nightfall, when the flowers have faded away, no fire-flies gem the road; one hears no tinkling bell; the robber owl skims lazily by fantastic shades chase each other into deeper gloom; and instead of "the watch-dog's cheerful cry," the "wolf's long howl" comes from the reed-brakes, and is echoed by its prowling mate on the neighboring hills.

Street to crack, and they found the meat sweet! One day he came home to Madeleine with Ruin as plainly lettered on his face as Dante's Omo. It was impossible for him to stay and front the vassals of his little burgh, and so they fled before the sheriff to the city; and there, after two years of hard struggle and much want, the old man died. What little remained in the purse Madeleine spent în conveying the dear form to its

graves whose sunken stones, wreathed with wildbrier vines and wrought with lichens, slanted and crumbled before the sun and wind of two centuries. Then the coach deposited her at the station once more just as the great, panting train came in. Her foot was on the step before thought struck her, and she paused to ask herself what was to be sought in the city—what but blanker ruin faced her in those swarming lanes? Madeleine drew her shawl about her and moved away. As well die here as there; at least the autumn leaves would drift and mound above her

The day was dark and lowering. For weeks nor rain nor gentle dews had refreshed the cal-rest-that last in the long row of ancestral cined earth. A heavy cloud hung overhead, and its pent-up fury burst upon the forest. The few birds that tenant these silent woods flew screaming to their eyries; some cattle dashed across the hills for shelter. The whole wilderness was in motion. The pines swayed their lofty heads, and the winds shrieked and moaned among the gnarled and aged limbs. A few old ones fell thundering down, casting their broken fragments around; and then the hurricane rushed madly on, tearing up the largest trees, and hurling them like javelins through the air. The sky was covered as with a pall; and lurid flashes, like sepulchral lights, streamed and blazed athwart it. The earthquake voice of nature trembled along the ground, and, ere its running echoes died away, came again, crash after crash thundering forth. But at length, as though weary of the agony, it paused, and the phantom clouds scudded away. The scene around was appalling! Hundreds of trees lay prostrate, while, here and there, others stood shivered by the bolt of heaven and smoking with its fires. God preserve me from another ride through these giant pines in such a tempest!

A

MADELEINE SCHAEFFER.

L

T twenty years old Madeleine Schaeffer found herself three against Fate, as Descartes against the murderous sailors: God, I, and my sword-the last a weapon whose fine edge the dull armor of her opponent had already partly turned. In other parlance, she had not a friend in the world, and had forgotten how to make one. Born in the faith that the race of Schaeffer crowned humanity, and that, owing to their rare condescension, the rest of creation shared sunlight and starlight, dew and rain, it was a stern teacher that wrought a new creed. In her native village her father ruled supreme, and art and wealth had done their best to make his daughter worthy of her blood; culture and accomplishment could hardly go further. When at length he looked upon his work, and saw that it was good, there came a great gap into his life -he had met with fulfillment. It was then that a malevolent deity whispered at his ear. His daughter's fortune-was it at all equal to what such a creature had the right to demand? Were there not flocks of golden fleece rambling about the earth, whose rightful shepherds were Schaeffers? And so the simple old countryborn-and-bred aristocrat plunged into the vortex of speculation. An excellent nut for Wall

and the train thundered by. She turned under the late, dull sky, and once more mechanically sought her father's grave. But she did not enter the inclosure, only sat on the low gate-stone, like a sad sphinx to question the passers-by, while twilight hastened up to wrap her in its shadows.

"He that overcometh, the same shall be clothed in white raiment,'" she sighed through the stillness.

"Because thou hast kept the word of my patience, I also will keep thee from the hour of temptation, "" said another voice.

Madeleine started; she did not know that she had spoken; and looking up through the gray dampness she saw the old clergyman standing above her. He took her home with him, and had her put to bed and to sleep, and allowed her the refuge of torpor and grief. A friend of his knew of some gay Southern travelers who, at the North in the summer, had desired a governess. A letter came and went with its swift white wings, and Madeleine was checked and ticketed on her way to the Carolinian coast-kindness which the good, glad-giving man could ill afford since the generous Schaeffer tithe had failed him.

