As you may have seen a tired horse suddenly mend its pace when turned in the direction of home, so the Widow scarcely noted now the leagues of land and sea that had still to be gone over, for was not every hour bringing her nearer home?

She fared better on this journey than on her first, for had not Charlie insisted that she should travel in a sleeping-car like any lady? So the long night was passed in slumber, and the next day though wearisome was comfortable; and then, lo, they were in New York again, being greeted by Mrs. Koster and Cassie! It was Hector, however, who managed everything this time; or rather, an altogether different Hector from the one who had arrived in New York six months before. The change did not escape Mrs. Koster's eye.

"My! ain't he smartened up?" she said admiringly. "Well, I'll say this for the States, if there's one thing they can do it's to make men look alive."

Cassie, too, was watching her Highland Nobleman with ill-concealed admiration; noting his added inches, as well as his added alertness of speech and manner, and his look of being able to take care of himself. But, with all this Hector could not be said to be looking happy; he was very silent, and scarcely brightened up even under the sunshine of Cassie's smiles.

"I know what it is," Mrs. Koster told her husband, when their guests were disposed of for the night; "I know what it is he don't want to go home, poor lad, that's what it is; and no wonder either-just stepping into his grave before the time, I call it."

Koster agreed with her most heartily: "A real smart man we'd make of him here; pity he can't stay this side."

But Hector, with the dignity and reserve which characterizes the Highland nature, asked no pity from anyone. Whenever the Kosters tried to find out what he felt about going home he shut up like a trap.

"I'm hoping to come back some day," was all they got him to admit. Neither would he delay their sailing any longer than could possibly be helped.

"Mother's wishing to get home," he said. "It's not for me to put if off."

In vain Cassie tried her most seductive wiles: Hector would not be beguiled. Only on the night before they were to sail for Scotland he found an opportunity to beg Cassie to write to him.

"The winter's terrible long on the Island," burst from his reluctant lips. "terrible long and dull."

"Oh, I'll send you a picture post-card now and again," Cassie said gaily; "and if you could just kindly send me the same, it would be nice-I'd add them to my collection."

"I'll remember," Hector assured her.

The sea was like a mill-pond all the way across. Even the Widow could not feel uncomfortable, and used to walk daily up and down the decks on her grandson's arm, while every day her face looked happier and her step grew stronger. Her talk was all of home.

"Och, Hector! how will we be finding the cow? I'm thinking she'll be glad to be back to the old byre! And will the hens be knowing me again? I wonder is Chuckie, that had the broken leg, still going? She was a fine bird"-and so on and so on. Hector then told her that by Mrs. Koster's suggestion he meant to take her to see

an eye-doctor in Glasgow. "It's not blind she is, it's only spectacles she's needing," Mrs. Koster had said. The Widow would not believe this; she had tried on John Matheson's spectacles two years past, and didn't they just make the sight worse? Oh no! it was the old eyes were gone these ten years and more. However, it made an excellent subject of conversation, and Hector was glad to have it. had some difficulty in persuading his grandmother to consent to the extra day's delay it would entail; she was counting the hours now till they could reach the Island-if she could have entered on such a calculation she would have counted the minutes also.

He

So the ocean was crossed again; the low green shores of Ireland came in sight, and home was nearly reached at last. The Widow wept with joy as the ship came into the dock.

"Is it true, Hector, or is it dreaming I am?" she cried.

But Uncle Neil's hearty greeting had nothing dream-like about it certainly:

"So yer back already to auld Scotland! Ye've no' made a long stay. Welcome hame to ye baith-there's nae place like hame, the song says!"

Alas! Hector could have cursed the song for its falsity to his own case; but he tried to affect good-humor and to join in the jocularities of his relative -he was not going to be a kill-joy, and above everything he refused to be pitied.

All the next day he went about cheerfully, and no one guessed at the fox that was gnawing his vitals.

The Widow, with many protestations, was taken to the eye-doctor in the afternoon. Hector stood beside her as the spectacles were one by one placed upon her nose. Each time she would shake her head and groan, and exclaim that it was blind she was, what was the gentleman troubling with her for? But all at once she gave a

cry of joy and held out her hands to her grandson.

"Och, Hector, I'm seeing you as clear as the day!" she cried. "And you're grown to be a man altogether!" It was a wonderful moment indeed, and Hector laughed with pleasure to see her gazing round and round the room in the sudden possession of her sight again. This miracle of healing came as a boon to Hector, for the Widow was so full of her recovered vision all the evening that she could think and talk of nothing else, and her garrulity made his silence less noticed. Next morning they were to start again for the Island, and Hector was as impatient now as his grandmother-on the sound principle that if one has a disagreeable thing to do the sooner it is done the better.

