'No, no,' said he, in a lively tone; 'my daughters sing and work. François and I join our wives at a game of piquet. The misfortune is, that our little party is often put into disorder. A knock comes below; we are obliged to descend, to receive and undress the new-comer, and to put the case in the register. This disturbs our game; we forget to mark the points.

'But your daughters, are they perfectly '——

'Oh, you mistake much if you imagine that the common spectacles to be seen here distress them at all,' said M. Perrin. "They pass the night here with the greatest composure and cheerfulness. One grows to

anything?'

So

He might well say so. The rooms which his family occupied were in the floor immediately above that where the bodies were laid. Nay, the piano of the young ladies stood directly above the table on which the unfortunates were exposed, before being reclaimed or buried. much was I struck with the wonderful searing of habit in this instance, that I could not help fancying it possible for these girls, so familiar with the idea of dead bodies, so accustomed to the domestic spectacle of their existence -to forget themselves on some occasion, and to ask strangers whom they visited, just as one would inquire for a garden or a kitchen: 'But where do you keep your dead bodies here?'

I now prepared to leave La Morgue. After bidding farewell to M. Perrin and François, they opened the gate for me, and I was about to issue, when I was driven back by an advancing crowd. These people were following, or rather surrounding a man, who was wheeling a handbarrow to the door of La Morgue. As it entered, a track of water marked the course of the vehicle. The cover which was over the body-for body it was which the barrow contained-was taken off, and it was plain that the young woman who lay there had died recently, from the clasped hands and compressed lips. From one of her hands, François found some difficulty in withdrawing a kerchief which she held. He had no

sooner got it, than he cried: 'Good Heaven! let me look at this woman!'

He gazed for a moment at her countenance, and exclaimed: 'It is she!'

"Who? what she?'

"The visitor of the morning-the Norman nurse!' was the reply of François.

I had been affected by the story, and was more so now, when I saw what despair had driven the poor nurse to. François said quietly: Ah, well, we shall lay her beside the body of the little one.'

M. Perrin put on his spectacles, opened his register, and wrote with a superb dash: UNKNOWN!'

·

STORY OF THE AMERICAN FRONTIER.

TOWARDS the close of last century, there lived on the western frontier of the state of Pennsylvania, two families, bearing respectively the names of Mayne and Waters. Though dwelling within a couple of miles of one another, and more than double that distance from any other settlers, it so chanced that these families were on the worst of terms. The heads, at least, of the two households were so, and the cause of their mutual dislike had reference to a distant period. Both had taken part in the war which gave independence to their country, but they had chosen opposite sides. William Mayne had thought it his duty to maintain his loyalty to the British sovereign, while Waters had been one of the most ardent supporters of the revolutionary party. Perhaps the mere circumstance of having adopted different sides would not have excited the hostility alluded to, had not Waters been the instrument of procuring the imprisonment of Mayne at an early period of the contest. Waters had conceived himself to be but fulfilling the part of a true lover of his country in doing so, and

declared himself free from all feelings of personal enmity. Mayne's confinement had proved in the end rather a fortunate event than otherwise, for at the close of the war he was held to have incurred so little guilt, that his liberty, as well as property, was restored to him, which might not have been the case had he been allowed to enter more largely into the contest.

William Mayne, however, was far from considering himself as a debtor on this score to his countryman; and when the two accidentally removed, after the war, to the same district on the western borders of Pennsylvania, sentiments the reverse of friendly existed between them. It must be owned that the hostility lay chiefly on Mayne's part, for Waters felt the consciousness of having been actuated by pure motives in the transaction at which Mayne took offence, and was rather anxious to conciliate his loyalist neighbour, than to nourish any feeling of dislike towards him. Neither of them being bad-hearted men, it is probable that, had they conversed freely together, they might have attained to a better knowledge of each other's character, and have become good neighbours. But, near neighbours as they were, no intercourse was kept up between them. Their families, too, shared in this estrangement, with the exception of two members of these retired households.

