"h-less " English, as she tells me how the also. But then, to get back of a night! Andersons have always been tenants of To find a good little wife like Annie waitDown End since her great-grandfather ing for you at the upper gate or by the came to the county and added on the liv-house door. To eat your supper and ing-house to the farmhouse for his young smoke your pipe, with your feet on the wife. mantelpiece if you pleased, and no possibility of being ordered into dress clothes to go to some vile theatre or idiotic dance - above all, to know that Catherine knew you were perfectly happy without herby the by, I wonder she has not written to me! Not that I want her to, of course. This would entail a few frozen conventional lines back by way of answer. But I am surprised she can endure thus easily the neglect of even the most insignificant of her subjects. I felt sure she would write to ask why I did not call on Sunday. She trusts, no doubt, to the greatness of my folly to bring me again, unasked, to her feet. Her confidence is for once misplaced.

"July, 1793." The date takes my fancy. I can see the Anderson of those days, large-boned, sinewy, stooping, with a red, fiery beard, like his present representative, stolid, laborious, contented, building his house here facing the coasts of France, nearly as ignorant of, and quite as indifferent to, the wild work going on over there in Paris town as little Annie herself can be. King, dictator, emperor, king, em peror commune, have come and gone but the sturdy race of farmers sprung from great-grandfather Anderson still carry on the same way of life in the same identical spot.

"But I'm not amusing you," says Annie regretfully. "If only it would leave off raining we might go out and have a ride on the tin-tan." It takes me some little time, and a closely knit series of questions, to discover that tin-tan is Southshire for see-saw; and I think how Catherine would laugh at the spectacle of my bobbing up and down on one end of a plank and this little country damsel at the other. Her detestable laughter; but, thank Heaven! I never need suffer from it again.

April 8. Gloomy again to-day. Inkcolored rain clouds hanging close over the hills, their fringe-like lower edges showing ragged across a pale sky, against which the hills themselves rise dark and sharp. Now aud again a shower of rain falls, but not energetically; the wind blows, the clouds shift, the rain ceases, and the sky darkens or gleams with a watery brightness alternately. Looking over the wide landscape and leaden sea, here and there a patch of sunshine falls, while I myself walk in gloom; now the sails of a ship catch the radiance, now a farmstead, now a strip of sand over by Windle Flats.

I feel slightly bored. Annie went into Rexingham this morning with Robert and the early milk cart. She is to spend the day with an aunt, and return with the empty cart this evening. Twice a day the Andersons send in their milk to Rexing ham, and winter and summer son Robert must rise at 3 A.M. to see to the milking, harness Dolly or Dobbin, and jog off his seven miles. Seven miles there, and seven miles back, morning and evening; that is twenty-eight miles in all, and ever the self-same bit of road in every weather. So that a farmer's life has its seamy side

April 9. A great improvement in the weather. I was awakened by the sun pouring in at my window, and looked out on to a light, bright blue sky, full of white cumuli that cast down purple shadows upon a grey-green sea. I draped myself in the white dimity window curtain, and watched Annie make her way up between the lettuce rows, with her hands full of primroses. She came from the orchard, where the green tussucked grass at the foot of the apple-tree is starred with these lovely little flowers.

I must have a talk with Annie in the orchard one day. It would be just the background to show off her particular style of beauty. I like to suit my scenery to the drama in hand. Catherine would be quite out of place in an orchard, where she might stain her gown, or a harmless beetle or spider terrify her into fits.

There appears to be only one post a day here; but Mrs. Anderson tells me that by walking up to Orton village I might find letters awaiting to-morrow's morning delivery. I was ass enough to go over this afternoon, and of course found nothing.

As I passed the barn on my way in, my ear was saluted by much laughter and shouting. I came upon Annie giving her little brothers a swing. Both great doors of the barn were turned back upon the outside wall and the swing hanging by long ropes to the rafters, and holding two chubby urchins together on the seat, swung out now into the sunshine, now back into the gloom, while Annie stood and pushed merrily. Three tiny calves, penned off in a loose box at one end of the building, stared over the low partition

with soft, astonished eyes. It was a charming little picture.