"Yer a wee thing glum, Hector," Uncle Neil said jocosely. "Ye've may be left yer hairt in Ameriky."

"Maybe," Hector retorted laconically, with no answering smile.

A day and a night-and the next day as evening fell the steamer came in to the quay at Balneish.

They were almost the only passengers, for the tourist season was over. The little quay was empty, except for a cart and a man with it. In the dusk a light or two twinkled in the windows at Balneish. Everything was very

still.

"There's John Matheson, mother, with the cart!" Hector cried; "he will have come for you and the box."

The Widow gazed through the grand new spectacles at the well-known outlines of the Island, pointing out each house and naming its owner-if the light had not failed she could have named each horse and cow, I believe. Hector sprang down the gangway and held out his hand to help her across it; a moment more and she stood again on the dear shores of home

-shaken with excitement, and worn with the fatigues of her long journeying, but oh, at home once more!

The kindly dusk hid her tears-her foolish tears of joy-as the cart rumbled along the stony road to the croft and John Matheson in the meantime was pouring out microscopic bits of so-called news to Hector-all that had happened at Balneish in the six months since they had left the Island: Rob MacLeod's COW had choked on a turnip in the summer; and Hamish MacLeod, he was bad with the asthma, but his daughter Jessie, she that's in Glasgow, was after sending him a bottle to take oh, it was grand stuff, and helped him at times. There had been good crops; yes, just fairish good of the hay; there was a boat got washed away from the pier in September, and John Farquharson's horse had gone lame in the right knee.

Hector listened and responded

to it all, feeling exactly as if he had wakened from a dream of extraordi

nary vividness. Was it true that they had ever crossed the sea and seen Charlie? All manner of funny scenes crowded into his memory, and here was Matheson droning away about a horse with a lame leg, and a cow that had choked on a turnip!

The cart stopped: they had reached the path up to the cottage. It was dark now, and Hector had to help the Widow up the rough bit of groundshe stumbled and would have fallen if his arm had not held her up.

"Och, Hector! it's old and useless I am," she said.

In spite of the fact that the door-key had been all this time in the Widow's pocket, the Mathesons had effected an entrance to the cottage somehow, and sorted it up for the return of its ownThe Cornhill Magazine.

ers.

A big peat-fire burned on the hearth, and a table stood spread by the fire. All this they saw through the window, and then, producing the key, they solemnly turned it in the rusty lock and stepped across the threshold. ("God forgive me," Hector thought; "I was never meaning her to come back!")

Surely that moment of home-coming compensated the Widow for many a weary hour. She sank down on the old, hard, uncomfortable wooden chair in the chimney-corner, and gazed hungrily round and round the little room as if she could never have enough of it.

Hector, with one tremendous effort, pushed away his thoughts of the past and turned his energies to the present.

"I'll not be taking you across the water again, mother, I'm thinking," he said with a laugh, as he lifted the big black kettle on to the fire to boil. He drew the table up beside his grandmother's chair and laid away her shawl for her as gently as a daughter might have done it.

No voice was there to whisper comfort to Hector at that moment: he had never heard of Carlyle or his Gospel; but none the less he arrived in some obscure way at the same conclusion as that stern old philosopher, “Here or nowhere was his America" for the present.

Charlie came across the water next year and saw his mother again as he had promised to do, and some two years later the Widow went on another journey, from which she never came back-crossed an uncharted sea and landed on the shores of a New World. Then Hector, wiser grown, sighed as he said farewell to the shieling for ever and turned his face towards the future.

In Western Africa life is short, events move extraordinarily quickly, and the years are very full. Fifteen years back takes one to prehistoric times. In those days a trading company held sway over a great block of the country. Its raison d'être was of course the earning of dividends; but besides capital it possessed also a charter, and in virtue of this charter it administered, after a fashion, such of the natives as were peaceable, and fought the truculent ones. For the purposes of this latter operation the company maintained a little army of blacks, recruited locally. The men were armed with rifles, and were trained and led by European military officers whom the company hired and exported to West Africa. The force was an excellent one, and did excellent work. It was kept busy, now here, now there, up and down the country, but most of its business was provided by the various secret societies with which West African politics are undermined.

