constitution carried him through, and gave him strength to rally. But another day would have been too late to save even him. There had been no opportunity for him to reach home or get aboard an American vessel, and thus he had made the voyage in the English whaler, and gone home in her to London. It is rather more than twenty years since Shubael Wyer appeared here as suddenly as he had left, and immediately settled into The sloop which brought Peter Joy to that strange way of life at Coatue. He Nantucket left again next day, taking Shu- bought that shanty of some fellows who had bael Wyer as a passenger, and from that put it there for convenience on gunning day his history for more than twenty years cruises, and he improved upon it, and also is a sealed book to all of us. This strange bought himself a dory. I have now and disappearance of course caused much talk then run foul of him during his short and for a while; but it was a nine-days' wonder, far-between visits to town, but he evidently and most people thought his disappointment knew and avoided me, and we have never in love, occurring for the second time in con-exchanged a word with each other since I nection with the same woman, was sufficient sailed on my second voyage in the Jasper, explanation. He had gone away for a leaving him here at home. while to wear off the keen edge of it, and would, no doubt, soon return. But the real truth lay deeper than this. He had indeed been disappointed and thwarted in the one point which was a kind of mania with him, - his passion for Dinah Bunker. He had seen her own chosen husband restored as it were from his ocean grave, and the act for which his soul must burn with life-long remorse had involved the murder of five other men. His crime had been a whole sale one; while in its sole object it had proved an utter failure. It can do you no harm, my boy, to know the truth of the story; and the moral will not be thrown away upon you, I hope. You see how a man may blast his whole life by letting foolish passions get the mastery of him for a single hour, for the worm of remorse has been gnawing at Shubael Wyer's heart-strings for five-and-forty years. The tale told by Uncle Zimri has always appeared to me like something related in confidence, and though he did not specially enjoin secrecy upon me, I have seldom spoken of it to any one. Now that I am getting gray myself, and nearly three generations have passed on since that tragedy occurred, there can be no harm in making it public. Peter Joy himself, in the midst of his great happiness, had many a tender thought for his old commander, for no idea of treachery had ever entered his mind. He had thought it strange that he could not find the ship that night, or see any lights, but the Whatever worldly goods the hermit left horrible idea of having been intentionally behind were taken in charge by his nearest abandoned had never entered his thoughts. relatives, but I think nothing of great value He received the first hint of it from myself, was found. There were queer rumors when we accidentally met each other round about his having been a pirate during what the other side of the Horn a year or two was called the cast away period of his life, later. Putting all the facts together, he was which included all the years of his prime, entirely convinced of the truth of my suspi- and strange dreams about fabulous amounts cions, but to no other person have I ever of gold coin buried on Coatue Point after told all the circumstances until tonight, now the fashion of Kyd and other free-booters of that Wyer has gone to his final account. It classic memory. But no such dreams were was a matter which it could do no good to ever realized, as but a small amount of montalk about, nor do I think that Peter Joy ey was found among his effects. Before I ever mentioned it again, unless, may be, to went to sea the next year the shanty had his wife. He and Dinah have both gone to been removed from the ground, and there rest, and their two sons, who are both now was nothing left on that sterile neck of land in command of ships, are probably as igno- to mark the site where Shubael Wyer, the rant of the details as the average of our peo- man of mystery, had spent the last twenty ple are. Suspicious whispers there have years of his blighted life. 3 FIRST VOICE. OH! Winter is a merry king, King Wint As merry a soul As good King Cole Of ancient history. His pipe puffs high To the cold, clear sky A tale of jollity. calls for his fiddlers too, IN WINTER. BY HELEN HERBERT. And the light leaves dance all the wild night through; The monarch laughs as the sport goes on, His skaters all in the glee must share: Then he hears the chime of their feet ring out, They speed them merrily. Then he bids his musicians the mad tunes still, He sings to himself as he watches all, SCHOOLCRAFT, MICH., DECEMBER. 