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into my coat pocket to carry home for her, | another direction, right over two or three and then we all sat down, for she seemed stone fences, over a stream of water, and tired and sleepy, and before many minutes across several fields; but neither she nor I she fell asleep on her mother's lap. This was can give any account of what happened to us about an hour before sunset: but almost on a after we heard that dreadful crash, just as suddeu it grew so dark that we thought there we were lifted up into the air, though neither must be a heavy thunder-storm coming, and of us was hurt any more than being a little we rose up to go home as quick as possible, bruised and stunned like; but the most territhinking that the child would get wet. I ble part of the story I have not yet told, took little Faithful from Esther, who went on though 'tis most likely you have guessed it as fast as she could before me. There was already-we never saw our child again! not a breath of air stirring, nor any thunder, but as it grew darker every minute, the lightning seemed to flash over the waters of the lake and light them up for an instant, and then again they looked as black as ink. As fast as I could I followed my wife along the path that led to our house, hoping that the child would be safe if we got there before the storm broke over our heads, for at that time I did not think of its being more than a very severe storm, though I never had seen one come on so sudden as this. Just as we got to the place where the path makes a turn, my wife stopped suddenly, and throwing up her hands, cried out :

For many days we searched amongst the ruined farms, and through the shattered and torn-up trees, and wherever the whirlwind could be traced by its work of destruction; but all in vain. The bedstead on which my wife had laid the dear child was found in the pine wood at the foot of the mountain, one of our chairs, along with some of the rafters of the house, were carried right across the lake into another man's farm, but she was never found. A neighbor brought us a small piece of the frock she had on, which he picked up amongst the broken stumps of the trees that had had all their tops clean carried away, and this-this is all," said the poor fellow,

“O Lord have mercy on us, for surely the pointing to the piece of print under the glass, end of the world is at hand.' "that we now have that ever belonged to our dear child,”

"I never shall forget the awful sight I saw when I looked up! An immense black pillar that whirled round and round furiously, and sent out flashes of red light in every direction, seemed to be coming rapidly towards us; we were now but a short distance from our own door, and by hurrying forward with all our strength, in another minute we were in the house. My wife took the child out of my

"Everything we had was destroyed," said Mrs. Baldwin, who, with the same tact that I had observed on another occasion, now addressed me in order to give her husband time to recover himself.

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Everything we had was destroyed; but we felt only one loss-that of our child. At first I thought if we had lost our child, as other parents lose theirs, I could have borne it; but to have her carried away in a raging whirlwind, and never see her again-oh! it was a hard hard, trial. But we cannot choose -it was the Lord's doing, and it is our duty to submit."

Mrs. Baldwin covered her face with her hands for a minute, but soon mastering her emotion, she rose, and taking down the picture from the nail on which it hung, she put it into my hands.

"Up to that time we had not heard a sound, and the air was as still and oppressive as it had been all day; but just as my wife stooped down to kiss her little Faithful, a great crash and rushing wind shook the house, and at the same moment I felt myself carried up into the air and whirled along in complete darkness. What more happened to me I don't know anything about, for I lost all sense, until I found myself some hours after-taken from us. As soon as he could fix his wards lying on the earth amongst uprooted trees, torn branches, and broken pieces of buildings. Meantime my wife was carried in

"There, sir, those are the cones that our little Faithful picked up and put into her father's pocket only an hour before she was

mind to any kind of work, he set himself to make this frame with them, for the storm had spared them to us for that purpose, he said.”

I assured Mrs. Baldwin that I had already | I have done very well, and in the course of admired the beauty of the workmanship, time perhaps-but we can't forget our lost though I did not then know the sad history child." which gave it so much interest.

This was the strange history I heard from Reuben Baldwin-an unpolished man, but a man of excellent sense and generous, warm feelings. With such a gem of a farm as he is now in, with such an admirable partner in his joys and sorrows, and above all, with the blessings of Providence, Reuben Baldwin may yet live to be a happy, if not a rich man.

