tion.

He kissed the cold forehead, and, shivering, passed over to the fireside, and once more examined the umbrella which he was going to take home to mend. He combed his scanty brown hair with his thin hand, as was his wont when engaged in professional contempla"Yes," he murmured, "this umbrella has a good strong framework. Marius never had a strong moral framework. I think human beings are very like umbrellas very like umbrellas. But they do not last so well, and I do not think they ever can be repaired they can only be patched up for a time."

He was still holding the umbrella in his hand, when Bernard Dene came into the room carrying a little, fair-haired girl wrapped in a grey shawl. She was crying, and looked terrified.

"This is Bernardine," the artist said. And then he added almost pathetically: "She always cries when she is with me. She is frightened of me; but she loved him yonder. Hush, child! you must not cry. You will take him. He is tired, and he wants to sleep. You may kiss him-on the forehead.”

"Oh, how cold!" she said, shrinking back, when her lips met the cold forehead.

"Yes, Bernardine," her father said, fondling her fair hair. "But it is snowing, you know. Every one is cold when it is snowing.'

"

"Put me down," she begged; "I don't want to be with you. Let me go to the little old gentleman."

"She never loved me," murmured the artist; "it was every one else but me."

And he turned away and wept his whole heart out, whilst the umbrella-mender was holding the

VOL. CXLVI.-NO. DCCCLXXXV.

child in his arms, talking to her as though he had known and loved her all her life-he who had never before held a child in his arms, except Marius yonder.

"Will you come home with me, little one?" he asked, in a voice so gentle that Bernard Dene ceased weeping and listened to it.

"Yes," she answered, smiling at him, and her fair head rested on his shoulder.

"Then say 'good-bye' to 'your father," he said, "and we will go home at once.".

"Good-bye, dad," she said, carelessly. It was nothing to her to part from him.

"You'll not see me again, Bernardine," he said, sadly. "Do

"Shan't I?" she asked. you know, dad, if he wasn't so cold I should kiss him again? I think I'd like to."

So they held her over him, and she kissed him, and put her little arms around his neck. Then they put his last gift-book in her hand, and the umbrella-mender turned to the artist :—

"I am sorry to leave you," he said, kindly; "but the hour has now come, and we must go our own ways. You have a long way to go. Remember, I trust you implicitly. Farewell. I shall see you to-morrow-not as you are now, it is true. I shall look upon what you were; and believe me, young man, I shall grieve for you. Farewell, Bernard Dene. Even failure is only a relative term, you know. And that which the world calls failure may have some better and nobler name in another planet. Therefore do not lose heart about yourself."

The artist bowed his head his right hand rested on the child's head, his left hand on the umbrellamender's shoulder.

"You have spoken very kindly

I

"If there be a

to me," he said. God, I trust that God may bless you, and make your latter days happy and peaceful. As for me, be assured that I shall not break my word to you. I leave my child and my pictures to you. Shall I see you home? The snow lies thick on the ground, and you do not know the way very well, and it is bitterly cold. Put on my overcoat. I shall not want it, for I shall not go out again unless you would like me to see you home."

"Do not trouble to do that," said the umbrella-mender. "Bernardine and I will easily find our way. And many thanks for the offer of the coat. I should be grate ful for it. Do not be anxious about Bernardine. I will take every care of her." And now, good night." The artist followed them down the creaking stairs, and opened the door for them to pass out. He closed the door hastily after them. There were a few men standing about, and some boys were snowballing each other and laughing lustily, and one of them, seeing the umbrella-mender, prepared a huge missile, and was just about to aim it at his head when a great coarse-looking woman prevented

him.

"Hold hard!" she cried, with an oath. "It's the mad painter's little daughter. Snowball me, not she."

Bernardine clung closer to the umbrella-mender.

"That's what they always call him," she whispered, dreamily"mad, mad,-what can it mean?"

