Mrs. Bird without a blinding suffusion of the eyes. Few words were said. "You know it all, my boy," said Mr. Bird, as he put his arms around me, and pressed me to his side. "I took you into my heart when I first saw you, and you will live there until you prove yourself unworthy of the place."

For several years a lumbering old stagecoach with two horses had run between Hillsborough and Bradford, and to this vehicle Henry and I committed our luggage and ourselves. It was a tedious journey, which terminated at nightfall, and brought us first to my father's house. Ordering my trunks to be carried to The Mansion, I went in to introduce Henry to the family, with the purpose of completing my own journey on foot.

Henry was evidently a surprise to them all. Manly in size, mould, and bearing, he bore no resemblance to the person whom they had been accustomed to regard as a lad. There was embarrassment at first, which Henry's quiet and unpretending manners quickly dissipated; and soon the stream of easy conversation was set flowing, and we were all happy together. I quickly saw that my sister Claire had become the real mistress of the household. The evidences of her care were everywhere. My mother was feeble and prone to melancholy; but her young spirit, full of vitality, had asserted its sway, and produced a new atmosphere in the little. establishment. Order, taste, and a look of competency and comfort prevailed. Without any particular motive, I watched the interchange of address and impression between Henry and my sister. It was as charming as a play. Two beings brought together from different worlds could not have appeared more interested in each other. Her cheeks were flushed, her blue eyes were luminous, her words were fresh and vivacious, and with a woman's quick instinct she felt that she pleased him. Absorbed in his study of the new nature thus opened to him, Henry so far forgot the remainder of the family as to address all his words to her. If my father asked him a question, he answered it to Claire. If he told a story, or related an incident of our journey homeward, he addressed it to her, as if her ears were the only ones that could hear it, or at least were those which would hear it with the most interest. I cannot say that I had not anticipated something like this. I had wondered, at least, how they would like each other. Claire's hand lighted the candle with which I led him to his room. Claire's hand had arranged

the little bouquet which we found upon his table.

"I shall like all your father's family very much, I know," said Henry, in our privacy. I was quick enough to know who constituted the largest portion of the family, in his estimate of the aggregate.

It was with a feeling of positive unhappiness and humiliation that I at last took leave of the delightful and delighted circle, and bent my steps to my statelier lodgings and the society of my cold and questioning Aunt. I knew that there would be no hope of hiding from her the fact that Henry had accompa nied me home, and that entire frankness and promptness in announcing it was my best policy; but I dreaded the impression it would make upon her. I found her awaiting my arrival, and met from her a hearty greeting. How I wished that Henry were a hundred miles away!

"I left my old chum at my father's," I said, almost before she had had time to ask me a question.

"You did?" she exclaimed, her dark eyes flaming with anger. "How came he there?"

My father invited him and he came home with me," I replied.

"So he spurns your invitation and mine, and accepts your father's. Will you explain this?"

"Indeed I cannot," I replied. “I have nothing to say, except that I am sorry and ashamed."

"I should think so! I should think so!" she exclaimed, rising and walking up and down the little library. "I should think so, indeed! One thing is proved, at least, and proved to your satisfaction, I hope—that he is not a gentleman. I really must forbid "— here she checked herself, and reconsidered. She saw that I did not follow her with my sympathy, and thought best to adopt other methods for undermining my friendship for him.

"Arthur," she said, at last, seating herself and controlling her rage, "your model friend has insulted both of us. I am an old woman, and he is nothing to me. He has been invited here solely on your account, and if he is fond of you he has declined the invita tion solely on mine. There is a certain chivalry-a sense of what is due to any woman under these circumstances-that you understand as well as I do, and I shall leave you to accept or reject its dictates. I ask noth ing of you that is based in any way on my relations to you. This fellow has grossly,

and without any apology or explanation, slighted my courtesies, and crowned his insult by accepting those coming from a humbler source-from one of my own tenants in fact."

"I have nothing to say," I responded. "I am really not to blame for his conduct, but I should be ashamed to quarrel with anybody because he would not do what I wanted him to do."

"Very well. If that is your conclusion, I must ask you never to mention his name to me again, and if you hold any communication with him, never to tell me of it. You disappoint me, but you are young, and you must be bitten yourself before you will learn to let dogs alone."

I had come out of the business quite as well as I expected to, but it was her way of working. She saw that I loved my companion with a firmness that she could not shake, and that it really was not in me to quarrel with him. She must wait for favoring time and circumstances, and resort to other arts to accomplish her ends-arts of which she was the conscious mistress. She had not forbidden me to see him and hold intercourse with him. She knew, indeed, that I must see him, and that I could not quarrel with him without offending my father, whose guest he was-a contingency to be carefully avoided.

However, I knew that all practicable means would be used to keep me out of his company during his stay in Bradford, and I was not surprised to be met the next morning with a face cleared from all traces of anger and sullenness, and with projects for the occupation of my time.

"I am getting to be an old woman, Arthur," said she, after a cheery breakfast, "and need help in my affairs, which you ought to be capable of giving me now."

I assured her most sincerely that nothing would give me greater pleasure than to make what return I could for the kindness she had shown me.