A weary journey both by nights and daysclattering over leagues of pine barrens-coaching through everglades that were sloughs of despond-skirting luxury, unthrift, and squalorat length they plunged into an almost unbroken forest, hung with long veils of bleached moss, and Madeleine found herself the solitary female on the deck of a crazy little steamer bound down river. She drew her veil over her face, and sat apart on the deck, for there remained no great distance before her. Approaching it, her future, that she had kept resolutely out of mind, now rose and refused to be dwarfed. It was an ugly sight to her; her sensitive pride, her inborn hauteur recoiled: yet it was work, and to meet it she summoned endurance. Sitting there, she watched the banks of the narrow channel down

Mrs. Ediston met her with a brood of little Edistons clinging about her skirts, and in ten minutes Miss Schaeffer had found her level for so long as she should teach beneath that lintel. Weary at heart, she gladly availed herself of permission to retire, and to dull with sleep the

which the steamer was shooting-banks which, | splendid wings in the dark and polished leafage in spite of the early autumn, were yet dense with the carpet of dazzling verdure, sprinkled with lofty greenery, and often gorgeous in the floral shifting sun and shadow from its emerald undergarniture of riotous vines-still wild and virgin sky, made a scene that filled Madeleine's soul as when the river first burst its way between with rest; and when, weary of gazing, she leanthem. Here the engines stopped for food; or ed back with closed eyes, the lofty murmur here the bows were half shoved in toward shore, among the waving boughs seemed to sing the and a long-limbed young man, rifle in hand, very strain of her dreams. She would have leaped on deck; or here there was fretting delay been content to jolt on under this antiphonal over piles of waiting cotton-bales; and here the vault forever; but, as nothing is eternal, there little steamer went on her noisy way again. It came an end to leisure and pleasure in the shape was all very tiresome, and Madeleine turned to of a large and irregular house, not in particular discover the nationality of her companions-an repair, and singularly weather-stained, half covuproarious set of tobacco-feoffs for the most part. ered with vines, and backed with a lofty grove In one spot they threw the dice; in another, of sycamore and cypress, and beyond, a dim line bartered and discussed the merits of crops, hu- of sea. man and cotton; in a third, loud words, picturesque gestures, and angry eyes betrayed the political quarter of that microcosm. In the centre of this group, leaning on his gun, stood the young man who had lately leaped on board, hailed with a halloo. His shooting-clothes of some very coarse and thick stuff-his heavy boots-first edge of service. the hat slouched over his face-these things al- It was early on the next morning when she lowed him no exalted station; but there was a awoke. Unpacking and arranging her slight certain air in his manner of wearing them that wardrobe, she then made the most elaborate said autocrat as distinctly as ermined velvet and toilet of her life. A glance, a word, had taught jeweled orders could have done. Boon compan- her what to expect of Mrs. Ediston: white, but ion of them every one, he yet seemed to surround a servant. The haughty Schaeffer blood ill brookhimself with a personal atmosphere which none ed it. But there is a pride far more tremendous of these creatures could penetrate; his brief and than any other—that of proud humility, and becurt harangue, received with acclamatory acqui-hind this the girl intrenched herself beyond reach escence, had been uttered like a ukase. If, as of all of Mrs. Ediston's arrows. From her few he stood there, leaning in this lordly way upon his gun, his cigar, with its faintly-curling wreath, held carelessly away between downward fingers -if, standing so, he vouchsafed a sentence, it was rather tossed at them than spoken; and this fawning public of his, like any other spaniel, seemed to relish his thrusts better than another man's caress. But since she understood nothing, this, too, soon wearied, and, in despite of her tremor, she gladly greeted the sight of her little box thrown upon a landing where overhanging boughs darkened the stream, and,a plank flung out on which she was to walk ashore. The tall young man with the rifle preceded, and, with a bow, offered a hand to assist her-a hand not much in accordance with the rest of him, and gleaming with a singular ring. Directly afterward he disappeared. Within a yard or two Madeleine now discovered an old coach awaiting her, and the driver having, satisfactorily to his own understanding, decided upon her identity in the affirmative, she was conducted at a funereal pace toward her final destination. The road was a causeway built above the dykes of broad rice-fields that every where, as far as eye could see, were green with the rank malarial tinge of a new, rich, second springing, although already stacked with the abundant harvest. At length they entered under a broad avenue of ancient oaks, a magnificent growth, huge and columnar, with vast arches and cathedral spaces. The pendent sheets of misty moss-the wild and brilliant parasites, whose blossoms fluttered like

dresses, once rich, now turned and pieced, she chose the plainest, and bound her throat and wrists with a narrow linen. But first, all those drooping veils of darkest hair that yesterday hung their ever-changing shadows about her face, that waving and waving below the soft, round chin, had at length broken into globy masses of curl, she combed out and brushed straight along the brow, to be coiled behind in one heavy knot. It is true there was thus left exposed an ear delicate and pink as any faintly-tinged whorl, and an outline fine and soft enough for a Madonna; yet one scarcely notices such things in a dependent. Moreover want, and care, and grief had somewhat sharpened them all; and thus attired, pale through fatigue, and with no lovely expression in the curves of those reticent lips, certainly no one would have accused Miss Schaeffer of beauty.