Mayne had one only son, Hugh, who had just reached the bloom of youthful manhood at the period when the incidents we have to relate took place. Hugh Mayne loved the daughter of Waters with his whole heart and soul. Often had this pair met on the lonely mountainside, when no human ear was at hand to listen to the outpourings of their simple affection. Mary Waters did not conceal these meetings from her parents, who, if they did not approve, at least did not check or forbid them. On the other hand, knowing well the dislike that rankled in his father's mind, Hugh Mayne did not venture for a long period to reveal the attachment that had sprung up in his breast. Blinded by the strength of his passion, he at last ventured to speak on the subject to his father.

The astonishment of the elder Mayne at the disclosure was only equalled by his anger. Again and again,' he said, 'have I told you of the cause I have to dislike that man and all that belong to him. He inflicted on me an injury, for which he has not deigned ever to make an atonement, even in words. You knew this, and yet you have Hugh Mayne, you have ever been a dutiful son, and I now lay my commands on you never to'

The son interrupted his father. Do not pronounce a command,' he said, which it will be impossible—which it will destroy my peace-to obey. And not my peace only, but that of another will be ruined by it?

'You are too simple, Hugh Mayne,' replied the father; 'you know not the temper of that man and his whole breed. Mary Waters can have no true affection for a son of mine. Hate to all of our name would be instilled into the minds of that family from their cradle. It is our money they look to.'

'You are wrong, father,' returned Hugh; 'this is your own prejudice that speaks.'

'And have I not cause to be prejudiced?' said the father, warming with the recollection of his wrong. 'Did not I suffer imprisonment for years through his means? I have ever been a kind parent to you, Hugh, but I know not that I would not sooner see you wedded to a negro slave, than to a daughter of Henry Waters. Never will one of that man's offspring be a good and loving wife to son of mine.'

Though conscious, in the depths of his soul, of the erroneous nature of his father's assertion, Hugh saw the necessity of giving up the point, for the time at least, before his father should be irritated into a more positive expression of anger or discouragement. With a sigh, he turned away to put on his hunting-gear, feeling that solitude would be most congenial to his present state of mind. Erelong he was on his way to the hills, with his hunting-belt across his shoulder, and his rifle in his hand-a weapon which the half-farmers half-hunters of the border seldom went without.

It was verging towards noon when Hugh Mayne left his home. On the evening of the same day, Mary Waters sat in her father's cottage, with her knitting on her knee, working, and at the same time conversing with her invalid mother, who lay upon a small bed in the same apartment. I hear the dogs barking, Mary; why has not your father taken them with him to the hills to-day?' asked the old woman.

'He thought, mother, that their noise might bring the Indians on his track, if the savages have really returned to this neighbourhood, which I pray to Heaven may not be the case!' As the young woman made this reply, she rose from her seat, and saying: 'The dogs know his hour-my father should be coming home now,' she went to the door of the cottage. She returned in a minute or two with the information that her father was not yet visible. After an affectionate inquiry into the state of comfort of the old woman, the young maiden turned once more to her homely labours.

Her anxiety did not permit her to sit long, ere she again went to the door, to look along the hill-side in front of the cottage for the form of her returning parent. On her third visit, her mother was greatly startled by a wild shriek from her lips, followed by her hurried re-entrance into the cottage. 'Merciful Heaven!' she exclaimed in an agony of alarm, Hugh Mayne is pursued! The savages are at his heels! O mother, mother! what is to be done?' The powerless invalid to whom this vain appeal was made, fell back on her couch, while the daughter rushed again to the door. A dreadful sight was indeed before her eyes. Along the side of the hill already mentioned, her lover was seen making at full speed for the cottage, trusting, doubtless, to receive assistance, or to effect a stand there at some advantage, against those who pursued him. These were three in number, dusky sons of the wild, terrible with their war-paint, and uttering fearful yells, as they bounded, at short distances from one another, like deer-hounds after their prey. Hugh had the advantage of them by