1880. SECOND VOICE. Oh! Winter is a cruel king, As cruel and cold As the despots of old Is a dream of death, That wraps us clammily. He calls for his servants to work his will: The flying leaves tremble and shiver with dread, Toss out their bare, empty arms, and groan. He whistles and sings in his mad delight: And the days are dark with the misery wrought, SETTLED IN A SNOWDRIFT. CHAPTER I. BY MISS JULIA A. KNIGHT. HE 12.20 North T'standizzineExpress-Couare Station. Was standing in Euston-Square Station. On the platform the noise and bustle were at their height. Porters hurried along with loaded trucks and scant ceremony. Late arrivals were rushing frantically to the ticketoffice. Already the guards were beginning to slam the doors at each end of the train, while the peculiarly aggravating hissing roar of the engine made itself heard above all the hubbub and confusion. A pretty old Quaker lady, ciad in a sombre gray, and with an expression of perplexity on her face, was making her way slowly through the crowd; and a tall young lady, dressed from head to foot in sombre brown of Quakerish hue, but most unquakerish make, was at her side. "It cannot be helped, auntie," the latter was saying, with some impetuosity; "I must go by this train, and Peters must come by the next with the luggage." "I do not at all like thee traveling alone, Susannah," urged the old lady, with a doubtful air. "I do think thee had better wait for the next train.” "No, no," returned Susannah, — otherwise Sunnie, -"it would upset all arrangements. Mr. Elliot will be waiting for me at Crewe : he will be vexed if I am not there. Besides, there is papa to think of. He always comes to meet me at Penrith, and I would not disappoint him on any consideration." "Well, I suppose thee knows best," said the old lady with gentle deprecation. "But I think thee would do better to remain; thee has never traveled alone before, and " "Why, auntie, what disaster can possibly befall me between here and Crewe?" interrupted the girl, drawing up her slight figure with an air of great independence. "I can take care of myself. No, I cannot wait for the next train; and, as Peters has been so stupid-Why, good gracious, they are locking the doors!" Taking two or three hasty steps along the platform, she stopped before the door of a compartment. "Ah, here's an empty carriage! This will do," she said hurriedly, signing to a passing guard to open the door. In another minute Miss Ross was helped into the carriage, her traveling-bag tossed after her, and the door re-locked. Then a bell rang somewhere, the engine shrieked dismally, and the train rolled out of the station. Sunnie, leaning out of the window to say farewell to her aunt, caught sight of the unlucky Peters frantically waving an umbrella and pocket-handkerchief and calling to everybody to stop the train. "What a lunatic she looks!" thought Sunnie, with a mirthful laugh. Then she drew in her head, settled herself on her seat, and, turning her eyes round, became aware for the first time that she was not alone in the carriage. A gentleman sat in the corner farthest from her, and, at sight of him, Miss Ross gave a violent start, a wave of rosy color rushed into her face, and then she drew herself up in an attitude of imposing dignity and reserve. Not that there was anything very alarming about the gentleman. He was a tall, athletic young fellow, with a brown face, steady gray eyes, and a resolute mouth, shaded by a small mustache. A sealskin cap was on his closely trimmed brown head, and a great bearskin rug half covered him. He was apparently buried in a "leading article" in the Times, and the entrance of the young lady did not seem to have disturbed his study or his equanimity one whit. "Good heavens! it's Jack!" uttered Miss Ross under her breath, averting her eyes from the fellow-passenger as hastily as if he had been a Gorgon instead of a good-looking young Englishman. "What can have brought him here? Could anything be more unlucky? I wish I could get out of the carriage! And she half rose and laid her hand on the strap as if to lower the window, but the sight of the chimney-pots and telegraph-poles flying past warned her that such a way of escape was not to be dreamt of. "And the train never stops till we get to Crewe ! Three hours! What is to be done?" she went on disconsolately, giving a furtive glance at her fellow-traveler, who was composedly turning the Times inside out. There was nothing to be done. The express was already rushing along at the rate of thirty miles an hour, and the two passengers shut up together in the first-class carriage were doomed to an uninterrupted tête à tête for the next three hours. It was a malicious stroke of Fortune that had brought these two together. Not six months before they had been affianced lovers; now no power on earth would have brought them voluntarily within fifty miles of each other. A very little had caused the quarrel, willfulness and pique on one side, pride and resentment on the other. Sunnie herself had been most to blame; but, in addition, she had contrived to place a rather formidable obstacle in the way of reconciliation, in the shape of another lover. Within a month after her rupture with John Rotherham she had engaged herself to his rival, the cause of the mischief, and Mr. Rotherham was the last man in the world to have forgotten or forgiven the fact. And so it happened that, when this untoward accident brought them together again, Mr. Rotherham sat in his corner of the carriage in silent resentment, and Miss Ross gazed out of the window at the snow covered landscape, and would not have known if it had changed to verdant green before her eyes. "I don't care," she thought, tapping her foot on the floor with an attempt at lofty nonchalance which failed signally, for she did care; and the brown eyes that looked out at the undulating snow-banks rushing by were dark with unshed tears, and the sweet red lips trembled piteously. Miss Ross was a very pretty girl, with great velvety eyes-eyes that were soft and willful and mischievous and pleading half a dozen times in as many