there was something half military and quite familiar in the white and gold jacket and knee-breeches which, with the high tophoots, set off so well the lithe figure of the Communist. At the same time he noticed the movement of the troops, and comprehended that they were forming for an asBanlt. Removing one of the sand-bags, he crept cautiously out under the carts, aud reaching forward, secured two cartridgeboxes belonging to the dead soldiers beyond. It was done with the dexterity and agility of a fox; he was back in his place in an instant, and the opening walled up; but he had lost his cap with the white cockade, and from the blonde hair blown back from his forehead, Marthe recognized her chevalier in the livery of the actress. The soldiers were marching rapidly up the street in two lines, keeping close to the walls on either side. The only gun in the barricade was fired incessantly, and a soldier fell at each report; bnt on they came none the less surely, not firing a shot until actually under the barricade. Then a puff of light blue smoke rose from the front of the column, and Marthe saw two white arms toss in the air, a slender figure* which sprang straight up, and then fell backward with upturned face, and the soldiers were leaping the barrier without opposition. Only three dead men! They stood within the barricade, surprised and disconcerted; then they divided into two parties, one to go back and order forward the dead-cart, aud the other passed by Marthe, as she crouched behind a cluster of cedars, on their search for fugitives.

Urged by a blind instinct, Marthe hurried down to the little fort, so well defended, and knelt beside her chevalier. He had been a bad man, and the love with which ho had loved her had been an unworthy one. But still he had loved her. She had heard it from his own lips bnt a short time before, and moved by a great pity, Marthe kissed again and again the beautiful face in her lap. Was it that he was only feigning death, or that he had been stunned, aud the touch of her lips aroused him?

"Where are theyf" he whispered, opening his eyes, but not moving.

"They have gone for tho moment. Now is your chance. Come quick with mc," said Marthe, who saw before her the hope of saving the man she had loved. Down one narrow side street, across a court, through an alley into another court, up the back stairs, and into Marthe's little room.

"But it will never do for me to stay here. Have you no disguise you could lend met This livery is too conspicuous, and it has already been marked."

Marthe opened Jean Cottin's chest, and took from it a peasant's suit of clothes. He threw his elegant boots into a corner; but

he could not keep Jean's clumsy sabots on his small feet, and Marthe substituted a pair of her own. The blue blouse changed his appearance completely; and when she fitted the heavy Umouxin about his neck, and tied the lappets of the plush cap well over his ears, she was sure that no one could recognize him. As ho followed her down the stair again, he caught her hand. "Ah, it is you, my little La Joyeuse," said he. "If I ever get out of this scrape, I will find you again. I shall remember who it was who saved my life by a kiss in the barricade."

"I hope your life is saved," said Marthe, calmly; *' but as for the kiss, I only gave it to you because I thought you were dead. I was as sure of it as if I hod seen you lying in your coffin with the coins upon your eyes. If you get safe away, you need not hunt for me again. Try to be a.little truer to your wife instead."

There were soldiers at the end of the street when the peasant passed out of the door aud walked with a lazy slouch in the opposite direction.

"What a good actor ho is!" thought Marthe. "He will get off." And Hying up the stairs, she hastily disjointed the stovepipe, and hid tho top-boots within it, cramming the gold-broidered livery into the little stove. Then, hearing voices below, she descended again, and listened in the little passage to what the soldiers were saying.

"I tell you," said one of them, "the old lady is a foreigner, and docs not understand French. Where's the corporal T Let him try her with a little German."

"Haben Sic," stammered the corporal, "einen Mann gesehen, Madame f" But Marthe's mother composedly continued her knitting. She had seen the futility of replyiug at guess to what people said to her.

"She is not German," said the corporal. "Here, Auguste, speak to her in English."

And Augnsto, rubbing his clasped hands nervously, and advancing very near to the old lady, inquired, "Have you seen to pass by, in a white trowser, a man with gold trimmings sewed on t"

Then Marthe's mother, placing her spectacles carefully across her nose, looked at the man steadily, and remarked, in good French, "I'm a little hard of hearing."

A bluff fellow, who had listened impatiently to this conversation, exclaimed, " Sco here, comrades, I believe she's only shamming. Ho may be hidden in this very house, and I mean to search." But tho search was to very little purpose, for he did not even find the livery which Marthe had just hidden.

"Marthe," said her mother, after they had gone, pointing to the fragments of Jean Cottin's gift, which the jarring of the cannon had shaken from the wall, "it must have

stormed terribly last night. Did you know that your chevalier was broken f"

"Yes, mother, I knew it," replied Marthe, fitting together rather sadly the shattered fragments of her little broken heart.

Even with the aid of his disguise, Arthur Chevalier did not escape; he was arrested on suspicion, and conlined at Vincenues. It was some time after the Commune had been quelled that a neighbor read his name in a list of tho prisoners who had been favored with a trial and theu shot. Marthe heard it without a tremor; ho had been dead to her since the day she hud heard him confess his love for her in the boudoir of the actress.

On the walls of Arthur Chevalier's prison was found, after his execution, a poem, which was supposed to bo a prophecy, though no one came after his death to kiss him in his coffin: his neglected wife was far away, and Nathalie, though she anticipated his fate when Marthe returned the livery, could not compromise her position by any show of sympathy for a condemned Communist. This was the poem, perhaps it was not a prophecy, but a- souvenir:

LOVE IN DEATH.
"I come not now tn mockery,"

Her woman's pity said;
"From him I scorned, while living,

I ask forgiveness, dead."

