"It is very quiet," said he.

It was very quiet. Some sheep were grazing on the grass by the river-side, and it seemed to him that he had never before heard the crisp tearing sound with which they cropped it. He stopped idly, and looked at them.

"Faith!" said Eugene, in his airily candid manner. "Because you won't let me. Mind! I don't mean to be reproachful either. I don't complain that you design to keep me here. But you do it, you do it."

burn?"

The field had been newly mown, and there were yet the marks of the scythe on the yellowgreen ground, and the track of wheels where the hay had been carried. Following the tracks with his eyes, the view closed with the new hayrick in a corner.

Now, if he had gone on to the hayrick, and gone round it? But, say that the event was to be, as the event fell out, and how idle are such suppositions! Besides, if he had gone; what is there of warning in a Bargeman lying on his face?

"A bird flying to the hedge," was all he thought about it; and came back, and resumed his walk.

"If I had not a reliance on her being truthful," said Eugene, after taking some half dozen turns, "I should begin to think she had given me the slip for the second time. But she promised, and she is a girl of her word."

"I will do any thing within the limits of possibility, for you, Lizzie," he answered with pleasant gayety as he folded his arms. "See here! Napoleon Bonaparte at St. Helena."

"When you spoke to me as I came from the Mill the night before last," said Lizzie, fixing her eyes upon him with the look of supplication which troubled his better nature, "you told me that you were much surprised to see me, and that you were on a solitary fishing excursion. Was it true ?"

"It was not," replied Eugene, composedly, "in the least true. I came here because I had information that I should find you here."

"Can you imagine why I left London, Mr. Wrayburn?"

"I am afraid, Lizzie," he openly answered, "that you left London to get rid of me. It is not flattering to my self-love, but I am afraid you did."

"I did."

"How could you be so cruel?"

"O Mr. Wrayburn," she answered, suddenly breaking into tears, "is the cruelty on my side! O Mr. Wrayburn, Mr. Wrayburn, is there no cruelty in your being here to-night!"

"In the name of all that's good-and that is

"I was saying to myself, Lizzie, that you were sure to come, though you were late."

"I had to linger through the village as if I had no object before me, and I had to speak to several people in passing along, Mr. Wrayburn."

"Are the lads of the village-and the ladies -such scandal-mongers?" he asked, as he took her hand and drew it through his arm.

She submitted to walk slowly on, with downcast eyes. He put her hand to his lips, and she quietly drew it away.

"Will you walk beside me, Mr. Wrayburn, and not touch me?" For his arm was already stealing round her waist.

She stopped again, and gave him an earnest, supplicating look. "Well, Lizzie, well!" said he, in an easy way though ill at ease with himself, "don't be unhappy, don't be reproachful." "I can not help being unhappy, but I do not mean to be reproachful. Mr. Wrayburn, I implore you to go away from this neighborhood, to-morrow morning."

"Lizzie, Lizzie, Lizzie!" he remonstrated. "As well be reproachful as wholly unreasonable. I can't go away." "Why not?"

knows I am not good"-said Eugene, don't be distressed!"

"What else can I be, when I know the distance and the difference between us? What else can I be, when to tell me why you came here is to put me to shame!" said Lizzie, covering her face.

He looked at her with a real sentiment of remorseful tenderness and pity. It was not strong enough to impel him to sacrifice himself and spare her, but it was a strong emotion.

"Lizzie! I never thought before that there was a woman in the world who could affect me so much by saying so little. But don't be hard in your construction of me. You don't know what my state of mind toward you is. You don't know how you haunt me and bewilder mc. You don't know how the cursed carelessness that is over-officious in helping me at every other turning of my life, wON'T help me here. You have struck it dead, I think, and I sometimes almost wish you had struck me dead along with it."

She had not been prepared for such passionate expressions, aud they awakened some natural sparks of feminine pride and joy in her breast. To consider, wrong as he was, that he could care so much for her, and that she had the power to move him so!

"Only at first' thought me so good, Lizzie? What did you think me after at first?' So bad?"

"And she loves me. And so earnest a character must be very earnest in that passion. She can not choose for herself to be strong in this fancy, wavering in that, and weak in the other. She must go through with her nature, as I must

"Because you were so different," she answered in a lower voice. "Because it was so endless, so hopeless. Spare me!"

R. F. reason with the legal mind? You wouldn't

“Will you tell me why?"

"I never supposed until to-night that you needed to be thought for. But if you do need to be; if you do truly feel at heart that you have indeed been toward me what you have called yourself to-night, and that there is nothing for us in this life but separation; then Heaven help you, and Heaven bless you!"

The purity with which in these words she expressed something of her own love and her own suffering, made a deep impression on him for the passing time. He held her, almost as if she were sanctified to him by death, and kissed her, once, almost as he might have kissed the dead.

"I promised that I would not accompany you, nor follow you. Shall I keep you in view? You have been agitated, and it's growing dark."

"I am used to be out alone at this hour, and I entreat you not to do so."

"I promise. I can bring myself to promise nothing more to-night, Lizzie, except that I will try what I can do."