I took leave of the worthy couple with the painful feeling that I was not likely ever to see them again, or even to make them any return for the kindness and hospitality they had bestowed on me.

"If f you should ever visit that part of the country," resumed Mr. Baldwin, again addressing me, "you will see the traces of that storm for miles; where it began, or where it ended, I can't say, but the greatest mischief was done just by our lake. It seemed to burst right over my house, and then gather up and carry everything away, sweeping furiously across the lake, and even driving the water several hundred feet on to the land on the opposite shore, as was plainly seen by the mud that was left there. From the first I believed that our child slept her death-sleep beneath those waters on which I had so often taken her in my little fishing-boat-and when she could nowhere be found amongst the ruins that the storm had made, I felt certain of it. I did not care to rebuild my house where everything would remind us of our misfortune and as to fishing in that lake again, or even rowing on those waters, I could not bear to think of it. So I sold my land for what little I could get, and soon fixed myself here where you see me. Thank God, Lake Sunapee.

It is not my intention to describe my meeting with my New York friend, or the business which brought us together, for there was nothing in it that could afford interest to any third person.

Two days after I left Reuben Baldwin's log-house in the bush, I was again in Cincinnati, where I made it my first business to procure a handsome copy of "Izaak Walton's Complete Angler," which I sent with my grateful remembrance to the Fisherman of

VITALITY OF SEEDS.-In addition to the old sto- | I took the opportunity of asking him how the ry of the vegetation of wheat found in an Egyptian missions were liked. Sir,' said the peasant, mummy, the New Hampshire Journal of Agri-we all feel obliged to you for your kind intenculture, in reply to the inquiry of a correspondent as to the length of time that seeds retain their vitality, quotes the following statement from an English paper.

James Binks, in the North British Agriculturist, stated that he had recently cleared off some old Roman encampments on his farm near Alnwick, a farm which he had lived upon for sixty-four years, and forthwith among the barley there sown, arose some seventy-four varieties of oats, never seen in that section before. As no oats had been sown, he supposed the place to be an old cavalry camp, and that the oats which were ripened under other skies, had lain covered with debris for 1,500 years, and now, being exposed to the action of the sun and air, they germinated as readily as though but recently sown.

ST. VINCENT DE PAUL.-" After having spent much strength and labor to little purpose," said this zealous evangelist (St. Vincent de Paul), "I was one day lamenting before God, as I walked to church, the little fruits of my exertions. As I went along, I was overtaken by a vine-dresser.

tions; we are likewise sensible that everything you tell us is good, but you preach too long. We ignorant boors are just like our own wine-vatsthe juice must have plenty of room left to work; and once filled to the brim, if you attempt to pour in more, even if it were the very best juice in the world, it will only be spilt on the ground and lost.""-From the Tour to Alet in Mrs. Shimnelpenninck's Memoirs of Port Royal.

MEN are so inclined to content themselves with what is commonest; the spirit and the senses so easily grow dead to the impressions of the beautiful and perfect, that every one should study, by all methods, to nourish in his mind the faculty of feeling these things. For no man can bear to be entirely deprived of such enjoyments; it is only because they are not used to taste of what is excellent, that the generality of people take delight in silly and insipid things provided they be new. For this reason one ought, every day at least, to hear a little song, and read a good poem, see a fine picture, and, if it were possible, to speak a few reasonable words.-Goethe.

"CHANLEIGH! Chanleigh! shouted the guard, with a conventional accentuation on the word which almost prevented its recognition, and Tom Morland, who had been on the look-out for the station for the last quar-old beadle, whose cheeks were like a winter ter of an hour, got out of the train. But Chanleigh was not his destination. He inquired of the station master how far off the village of Beauchamp was; and learning that the distance might be "something better nor three miles," he desired that his luggage might be sent on in the solitary square box on wheels which, doing duty as a fly, had come down from the inn on speculation; and set out on foot in the direction indicated.

