prayer, and blessing to the name of God-and then she led him to his home.

"I awoke with violent pain, for I shook with terror. In all the strife and suffering, I was the wanderer; but it seemed as if the deliverance had been granted to another."

The day-long sadness was again upon the speaker; and in the still moments that ensued, the lovely listener seemed as if the tale had overshadowed her gay mood. She was going over the strange dream, step by step, she was giving up her heart in sympathy with the forlorn prodigal, and rehearsing the excitement of the rescue. The whole of the sick man's fancy stayed with her like a sun picture, and each moment only developed and verified the picture. But the elder, and, in such a case, the less sensitive mind, dwelt only a moment on the details of the dream; it could only linger with dread upon the mystery, which touched so closely his own experience, and seemed to bear a lesson to himself alone.

The oracle was silent, perhaps, as becoming in a priestess, she was entranced; and reverently enough the dreamer appeared to be waiting. His thoughts, however, were just then far enough from such proper homage to the lovely priestess; while she, to her great confusion be it spoken, was wandering far enough away from the pity-needing, trembling being beside her. She was quite disposed to identify herself with so good an angel as that youngest sister; but, then, she had no brother. Well, who was it, then? But her reverie was broken by that mournful tone, which never failed to rout the fancy of the moment, however clear and sweet.

'Come, now, Lily, I have done my part; I wait for yours. Has this dream a meaning; and for me?"

"To business, then, as the black doves of old Dodona's oak groves might have said by way of prologue to their sage responses. I'm glad you've put the question in the way you have; for now I can give you a real woman's answer. In the first place, the dream has no meaning at all; and, in the second place, it cannot mean anything about either you or me. The man was quite young, you see.'

"Did I say he was young, my dear?"

"Well, not exactly, perhaps ; but you made me fancy him

much younger than you; and then I'm sure I'm not the young angel of a lady, for she was so beautiful."

"I forgot that I had said that, dear. I think you are going to be Daniel, after all; telling the dream your own way before you explain."

now.

"At any rate, she was very, very pious. You did say that, I hope, I pray as well as others, quite as sincerely, and quite as often; yes, better than others, for I pray for you; others have so many to love, that their thoughts are distracted when they pray. I have only you to think of-and I cannot but be very fervent when I seek Heaven's goodness for a father who has been so dear to me, and who now needs so much kindness, both from me and Heaven; but then you know, papa, I don't make a practice of going at twilight, at either end of the day, to old grey stone altars at the corners of dreadful woods. You have trained me too well to the practice of a rational and sober religion, ever to find me mumbling collects like a Puseyite, or Latin like a Catholic. So I judge that you were flurried a little, and made a very excusable mistake, considering you were asleep, in the features of both the individuals. It's quite plain to me, that if the dream belongs to you at all, only the first part can be true; for here you are at home, in a very substantial and respectable house, in a very fertile valley, and plenty of wood on every side, and poor tender-footed Lily has not to roam up and down in distress to go and seek you. What would you have more? The lady does not fit, and I am certain the gentleman was—oh, let me see-twenty years younger than you. What would have more, I ask?"

you

"The theory, to be sure your theory; I was forgetting."

"To be sure, papa, and this is it. Perhaps it will help us a little. Dreams, no doubt, tell a great deal of truth and wisdom, too, if we could only get at it. They represent not only the events but the thoughts of the day, and are occasionally of use to the wakeful in unmasking the real character of the sleeper. Sometimes they serve a good end, though not after the pleasantest fashion, by ransacking the lumber of the past, and bringing neglected experience to the light. This dream of yours, for instance, dear father, does it not bring to

mind the many perils you have passed through, and the heavy disappointments you have known; or perchance it is a miniature of your whole life, true to the present hour, which finds you at home in a little Paradise, with Lily for an angel to soothe and dress the wounds of life's rough usage."

"Bless you, then, for as good an angel as ever walked in human form and flesh; and thank you for a very wise little prophet. I will believe you are right; you have, indeed, soothed many of my wounds; God grant they may all and soon be healed."

"Only let me know them all-I'll answer for their cure; and I rather fancy that between us three, Milly, me, and the Doctor, we shall yet see you and health make up your quarrel, and be good friends again."

"But the mind, Lily; the memory faithful only to the grief and sin of the past."