But before he could answer her, she had fallen into a gentle sleep; and thus he bore her along the snow-covered streets, careful of every step he took, lest perchance he might slip and rouse her from her slumbers. Her little golden

head rested against his face, and her little hands tightly clasped his neck, and he loved to feel her touch, remembering, that she, and she alone, had called forth what good there was in his son's evil nature. The world might call him bad and heartless, for such he had proved himself to be to the world; but this child said he was kind and good, for such he had shown himself to be to her. It was something in bis favour that he had won this child's love: maybe it would go all the better with him hereafter, because her lips had touched his cold forehead.

up

So the umbrella-mender carried her to the umbrella shop. He laid her tenderly on the counter, well wrapped in the warm grey shawl. He lit the lamp, and made the fire in the little inner room, and then, to the best of his ability, improvised a cosy bed, where he placed her, just as she was. Then he knelt by her and guarded her for a while, smiling contentedly when he saw her smiling in her sleep. After an hour or so he left her, and carefully shading the lamp from her eyes, he settled down to read a few pages of Grote's 'Greece,' in which he had been engaged when he was summoned away to his son's deathbed. tried to collect his thoughts and concentrate them on the subject, which had a great interest for him ; but he found himself thinking now of the artist, now of his son, and. he found his eyes wandering away from the pages of Grote's history to the spot yonder where the child was sleeping and smiling, and holding tightly in her hands Marius Crocker's last gift-book.

He

"What will she prove?" he said aloud. "Her father is undoubtedly mad. It is a curious sensation being with a madman. My heart stood still within me when we were

struggling for that picture. Fancy him being quite willing to kill himself because he had murdered Marius! If he had not been mad he would have sent me after Marius, instead of choosing to go himself. Well, he is a fine young fellow, and it is a pity he should die."

Then he laughed softly.

"Of course he was mad-his eyes told me that. Still, I am glad to have made his acquaintance. I shall always think of him with pleasure. I wonder how he will get on in the next planet! I trust he will be happy and successful."

And meanwhile the artist, alone with the dead man, wrote out his will. It was briefly this:

"To Coriolanus Crocker, of 30 Stone Street, umbrella-mender and madman, I leave my little girl Bernardine and all my pictures signed with my name. Any of my pictures, except the portrait of Marius Crocker, whom I have killed, may be sold by Coriolanus Crocker, Marius Crocker's father.

"BERNARD DENE

"24th January 1878.”

"Some one ought to witness this," he said to himself, rising up with the pen in his hand. His eyes fell on his silent companion. "To be sure!" he cried. "A capital idea! Marius himself shall witness my last will and testament."

He took the cold hand in his own, and put the pen between the thumb and the first finger, and made it trace out the signature, "Marius Crocker, dead man."

He smiled, and rubbed his hands together, as though he were quite delighted with himself.

"Now I must kill myself," he said, as he dried the paper before the fire. "And I think that is about all. Fancy that madman trusting me to kill myself! No sane man would have done such a thing. I saw from the beginning that he was mad. There was no mistaking the look in his eyes."

Suddenly he became sad and pensive.

"But the umbrella-mender spoke very kindly to me," he murmured to himself, "and he did not once reproach me for having killed Marius. In fact he behaved like a gentleman. And he said something about failure, which struck me as being comforting. Well, I trust that his latter days may be happy and peaceful. That is what we wantpeace. I have never known peace: there was always confusion and tumult in my brain. Perhaps death brings peace. I shall soon find out about that.

"

The people of the house heard the report of a pistol. They rushed up to the artist's room, expecting to have to break open the door. But it was not even closed against them; so they passed through without delay, and found the artist fallen on the ground. They raised his head gently.

"I killed that man yonder," he whispered. "Let that be clearly

understood. You did not know the umbrella-mender, did you? He is undoubtedly"

At that moment the artist

died.

BEATRICE HARRADEN.

I QUITE agree with Mr Ruskin that field-sports are demoralising. What is worse, they spoil anything like rational conversation. At St Andrews, for instance, I might as well belong to a Trappist community; the Philistines of the Links speak a foreign tongue; for what meaning can an intelligent being attach to "cleeks," and "niblics," and "putters," and "long spoons," and "hittin' the grun'," and "tappin' the ba'" Here, at Cairnbana, it is just as bad. The boys and they are nice boys too can think of nothing but loch trout and wild duck. There is a big salmo ferox which haunts their dreams. The brute lives at the bottom of the loch, and only comes to the surface at intervals to play the deuce with their tackle. In such a society, moreover, all the ordinary relations of life are inverted. Ronald Macdonald, the water-bailiff, is a much more important personage than the Secretary for Scotland; and the exploits of Angus Cameron, the keeper-the deer he has stalked, the salmon he has landed, the eagles he has shot -are spoken of with bated breath. The most valued correspondent of the family (to judge from the constant allusions that are made to him) appears to be a gentleman of the name of Wells. Wells will do this, Wells will do that; and mysterious packets arrive from him by post. I fancy at first that he is connected somehow with the Local University examinations, for which the boys are presumed to be reading; it turns out that he is