Accordingly, she brought out her accounts, and as she laid down her books, and package after package of papers, she said: "I am going to let you into some of my secrets. All that you see here, and learn of my affairs, is to be entirely confidential. I shall show you more than my lawyer knows, and more than anybody knows beyond myself."

out to me. As I did the work with much painstaking, the task gave me employment during the whole of the morning. close, we went over it together, and she was warm in her praises of my handwriting and the correctness of my transcript.

After dinner she told me she would like to have me look over some of the papers she had left on the table. "It is possible," she said, "that you may find something that will interest you. I insist only on two conditions: you are to keep secret everything you learn, and ask me no questions about what may most excite your curiosity."

One ponderous bundle of papers I found to be composed entirely of bonds and mortgages. It seemed as if she had her hold upon nearly every desirable piece of property in the town. By giving me a view of this and showing me her rent-roll, she undoubtedly intended to exhibit her wealth, which was certainly very much greater than I had suspected. "All this, if you continue to please me,' was what the exhibition meant; and young as I was I knew what it meant. To hold these pledges of real estate, and to own this rent-roll was to hold power; and with that precious package in my hands there came to me my first ambition for power, and a recognition of that thirst to gratify which so many men had bartered their honor and their souls. In that book and in those papers lay the basis of the old lady's self-assurance. It was to these that men bowed with deferential respect or superfluous fawning. It was to these that fine ladies paid their devoirs; and a vision of the future showed all these demonstrations of homage transferred to me--a young man— with life all before me. The prospect held not only these but a thousand delightstravel in foreign lands, horses and household pets, fine equipage, pictures, brilliant society, and some sweet unknown angel in the form of a woman, to be loved and petted and draped with costly fabrics and fed upon dain

ties.

I floated off into a wild, intoxicating dream. All the possibilities of my future came before

me.

could not freely follow even the impulses of my own natural affection.

Tiring of the package at last, and of the thoughts and emotions it excited, I turned to others. One after another I took them up and partly examined them, but they were mostly dead documents-old policies of insurance long since expired, old contracts for the erection of buildings that had themselves grown old, mortgages that had been canceled, old abstracts of title, etc., etc. At last I found, at the bottom of the pile, a package yellow with age; and I gasped with astonishment as I read on the back of the first paper: "James Mansfield to Peter Bonnicastle." I drew it quickly from the tape, and saw exposed upon the next paper: "Julius Wheeler to Peter Bonnicastle." Thus the name went on down through the whole package. All the papers were old, and all of them were deeds some of them conveying thousands of acres of colonial lands. Thus I learned two things that filled me with such delight and pride as I should find it altogether impossible to describe: first, that the fortune which I had been examining, and which I had a tolerable prospect of inheriting, had its foundations laid a century before by one of my own ancestors; and second, that Mrs. Sanderson and I had common blood in our veins. This discovery quite restored my self-respect, because I should arrive at my inheritance by at least a show of right. The property would remain in the family where it belonged, and, so far as I knew, no member of the family would have a better right to it than myself. I presumed that my father was a descendant of this same Peter Bonnicastle, who was doubtless a notable man in his time; and only the accidents of fortune had diverted this large wealth from my own branch of the family.

This discovery brought up to my memory the conversations that had taken place in my home on my first arrival in the town, between Mr. Bradford and my father. Here was where the "blue blood" came from, and Mr. Bradford had known about this all the time. It was his hint to Mrs. Sanderson that had procured for me my good fortune. My first impulse was to thank him for his service, and to tell him that I probably knew as much as he did of my relations to Mrs. Sanderson; but the seal of secrecy was upon my lips. I recalled to mind Mrs. Sanderson's astonishment and strange behavior when she first heard my father's name, and thus all the riddles of that first interview were solved.

united itself in my mind with pride of ances try; and though there were humiliating considerations connected with my relations to Mrs. Sanderson, my self-respect had been wonderfully strengthened, and I found that my heart was going out to the little old lady with a new sentiment-a sentiment of kinship, if not of love. I identified myself with her more perfectly than I had hitherto done. She had placed confidence in me, she had praised my work, and she was a Bonnicastle.

I have often looked back upon the revelations and the history of that day, and wondered whether it was possible that she had foreseen all the processes of mind through which I passed, and intelligently and deliberately contrived to procure them. She must have done so. There was not an instrument wanting for the production of the result she desired, and there was nothing wanting in the result.

The afternoon passed, and I neither went home nor felt a desire to do so. In the evening she invited me to read, and thus I spent a pleasant hour preparatory to an early bed.

"You have been a real comfort to me today, Arthur," she said, as I kissed her forehead and bade her good-night.

What more could a lad who loved praise ask than this? I went to sleep entirely happy, and with a new determination to devote myself more wholly to the will and the interests of my benefactress. It ceased to be a great matter that my companion for five years was in my father's home, and I saw little of him. I was employed with writing and with business errands all the time. During Henry's visit in Bradford I was in and out of my father's house, as convenience favored, and always while on an errand that waited. I think Henry appreciated the condition of affairs, and as he and Claire were on charming terms, and my absence gave him more time with her, I presume that he did not miss

me.

