"I did not know but they had declined it utterly," said Fleda, "it was so long since I had sent it and they had taken no notice of it; but it seems they kept it for the beginning of a new volume."

"'Would do no discredit to some of our most honoured names'!" said Hugh. "Dear Fleda, I am very glad! But it is no more than I expected." "Expected!" said Fleda. "When you had not seen a line! Hushmy dear Hugh, aren't you hungry?"

The tea, with this spice to their appetites, was wonderfully relished ; and Hugh and Fleda kept making despatches of secret pleasure and sympathy to each other's eyes; though Fleda's face after the first flush had faded was perhaps rather quieter than usual. Hugh's was illuminated.

“Mr. Skillcorn is a smart man !” said Barby coming in with a package, "he has made out to go two miles in two hours and get back again safe!" "More from the post-office!" exclaimed Fleda pouncing upon it, "oh yes, there has been another mail. A letter for you, aunt Lucy! from uncle Rolf! We'll forgive him, Barby-and here's a letter for me from uncle Orrin, and-yes-the 'Excelsior.' Hugh, uncle Orrin said he would send it. Now for those blessed pine knots! Aunt Lucy, you shall be honoured with the one whole candle the house contains."

The table soon cleared away, the basket of fat fuel was brought in; and one or two splinters being delicately insinuated between the sticks on the fire a very brilliant illumination sprang out. Fleda sent a congratulatory look over to Hugh on the other side of the fireplace as she cosily established herself on her little bench at one corner with her letter; he had the magazine. Mrs. Rossitur between them at the table with her one candle was already insensible to all outward things.

And soon the other two were as delightfully absorbed. The bright light of the fire shone upon three motionless and rapt figures, and getting no greeting from them went off and danced on the old cupboard doors and paper hangings, in a kindly hearty joviality that would have put any number of stately wax candles out of countenance. There was no poverty in the room that night. But the people were too busy to know how cosy they were; till Fleda was ready to look up from her note and Hugh had gone twice carefully over the new poem, when there was a sudden giving out of the pine splinters. New ones were supplied in eager haste and silence, and Hugh was beginning "The wind's voices," for the third time, when a softwhispered "Hugh!" across the fire made him look over to Fleda's corner. She was holding up with both hands a five-dollar bank note and just shewing him her eyes over it.

"What's that?" said Hugh in an energetic whisper.

"I don't know!" said Fleda shaking her head comically; "I am told 'The wind's voices' have blown it here, but privately I am afraid it is a windfall of another kind."

"What?" said Hugh laughing.

"Uncle Orrin says it is the first fruits of what I sent to the 'Excelsior,' and that more will come; but I do not feel at all sure that it is entirely the growth of that soil."

"I dare say it is," said Hugh; "I am sure it is worth more than that. Dear Fleda, I like it so much !”

Fleda gave him such a smile of grateful affection; not at all as if she deserved his praise but as if it was very pleasant to have.

“What put it into your head? anything in particular?”

"No-nothing-I was looking out of the window one day and seeing the willow tree blow; I then looked over my shoulder; as you know Hans Andersen says his stories did."

"It is just like you! exactly as it can be."

"Things put themselves in my head," said Fleda, tucking another splinter into the fire. "Isn't this better than a chandelier?"

"Ten times!"

"And so much pleasanter for having got it ourselves. What a nice time we had, Hugh?"

"Very. Now for the portfolio, Fleda-come! mother is fast; she won't see or hear anything. What does father say, mother?"