"There, Tim! I can only give you six more!" cries Annie. "I've got to go and make the puddings" (she said "puddens," but what matter?). Before she goes she pulls a handful of grass from the threshold and offers it to the calves. While they tug it this way and that to get it from her hand, she endeavors to plant a kiss on the moist, black muzzle of the smallest, but he promptly and ungallantly backs and the grass falls to the ground. At the same moment the children discover me, and an awed silence succeeds to their chatter. Not to embarrass them, I move off and fall a-musing as to whether Catherine could make a pudding to save her life? It is pretty certain it would cost a man his to have to eat it; does not even her violin playing, to which she has given indubitable time and attention, set one's teeth on edge to listen to?

Yet why this bitterness? Let me erase Catherine and her deficiencies from my mind forever.

April 10. Again no letter! Very well! I know what I will do. I am almost certain I will do it. But first I will go down to the beach and give it a couple of hours' sober reflection. No one shall say I acted hastily, ill-advisedly, or in pique.

I cross over to the cliff edge. Here the gorse is aflame with blossom; the short, dry grass is full of tiny insect life. Various larks are singing; each one seems to sing the same song differently; perhaps each never sings the same arrangement twice!

I go down the precipitous coastguards' stairs. At every step it grows hotter. Down on the beach it is very hot, but there is shade to be found among the boulders at the cliff's base. I sit down and stare along the vacant shore; at the ships floating on the sea; at the clouds floating in the sky; there is no sound but the little grey green waves as they break and slosh upon the stones.

I think of Catherine and Annie, and I remark that the breakwaters are formed of hop-poles, twined together and clasped with red rusted iron girdles; the wood has been washed by the tides white and clean as bones. I wonder whether I shall ask Annie to be my wife, and I wonder also whence came those literally-millions of wine bottle corks that strew the beach to my right. From a wreck? from old fishing-nets; or merely from the natural consumption of beer at the building of the breakwater ?

Coming back to Down End, I find a travelling threshing machine at work in the rick-yard. I had heard the monotonous thrumming of its wheels a good way off. The scene is one of great animation. the machine is drawn up against the conical-shaped haystack, its black smoke stretches out in serpentine coils against the sky. A dozen men are busy about her; those who work her, old Anderson, son Robert-a dreadful lout he is too, quite unlike his sister-various other louts of the same calibre, the two little boys, very much in every one's way, and Mrs. Anderson and Annie, who have just brought out jugs of ale. I naturally stop to say a few words to Annie and watch the threshing. Anderson is grinding out some of last year's oats for the cattle.

Son Robert comes to take a pull out of Annie's jug. "That's prime, measter, ain't it?" he says to me, and wipes his mouth with the back of his hand. I go in thoughtfully. Is son Robert exactly the sort of man I should care to call brother-in-law?

April 11, 12. These two days I have been casting up the pros and cons of a marriage with Annie. Shall it be - or not be? I suffer from a Hamlet-like perplexity. On the one hand I get a good, an amiable, an adoring little wife, who would forestall my slightest wish, who would warm my slippers for me, for whom I should be the Alpha and Omega of existence. She would never argue with me, never contradict me, never dream of laughing at me; would never laugh at all unless I allowed her, for she would give into my keeping, as a good wife should, the key of her smiles and of her tears. But of course I should wish her to laugh. I should wish the dear little creature to remain as merry and thoughtless as possible. Dear Annie! what surprise and delight will shine in your innocent blue eyes when I tell you my story! Your childlike gratitude will be almost embarrassing. Last, and perhaps most weighty pro of all - when Catherine hears of it she will be filled with regret; yes, she may act indifference as gaily as she pleases, I am convinced that in her heart of hearts she will be sorry.

