coherent dreams, and I felt no doubt that in his case the impression would wear off in a day or two. As I went out, I communicated these views to Dr. Warden, who was disposed to agree with them.

This proved to be my last conversation with John Lynn. For that very evening I was unexpectedly called away by business, which obliged me to spend several months in America; and upon returning, I found that he had left Greystones House cured, and had gone abroad for a long tour. After which, I heard nothing more about him; so that the days' petty dust" could accumulate with undisturbed rapidity over my recollections of the man himself, and our acquaintanceship, and his curious dream.

66

In the early summer five years later my diary fixes all dates-I happened to be wandering along the eastern coast, and arrived one evening at a remote little seaside place in Norfolk, which rather took my fancy with its many gabled farmhouses and comfortable Cock and Anchor. The next morning, the twenty-third of June, was, I remember, brilliantly fine, and tempted me out with my photographing gear-a much more cumbrous apparatus than at the present day. My negatives turned out better than usual, and as it was a new fad with me, I became so deeply absorbed in my attempts that I allowed myself to be overtaken, a good way from home, by a violent storm of wind and rain, which came on suddenly between five and six o'clock. I had an extremely unpleasant walk home with my unwieldy camera and other paraphernalia; and having got into dry clothes, and ascertained that several of my most promising plates had been destroyed, I did not feel enthusiastically benevolent when the landlord appeared in my room with a statement to the following effect: A young man had just druv over in the dogcart from Sandford Lodge-Mrs. Lynn's place below-wantin' Dr. Dixon in the greatest hurry to the old lady, who was took awful bad for her death they thought; but Dr. Dixon had had a call seven miles off Stowdenham ways, and couldn't be got for love or money. "And so, sir," proceeded my landlord, "believing as you be a medical gentleman, I made bold to mention the suckumstance to you, in case as how you might think of doin' summat for the poor lady."

Common humanity, of course, compelled me so to think, albeit human naturethat equally common, but very different thing-mingled some heterogeneous elements with my thoughts; and the consequence was that I at once set out again through the rain, which still fell thickly.

me.

The young man in the dog-cart was excited and communicative of mood, and upon the way told me several facts explanatory of the state of affairs in the household toward which he was swiftly driving The family, he said, had been at Sandford Lodge for about a couple of years, and were well liked in the neighborhood; everybody'd be sorry to hear of their trouble, and, to be sure, it was a terrible thing to have happened; it was no wonder the mistress was taken bad at bein' told of it sudden. Why, hadn't I heard them talkin' about it up above? Sure, the two gentlemen had been out sailin' that arternoon in their little boat, and was caught in the squall and capsized, or else she ran on a rock, it wasn't sartin which, but anyway she'd gone down clever and clean. And Mr. Jack had somehow manidged to swim ashore; but his brother, Mr. Vincent, a fine young gentleman in the army, there wasn't a sign of him—and he about gettin' married to one of the young ladies just the day arter to-morrow. But with the tide runnin' out strong as it was then, the corpse might never happen to come ashore at all. Indeed, they were in an orful takin' altogether down at the Lodge, and just before he come away, they'd found the mistress lyin' all of a heap in the landin', and couldn't get her round again by any means. So it 'ud ha' been a bad job if he'd had to come back without Dr. Dixon or nobody.

By this time our short drive was nearly at an enl. "Coming this road," said a young man, the quickest way to the house is round by the back." So saying, he drove a few hundred yards down a deep-rutted sandy lane debouching on the seashore close to an iron gate, at which he pulled up. "There's a turnstile in the bank to your left, sir," he said as I alighted, "and then if you go straight on up the lawn, you'll find the porch-door open, and there's safe to be some one about."