In answer to this they had the letter read, which indeed contained nothing remarkable beyond its strong expressions of affection to each one of the little family; a cordial which Mrs. Rossitur drank and grew strong upon in the very act of reading. It is pity the medicine of kind words is not more used in the world-it has so much power. Then, having folded up her treasure and talked a little while about it, Mrs. Rossitur caught up the magazine like a person who had been famished in that kind; and soon she and it and her tallow candle formed a trio apart from all the world again. Fleda and Hugh were safe to pass most mysterious-looking little papers from hand to hand right before her, though they had the care to read them behind newspapers, and exchanges of thought and feeling went on more swiftly still and softly across the fire. Looks, and smiles, and whispers, and tears too, under cover of a Tribune and an Express. And the blaze would die down just when Hugh had got to the last verse of something, and then while impatiently waiting for the new pine splinters to catch he could tell Fleda how much he liked it, or how beautiful he thought it, and whisper enquiries and critical questions; till the fire reached the fat vein and leaped up in defiant emulation of gas-lights unknown, and then he would fall to again with renewed gusto. And Fleda hunted out in her portfolio what bits to give him first, and bade him as she gave them remember this and understand that, which was necessary to be borne in mind in the reading. And through all the brightening and fading blaze, and all the whispering, congratulating, explaining, and rejoicing going on at her side, Mrs. Rossitur

and her tallow candle were devoted to each other, happily and engrossingly. At last however she flung the magazine from her and turning from the table sat looking into the fire with a rather uncommonly careful and unsatisfied brow.

"What did you think of the second piece of poetry there, mother?" said Hugh; "that ballad? The wind's voices' it is called." "The wind's voices'? I don't know-I didn't read it, I believe." 66 'Why mother! I liked it very much. Do read it-read it aloud." Mrs. Rossitur took up the magazine again abstractedly, and read

"Mamma, what makes your face so sad?
The sound of the wind makes me feel glad;
But whenever it blows, as grave you look,
As if you were reading a sorrowful book.'

"A sorrowful book I am reading, dear,-
A book of weeping and pain and fear,
A book deep printed on my heart,
Which I cannot read but the tears will start.

"That breeze to my ear was soft and mild
Just so, when I was a little child;
But now I hear in its freshening breath
The voices of those that sleep in death.'

"'Mamına,' said the child with shaded
brow,

'What is this book you are reading now? And why do you read what makes you cry? 'My child, it comes up before my eye.

"""Tis the memory, love, of a far-off day When my life's best friend was taken away; Of the weeks and months that my eyes were dim

Watching for tidings-watching for him.

"Many a year has come and past
Since a ship sailed over the ocean fast,
Bound for a port on England's shore,--
She sailed-but was never heard of more."

"Mamma-and she closer pressed her
side-

'Was that the time when my father died?-
Is it his ship you think you see?--
Dearest mamma-won't you speak to me?'
"The lady paused, but then calmly said,
'Yes Lucy-the sea was his dying bed,
And now whenever I hear the blast
I think again of that storm long past.
""The wind's fierce howlings hurt not me,
But I think how they beat on the pathless

sea,

Of the breaking mast-of the parting rope,
Of the anxious strife and the failing hope.'
"Mamma,' said the child with streaming
eyes,

'My father has gone above the skies;
And you tell me this world is mean and base
Compared with that heaven-blessed place.'
"My daughter, I know-I believe it all-
I would not his spirit to earth recall.
The blest one he-his storm was brief-
Mine, a long tempest of tears and grief.
"I have you my darling-I should not sigh
I have one star more in my cloudy sky,
The hope that we both shall join him there,
In that perfect rest from weeping and care.'

"Well mother, how do you like it?" said Hugh whose eyes gave tender witness to his liking for it.

"It is pretty," said Mrs. Rossitur.

Hugh exclaimed, and Fleda laughing took it out of her hand.

"Why mother!” said Hugh, "it is Fleda's."

"Fleda's!" exclaimed Mrs. Rossitur, snatching the magazine again. "My dear child, I was not thinking in the least of what I was reading. Fleda's!"

She read it over anew, with swimming eyes this time, and then clasped

Fleda in her arms and gave her, not words, but the better reward of kisses and tears. They remained so a long time, even till Hugh left them; and then Fleda released from her aunt's embrace still crouched by her side with one arm in her lap.

They both sat thoughtfully looking into the fire till it had burnt itself out, and nothing but a glowing bed of coals remained.

"That is an excellent young man ?" said Mrs. Rossitur.

"Who?"