minutes - and a piquant, spirited face. She looked like an old picture as she sat back in her seat, with the light full on her delicate face and bronzebrown hair. It was a bitterly cold day. The keen north wind met the train as it tore along, and came in at every chink and corner of the carriage. A great bank of leaden clouds was sweeping down before the wind, and the snow was already beginning to descend in those small powdery flakes that betoken a heavy downfall. Miss Ross was going to her home, Red Scar, a picturesque old manor-house among the remote Cumberland mountains. At Crewe Mr. Eliot was to meet her; and Sunnie had not chosen to run the risk of disappointing Mr. Elliot, the man who had supplanted John Rotherham, and whom it was not exactly pleasant to disappoint either by accident or design. But Sunnie certainly had not bargained for traveling to Crewe tête à tête with John Rotherham. Presently she got tired of gazing out on the bleak prospect, and, taking a BALLOU from her traveling-bag, tried to beguile the time by studying its contents. But it was of no use. She read the opening sentence half a dozen times over, without taking in its meaning, stopped short, began again, and repeated the process once more. "I wish he would n't sit there like a stock or a stone," she thought discontentedly, her eyes still fixed on the unlucky first sentence. "He is not reading, for he has not turned the paper once in the last half-hour. If he would only speak or move or do something! I suppose he is very angry with me. Oh, dear!" And again Miss Ross betook herself to her BALLOU, and in three minutes was going over the old ground again. "I wonder what he is thinking of? I wonder if he is altered? I" At this juncture Miss Ross's curiosity got the better of her prudence. She raised her eyes furtively over the edge of her BALLOU, glanced across the carriage at her imperturbable fellow-traveler, and found herself caught in the very act. At that same instant John Rotherham was taking a cool and deliberate survey of herself over the top of his newspaper. Sunnie drew herself up with her usual nonchalance, and for one instant kept her grav-, ity admirably; then the comical aspect of the situation struck her irresistibly; the brown eyes wavered, then sparkled; a smile came curling round the corners of her lips; her hardly won dignity went flying away on the wings of the wind, and she broke out into a fit of most untimely merriment. Laughing, like crying, is infectious. For a moment John Rotherham preserved his gravity; then his brown face relaxed, and he joined in the laugh, though there was a shade of unappeased wrath in his eyes, and a suspicion of grimness in his mirth. "I beg your pardon," said Sunnie when she had recovered herself a little. "I could not help it really-it was such an absurd situation. But I assure you"-raising a pair of sweet appealing eyes to his-"I did not get into the carriage on purpose. I had no idea you were in it, or "Or you would not have entered it, I suppose," he concluded dryly. "Pray do not apologize. I can quite understand how it happened." Sunnie tapped her foot impatiently. He spoke with the coldest courtesy of manner, a manner that said unmistakably that there was to be no truce between them, though he had been beguiled into a moment's laughter. "I am very sorry I cannot get out again," she said, with an air of great dignity. "I would if I could." "No doubt. Our meeting, of course, is equally unpleasant for both," he rejoined stiffly. "Are you making a long journey? I suppose not, since you are alone." "Pe "I am going home," she answered. ters, who ought to have been with me, managed to miss the train, and I could not wait for the next." "I shall be happy to be of assistance to you, if you will allow me," he said, still with frigid politeness. "I am going to Penrith, 66 "Ye-s-s," returned Sunnie, with reluctance, again raising her eyes appealingly. "I am so sorry; I could not help it." "There's nothing to be particularly sorry for," he said, with a sort of grim irony, "only a chapter of accidents which no one could forsee. I do not mean to fight Elliot, so pray do not let yourself be worried on my account." Sunnie relapsed into silence, feeling not a little bit snubbed, and musing rather sadly over the causes that had changed her frank, chivalrous lover into this cold, stern man, who apparently did not care to waste too many words with her. "How changed he is!" she thought, with a wistful look in her dark eyes. "He is thinner and browner, and-and-how angry he is with me! How I wish I had not laughed!" John Rotherham did not take to his newspaper again, but sat staring straight before him in a fit of abstraction, his dark brows knit, his eyes gloomy. Apparently his reflections were no pleasanter than Sunnie's. They remained silent for some time, while the train sped on through the snow-white country. The threatened storm was meeting them now in all its force; a cloud of whirling snow-flakes filled the air. The cold was intense. Presently Sunnie roused herself with a shiver, and drew her fur-lined jacket more closely round her. Her rugs and shawls had been left behind with Peters, and now the air was chilling her through and through. "You are cold." And Mr. Rotherham, rising from his seat, came across the carriage, with the great bearskin in his hands. My rug is large enough for two." 66 He would have thrown it over Sunnie; but Sunnie, piqued by his indifference, would have none of it, and