I did not see her as she came.

My soul was wrapped in dark;
The coined weights were pressing close

On eyelids cold and stark.

Her words of tardy tenderness

I did not even hear;
For the first time I turned to her

A dull, nnlistening car.

On a month all unresponsive,
On the close-locked lips of death,

Fell the sweetness and the flutter
And the warmth of iter dear breath.

Perhaps I only dreamed them,

Perhaps Bhe did not speak;
But. a tear burned in the flicker

Of her lashes on my cheek.

Tonch of fire I Ah, how It thrilled me!

All the darkness then grew warm.
Oh! I would not, could 1, waken

To life again and scorn.

No, n thousand limes far sweeter

Is love, though mixed w-ith death,
So I can not taste its hitter,

Having once drunk of thy breath.
Lapped thus In rapturous trances,

In ecstasy supreme.
Dream on, dream on, O heart of mine!

Oh, waken not, but dream!

Dream, while so lowly lying

Within thy coffin bed,
That, though she scorned thee, living,

She came and kissed thee, dead.

Tho rest of the story is quickly told. A few miles from Villier-le-Bel lies a dairyfarm, belonging to the Due d'Ayen—a moated grange, more blithe, but not less picturesque, thau that of Mariana. In a cool, lowbrowed room, wboso thick stouo walls arc

the remnants of an ancient round tower, stand rows upon rows of little heart-shaped chevaliers, that Marthe fills with snowy cream-cheese which Jean carries to Paris, with pats of butter shaped like yellow waterlilies, and stamped with a jonquil. While Marthe is petting Bloom, her black Holland cow, we will step into her neat little salon, with its floor waxed like a mirror, and its deep-seated windows full of geraniums and fuchsias, and examine the pictures that hang upon the walls. The day that they were married, Jean and Marthe stepped into Gonpil's art store and selected every engraving, lithograph, or photograph of the paintings for which she had posed. Here they are, and a choice art collection they make, with tho names of many noted men iu the corners. A very few originals there are too, for Marthe treasures these souvenirs of her life as a model, and Jean is thriving, and the artists havo not been exorbitant when Marthe has requested a reproduction of even a great picture.

Over the fire-place a quee r object has beon let, mosaic-like, into tho wall when t he plaster was fresh. It is of porcelain, though not an ordinary tile. If yon scream at tho top of your lungs to Grand'inere La Joyeuse, knitting at the sunniest window, and rocking tho baby -with her foot, asking her if that is the family escutcheon, she will probably reply, as she did to me, "Cochon! no; that is Marthe's little heart that was broken; but Jean Cottin mended it soundly for her."

ANSWER FOR ME.

Wnvr would I do for you, my dear.

If I to-day could be lord of my life? Suppose that we both were sitting here.

Mere man and woman, not husband, wife, Would your faded face be fair, and your brow—

What but the wrinkles there would I sec? Would I love you then as I do now?—

But you shall answer, dear, for mo.

I love not easily, love but few:

Light come, light go, is not my way: No one has known my heart but you.

And you not its deeps, as you shall to-day. Put your hand on it, and feel it beat—

Where is the other impossible she Can quicken It, kneeling at my feet?—

But you shall answer, sweet, for me.

Love is forever, and only one;
For when it enters surrendered hearts

It is aB the supreme master—none
Can dispossess him till life departs.

And none succeed him of royal line:
Vacant the darkened throne must be.

If desolation should fall on mine-
But you shall answer, love, for me,

If I were king of the world, my dear.

You conld not be more my queen than now; You would have the same old lover here,

Except that Ills crown would be on your brow. Can any thing be too good for you

That a king may give yon? Ask and see: Name me the thing that I will not do—

For you shall answer, wife, for me.

Then good old "China," "Mear," and all,

Were heard on Sabbath-days,
And men and women, boys and girls,

J'ined in the song of prai9c.

But that old pulpit was my pride—

Jest eight feet from the ground
They'd reared it up—on either side

A narrer stairs went down;
The front and eends were fitly carved

With Scripter stories all—
Findin' of Moses, Jacob's dream,

And sinful Adam's fall.

Jest room inside to put a cheer,

The Bible on the ledge
(I'll own I did get narvous when

He shoved it to the edge).

Well, well! I tried to keep things straight—

I went to ev'ry meetin',
And voted "No" to all they said,

But found my influ'nee fleetin'.
At last the worst misfortin fell—

I must blame Deacon Brown: He helped the young folks when they said

The pulpit should come down.

They laughed at all those pious scenes

I'd found so edifvin';
Said, "When the parson rose to preach,

He looked a'most like flyin';"
Said that "Elijah's chariot

Jest half-way up had tarried;"
And Deacon Brown sot by and laughed,

And so the p'int was carried.

This was last week. The carpenters

Have nearly made an end— Excoose my feelin's. Seems to mo

As ef I'd lost a friend. "It made their necks ache, lookin' up,"

Was what the folks did say: More lookin' up would help us all

In this degin'rate day.

IN the autumn of 1874 I went to call on Dr. Hamilton Theack, a gentleman residing in an elegant establishment, No. — West Twenty-third Street, New York; and this visit I was induced to make by a very curious circumstance indeed. Accident had shown me, or seemed to show me, that Dr. Theack was connected with au incident aB singular and mysterious as if, instead of occurring in the prosaic nineteenth century, it had taken place two hundred years ago; and I must say my curiosity was excited to the very highest degree to ascertain the solution of what had appeared to me for some