"Mr. Olmney. He sat with me some time after you had gone.”

“So you said before,” said Fleda, wondering at the troubled expression of her aunt's face.

"He made me wish," said Mrs. Rossitur hesitating, "that I could be something different from what I am, I believe I should be a great deal happier.'

The last word was hardly spoken. Fleda rose to her kness and putting both arms about her aunt pressed face to face, with a clinging sympathy that told how very near her spirit was; while tears from the eyes of both fell without measure.

"Dear aunt Lucy, dear aunt Lucy, I wish you would? I am sure you would be a great deal happier."

But the mixture of feelings was too much for Fleda; her head sank lower on her aunt's bosom and she wept aloud.

"But I don't know anything about it!" said Mrs. Rossitur, as well as she could speak, "I am as ignorant as a child!

"Dear aunty! that is nothing, God will teach you if you ask him; he has promised. Oh ask him, aunt Lucy! I know you would be happier! I know it is better, a million times! to be a child of God than to have everything in the world. If they only brought us that, I would be very glad of all our troubles! indeed I would!"

"But I don't think I ever did anything right in my life!" said poor Mrs.

Rossitur.

"Dear aunt Lucy!" said Fleda, straining her closer and with her very heart gushing out at these words, "dear aunty, Christ came for just such sinners! for just such as you and I."

"You," said Mrs. Rossitur, but speech failed utterly, and with a muttered prayer that Fleda would help her, she sank her head upon her shoulder and sobbed herself into quietness, or into exhaustion. The glow of the firelight faded away till only a faint sparkle was left in the chimney.

There was not another word spoken, but when they rose up, with such kisses as gave and took unuttered affection, counsel and sympathy, they bade each other good-night.

Fleda went to her window, for the moon rode high and her childish habit had never been forgotten. But surely the face that looked out that night

was as the face of an angel. In all the pouring moonbeams that filled the air, she could see nothing but the flood of God's goodness on a dark world. And her heart that night had nothing but an unbounded and unqualified thanksgiving for all the "gentle discipline" they had felt; for every sorrow and weariness and disappointment; except besides the prayer, almost too deep to be put into words, that its due and hoped-for fruit might be brought forth unto perfection.

CHAPTER XXVII.

If I become not a cart as well as another man, a plague on my bringing up. Shakspeare.

E

VERY day could not be as bright as the last, even by the help of pitch-pine knots. They blazed indeed, many a time, but the blaze shone upon faces that it could not sometimes light up. Matters drew gradually within a smaller and smaller compass. Another five dollars came from uncle Orrin, and the hope of more; but these were carefully laid by to pay Philetus; and for all other wants of the household, excepting those the farm supplied, the family were dependent on mere driblets of sums. None came from Mr. Rossitur. Hugh managed to collect a very little. That kept them from absolute distress; that, and Fleda's delicate instrumentality. Regular dinners were given up, fresh meat being now unheard-of, unless when a kind neighbour made them a present; and appetite would have lagged sadly but for Fleda's untiring care. She thought no time nor pains ill-bestowed which could prevent her aunt and Hugh from feeling the want of old comforts; and her nicest skill was displayed in varying the combinations of their very few and simple stores. The diversity and deliciousness of her bread-stuffs, Barby said, was "beyond everything!" and a cup of rich coffee was found to cover all deficiencies of removes and entremêts; and this was always served, Barby said further, as if the President of the United States was expected. Fleda never permitted the least slackness in the manner of doing this or anything else that she could control.

Mr. Plumfield had sent down an opportune present of a fine porker. One cold day in the beginning of February Fleda was busy in the kitchen making something for dinner, and Hugh at another table was vigorously chopping sausage-meat.

"I should like to have some cake again," said Fleda.

"Well, why don't you?" said Hugh, chopping away.

"No eggs, Mr. Rossitur; and can't afford 'em at two shillings a dozen. I believe I am getting discontented. I have a great desire to do something to distinguish myself. I would make a plum pudding if I had raisins, but there is not one in the house."