had arrived in London with Mr. Gibbons, and are making a mystery of their news, as I did of mine in my telegram to them.'

"No! No," he cried excitedly, "The people at Rathkieran know nothing about me. Gibbons swore he'd speak of me only as a friend."

And I'm sure he kept his word. Austin Gibbons is a man to be relied upon, Uncle Terence," she answered soothingly. “And his gratitude and affection for you are unbounded."

Poor fellow. Yes. He was in a bad way when he came to me," looking dreamily into the fire, "But he brought me luck. And so, when that night after years of waiting, I found gold-— gold enough," his voice trembling with excitement," to bring in, I could see, millions, when the mine was worked, I vowed to make Gibbons a partner, and I did. He is now well-off-rich, I may say."

"I know, Uncle Terence. He has told me all. He is deeply grateful."

"He need not be. He has well repaid me for all I did for him. Only for him, his watchfulness and devotion, I'd have died of that dreadful fever. But thank God I lived to know and love you, Elizabeth. Now my whole life will have but one object to make you happy. Together we'll unearth that cross, or its thief; and when I do die, you

"Hush! hush! You are going to live. I can't spare you, Uncle Terence. But you must keep quiet. Excitement is bad. Lie back. That's it. Close your eyes and rest. I'll watch beside you. So go to sleep."

He did as he was told. He was very weak, and feeling quite exhausted by his long speech and excited recollections. was glad to lie back amongst his cushions and rest. In a short time, to Elizabeth's great joy, he fell asleep.

CLARA MULHOLLAND.

(To be concluded next month.)

THE COUNTRY COTTAGE

T lies in the heart of a beautiful country, a country of mountain, and woodland, and little singing streams that tumble joyously down from the amphitheatre of hills over one cascade after another, between fringed banks of fern and flaggers," intermingled with the "long purples" of Shakespeare and a hundred other sweet-smelling, water-loving things. We called the little house," Cooleen," a name which in the homely Gaelic means "little corner," and even in the alien Saxon tongue expresses somehow much of its attributes of cool greenness and quiet. "Like a wren's nest, little and cosy," someone said of it; and perhaps because of kindred associations one comes to think of it always as a nest, hidden away from the eyes of man, though still beside the high road, by a living network of greenery, the native home of blackbird and thrush, of linnet and robin, and a whole tribe of feathered creatures.

Was there ever, indeed, such a place for birds? As soon as the first faint streak of dawn lights up the eastern sky, one hears a low tentative twitter outside one's window-open all night, be sure, to the breath of the wind that floats in across meadows where the corn-crake has been droning his sleepy song through each hour of the short June night. A little later the full chorus begins." Get-up, get-up, get-up!" chirp the sparrows in the ivy; while a big brown thrush, perched on the topmost bough of a tall fir-tree, keeps telling us unmistakably, "I hope you have come to stay! in bird-words set to a pretty musical accompaniment peculiarly his own.

Very happy and very proud that thrush seems to be on his lofty pinnacle, and we were not long in discovering the reason of his excessive amiability. For in a cosy nest of entwined moss and ivy in the shrubbery hard by his little brown wife sits hatching her four mottled blue-green eggs with a brooding, expectant look in her bright eyes. The children peep up at her through the laurels, while she watches them with a steady, unflinching gaze. "We must not touch her or frighten her away, poor sweet," says the oldest and wisest of them, with all the kindly dignity of his seven-and-a-half years. And now they have come so often to peep without molesting that the little mother-thrush no longer heeds or fears them.

The shrubbery is a place of delight for others than the birds; for here the lilac, white and mauve, sheds its fragrance around

it through all the lovely month of May; the laburnum droops its golden tassels, branch above branch, seeking its royal kinsman the sun, as it climbs towards the sky above. On a sloping green bank before the windows of the cottage two great treepeonies vie with each other in their twin pink loveliness. Clematis and fuchsia and syringa trail their flowery branches down through the trees, or over the old, fern-encumbered walls; roses pink, white, and yellow climb along the house, or by the side of the long lean-to greenhouse wherein veritable forests of heliotrope or ivy-leaf or scarlet and white geraniums cover the walls.