All were glad to see me useful, and happy in my usefulness.

When Henry went away I walked down to bid him farewell. "Now don't cry, my boy," said Henry, "for I am coming back; and don't be excited when I tell you that I have engaged to spend the winter in Bradford. I was wondering where I could find a school to teach, and the school has come to me, examining committee and all."

A FRIEND of this writer tells him that one rainy evening, on board an ocean steamer, when walking up and down the deck was out of the question, he sat and listened with due complacency to an enthusiastic American, who was bragging a steady stream about his native country. To weak people, this sort of talk is velvet rubbed backward, but to healthy folks, like my friend, it is exhilarating. He declares he likes to hear a great hearty, hulking fellow, dressed in good clothes, with his pocket full of the chinks, blowing out to a company of luxurious, Europe

mad, timid, apologizing Americans his absurd defense of everything in America, good and bad alike. But then, he says, there is a limit to this pleasure, as to most things. Free elections and orderly, common-schools, universal reading, writing, and arithmetic, free religion, riddance of primogeniture, entailed estates, House of Lords, and much other feudal rubbish, payment of the national debt, with items of material wealth,-iron mines, copper mines, mines of lead and tin, of silver, quicksilver and gold, with tall talk about Washington and Adams, Jackson and

could not freely follow even the impulses of my own natural affection.

Tiring of the package at last, and of the thoughts and emotions it excited, I turned to others. One after another I took them up and partly examined them, but they were mostly dead documents-old policies of insurance long since expired, old contracts for the erection of buildings that had themselves grown old, mortgages that had been canceled, old abstracts of title, etc., etc. At last I found, at the bottom of the pile, a package yellow with age; and I gasped with astonishment as I read on the back of the first paper: "James Mansfield to Peter Bonnicastle." I drew it quickly from the tape, and saw exposed upon the next paper: "Julius Wheeler to Peter Bonnicastle." Thus the name went on down through the whole package. All the papers were old, and all of them were deeds-some of them conveying thousands of acres of colonial lands. Thus I learned two things that filled me with such delight and pride as I should find it altogether impossible to describe: first, that the fortune which I had been examining, and which I had a tolerable prospect of inheriting, had its foundations laid a century before by one of my own ancestors; and second, that Mrs. Sanderson and I had common blood in our veins. This discovery quite restored my self-respect, because I should arrive at my inheritance by at least a show of right. The property would remain in the family where it belonged, and, so far as I knew, no member of the family would have a better right to it than myself. I presumed that my father was a descendant of this same Peter Bonnicastle, who was doubtless a notable man in his time; and only the accidents of fortune had diverted this large wealth from my own branch of the family.

This discovery brought up to my memory the conversations that had taken place in my home on my first arrival in the town, between Mr. Bradford and my father. Here was where the "blue blood" came from, and Mr. Bradford had known about this all the time. It was his hint to Mrs. Sanderson that had procured for me my good fortune. My first impulse was to thank him for his service, and to tell him that I probably knew as much as he did of my relations to Mrs. Sanderson; but the seal of secrecy was upon my lips. I recalled to mind Mrs. Sanderson's astonishment and strange behavior when she first heard my father's name, and thus all the riddles of that first interview were solved.

united itself in my mind with pride of ances try; and though there were humiliating considerations connected with my relations to Mrs. Sanderson, my self-respect had been wonderfully strengthened, and I found that my heart was going out to the little old lady with a new sentiment-a sentiment of kinship, if not of love. I identified myself with her more perfectly than I had hitherto done. She had placed confidence in me, she had praised my work, and she was a Bonnicastle.

I have often looked back upon the revelations and the history of that day, and wondered whether it was possible that she had foreseen all the processes of mind through which I passed, and intelligently and deliberately contrived to procure them. She must have done so. There was not an instrument wanting for the production of the result she desired, and there was nothing wanting in the result.

The afternoon passed, and I neither went home nor felt a desire to do so. In the evening she invited me to read, and thus I spent a pleasant hour preparatory to an early

bed.

"You have been a real comfort to me today, Arthur," she said, as I kissed her forehead and bade her good-night.

What more could a lad who loved praise ask than this? I went to sleep entirely happy, and with a new determination to devote myself more wholly to the will and the interests of my benefactress. It ceased to be a great matter that my companion for five years was in my father's home, and I saw little of him. I was employed with writing and with business errands all the time. During Henry's visit in Bradford I was in and out of my father's house, as convenience favored, and always while on an errand that waited. I think Henry appreciated the condition of affairs, and as he and Claire were on charming terms, and my absence gave him more time with her, I presume that he did not miss All were glad to see me useful, and happy in my usefulness.

me.

When Henry went away I walked down to bid him farewell. "Now don't cry, my boy," said Henry, "for I am coming back; and don't be excited when I tell you that I have engaged to spend the winter in Bradford. I was wondering where I could find a school to teach, and the school has come to me, examining committee and all.”

I was delighted. I looked at Claire with the unguarded impulse of a boy, and it