"But the accident, Miss Gabbatis," said Miss Nunly, in her usual quiet voice.

"Yes, I hadn't forgotten it, but you see I'm such a one to run off after stories that happen to come into my head. Well, you know at this race the gentlemen ride their own horses, and he rode his, and it went over a ditch with him, and threw him, and broke his neck there and then, without making any more to do about it. He never spoke any more; of course he couldn't when his neck was broke. I wonder how people look under such circumstances, whether their heads seem to hang loose, or what. I never saw an accident in my life, except a little boy that got his finger trapped off with a door banging to, and, my word, how he screamed! But it's a very shocking thing is this. Of course they telegraphed to his friends at once, and I suppose they'll put him in a shell to-night and take him back to where he came from. His poor wife,but I forgot, he is a bachelor, and that's a good thing. I never make much account of bachelors dying."

Miss Nunly had laid her work down in her

lap, and was listening to Miss Gabbatis, with a face hushed and calm as ever; but her fingers tightened their grasp of each other every moment, and her breath came quick and short. Ah! these

races.

"Yes; it's a shocking thing when one comes to think about it, very. You don't seem to like to hear about accidents, Miss Nunly. Now you see what a difference there is in people. Why, first thing whenever I get hold of a newspaper, I fly to the column of casualties, and see what's happened in that line. I've said fifty times over, if I'd only been a man, what a good surgeon I should have made. You know I don't get upset easily. I don't think it would give me the least bit of a turn to see anybody run over, although it would upset some people for a week, and it's made you look white only to hear about something happening; it's astonishing how differently people take things. I'll thank you, Miss Maud, just to undo this knot in my netting; at my time of life people's eyes aren't so good as they used to be."

Maud unfastened the knot and set the work

afloat again. It went briskly on for about an hour longer, mingled with a pleasant little running chat, on the part of Miss Gabbatis, concerning things that were going on in a general way. She didn't care much about getting an answer, or whether it fitted rightly when it did come; because, as she said, she liked to hear herself talking, and it seemed to come easier when she didn't feel that she was keeping any one else from doing it. Before it was dark the carriage came for Maud, and Miss Gabbatis accepted her offer of a ride home, packed away her netting, gathered up her shoes and umbrella, and Miss Nunly was left to her solitude.

When they were both gone, she collected the work from the table and packed it carefully away in the basket. It was a white frock for Milly Dakin's baby, who was going to be christened next Sunday. Miss Nunly was never idle. Perhaps for her, as well as for Maud, there was the need, the constant need, of something to do, lest the heart, having lost its first hope and labour of love, should become weary and peevish. After all, it is only this that one half of us need,

to make us truly peaceful and content. Just something to do; something for our energies to work at, something that others may be the better for. But, be that as it may, Miss Nunly was never idle. Come when they might, morning, noon, or night, her friends were sure to find her employed.

Except in those few moments between the lights, when twilight began to creep up over the sky, and the Marbrook hills grew dim, and the wind eddied dreely through the tall old elm trees outside the window. Then, in the stillness of that little wainscoted parlour, she would sit and think.

Where those thoughts travelled-into what far distant track, painful or pleasant, they bore her

was not for others to know. Sufficient for the world without that she did her duty to it bravely and well; that to her power, and often beyond her power, she helped those who needed help, and gave sympathy to those who were desolate and oppressed. More than that, it had no need to ask. Of her own inner life Miss Nunly never spoke; it was lived very sacredly between God

and her own soul, and whatever shadow of old hopes and memories it held, was held for herself alone. To show them to others could do no good. Truly life for her had been very different from what she had once thought; but such as it was, she took it and made the best of it-quietly covering over its old scars and bruises, living it so wisely and so well, that none, even of those who loved her best, ever thought how marred and maimed it was underneath.

When she had made everything very tidy and neat, Miss Nunly went upstairs to her own room, from which, looking out over Mossingay meadows, she could see the race-course with its white winning-posts, and grand stand, and the booths erected for to-morrow's populace. She watched them until it grew dark, and then came down again to the empty parlour. She closed the shutters, that she might not hear the elm tree branches rattle against the window; then she put the lamp out and stirred the fire into a dancing blaze, and drew up close by her easy chair, a quaint, old-fashioned, black oak cabinet,