There is yet much to be done with the hot-house, with the garden, with the shrubbery even; and we have great and multitudinous plans. The greenhouse must be filled, the garden made more trim and lovely; the shrubbery, please God, must next year be carpeted with primrose and daffodil and wildwood anemone. Already we have discovered a little wood of the wind-flowers above a purling brown trout stream, hardly a mile away, which transplanted will by next April make our woodland walks a starred delight of white and purple blossoms.

Inside, the little house is very sweet, with its many wide windows, guarded by stout old-fashioned shutters to keep one safe and warm against the winter's chill, looking always out on the green pleasaunce and the little wood of the singing birds. Everything, one's pictures and china, the old cabinets and curios, look so much better against their subdued setting of roses and gold here in this quaint sitting-room than they did in the more pretentious, more commonplace town house. There is something virginal, Madonna-like, in the starred blue papering of the tiny bed-rooms, with their immaculate white curtains; something warm and welcoming in the tiled, crimson-tinted hall something very cosy and inviting, comfortably defiant of the wintry storm, in the wide, low-ceiled dining-room, with its wall-cupboards, its corner fireplace, and shelf of books set obligingly near at hand.

There is a tiny bathroom, a laundry, a dairy; a wired-in poultry-run hidden away in a sheltered corner of the wood; everything useful as well as beautiful. Yes, it is a dear little house, an ideal home for one grown perhaps a trifle worldweary, nor now too much averse to the thought of that other home in the beautiful God's-acre only a stone's throw off beyond the road, where lies already in the shadow of the ancient belfry tower so much that once made all the joy, the homeliness of life.

And if one be younger, or of less sombre mood, there is the steam-train hurrying past the green postern gate to bear one

swiftly between hedges of hawthorn or woodbine and wild-rose to the things of the world, of life and of youth in the throbbing city one short league away; or if one be not a townsman by birth or inclination, to carry one higher up in the beautiful country, through fields of golden buttercups, of fragrant hay, or ripening corn, to the land of misty mountain, of wide, highlying moor and bogland, the country of shadowy, turf-tinted trout-streams, of ponds and lakes the haunt of wild duck and water-hen. Sometimes there will come a sudden, unexpected dash of vivid colour and life in the shape of a battalion of soldiers riding down in open carts from their encampment in the furthest recesses of the hills, blowing kisses to the pretty peasant girls or making fun as they pass with the countrymen or "tinkers" whom they meet with on their way. And if one goes this road, to the land of mist and mountain, of heather and bracken and fresh bogland breezes, one is sure of a pleasant journey, a happy day and a restful night, with no uglier memory than the music of the singing streams still lingering in the ear and lulling one to sleep.

NORA TYNAN O'MAHONY.

A QUESTION

ON Scripture-alphabet intent
Sits, strangely still, my wilful son,
His curly head a little bent,

His whole attention won.

The artist has, with lavish hand,
The glowing page bedecked amain;
In brilliant hues the prophets stand
On crudely emerald plain.

Here 'Abraham, with beard snow-whit
Builds high a pile of orange wood;
And holds an axe most wondrous bright
Which thirsts for Isaac's blood.

There Esau, armed with huge cross-bow, Stalks deer on purple mountain side, While Jacob in the tent below

His smooth limbs seeks to hide.

But on a certain mystic page
The youthful student dwells a space,
While gravity beyond his age
O'erspreads his rosy face.

An awful picture, this, I ween,
With deepest crimson sprinkled o'er,
For John the Baptist dead is seen,
And weltering in his gore,

The body lies outstretched, forlorn,
While in a dish the bleeding head
Aloft by soldiers grim is borne,
The dancer's guerdon dread.

Great sympathetic tear-drops well
Within the boy's dark wondering eyes,
The while the direful tale I tell
And deep and oft he sighs.

In haste to soothe his deepening woe,
I now describe the Saint's reward:
"His pain is past and gone, you know
Forgot his durance hard."

Yet once again the page is read,
And once again a sigh is given,
"But-did he find another head,

That blessed saint-in Heaven ?"

M. E. FRANCIS.