I followed his instructions, feeling a curiously strong impression of familiarity with the place at which I had arrivedthe sandy bank, the gate, the slope un

ent.

ning up to the creeper-draped gabled house, standing out darkly against the struggling moonbeams. A common enough illusion, I reflected, but it was now without doubt unusually powerful and persistIt was not dispelled even by my pricking my hand severely in brushing past a puzzle-monkey, which brandished its spiny arms in front of the turnstile; and the sensation strengthened as I walked up the steep lawn, threading my way up flights of turf steps, among flower-beds cut fantastically into the semblance of a fleet of boats and ships, with sheets of white blossoms glimmering for spread sails, and scarlet ones gleaming for flags. I felt convinced that I had never seen the device before; and yet it certainly did not seem new to me. At the door I was met by. two girls, who looked stunned and scared, but who reported that their mother had recovered from the long fainting-fit which had so much alarmed them. They brought me upstairs to the room where she was sitting; and the first sight of the miserable face which she turned toward me served to heighten my perplexed state of what may be called latent reminiscence. For I was at once struck by its marked resemblance to a face which I had in some past time frequently beheld, but which I now completely failed to single out from among a hurriedly summoned mental muster of my friends and acquaintances. And so thick a fold of oblivion had lapped over my recollections of the persons and events which would have given me the right clew, that although I knew I was speaking to a Mrs. Lynn, I could make no instructive application of the fact.

I found the interview dreary and embarrassing. Mrs. Lynn was so far recovered that her health called for but little professional discourse, and yet I feared to appear unsympathetic if I hastened away abruptlv. Accordingly I sat for some time, delivering myself intermittently of the common commonlpace, "and vacant chaff well meant for grain," which is deemed appropriate to such occasions. At length I bethought me of terminating the scene by producing a visiting-card, which I handed to Mrs. Lynn, murmuring something about a hope that if I could at any time be of any service to her she wouldBut before I was half through my sentence, she started and uttered an exclamation, with her eyes fixed upon the name

and address. "Harlowe Greystones," she said; "why, it must be you who were so kind to poor Jack when he was with Dr. Warden !"

As she spoke, a ray of recognition shot into my mind. Could it be?—yes, certainly it could be no one but John Lynn's mother-of course I remembered John Lynn. Indeed there was as strong a likeness between her and her son as there can be between an elderly lady and a young man. I was, however, still unable to recall the occasion upon which he had, as I now began to feel dimly aware, given me a somewhat minute description of this place and its surroundings; and then had not the driver told me that the family had lived here for only two years? My perplexity was but partially removed.

Mrs. Lynn appeared to be strangely agitated by her discovery of my identity. She sat for a minute or two glancing from the card to me, her lips moving irresolutely as if upon the verge of speech into which she dared not launch forth. Then she looked quickly round the room, which was empty, her daughters having been called away, and thereupon, with the air of one snatching at an opportunity, she turned to me and said: "Dr. Harlowe, I must tell you something that has been upon my mind for a long time." She continued, speaking low and rapidly, with many nervous glances toward the door, and sudden startled pauses upon false alarms of interruption: "Perhaps you may have heard that my youngest son Vincent is going to be married." (The tense showed that she had not yet learned to associate him with "the tangle and the shells.')"Their wedding was to have been the day after to-morrow, his and Helen Rolleston's. She's my ward, who has lived with us all her life; and they've been engaged for nearly a year. Well, Dr. Harlowe, my son Jack-you know Jack---has been at home too for three or four years, and some time ago I began to fancy-it was scarcely more than a fancy, and I've never said a word about it to any one-a feeling on his part of attachment toward Nellie. I hoped at first that I might be quite mistaken, but latterly I've thought that hardly possible. What I believe is that it sprang up gradually and insensibly as it were, and that he never realized how matters stood until the time of his brother's engagement. And since then I think-I fear he has at

times just occasionally-shown some jealous feeling toward Vincent-and those two used always to be such good friends. Not often at all, and nothing serious, you know; I'm sure none of the others have ever noticed anything of the kind; and indeed it may be only my own imagination; it's an idea that, under the circumstances, one night easily take up without any real reason.

66

Very true, I said, because she looked at me as if wishing for assent.

"But that's not what I particularly want to tell you," she hurried on. "Tonight, soon after he came back from that miserable boat, I was in here, when I heard Jack running upstairs, and I went to the door to speak to him, but before I could stop him, he had passed, and gone into his room. Just outside it he drop ped something, and I picked it up. It was this!" She took out of her pocket a small gold horseshoe-shaped locket with an inch or so of broken chain attached to it. One side of its case had been wrenched off at the hinge, showing that it contained a tiny photograph-a girl-face, dark-eyed and delicately featured.

