, "you talk like a book."

"You'd rather I'd talk like a letter: Miss Dorothy Cantrill, care of Mr. Gregory Spawling, Cartown, Midlandshire, England, and if not there, at Mr. Cantrill's, near Crossley, post paid," said Will, holding his whip and ribbons in one hand, and gazing intently into the other, as though reading the superscription of a letter. On pronouncing the last word, he cast a sly glance at Dorothy, who, instead of making any reply, put the corner of her apron to each eye in succession, and complained of the dusty road. This little subterfuge, however, was without avail, for Jacob saw that she was crying.

Will coughed violently and thrashed his horse, but finding that this did not repair the mischief, he turned sharply round upon Dorothy, and begged her pardon "a thousand times over"-assuring her that he did not mean to hurt her feelings.

Why Miss Cantrill should have cried at all Jacob could not understand, but he was quite convinced that Mr. Tunster had been guilty of some gross act of unkindness, and until the mail-driver had begged Dorothy's pardon a thousand times, Will, despite his musical powers, had very much deteriorated in Jacob's good opinion.

"

The little storm blown over, Mr. Tunster commenced to blow his horn with unwonted vigour (but whether the tune was Rory O'More," "Tom Moody," or both, or neither, not Will nor any other accomplished musician could have decided), and the little party entered Cartown.

"Yonder is the church," said Dorothy, pointing to a brown, timeworn tower among a clump of trees; "and that's the 'Blue Posts,' pointing to an inn, with two posts painted blue, a water trough, a bucket, and two men refreshing themselves and their horses; "and this is the market-place," she continued, as they entered an irregular square of irregular houses and shops, with a few people loitering about on an irregular pavement, and several persons looking from their windows and several tradesmen gazing from their doors at a carriage and pair, which had halted before the chemist's shop.

"And here's the post-office," said Will, as he pulled up opposite a private house with a window half blackened, and a slit in one of the panes for letters, a green curtain above, and an "Important Notice " with a coat of arms fitted into one of the square panes. A black square beneath this was opened, and Will, thrusting in a leather bag. covered about the neck with worn-out wax seals, said it was "nice VOL. VIII., N.S. 1872. 3 C

weather," and on the mail started again, the driver occasionally dropping a parcel into the hands of people who were standing at their shop doors, in anticipation of packages inscribed with their names and addresses.

Miss Cantrill, who was quite at home with Jacob already, and was almost as kind to him as Susan herself, said: "Dear me, the streets seemed quite natural again since she had seen them, which was a fortnight come Monday"-such a holiday as she had not had for some time. She told Jacob a great deal about the town, and said she was sure he would like Mr. Spawling. Will Tunster expressed a similar opinion, and guessed that Jacob would like Mr. Spawling's housekeeper too. Jacob frankly admitted that he liked her already, an admission which pleased Dorothy amazingly, and an admission which Susan Harley might not have liked so well, much as she desired Jacob's happiness; for there is a tinge of jealousy in every phase of woman's love.

"That's the school," at length said Dorothy, pointing to a plain stone building standing between a grocer's shop on the one hand, and a large square playground on the other. It was a very plainlooking establishment, even to the sign which described the place, in simple Roman capitals, as "The Cartown Public School." Will Tunster said the school was only some five years old, but he understood it was doing a deal of good; upon which he entered into some very crude speculations about the position he might have held in society if there had been such "shops" for learning when he was a boy, until once more he gave the reins a check and the conveyance stopped at Mr. Spawling's-a small house standing alone in a byelane some few hundred yards from the school, with a blood-red rose climbing over a lattice porch, and the front door being open-a refreshing peep, right across a long strip of oil-cloth and well cleaned stones, into a back garden full of a miscellaneous collection of vegetables and flowers.

Mr. Spawling came to the door to meet his visitors. He was a man beyond the meridian of life; though Time had dealt kindly with him, only leaving a few grey marks of his passing on Mr. Spawling's head and among Mr. Spawling's whiskers. It is true there was a slight falling in at the mouth, but this only heightened the benignant expression which animated his regular features. There was an elasticity in his gait, a quiet grace of manner, a bright healthy twinkle of the eye, and a music in Mr. Spawling's voice that relieved Jacob's mind of a great weight of doubt and fear, which had occasionally influenced his thoughts and speculations about his new home.

"Well, my boy, how are you?" said Mr. Spawling, when Jacob had alighted; " and how have you enjoyed yourself, Dorothy? and how does the world go with you, Mr. Tunster?" listening and smiling at the answer which each question elicited.

While these little courtesies were being observed, Will handed out the luggage. Dorothy soon bustled off her bonnet and shawl, and by Mr. Spawling's directions drew a glass of beer for Will; and in a most astonishingly short space of time Jacob found himself in a pleasant little parlour, taking tea, with Dorothy on one side and Mr. Spawling on the other.

That evening rapidly changed into night, though the twilight lingered lovingly about the open window, while the wind wandered gently in, laden with the scent of mignonette and sweet briar. The lamp was, however, trimmed at last, and-with the sounds of Mr. Spawling's voice (reading a chapter of the Old Testament before Jacob's retiring) lingering in his ear, and the rattle of the cart, and the good-bye of Susan, and the remembrance of bright spots in the panorama of the day's journey, all mingling together in a strange jumble-Jacob soon found himself between the cleanest and coollest of white sheets, surrounded by the whitest of white dimity, in the smallest and prettiest of pretty little rooms, trying to go to sleep, and feeling himself able to do nothing but think and dream, until at length memory gradually faded away, and even the angel face looking out of the factory window was forgotten.

(To be continued.)

I THINK it was Benjamin Franklin who made the curious mistake of supposing that a man could not open his eyes under water. The statement occurred in a practical dissertation on swimming. The writer was an accomplished master of the art in all its forms. He could float, and tread, and dive, and perform innumerable feats; and when, in the course of his instructions, he was explaining the method of swimming under water and of finding and bringing up a small object from the bottom, he stated that the diver must take the precaution of entering the water with his eyes open, or the pressure of the fluid would keep the lids closed till he rose to the surface. It is conceivable that a man unaccustomed to the water should imagine this difficulty, but it is extraordinary that a practised diver should not have known as a fact that the external pressure of liquid is no obstruction whatever to the opening and closing of the eyes. Apropos of under-water swimming, I would like to put a question to the physiologist. Several writers on diving-Dr. Franklin among the number-recommend that the swimmer should inflate his lungs well before descending, and expel the air with force, as a relief to the organs of breathing, when he can bear the tension no longer. The air so expelled rises to the top of the water in bubbles; and the theory is that this act enables the diver to remain a few seconds longer, before coming up to take breath. Is the theory a correct one? A corresponding experiment out of water would tend to prove its correctness; but, under water, if one may trust to one's individual experience, the relief of emptying the lungs of the stock of air is so very slight as to make but an almost inappreciable difference in the possible duration of the dive. In the mere act of expulsion there is ease to the lungs; but the instant the air is gone you must come to the surface. The problem involves, no doubt, a question of the necessity for continued aëration of the blood. I leave it to the biologist.

SOME men are so impressed by the influences of their school life, that they do not cease to be school-boys all their days. The business of the world never thoroughly takes possession of their minds. Events are to them like lessons in a class-book. The figures in history are not representatives of living men and women, moved by the tendencies and the passions which are to be seen also at work in contemporary life; they are puppets in the student's laboratory; they are lay characters doing duty in the work of preparing the scholar for examination. The man is not merely