Some dozen years before this epoch Mr. Roanoke the elder had died, leaving his youngish widow and her son well provided with stocks, mortgages, and railroad bonds, and his estate to a son by a previous marriage. On the estate, however, the widow continued to reside for a part of every year, traveling during the spring and summer. In one of these journeys she met with an admirer who speedily made her Mrs. Ediston, and returned with her to manage her step-son's affairs. This son, in process of education at the North, afterward chose to bury himself on one of the few rice-lands on the Mississippi, a maternal inheritance, leaving Mrs.

Ediston for the present in undisputed possession. | self attended to Rob's Greek. For a day or two But on the death of Mr. Ediston the vast out- it was hard work with the uproarious Essie and door arrangements of a plantation proved too Ally; but then the pair found that they were much for her skill, and Mr. Geoffrey Roanoke under that strong but light hand and succumbed returned to his ancestral acres. It was to this with riotous pleasure; and in all Miss Schaefyoung man, then, that Mrs. Ediston presented fer's stay at Roanoke Fields she had no more Miss Schaeffer as she entered the breakfast-room feal subjects than these breezy little things. Rob that morning-presented as to a potentate. Mr. regarded his governess rather as a region to be Roanoke was deep in his newspaper, but glanc- explored, did not at once surrender his affecing up, he rose, bowed, and extended his hand tions, held her command as a personal indigniafter a moment's deliberation, with that chiv- ty, and refused allegiance. Miss Clara Ediston alrous deportment due to any woman. Miss was the easiest victim of the whole. She had Schaeffer bent coolly in return, chose not to see attained her twelfth year, and was advanced in the hand, and passed to the seat indicated by her studies so far as the third volume of the Mrs. Ediston, between the Misses Ally and Es-"Children of the Abbey." Upon promotion sie Ediston, who were already clamoring for ev- she was struck with a fit of the sulks, durery thing on the table. Quieting them, Missing which her mamma prescribed and adminisSchaeffer scarcely suffered aught to escape her, since the first few moments of acquaintance are foundation-stones. It was more by intuition than otherwise that she recognized the state of affairs between the young man and her mistress. On the one part, a financial arrangement that spared the privy purse. On the other, she had been his father's wife; therefore was to be treat-winter; but Miss Schaeffer had lost her beared with respect; in the mean time managed his household admirably. But to say that there was love lost between them would have been a waste of words.

"Another cup, my dear Geoffrey? Julius, Mr. Roanoke's cup." And between the periods of his paragraphs Mr. Roanoke sipped his coffee, black and bitter-a habit which Miss Schaeffer supposed he had contracted to guard against the miasms. As she looked at him he wore a strangely-familiar air; she wondered where she had seen him before; and then as the ring on his hand flashed in her face she remembered. It was true he wore broadcloth now rather than fustian; and the countenance, crowned with its white forehead above deep-set but glowing eyes, had a somewhat less sardonic guise than when the brown beard and mustache alone appeared beneath the shade of a slouching brim. Still it was the same; and then an older remembrance struck her. A hand ungloved to fasten her cloak, and a strange ring scattering light from it. Well, why should he recognize in a pale, serge-clad governess the brilliant being who floated on his arm in swooning circles amidst music, and incense, and lustre? Damask cheek, dropping tresses, raiment of gold-colored satin that seemed but the shadow thrown by her topaz gems. Miss Schaeffer glanced at the mirror that hung opposite: no, severe and old, she would not have known herself. As her eye fell it rested for a moment on Mrs. Ediston's. Mrs. Ediston smiled, and stirred her coffee, and tasted. A servant brought round Mr. Roanoke's horse for his daily visit to the fields; the cheerful banquet was concluded, and not a word had been thrown away.

It did not take Miss Schaeffer long to fall into the round of her new duties, which were not heavy; for after class-hours there was nothing but Clara's music, and Mr. Roanoke him

tered a dark closet. With her release she fled incontinently to Miss Schaeffer, and bewailed her fate in a style unworthy of Amanda, and found solace thereon in "Clara's Waltz," with which Miss Schaeffer silenced her, and for which she suffered her that day to put by the exercises. Thus established the autumn went fleeting into

ings, she had no motive for notching off the days on her memory, and since the weather was like May she forgot that it was December. She had not become a whit more reconciled with her condition; she had only hardened her armor. Mrs. Ediston could not keep her at a greater distance than she kept Mrs. Ediston. As for Mr. Roanoke, she did not know that beyond the table courtesies she had yet exchanged a word with him. She was left out of all his plans. He regarded her as a subordinate, and treated her with quiet respect. To Miss Schaeffer it seemed quiet contempt. The frequent visitors did not know of her existence, of course. She never lingered at the table, never was to be found in drawing-room or on veranda; but in the school-room, if Mrs. Ediston sought her, or Mr. Roanoke came about Rob's Greek, she received them like a queen in her own domain.

"Why don't you ever come down when there's company, Miss Schaeffer?" asked Essie, skipping into the room on one foot and resting it with the other.