"That's Nellie," said Mrs. Lynn, "and it belongs to Vincent; he always wore it on his watch-chain. So if he had really been washed away, as they said, I don't understand how Jack came to have it with him. I don't see how he could have got it, do you, Dr. Harlowe ?" queried this poor mother, leaning forward and laying a hand on my sleeve in her eagerness for an answer.

"He might have been trying to rescue his brother-to pull him ashore, or into the boat, and have accidently caught hold of it in that way, I suggested. "It looks as if it had been torn off by a strong

grip "Do you think that may be how it was?" she said with what seemed to me an odd mingling of relief and disappointment in her tone. "When I had picked

it

up, I waited about outside Jack's door, and thought I heard him unlocking and opening a drawer. Presently he came out, in a great hurry evidently, for when I spoke to him he only ran past, saying, 'I can't stop now, mother.' He had some shiny, smooth-looking thing in his hand, the passage was so dark that I couldn't see exactly what. I went into his room, and the first thing I noticed was the drawer of

the writing-table left open. I knew it was the one where he keeps his revolver, and when I looked into it, I saw that the case was empty. The revolver is gone; he must have taken it with him. Just then I suddenly got very faint, and they say I was unconscious for a long time. One of the maids says that she saw Jack running down toward the beach, about an hour ago. I believe numbers of people are there looking out. I said nothing to any one about the revolver-perhaps I ought to have done so. What can he have wanted with it? I've been thinking that he may have intended to fire it off for a signal, if the night was very dark. Don't you think that is quite possible?"

"I don't know-I can't say," I answered, without, indeed, bestowing any consideration upon Mrs. Lynn's somewhat unlikely conjecture, for at this moment a whole sequence of recollections stood out abruptly in my mind with a substantial distinctness, as if my thoughts had been put under a stereoscope.

"Can you tell me whether there is a boat-house at some little distance from here along the shore? An old boat-house that hasn't been used of late, standing back near some sand-hills-perhaps a mile along the shore-in a rather ruinous state, built in a hollow between two banks," I went on, impatiently adding what particulars I could, in hopes of prompting her memory, which seemed to be at fault.

"Yes, yes, there is one like that," she said at last, “in the direction of Mainforthing; I remember we walked as far as it not very long ago."

"Some one ought to go there immediately," I said, moving toward the door. Why?" exclaimed Mrs. Lynn, following me, "is there any chance that the boys-?" But I did not wait to explain my reasons, which, in truth, were scarcely intelligible to myself.

Hurrying down the lawn, and emerging on the beach, I fell in with a small group of men and lads, of whom I demanded in which direction Mainforthing lay. To the right, they told me by word and gesture, and one of them added, pointing in the opposite direction, where a number of dark figures, some with lanterns, were visible, moving along the margin of the farreceded tide, "But it's more that a way they thick she must ha' been when she went down." I explained that my object

was to find the old boat-house, whereupon they assured me that I would do so easy enough if I kept straight along by the strand for a mile and a bit, and two or three of them accompanied me as I started. The stretches of crumbling, moonbleached sand seemed to lengthen out interminably, but at last round a corner I came breathlessly upon my goal. The door of the boat-house was wide open, and the moonlight streamed brightly through it full in the face of a youth who, at the moment when I reached the threshold, was standing with his back to the wall, steadying himself by a hold on the window-ledge beside him, and looking as if he had just with difficulty scrambled to his feet. He was staring straight before him with a startled and bewildered expression, and saying, "Jack-I say, Jack, what the deuce are you up to?" in a peremptorily remonstrant tone. And not without adequate cause. For opposite to him stood John Lynn-altered, but still recognizable as my former acquaintance-who held in his hand a revolver, which he was raising slowly, slowly, to a level as it seemed with the other's head. The next instant I had sprung toward him, but he was too quick for me, and, shaking off my grasp on his arm, turned and faced me, still holding his weapon. "Dr. Harlowe ! You here?" he said, and had scarcely spoken the words

when he put the barrel to his temple, and before the echoes of the shot had died on the jarred silence, and while the smokewreaths were still eddying up to the boathouse roof, he lay dead at our feet with a bullet in his brain.

