Then coming round her workstand she laid her hand on the shoulder of the old Kentuckian, and said, "Uncle Ben, when I asked you to change me a dollar this morning, to pay the milkman, you had a singular-looking old pocket-piece amongst the loose change you held in your hand; will you allow me to look at it?"

Uncle Ben, apparently wrapped in deep thought, pulled out the old pocketpiece and placed it in her hand.

66

Now, uncles," continued Sue, drawing the baby's medal from her bosom, and placing the two side by side on the workstand, both of you put on your spectacles and look.”

I saw at a glance that one was an exact duplicate of the other. There was the same big star in the centre of each, and on the reverse sides the same wreath inclosing what until it had been filed or cut out -was a superscription, or motto.

"Good God!" exclaimed Uncle Ben, as his eyes rested on the two medals, and clapping his hand to his forehead, he stood as one bewildered.

Uncle Cook also looked, and raising his left hand to his chin and feeling it with an abstracted air, was mute.

Sue then placed the tip of her forefinger on two small links fastened in a loop brazed to the edge of the baby's medal. Then her great gray eyes sought those of Uncle Ben. She did not speak, but gazed deep into them as she did the night before. The language of her eyes was plainer to the old man than words. Unbuttoning his waistcoat he pulled over his head a long gold guard-chain, and laid one end of it close to the two small links. He nodded his head three times affirmatively, and turning to Uncle Cook, said:

"When you packed your money in that barrel of lard, you broke the chain that held those two medals together, and packed one and put the other into your pocket."

see the place where your barrel of lard was stolen?"

“I did,” replied Uncle Cook, “ten years after it happened, and found a tavern standing on the identical spot. On the opposite side was an immense limestone rock, as high as this ceiling. It stood above a very fine spring. The landlord told me a queer story about the lost barrel of lard, which he said was generally believed at the time he settled there.

"The story was, that a Pennsylvania wagoner going east, once, broke down, and placed his load just where the house afterwards stood, while he went across the Little Kanawha to get his wagon mended. When he returned there was a barrel of lard missing. The following winter the hoops and staves of the barrel were found at the foot of the precipice.

"We walked to the bottom of his garden, and he showed me the precipice. He said that a blacksmith at the ford, when hunting, the next winter, found the staves sticking above the snow, and collected most of them to make a barrel. That all of them were greasy, and some of them gnawed. The conclusion that the people came to was that the bears, which were then numerous there, had found the barrels of lard during the wagoner's absence, and in trying to get at the inside of one of them had set it rolling down the hill, and it had gone over the ledge and lodged in one of the holes on the flat rock below. As it was partially broken in the fall, the bears pulled it to pieces and ate the lard. I was foolish enough to grope in the holes to see if I could find any of my lost gold.

"The landlord then told me that the same blacksmith robbed and murdered a man who was driving his wagon on his way to Kentucky the next autumn, and threw his body over the precipice and ran away with his money; of course he got my money out of the barrel that rolled over the precipice, and took that

"When

66 No, sir," said Uncle Ben. the bears ate the lard, as they had no use for the money they left it in the

hole.

The leaves of autumn and then the snows of winter covered it up snugly, and the blacksmith only got the staves and hoops. The man who, as they told you, was murdered, got your money and now stands before you. Your loss, Mr. Cook, has been my gain. The guineas and half-eagles that came out of that barrel of lard made my fortune. I have kept a strict account with you for twenty-nine years, and to-morrow I will give you a check on the Bank of Kentucky for principal and compound interest at ten per cent. I am your debtor for nearly thirty thousand dollars. I may add that the pleasure of returning it is doubled by knowing that Sue, there, and Ajax, are to be made happy by its possession."

The bloom, after fitful visits and flights, presently settled in Sue's cheeks. The tears dropped from her long eyelashes. She laughed and wept by turns. At last she laid a hand on each shoulder of the old Kentuckian, and looking once more into his eyes, said:

"I knew it, Uncle Ben. I knew last night it was Uncle Cook's money you found. And all alone, by God's help, I have worked out this deliverance from our troubles. Blessed be his name!" Then she kissed the two old men and bade them good night.