66

So

"Oh, I forgot that; never fear, old Drayton 's a capital preacher, and I'll make him come and talk you into a good humour with yourself, as soon as you get a little stronger. for indoors, and new dreams. * * * Just look, papa. How glorious the night! This beats your dream, I know— not quite such a grand mansion, but a lovelier, larger valley, I'll be bound; ay, and quite as happy, if you would only think so."

66

Happy dear, you forget that in the dream all the dwellers in the vale were always happy."

"What! the poor sister, who had to go out and seek a lost brother and found him all in rags ? No. I'll match my reality with your fancy. I do not dislike the flights of fancy. I often feel borne high up, so that I can see a long way into the past, and (as the poet says of the eagle,) 'greet the yet unrisen sun;' even now, I could believe that chaste, soft light was my mother's smile falling on us as we stand; on you to comfort you, and on me, father, because I help to realize her wish. Do I not comfort you?"

"Unutterable thanks, my daughter, for all your sweet love, and patient helping. Let us go in."

CHAPTER III.

66 BLASTS FROM HELL."

THE night which ensued on this singular conversation between Charles and his beloved child, was spent by both hearts in sleepless excitement. Lily endeavoured hour after hour to gather from the dream of her father some clue to his actual state of mind, for, as she had said, there was reason in placing confidence in dreams, to a certain extent; and though she had scarcely felt courage enough to suggest that this vision of the night might be only a pictorial and condensed view of the workings of the father's mind, she could not control her feelings when she came to retrace the successive steps of the fanciful history, and, in the attempt to extract the hidden meaning, and to realize the indicated fulfilment, she was touched to the quick of her young heart, by the partial knowledge and her dreadful surmise of the suffering through which sin had already dragged her father-appalled by the threatening of dangers which, to one so timid, seemed insurmountable, and then, fired with all the enthusiasm of hope—the hope that she herself should accomplish, or be permitted to witness, the deliverance of a dying father from the bondage of the Prince of Darkness. One misgiving, however, would weigh coldly on her expanding hopefulness. She was well able to interpret the earlier parts of the vision. She recognized in the palace home, not so much that earthly home, to which at first she had so playfully referred as the innocent and blissful life which had been so cruelly marred by wanderings from virtue, and, above all, by the self-enslavement of that father. She could trace in the housewifely sister a strong likeness to such charity as was common on every hand-the charity which fondled itself amongst the quiet pleasures of a virtuous life, which had never suffered the ruder shocks of temptation, and had grown up in an indolent belief that virtue would triumph in the long run-that all would be right at last. She almost smiled at the complacency, the shrewd and knowing looks of satisfaction with which her old friend Bethia, for instance, would extend the hand of fellowship to

any poor sinner, after he had forsaken the error of his way; but her own sympathy, educated as it had been under the constant influence of Mr. Barton's example, was decidedly in favour of that sublimer charity which lays itself out, in all times and seasons, for the salvation of the self-destroyed. There was the anxiety, the impatience, the indefinite but loving effort of the sister who beat the bounds of safety, in the hope that the lost one might hear and follow her voice. But she could carry her interpretation no further. She did not then understand the teaching of that lowly, weeping maiden at the "old grey cross." She could not identify herself with the actual rescue of the forlorn and perishing prisoner in the gloomy woods, and it was with a pang of jealousy and of selfreproach for her inefficiency and ignorance, that she resigned herself to the belief that, by some means or other, her father would even yet be rescued from the horrible meshes of the peril in which he was entangled.

When she entered the chamber of her father, radiant with her new confidence, and with the effort to hide the tell-tale witnesses of her wakeful night, she was surprised to find him up and dressed, and delighted more than surprised with the quiet smile of peace which accompanied the announcement of her father's determination to return at once to Arlton.

"I have been thinking, my dear, that if anything serious should happen to me, it would be so cruel to impose this long journey on my father; that I would even rather not have him sent for, though he did beseech it so earnestly; and yet Lily, if he died without seeing me, or if I died, and he were absent, I know that his death would be unhappy; it would give the lie to his long course of virtue. Ah! I would not have it so even I-I will go to him; he shall see me die ; he shall hear me-what can I tell him? But I am so near the last, Lily, my dearest one; I may not live to see him, or to tell-tell him the dream I told you, and say, it brought before me all my foolish, wicked life; it pained me till it has almost slain me in an agony, by the remembrance of his love and of her sweet Sarah mine !-but that I was found at last; yes, Lily, tell him that the religion never felt, long neglected-came to me-like itself to give me peace in