I take yon to be the new parson of Beau-mon in his best coat pocket. Three weeks champ," said one of the bystanders to an afterwards, when Tom had almost forgotten other.

ground, unable to rise. In another moment, just as Tom had almost succeeded in reaching him, he was rescued by a woman's hand, with the fond foolish words which will serve as a panacea for half the woes of childhood till the end of time. Tom turned to the

"Now, Jemmy," she said, "we will go home together, and to-morrow you shall wait for me. I dare say it was carelessness; no one would be so cruel as to hit you a blow on purpose.

"Oh, yes, Miss Letitia; I saw him! was the general cry. "I did!” and “I did!" "And I am afraid I did," said Tom, who had raised his hat to Miss Letitia, and walked on by her side.

of freedom in his limbs. The country grew | idently a cripple-for a little pair of crutches picturesque as he left the town of Chanleigh had rolled away into a ditch-lay on the behind him. It was certainly flat, but then it was well wooded, and watered by a little river that ran swiftly and clearly over its pebbly bed. On the banks grew tall grasses, luxuriant in the shade of the willows. He came at length upon a common, covered with long brambles, stretching over stunted gorse speaker. She had a care-worn look, and was bushes, behind which were hid away pools almost shabbily dressed; but she had a proof water known only to the cottagers' asses fusion of fair hair, and large gray eyes, and their foals, and one or two worn-out whose expression atoned for waning youth plough-horses turned out to graze there. and freshness. The children made way for Leaving the common to his right, he made her eagerly, and Jemmy Bates himself seemed his way down a shady lane, arched with long thankful to be near her even at the cost of branches of elm and oak, and presently came his bruises. The boy who had knocked him upon a village which he rightly concluded down slunk away. to be Beauchamp. At intervals he had passed several farmhouses, which wore an air of comfort and plenty. The village, however, was not in character with them. Damp had seized on many of the cottages. Here, the roof, the walls, and the out-houses were covered with a moss of vivid green, which clung tenaciously, and turned all to rottenness beneath it; there, the door was coated with a fungus which grew as surely as the night came, to be destroyed in the morning, and to grow again, till man's patience was exhausted in the conflict. Hinges had given way; locks were loose, for the screws would never stay in; a dozen carpenters might work from morning till night without effecting much good with such unsatisfactory materials. At every third or fourth house beer was licensed to be drunk on the premises." Tom said truly that children good, bad, or The inn, where hung the sign of the Golden indifferent were always an object of interest Lion-a prodigious animal with a mane of to him. He had been watching poor little startling brilliancy-was a modern building Jemmy Bates limping painfully by his side, of brick, and apparently the only one in de- and somewhat to the boy's astonishment cent repair. Near it stood the school-house he took him up in his arms and carried in a dilapidated state, and contrasting pain- him along. The distance was soon accomfully with its neighbor. Tom had heard the plished. Tom deposited his burden in his church clock strike four as he came up to it, mother's cottage, and was overwhelmed with and in a moment out rushed a swarm of chil- her thanks. Miss Letitia having pointed out dren: boys, girls, and infants. He watched to him the nearest way to the rectory, went them with keen interest. They were the on her way, and another half-mile brought soil in which he was to plant seeds, to weed, him to his journey's end. The house which to reap-God granting it—the harvest of re- was henceforward to be his dwelling-place ward. Half a dozen boys a little older than was before him. It was one story high, the rest were in loud turmoil. From the with lattice windows, and a porch, over midst of the group Tom heard a rattling which grew honeysuckles and roses in the noise, then a groan: and a cry of "Shame wildest luxuriance. An unsparing hand had to knock down Jemmy Bates!" broke from planted half a dozen sorts of climbers bethe rest. A boy, about ten years of age, ev-neath the windows; one of these had served

