perhaps you may go back and see them again, and make them presents."

The delighted girl's eyes sparkled with the idea he had thus invitingly proposed, and in another moment she had hold of the stranger's hand, and was being conducted away from the smooth beach which she and the tiny birds had so long haunted.

Night came on, and the full-orbed moon hung in the eastern sky. Her chaste rays shed a sweet effulgence over both land and water. The hushed waves just broke their sparkles in her light, that looked like diamonds profusely flung out of the deep of some crystal mine. There was a Spirit of Beauty upon every thing, albeit sadness shaded all with the spread of its raven wing.

Old David, the fisherman, had returned home to his hut from a two days' absence, and first of all he asked for his little Elsie. But Sarah was obliged to answer him by saying that she had not yet come in.

"But it is night-long past sundown!" said he.

"And I have walked down to the shore, and called, and called loudly for her; but she has not answered me.”

"Neither have you seen her?"

"No."

"Nor her tracks in the sand?"

"Yes, I followed them a little way, and then the tide had washed them all out."

"Good God!" exclaimed he, in agony-" she is lost!"

"Think you so, David?" asked his truly anxious wife. "She must be ! Where can she have gone, pray? She may be washed far out to sea, this very minute !"

"Heaven grant she is'nt !" exclaimed Sarah, a large, glistening tear rising to her eye, which she immediately raised her hand to brush away.

Instantly the almost dispirited fisherman hurried out at the door, without uttering another word. Directing his steps to the shore, he commenced walking its margin for long and lonely roods. Ever and anon, he called out loudly-"Elsie! Elsie !" but the sighing winds caught up the syllables, and wafted them away upon the surface of the sparkling water.

Backward again he pursued his way, still keeping up the call, and occasionally looking down at the water's edge to see if the

form of the beloved lost one might not even there be lying at his feet. But nothing met his strained and anxious vision, save the same flat prospect of sand and smoothly spreading water.

"Is that her? It is!-it is!" suddenly broke forth from his lips, as he bent his head eagerly forward, thinking he espied a white form sitting down upon a jutting point of the beach. He hastened to the spot, calling on the name of the child as he went along.

But alas! alas! when he arrived at the spot where he thought the cherished form was sitting, his eyes were greeted with no sight but the low bank of sand, and his ears were saluted with no voice save the continued moan of the incoming waters.

An illusion, which his temporarily disordered fancy had conjured up to his senses, had completely deceived him. The form of which he was so earnestly thinking, was there only in his imagination. The deception was one that was most natural, and he was exceeding loth to separate it from his belief. Even thatbereft as he was at that moment of one of his heart's treasureswas a source of far more consolation to him than nothing at all and he involuntarily stood for some time upon the spot where the apparition had shown itself, as if rivetted to a place it should select for its temporary rest.

seen.

It was not long after, when he posted back to his hut again, filled to overflow with wonder at the thought of what he had He narrated all faithfully to his wife, while she treasured it away in her heart. It was manifest that both were affected most deeply with a strange and superstitious belief that their adopted child had for a moment sat alone by the sea-shore, and then disappeared as unexpectedly as she had come—an angel of light for their feet, and of love for their hearts.

To be Continued.

More people are controlled by affection than reason. This shows that we were made to excel in love rather than knowledge; and where affection and reason combine, they make the subjection of the heart the truest empire.