As we sat silently gazing into the grate after Sue had gone, my mind reverted to her nervousness at the conclusion of Uncle Ben's story the previous evening, and her impressive act and words before bidding him good night; her allusion in our chamber to corroborative evidence of the truth of Uncle Ben's story; her suddenly avoiding the subject; and her earnest, supplicating

prayer. Then I thought of her seizing the newspaper before breakfast and drawing the old man's attention to the circus advertisement, the day spent at Germantown, and the two lines of that old song. This guileless girl, with a woman's intuition, had seized upon an incident in the narration of the old Kentuckian's adventures, and connecting it with a story heard in her childhood, had "worked out this deliverance from our troubles."

Why did she not confide her plans to her husband, and seek his counsel and coöperation?

Would she raise him to heights of hope for a few brief hours, perhaps only to plunge him deeper back into the slough of despond?

Such, no doubt, were her thoughts as she sat by the baby's crib the night before.

I placed the baby's silver cup, with some cigars in it, before my uncles, and bade them good night, as the old Kentuckian commenced telling Uncle Cook the story of his adventure with the robbers, and his finding the money.

As I entered our chamber Sue arose from her knees, and putting her arm around my neck, said:

You would n't believe me, Ajax, when I told you, after we were married, that I had a fortune somewhere, if I could only find it. Now you can pay those obstinate Frenchmen, and I will hold the mortgage on the house, and we will have sixteen thousand dollars left."

Then Lulie stirred in her crib and opened her large gray eyes, so like Sue's. Then we both kissed her, and kissed the dear old medal, and hung it around the baby's neck.

Ajax T. Lamon.

Vital as actuality,

Paul H. Hayne.

"Doubts to the world's child-heart unknown

Question us now from star and stone;
Too little or too much we know,
And sight is swift and faith is slow:
The power is lost to self-deceive
With shallow forms of make-believe."

WHITTIER.

A MODERN dynasty is assuming control in the region of mind. Throughout the civilized world the reign of the Miraculous is gradually losing power and prestige, superseded by the reign of

Law.

It would be hazardous to say of any great principle which has had its day, that it has not had its use also. But though the romantic polytheism which makes brilliant the great epic of Homer may have suited well the epoch-in-progress of ancient Greece, yet, in our day, no one but an enthusiastic poet like Schiller will lament that the gods of Greekland have vanished in the dim distance of the past; that their king, with thunderbolt in hand, has been dethroned, to make way for lectures on electricity and kites drawing lightning from the clouds; that Phoebus is ousted from his chariot, his four-yoked steeds useless ever since Copernicus brought the sun to a standstill; that Neptune

1 See Tillotson's 1824 sermon; and Butler's Analogy of Religion, part ii. chap. 2.

It is remarkable that St. Augustine, more than fourteen centuries ago, regarded a miracle as a

has lost to the mariner's compass the sceptre of the sea, and Pluto to penal flames, that are dying out in their turn, the dominion of the Underworld; that in these days of cannon and breechloaders and protocols, Mars no longer leads armies to the field, nor Minerva statesmen to the cabinet; that dryads and nymphs have deserted forest and fountain, as the bear and the buffalo disappear, before the sweep of civiliza

tion.

As monotheism, despite poetic regrets, befits a later stage of the world than polytheism, so the persistent uniformity of law is an advance, timely and welcome in our modern day, on that scheme of the arbitrary and the exceptional which is based on miracle-working-welcome to the thoughtful and dispassionate observer, but abhorrent to the mere dogmatic theologian: yet, welcome or unwelcome in certain quarters, a truth that has already made its way to respect, and is sure to prevail.

I use the word miracle, not in its etymological sense, as a something to be wondered at, nor, as Archbishop Tillotson and Bishop Butler have spoken of it,1 as an occurrence which is not "like thing occurring not against nature but against what we know of nature: "Portendum ergo fit, non contra naturam, sed contra quam est nota natura.' De Civitate Dei, lib. xxi. cap. 8.