give me the paper, and see that Martin takes Lizzy Machin some hot coffee down." And then Maud unfolded the " Manchester Times," and began to read it, as doubtless many others did that same morning, until she came to the words, in great, black, pitiless, staring letters

"Terrible accident on the North line; twenty lives lost."

Maud did not faint; she did not shriek and scream; she did not burst into a tornado of tears; nor chide with passionate bewailings the overmastering will which had parted between her and all of human love. She did not cry out wildly and fiercely against the hand that had torn from her so utterly and suddenly her one great possession; but all life and energy seemed to stagnate within her; all power either of suffering or understanding. A dim, vague unconsciousness gathered down upon her, through which neither hope, nor grief, nor dread could pierce. Slowly, mechanically, she arose, wrapped her cloak round her, and tied her hat; then, still holding the paper in her shivering hands, she went with

wandering steps, as one in a dream, through the garden, so bright and dewy, and fresh in its summer beauty; across the orchard, where Pet and Muffie came capering to meet her, and looked wistfully up into her face with their great brown eyes to ask for the customary caress; and over the low stile into Lingold-wood. Then through the green shaded aisles of overhanging boughs and leaves, until she came to the little brook that tinkled past the garden of Glinton Manor.

Maud's home that was to have been.

There it stood in that early June morning freshness; its grey, worn old gables clearly marked against the blue sky; the oriel window waiting for the noon sunlight to creep round upon it; the vases holding up their clusters of moss and fern along the terrace walk; the lilies idly swaying to and fro upon the fountain pond; the cypress stretching out its long black arms over the distance; the flowers - Stephen's flowers shining out brave and bright. Still for scent, the sweet-briar wafting out its thrills of perfume; still for colour, the quaint old English beds of roses, pinks, and pansies; still for mo

tion, the brook rippling along over its gravelly bed, and the yellow iris nodding on its tall green stem, and the long willow branches drifting across the stream, and the light fern leaves curling and uncurling their feathery fronds in the wind. Still for sound, the slow drip of the water, falling with measured plash from the marble urn, and the rooks cawing out their dreary, monotonous talk from the old elm tree, and the cool rustling of the ivy leaves round the carved-stone doorway. And through all, and mingling with all, and saddening all, the sharp, clear whistle of the railway train, cutting its way in and out through the valley; keen and ringing now, as it swung across the highroad, then broken and uncertain, as the sound lost itself among the Mossingay woods, and again starting out into the open country, and dying off into a faint sobbing sigh upon the distance.

The railway-whistle. Listened for eagerly by so many as the signal for loved friends to meet, ut for her only a perpetual knell for the joy that she had lost never anything more than that for

her now.

Poor little Maud! poor little Maud! standing there by the brook-side in Lingold Wood, the worn gables of Glinton Manor looking greyly down upon her, the garden's gay, bright beauty mocking and dazzling before her tearless eyes. Poor little Maud! still grasping in her starved white fingers that cruel Manchester paper, still straining her thoughts to pierce through that blinding haze which was gathering thicker and colder upon her as she stood.

And then she read it all over again the hard, pitiless words, that would be read that morning by many a merchant at his desk, by many a clerk in his counting-house, by many an idler in his club room-pitiless words that would be gabbled over by news boys in the streets, and read out with hardly a passing sigh by comfortable matrons in their unscathed homes - wellchosen, neatly expressed, admirably concise words, but hard, pitiless words, that asked for so many readings ere they would reveal to her all their bitter import.

She understood it at last. Slowly, and as it

were awaking from some dim, shapeless dream, there rose before her the great, sad, unalterable fact, which no distance could ever soften, no time ever efface. Stephen Roden was dead.

Yes, God had speedily answered that unspoken prayer of hers; for our very thoughts are prayers, as well as our words. She would never say goodbye to Stephen any more. Henceforth there would be no parting between them. Near her, very near her, perhaps much nearer than in life he had ever been, she might think of him now as an unseen presence of help and comfort and hope. Never more indeed to hold with him any speech of years on earth to come, or to walk hand-inhand with him to meet whatever of mortal danger might lie before her, or to rest, weary and wayworn, upon his strong arm, as she once thought to do, but not the less truly hers in all present and coming time; chosen perhaps by his Father and her Father to be for her one of those ministering spirits who do always keep watch and guard over the children of the kingdom.

So there, beneath the leafy temple of Lingold