made an energetic movement of resistance. "Don't be foolish." He spoke authoritatively; and without more ado, he put the heavy crimson-lined fur over her, without paying the slightest heed to her petulant opposition. "You are too kind," she said, with an attempt at sarcasm. "I beg your pardon if I have offended you," he replied, taking the seat opposite hers; "but you look half frozen now, and we have still two hours to Crewe." "Have we ?" she inquired rather drearily. "Yes. No doubt you wish yourself there; or at least”. with a grim emphasis - "that Francis Elliot were here. I most heartily wish that I could transform myself into him for your sake." Why do you keep bringing up Mr. Elliot's name?" broke in Sunnie impetuously. "It cannot be such a pleasant one to you." "On the contrary, I regard it with the utmost indifference," he affirmed coolly. "He has gained an advantage over me of course; but I bear him no malice on that account. In these degenerate days we have reached such a height of virtue that we never take vengeance on our enemies. We content ourselves with 'cutting' them.” "I do wish you would let his name drop," interposed Sunnie angrily. "I do not care how much vengeance you take upon him. He is quite capable of defending himself." “What a laudable interest you take in your lover's welfare!" returned the young fellow, whose smouldering wrath seemed about to break into full blaze. "I suppose, if his serene high-and-mightiness came to grief some fine day, you would not regard it with the same cheerful equanimity?" "As it cannot possibly matter to you how I should regard it, we will not discuss the subject," retorted Sunnie coldly. "As you please," he said, with some bitterness. "The Honorable Francis Elliot is not the pleasantest subject to converse about, being a confounded prig and a sneak to boot; and "-looking straight at her"you know it as well as I do." This was vigorous language, but Sunnie, who ought to have stood up for her absent lover, let it pass without comment. "However, I bear him no malice," he continued; “and I assure you he has my entire forgiveness." "You have not forgiven him," said Sunnie, looking with sparkling, angry eyes, straight at the discarded lover, "nor me either; nor do I believe you ever will, any more"-speaking slowly and emphatically "than I shall forgive you." "Frankness is a virtue, Miss Ross," he said, "since it often makes unexpected revelations. I was certainly under the impression that I was the only one who had anything to forgive." "It is stranger still that I should be under exactly the same impression as regards myself," was the somewhat incredulous response. "If you will let me know what particular form my iniquities have taken, perhaps I may be brought to see my guilt," he remarked, looking grimmer than ever. "At present I am quite in the dark as to my own misdeeds." "What is the good of raking it all up again? Recrimination is worse than useless," said Sunnie proudly. "You forget I do not even know of what I am accused," he answered; "and I most distinctly affirm that I have not done anything to call forth any recriminations whatever." "Do you call it nothing to neglect and slight the girl you are engaged to?" said Sunnie hotly. "Do you call it nothing to leave her alone for weeks together; to go off at a moment's notice, nobody knows where, without a message, without a line to her; never to write for months; and to keep such such a profound secrecy on the subject that she is a laughing-stock to her friends? Do you call that nothing?" "You are exaggerating," he said, as she stopped short, more for want of breath than want of words. "I was away just three weeks." "I do not care whether it was three weeks or three hundred," broke in Sunnie passionately. "It does not alter the fact. You left me without a word, exposed to the sneers and insinuations of everybody, to learn from others what you ought to have told me." "Stop!" he interrupted sternly. "I am not responsible for the scandal and gossip of a parcel of old women, or the insinuations and slanders of Francis Elliot. I went away on private business connected with a client and friend whom I am bound to help. Whatever you may have been told about it is false, for it was and is a secret; and that secret I mean to keep all my life. I wrote to you before I started". 66 Did you?" interrupted Sunnie incredulously. "How strange that I should never have received the letter!" He went on, unheeding the interruption. "And I told you that I should not write again for a week or two, because I could not reveal where I was going. And when I did return "his eyes sparkling with an angry light, his voice bitter-"it was to find that the girl I was engaged to had thrown me over for a richer and more aristocratic suitor. My letter of remonstrance was returned unopened, and a message of insulting curtness was all the explanation I ever received. Oh, yes! you have truly much to forgive, Miss Ross!" "I did not throw you over for Mr. Elliot," said Sunnie, with indignant eyes. "I was not engaged to him till a month afterward; and you have no right to impute such mean and mercenary motives to me because he happens to be richer than you. He, at any rate, would be too courteous to upbraid and malign me, as you are doing." "Oh, he is a paragon of all propriety, I am aware!" retorted John Rotherham, whose wrath, once roused, was not easily stilled. But, all the same, he 's a confounded sneak! If it had not been for his mean and 66 |