choose her course, and either come directly to him, or remain with her adopted father; but that if she decided on the latter course, he declined any further interference in her affairs, and begged that the letter announcing her decision to be such might be the last intercourse ever to take place between them.

"And that letter," Naomi continued, with still greater animation, "will reach him to-morrow. And now father, dearest father, will you forgive me for having laid such a burden upon you? your own child—your Naomi ?”

There is little more to tell. The uncle, who had never seen Naomi, and probably could not have appreciated her had he known her, submitted to his disappointment without making any further effort to win her, and shortly afterwards married a woman some thirty years his junior, who is probably better fitted to spend his large fortune according to his taste than Naomi would have been. I had once hoped that, now all was cleared up, our friends would have remained at Pen Idris. But Mr. Mountain had quite resolved upon undertaking the sacred task he had assumed, and he and Naomi sailed together within three months of her illness; Naomi grieving somewhat to leave Pen Idris, where so many childish remembrances lingered, but perfectly satisfied and happy to go anywhere with him, whom she loved as father and mother in

one. May blessings attend you, dear child; and when it is God's Will to part you from him (for I am certain man never can), may the strong and entire submission to that Will, implanted in your breast by himself, give you a meek and patient heart, and fill you with fuller realisation of the only Home where Love shall be perfected, and know no end.

"And Ruth said, Intreat me not to leave thee, or to return from following after thee: for whither thou goest, I will go; and where thou lodgest, I will lodge; thy people shall be my people, and thy God my GOD. Where thou diest, will I die; and there will I be buried. The Lord do so to me, and more also, if ought but death part thee and me."

BOWSBRO' HALL.

"Oh! what a cunning guest

Is this same Grief!

For Grief knows all, and enters where he will.

No screw, no piercer, can

Into a piece of timber work and wind,

As GOD's afflictions into man,

When He a torture hath designed.

Only an open breast

Doth shut them out, so that they cannot enter;

Or if they enter, cannot rest,

But quickly seek some new adventure."

George Herbert.

Ir is now many years since Bowsbro' Hall was occupied by a large and stirring family, whose constant movements kept the whole country alive. I cannot recollect the days when four sons and eight daughters were gathered around their fine hearty old father, who now, with most of those in whom he lived and joyed, is gone to his rest; but years ago no less a family party gathered constantly around the Yule fire in merry glee.

Old Mr. Garforth was one of the very best specimens of a true noble-hearted English gentle

man.

Naturally of a most active, energetic mind, always bent upon the welfare of others, and its own self-culture, he had had the rare resolution to withstand the temptations to an idle life, offered him as eldest son, and heir to the paternal acres, and dedicated himself, with all the perseverance and industry of a starving cadet, to the uphill profession of the law; in which, at an earlier age than is common, he attained to an elevated and honourable position, which enabled him to support the otherwise overpowering tax of twelve children.

Provision for these being, as he considered, realised, and sundry of those intimations which are often a man's truest friends warning him that there is a season for all things, and the time for work must in his case, ere any very distant period, be changed for the "time to die," Mr. Garforth retired from his lucrative profession, and subsided, as he was wont to express it, into a quiet country gentleman. A mere sporting squire he could never become; for, besides the good society in which he had mingled freely, his own mind was incapable of vegetating only; in every passing circumstance of life he was wont to seek and to find higher chords of harmony than were perceptible to less well attuned minds, and from each he drew a rich fund of philosophy of the truest sort, which shed the rays of its own treasures on all around him. Need I say that Mr. Garforth was a deeply

religious man?-religious in the highest sense; for not an action, I might say not a word, but had its main spring in what our Blessed Lord pronounced as the summary of all good-the Love of GOD and of his neighbour. Earnest, hearty, and constant in his devotions, scrupulously pure in his life, upright in every thought of his heart, unable even to think ill of any one, and liberal (though truly his left hand knew not what his right hand did) almost to a fault; highspirited-fiery once he said-yet gentle and mild as S. John himself now; such was the man whom every one loved as soon as they knew him. So deep and full a loving trust in GOD, so entire a submission to His Will, such a readiness to leave all (and he had much to leave) whenever it was the right time, and so singularly humble and lowly a self-estimation, have perhaps rarely been gathered together in one so gifted, and so filled with this world's good things.

Mr. Garforth would smile incredulously when his attainments were spoken of as considerable; but he was the only person who did not consider them such-he only did not know or perceive how much poetry there was in his kindly heart, how much philosophy in his widely beneficent mind. No sounder or truer judgment could be found; and countless were the widows, the orphans, the ruined and neglected, perhaps guilty men, who had trusted in his steady,