If

an Edinburgh tackle-maker. The discussions about "flies " are interminable. Are Zulus killing? Are Alexandras any good? What about the little Doctor? The preparation of a "cast" involves no end of care, a great artist could not select the colours for his palette with a graver sense of responsibility. And the intelligence that a big fish has been seen in the Salmon Pool (and whenever Donald wants a glass of whisky on his way home, a big fish is sure to be about) drives the whole household fairly frantic. Mr Andrew Lang would like to watch the formation of a myth, he ought to come to Ardnamurchan. The day that a fish is lost, it weighs ten pounds. Next day it rises to twenty. By the end of the month it is as big as the Snapping Turtle of Alabama,-the monster who "swallowed Langton Bennett, and digested Rufus Dawes." The growth of the legend in the course of ages is easily accounted for, when we remember how a salmon quadruples his weight in a week. "They were telling me that John had lost a big fish-ten punds they were saying." "It was not less than twenty punds the fish that John lost he was fast for an hour and a quarter and a half, but he would not move from the bottom, whatever John would do." will have been hearing of the fish that John lost-I saw him myself -he would weigh forty poundforty pound and more-he jumped clean over the linn, and never stopped till he got to the sea. a fine fish."

"You

He was

We were on the loch on Monday. Loch Lora is certainly a grand bit of water. The mountains round about are bleak and bare,—at the far end, where the goats look down at us through the mist, the precipices are wellnigh inaccessible. The islands, however, where we lunched, are finely wooded,-gaunt Scotch firs rising from banks of heather as high as our heads. Here, and on all the lochans round about, the shores are green with the great Osmunda regalis-the Royal Fern. There were hundreds of gulls overhead screaming at us out of the sky; and we saw a bird that is hardly, they tell me, to be seen elsewhere in Scotland -the black-throated Diver. The young ones had left the nest-but we could not distinguish them; we only knew by the mother's warning cry-strangely weird yet melodious that they were somewhere about. I do not see the fun (apart from the moral considerations on which Mr Ruskin has so copiously enlarged) of fly-fishing. The line has a bad habit of coming back in your face, and in my own case the hooks were always catching in One or other of the boatmen. They did not seem to like it, and after a little I came to the conclusion that there were no fish in the loch, and went ashore with a volume of Wordsworth. It was a drowsy day; there was hardly a ripple on the water; and I lay for a while on the bank, looking at the boat as it drifted slowly past, and watching the boys who were casting as industriously as ever. They were good anglers, I daresay; their lines fell with surprising lightness; and ever and again I saw the line tighten, the rod bend, and after a brief conflict, John would lean over the side with the landing-net in his hand, and a cheer from Jack directed my atten

tion to the fact that a fish had been captured. The trout had begun to feed, they told me afterwards; and for half an hour the big fellows seemed as hungry as hawks. "Won't you try it a bit?" they shouted cheerily ; but I only shook my head, and the boat drifted away again. Then I opened my book (it opened curiously enough at the page where the poet warns the shepherd never to mix - his drink, I had written inadvertently --never to mix his pleasure or his pride with sorrow of the meanest thing that feels," But they don't feel," Jack retorted, when I pointed the passage out to him on our way back," they rather like it,”—“ And they ain't mean," Jim added); and became so engrossed in its perusal that the outside world faded from my vision, and I was only recalled from a delightful dream of an enchanted palace, and an emaciated Princess, by hearing voices close at hand. "I believe the Professor has fallen asleep again,-by Jove! what a guy the midges have made him!" It was too true. As the afternoon waned, the infernal-I beg pardon -the infamous mosquitoes had waxed lively and mischievous; and for some days thereafter I could not look at myself in the glass without a shudder.

All the way home-and we had a long pull to the pier, and a threemuile drive after leaving the lochthey talked of nothing but fish. "Will you believe it, sir?" said Jim. "I caught a three-pounder with a whole cast of flies in its mouth that Jack lost last week!" "But the strangest thing happened that ever I heard of," Jack interrupted; "when we were trolling back, a small trout, not much more than a minnow, took my tail-fly, and I was reeling in the line leisurely, when-slap-a big fish went at him. The beggar held on like