"There is but one means, Mr. Wrayburn, of sparing yourself and of sparing me, every way. Leave this neighborhood to-morrow morning." "I will try."

you were frightfully likely to become bored. Are you less frightfully likely to become bored, marrying for no money and no station? Are you sure of yourself?' Legal mind, in spite of forensic protestations, must secretly admit, 'Good reasoning on the part of M. R. F. Not sure of myself.'

In the very act of calling this tone of levity to his aid he felt it to be profligate and worthless, and asserted her against it.

"And yet," said Eugene, "I should like to see the fellow (Mortimer excepted) who would undertake to tell me that this was not a real sentiment on my part, won out of me by her beauty and her worth, in spite of myself, and that I would not be true to her. I should particularly like to see the fellow to-night who would tell me so, or who would tell me any thing that could be construed to her disadvantage; for I am wearily out of sorts with one Wrayburn who cuts a sorry figure, and I would far rather be out of sorts with somebody else. Eugene, Eugene, Eugene, this is a bad business.' Ah! So go the Mortimer Lightwood bells, and they sound melancholy to-night."

He referred to the circumstance that there were tears upon his hand, as he stood covering his eyes. "A most ridiculous position this to be found out in!" was his next thought. And his next struck its root in a little rising ment against the cause of the tears.

"Yet I have gained a wonderful power over her, too, let her be as much in earnest as she will!"

66

Lizzie Hexam, too, had avoided the noise, and the Saturday movement of people in the straggling street, and chose to walk alone by the water until her tears should be dry, and she could so compose herself as to escape remark upon her looking ill or unhappy on going home. The peaceful serenity of the hour and place, having

The man made no reply, but went his way. Eugene Wrayburn went the opposite way, with his hands behind him and his purpose in his thoughts. He passed the sheep, and passed the gate, and came within hearing of the village sounds, and came to the bridge. The inn where he staid, like the village and the Mill, was not across the river, but on that side of the stream on which he walked. However, knowing the rushy bank and the back-water on the other side to be a retired place, and feeling out of humor for noise or company, he crossed the bridge and sauntered on: looking up at the stars as they seemed one by one to be kindled in the sky, and looking down at the river as the same stars seemed to be kindled deep in the water. A landing-place overshadowed by a willow, and a pleasure-boat lying moored there among some stakes, caught his eye as he passed along. The spot was in such dark shadow that he paused to make out what was there, and then passed on again.

The rippling of the river seemed to cause a correspondent stir in his uneasy reflections. He would have laid them asleep if he could, but they were in movement, like the stream, and all tending one way with a strong current. As the ripple under the moon broke unexpectedly now and then, and palely flashed in a new shape and with a new sound, so part of his thoughts started, unbidden, from the rest, and revealed their wickedness. "Out of the question to marry her," said Eugene, "and out of the question to leave her. The crisis!"

He had sauntered far enough. Before turning to retrace his steps he stopped upon the margin to look down at the reflected night. In an instant, with a dreadful crash, the reflected night turned crooked, flames shot jaggedly across the air, and the moon and stars came bursting from the sky.

Was he struck by lightning? With some incoherent, half-formed thought to that effect, he turned under the blows that were blinding him and mashing his life, and closed with a murderer, whom he caught by a red neckerchief-unless the raining down of his own blood gave it that hue.

to contend against, sank healingly into its depths. She had meditated and taken comfort. She. too, was turning homeward when she heard a strange sound.

It startled her, for it was like a sound of blows. She stood still and listened. It sickened her, for blows fell heavily and cruelly on the quiet of the night. As she listened, undecided, all was silent. As she yet listened, she heard a faint groan and a fall into the river.

Her old bold life and habit instantly inspired her. Without vain waste of breath in crying for help where there were none to hear, she ran toward the spot from which the sounds had come. It lay between her and the bridge, but it was more removed from her than she had thought; the night being so very quiet, and sound traveling far with the help of water.

At length she reached a part of the green bank much and newly trodden, where there lay some broken splintered pieces of wood and some torn fragments of clothes. Stooping, she saw that the grass was bloody. Following the drops and smears, she saw that the watery margin of the bank was bloody. Following the current with her eyes, she saw a bloody face turned up toward the moon and drifting away.

Now merciful Heaven be thanked for that old time, and grant, O Blessed Lord, that through thy wonderful workings it may turn to good at last! To whomsoever the drifting face belongs. be it man's or woman's, help my humble hands, Lord God, to raise it from death and restore it to some one to whom it must be dear!

It was thought, fervently thought, but not for a moment did the prayer check her. She was away before it welled up in her mind, away, swift and true, yet steady above all--for without steadiness it could never be done to the landing-place under the willow-tree, where she also had seen the boat lying moored among the stakes.

A sure touch of her old practiced hand, a sure step of her old practiced foot, a sure light balance of her body, and she was in the boat. A quick glance of her practiced eye showed her, even through the deep dark shadow, the sculls in a rack against the red-brick garden-wall. Another moment and she had cast off (taking the line with her), and the boat had shot out into the moonlight, and she was rowing down the stream as never other woman rowed on En

Intently over her shoulder, without slackening speed, she looked ahead for the driving face. She passed the scene of the struggle-yonder it was, on her left, well over the boat's stern-she