Now for the cons; they, too, are many. As I said before, I should not like son Robert to call me brother. I should find honest old Anderson père rather a trial with his red beard, his broken nails, and yawning chasm between his upper teeth; even Mrs. Anderson, so comely and pleas. ant here in her own farmhouse, would

suffer by being transplanted to Lincoln's these are filled with water from the last Inn. So might little Annie herself. A rains. The new buds are but just "exlapsed "1. "in a country hayfield has much ploding" into leaf; here and there the less significance than when lost at a Lon- Dryades have laid down a carpet of white don dinner-table. How is it, I wonder, anemone flowers to dance on; trailing that while the dear child generally speaks brambles lie across the track, with Octoof 'ay and 'ouse, she invariably besmirches ber's bronze and purple-green leaves, still with the strongest of aspirates the unfor- hale and hearty, making an exquisite contunate village of H'Orton? Still, it would trast with the young, brilliant, fan-folded be easy to correct this, delightful to edu- shoots just springing at their base. cate her during our quiet evenings, to read with her all my favorite prose writers and poets! And, even supposing she couldn't learn, is classical English in the wife an infallible source of married happiness? Let me penetrate below externals and examine into the realities of things.

Christmas only, but I've known him all my life. We always sat together in school; he used to do my sums for me, and I've got still a box full of slate pencil ends which he had touched."

So my card castle came to the cloth. Here was a genuine case of true idyllic boy and girl love, that had strengthened and ripened with mature years. Annie had no more given me a thought — what an ass, what an idiot I am! But really, I think Catherine's cruelty has turned my brain. I am ready to plunge into any folly.

I gave the Andersons ten minutes' start, then rose, unlatched the gate, and followed Annie. I reached the upland field. It was dotted with sheep; ewes and lambs; long shadows sloped across it; a girl stood at the further gate. This was Annie, but alas ! some one was with her; a loutish figure that I at first took to be that of son Robert. But as I came nearer, I saw it was not Robert but his equally loutish friend, the young fellow I had seen working with him by the threshing machine. That day, in his working clothes, he had looked what he was, a strong and And it would have been folly. After the honest young farmer. To-day, in his Sun- first second's surprise and mortification, I day broadcloth, with a brilliant blue neck felt my spirits rise with a leap. I was scarf, a brass horseshoe pin, and a large suddenly dragged back from moral suibunch of primroses in his buttonhole, he cide. The fascinating temptation was looked a blot, an excrescence, on the placed forever beyond my reach. And it sunny earth. Personally, he might have was Edward Fuller who thus saved me! been tall, but for a pronounced stoop; fair, Good young man! I fall upon your neck but that he was burnt brick color; smooth-in spirit, and kiss you like a brother. faced, but for the multitude of lines and furrows, resulting from long exposure to the open air. His voice I couldn't help admitting was melodious and manly, yet the moment he caught sight of me he shuffled his feet like an idiot, and blushed like a girl. He whispered something to his companion, dropped over the stile like a stone from a catapult, and vanished from view.

I am still free! who knows what tomorrow may bring.

April 14. To-morrow is here and has brought a letter from Catherine. I find it lying by my plate when I come down to breakfast. I take it up, look at the superscription, partly in Catherine's well-known writing, partly in my landlady's spider scrawl — for it had gone first to my London rooms. I turn it over, feel it, decide it contains one sheet of paper only, and put it resolutely down. After breakfast is time enough to read it; nothing she can say shall ever move me more.

I pour out my coffee; my resolutions waver and dissipate themselves like the steam rising from my cup. I tear the letter open, and find myself in Heaven straightway. And these are the winged words that bore me there:

sand feet, where it inhabits the bamboo bushes, and is known to the natives as the Pei-ssjun or Chua-ssjun, i.e., white, or spotted, bear. Few presents, we imagine, would delight the heart of the director of the British Museum of Natural History more than examples of this rare and little-known mammal. As France and Russia can now both boast of specimens, England, whose interests in China are so predominant, surely ought to be able to obtain some likewise.

A RECENT Communication of Herr Büchner | at an elevation of ten thousand to twelve thouto the Imperial Academy of Sciences of St. Petersburg announces that, among other objects obtained in the Chinese province of Kansu by Herrn Potanin and Beresowski, during their expedition of 1884-87, was a skin of Eluropus melanoleucus. This very remarkable bear-like animal is hitherto known only from the specimens which were procured by Père David in the principality of Moupin, in the north of Szechuen, and which are now in the Paris Museum. Herr Beresowski met with it in the mountains of southern Kansu,

Nature.

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