Of these secret societies that of "The Silent Ones" is perhaps, in virtue of its membership and aims, the most formidable. The "Society of the Leop ard" runs it close. As present we are concerned with the "Society of The Silent Ones." It probably numbers its adherents by millions. Periodically large parties of these go on the warpath, in obedience, apparently, to orders received-whence, from whom, it is impossible to say. These excursions are very horrible affairs-towns and villages are looted and burned, people are murdered, and in many cases their bodies are devoured by the assassins. Blood-stained, smoking ruins and wasted farms mark the path of "The Silent Ones." They always move at night, entire secrecy shrouds their intentions, and they never speak.

Hence their name. The terror they exercise over other natives is indescribable. News that "The Silent Ones" are out is sufficient to depopulate a whole countryside. Men, women, and children abandon home and farm, and rush terror-stricken, mad with fear, to hide in the friendly bush. Up-country trading stations are usually fortified and the traders armed, and to them the wretched fugitives will come for protection. As a rule "The Silent Ones" fight shy of such places, but there have been cases wherein the trader and his people were massacred, the store looted, and the whole place reduced to ashes.

To-day the society is not what it was. In more than one bloody encounter its members learned the price exacted by the white man from them that go a-murdering and pillaging. Here also, as elsewhere, the road has proved itself a great factor working for peace and order. The country is being rapidly opened up, new roads are being cut, old ones are being extended daily, and the reign of "The Silent Ones" is passing to its close.

Fifteen years ago it was at its zenith. In a district which the society only occasionally ravaged there established itself a mission-station. The personnel of the Mission consisted of two French Fathers. One, Moulain, was a man of middle age, an Alsatian many years in West Africa, who spoke fluently several of the native languages. Father Ridout, his colleague, was a young man newly arrived in the country, and quite without experience. The house they lived in was close alongside a big native town, whence there ran a trade road forty miles down to the great river. On the far side of the river stood a large settlement gar

risoned by a considerable portion of the company's army.

The Fathers had a fine farm, and were satisfied that their presence and efforts were appreciated by their neighbors the townspeople, with whom their relations were most friendly. One afternoon the chief of the town presented himself at the Mission. The man was all gone to pieces. He gasped out that news of the coming of "The Silent Ones" had just reached him. He said they came because the town had welcomed and entertained the white man. Normally an intelligent, reasonable fellow, terror had turned the chief into a gibbering, drivelling incompetent. He was too frightened even to run away. He prayed the Fathers to leave at once. There might yet be time, he said, for them to reach the settlement. For his own part, perhaps, if "The Silent Ones" found the white men gone they would content themselves with looting and destroying the Mission, plus a fine from the town. The prospect was not a bright one, but if the Fathers remained, then would murder be the portion of all infallibly. And the poor miserable wretch grovelled and sobbed in his agony of fear.

Father Moulain comforted him as well as he could, but sympathy did the man no good at all, and the Father took a different line. "More than a year I have lived in your town," he said, "and you do not know me. You think I fear. Did I fear when I came first to you? You were not then my friend, remember. And your people would not help me at all; they threatened me and tried to drive me away from the town. Afterwards it was different. But at the beginning, you know how close I was to death at your hands. And now to-day you come to tell me to leave my house and run away from a lot of bushmen whom I have never seen." [In West Africa the term

"bushman" is the most insulting that can be applied to any native. In several of the languages it seems to be synonymous with "ape."] "My friend, you mistake me. It is not my habit to run away. I shall stop here. And you, go back to your house. "The Silent Ones' shall not harm you, nor your people neither." And the fiery little Padre turned and went back into the Mission.

Men turn in early in the tropics, and the Fathers had been asleep some hours when, about midnight, a "boy" rushed into Moulain's room screaming. Evidently the chief had been well informed. "The Silent Ones" had arrived. The "boy" cowered in the corner, groaning and gibbering, quite beside himself. Moulain slipped into his long white cassock, and went out into the moonlight. A wonderful spectacle met his eyes. Between the mission-station and the town wall was a large clear space, many acres in extent. This was filled with a great army of men sitting down. One can read small print by the light of a full moon, and the little thick-set Alsatian could see that the naked savages before him were armed, and that many of them were daubed over with a white pigment. Not a sound arose from the vast assembly. Perfectly still, utterly silent, infinitely sinister, "The Silent Ones" sat, many thousands of them. And the little lonely white man, black-bearded, white cassocked, standing before them in the cool, mellow radiance, felt he could understand something of the awe they might inspire in meaner-fibred men. A white man, a Frenchman, in his own indomitable soul there was nothing of fear, and he advanced coolly towards his visitors. Arrived within a few yards of the front rank he stopped, and in their own language courteously saluted them. No man answered him. He continued