"Why, I don't make a bit of noise!" was you would wish to go home," said Mrs. Ediston, the round-eyed reply. meditatively.

"No; but a gentler movement. This way." And Miss Schaeffer, binding up a fallen tress, suddenly paused with a color in her cheeks, finding herself softly humming the gayest of tunes, and waltzing down the room with Essie.

"O Miss Schaeffer, you dance better than mamma!" cried the child in an ecstasy. "Do come down and waltz with me to-night."

"To-night you will be in bed. There, Essie, now I must draw your copies."

"No, indeed, we always sit up when there's company, to learn ease, mamma says. Miss Schaeffer, won't you?"

"No. Run away."

"But why not?" pursued Essie.

"Why not?" repeated Miss Schaeffer, throwing down her pencil. "Oh, because my dancing days are over."

"Over! What makes them over?" "I've lost my slippers," said Miss Schaeffer, with half a smile.

"Wait not to find your slippers,

But come in your naked feet," hummed a voice in the corridor; and as Miss Schaeffer heard a retreating step she felt an uncomfortable suspicion that a witness of the little drama had been in the door-way. But if Mr. Geoffrey Roanoke had allowed himself such freedom, it must have been an inadvertence; more probably he had heedlessly caught the word in passing; and a moment after, as if to dispel the very idea, Mr. Roanoke himself, grave as Rhadamanthus, marshaled in the refractory Rob, bowed silently to Miss Schaeffer, and proceeded to scatter Rob's wits through the mazes of an irregular verb.

One morning shortly after this occurrence, when Miss Schaeffer took her seat at the breakfast-table, her eye was arrested by an envelope lying beside her napkin. A letter to her? And from whom in the world? Ah no; Mrs. Ediston allowed Mr. Roanoke the pleasure of paying her bills. Such was his method. As few words as possible with his serfs. All this without the movement of an eyelash.

"I suppose you know that the holidays are upon us, Miss Schaeffer?" said Mrs. Ediston.

"I had forgotten. You wish the children should have vacation ?"

"Oh, certainly. From Christmas until Epiphany, always. It will be such a relief, Geoffrey, if Rob ever gets to college!"

"A relief not to be immediately experienced. He is very well as he is. A good enough boy as boys go," said the young man, scarcely glancing up from the price-current of the Mercury.

"You will not have time to return to the North, Miss Schaeffer, in twelve days?" continued Mrs. Ediston.

"I do not wish it. I suppose there is some place in the neighborhood where I can stay till they resume."

"Oh, here of course. There will be care enough for you. But I should have thought

"No relatives? no friends? Great Heavens, Geoffrey!" cried Mrs. Ediston in French across the table. "What sort of thing is this in the house with no relatives and no friends?"

Miss Schaeffer colored-a deep, warm tint that clung to her cheek. She smiled too, a smile that disclosed little bits of pearl.

"I beg your pardon, Mrs. Ediston, but I understand French."

"As my governess should!" retorted that lady, flushing angrily.

Miss Schaeffer did not notice the words, for her glance had caught Mr. Geoffrey Roanoke's; and with the dimpling smile, the gay glint of dark eyes, the color, Miss Schaeffer was for a moment again radiantly lovely-and knew it. Only a moment; then it all fell, and she was the gray-faced governess of old. Yet brief as the moment was, it was a small triumph; for Mr. Geoffrey Roanoke had been altogether in the habit of making the most trifling remarks to his mamma, in the French tongue, as if to exclude the white servant from any participation. He smiled himself-he could not help it; and as his eyelids dropped, it was on that perfect picture. In a breath he glanced up again as if to assure himself that it was still there. No, it had been a glamour-nothing else; no one but the pale, stern, black-clad woman sat before him. Miss Schaeffer had certainly taken a liberty. Mr. Roanoke's demeanor became icily lordly. At least so Miss Schaeffer construed the meaning of the next few moments. Little did the governess care. Indispensable, and knowing it, giving them good work for good payment-they were welcome to indulge their little whims. Her sole solicitude was to amass such a sum as would allow her to open a day-school in the city at no distant period, and after that perhaps to pay her father's debts. This very scene was another plate for her armor. She rose from the table, took the envelope, bowed to Mrs. Ediston as usual, and withdrew-Essie and Ally skipping down to follow her. But at sight of that money I can not say that a tortured fiend did not turn in her heart anew. It wanted yet a half hour to class-time, and in the school-room Miss Schaeffer composed herself above a sheet of paper. There was too much nobility in Madeleine's nature to attempt offering the good clergyman repayment of the sum he had expended for her. Necessity had forced acceptance upon her; it was impossible to cancel an obligation. But she could at least devote a portion of her earnings toward alleviating wants that she knew too well. Poor people in the surrounding coun