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"Are you Mr. Morland?" she asked. "Then do not judge of the boys by this unlucky incident. They are good on the whole; but the schoolmaster has lately suffered much from ill-health, and they have been for some time without the personal superintendence of a clergyman. Altogether, circumstances have been against them."

as a trellis to another, and so on, till the whole front of the house was in a tangle of foliage. In front was a little grass-plot: no scythe had touched its growth for months, and the gravel path that ran round it was almost choked with weeds. It was a neglected spot.

came-as they sometimes did—he lived gayly at Beauchamp, giving pleasant little dinners to the sprightliest people he could get together; never troubling himself with parish work, preaching effectively what he seldom attempted to practice, and never striving to restrain his son in the downward course in which he had walked from his boyhood upwards. Three years passed on thus. Suddenly the news spread like wildfire in Chanleigh and Beauchamp that George Nugent had left Mr. Wortleby's office overnight, and had taken his passage in a vessel that sailed on the following morning for Australia. Was his father acquainted with his movements? Nobody ever knew; nobody demurred when he stated his inability to meet his son's debts; nobody wondered at his evasion of the just demands on his time, his energy, or his income. An affection of the lungs was a sufficient excuse to the Bishop of the diocese for Mr. Nugent's residence in the south of France, during the two last years of his life, and a succession of ill-paid curates took the duty at Beauchamp. One became ill and unfit for work from the effects of the damp; another, who had come fresh from a manufacturing town, where he had been accustomed to appeal to intellects as keen as his own, gave up his rural congregation in despair after he had examined a few of the most intelligent-looking members in the churchyard on the subject of the sermon he had just delivered; a third levelled such straightforward denunciations at what he considered the hopeless lethargy of his flock, that they grew too timid to venture into church at all. But in truth it was a discouraging field for action, for no one could look at the vacant eye and the meagre development of brain amongst the laboring populalation, and hope for much fruit from so sapless a tree. When death removed Mr. Nugent from the supervision of the work to which he had never had sufficient energy to put his own hand, it was owing to the fact of a sermon lying forgotten in the pocket of a coat that an industrious and earnest-minded. man had come to fill his place.

Tom had bought the household furniture of the executors of the late incumbent, and an elderly woman, who had been left in charge of the house, was engaged by him as his housekeeper. His Lares and Penates were thus already set up. To be enabled to form some idea of the work Tom had before him, it will be necessary to revert to a period sixteen years antecedent to his entering on the living. The rector of Beauchamp was, at that time, named Nevil. He was a widower, with one daughter. She was scarcely seventeen years of age, but she had been her father's almoner, sick-nurse, and school teacher from childhood. Her education had been built upon his theories, and the result had made her, in some measure, different from other girls. She gave all her energies to assist him in the care of the parish, making no friends in her own class of life. When his death occurred suddenly, she found herself alone in the world. An old fellowcollegian of her father presented her case to a charitable fund, which conferred a small annuity upon her, and Letitia Nevil settled down in the place which circumstances had endeared to her, on an income of fifteen pounds a year; her skill in needlework, and her industry in various ways, supplying whatever her need required beyond that amount. The new rector, Mr. Nugent, was an elderly man of good family-handsome, eloquent and agreeable. His wife, who was the daughter of a spendthrift Irish peer, died soon after his arrival in the parish; and his only son, on leaving college was placed in the office of Mr. Wortleby, the solicitor at Chanleigh. George Nugent was like his father in person, careless and extravagant as the elder man was also. Mr. Nugent's debts had accumulated with his years, but they never sat heavily on his shoulders, like the old man of the sea, as they do on many others; for when his creditors were pressing, he packed up his travelling bags and went to Paris or MR. WORTLEBY lived in a large, gloomy Brussels till they became weary, or resigned house in Chanleigh, of which the lower part to the hopelessness of their case. He was was entirely set apart for the transaction of always expecting windfalls. When they business. On either side of the street-door,

CHAPTER II.