The coroner's jury of course returned their customary verdict, perhaps with better grounds than usual. Upon my own private verdict I have deliberated often and long, but without arriving at any conclusive result. That crime upon the brink of which John Lynn had undoubtedly stood -was it a premeditated one, or had he taken the revolver with some different intention, and afterward yielded to a sudden suggestion of the fiend, prompted by his brother's helpless plight? This question I can never hope to answer definitely, though my opinion inclines toward the latter hypothesis. Upon the whole it seems clear to me that by his last act my unhappy friend did but "catch the nearest way" out of a hopelessly complicated maze of mortal misery. Furthermore, I cannot avoid the conviction that but for his narration to me of his strange dream or trance experiences, a fratricide's guilt would have been superadded to the calamities of his mind distempered, and his passion "by Fate bemocked."- Cornhill Magazine.

A PANORAMA OF RECENT EVENTS.

A HISTORY OF MODERN EUROPE. By C. A. Fyffe, M.A., Barrister-at-Law, Fellow of University College, Oxford; Vice-President of the Royal Historical Society. Vol. III. From 1848 to 1878. New York: Henry Holl & Co.

Mr. Fyffe's ideal is no easy one, as indicated in the plan and scope of these volumes. As the ages have advanced great events have crowded more thickly; interests have become vastly more complex; and society, revolutionized from the bottom, offers to contemplation problems much more difficult to gauge properly, with due relation to concurrent issues, as well as to questions of the past. Beginning with the French Revolution, which properly makes the basis of modern European history, the social and political interests of the world

have expanded in geometrical progression, both as to number and intricacy, to an extent which belittles previous epochs. The latter, from their very distance, as well as from their greater simplicity, are more picturesque, but do not so readily lend themselves to our sympathies.

The period which Mr. Fyffe treats in the present volume is one of surpassing importance. In it blossomed for good or evil forces which had been long lying inactive or repressed. It represents the culmination of impulses and struggles which we are still feeling in our daily lives, and which are most intimately linked with all things that enter saliently into our human record. To relate so great an epic in very limited space with clearness, and, in sketching the external form of things, to place due emphasis on those inner causes which have contributed more notably to make things

what they are, without combining the narrative with a great mass of detail is the aim of these volumes, and in the present one we think the author has succeeded even better than in its predecessors. Mr. Fyffe has but little of that superb charm of style which lend such fascination to writers like Macaulay and Green, but in his consistent purpose of offering a lucid chronicle of events one can easily admire his strong and direct touch, the clearness with which he perceives things, and his skill in unravelling an intricate web. The talent of the historian supereminently is clarity of vision and the consequent ability to separate essentials from non-essentials in telling the story of events. Our author carries this gift to good results, that make him a reasonably safe guide in following the events of the nineteenth century.

The revolutionary stir of 1848, though greatly inferior in violence to the cataclysm which was its remote cause, was much more general in the national effects produced throughout Europe. England and Russia were the only great countries which did not respond to its influence, the former because the forces of freedom and discontent had constitutional outlets, the latter because an iron despotism at the top was met by a stupid and brutal condition of the masses, which left them ignorant of wrongs. Prussia, Austria, the smaller German States, France and Italy, were rocked in desperate convulsions that threatened to overturn governments and reconstruct political society. The reasons that caused failure in this end are an essential portion of history, and Mr. Fyffe indicates them with precision. The attempts to secure reform, if not constitutional change in Prussia and Austria; the revolt of Hungary under Kossuth, and the futile endeavor of Italian patriotism under Charles Albert to unloose the clutch of Austria, are sketched with clean-cut vigor of outline. Most Americans know these things only vaguely, and a half hour with Mr. Fyffe s volume will make an intelligent reader sufficiently familiar with the essentials of the important events closing the first half of our century.

The rise and fall of Louis Napoleon make one of the most interesting features of recent history. The skill with which this imperial harlequin closed the eyes of France and other nations to his own ignoble aims and insignificance as a ruler, and the histrionic genius that for a score of years made him successful in posing as the centre of European affairs, are almost without a match. He became sub

servient in the course of events to a series of great results, and destiny used him as an efficient tool. The Crimean War would probably have not ended in muzzling Russia on the Black Sea, had it not been Napoleon III.'s interest to make France forget his infamous treachery in a fresh intoxication of military glory; Italy would not have gained her unity and independence as soon had it not been that the selfish policy of the French ruler dictated alliance with Victor Emmanuel; and German unity would probably have still been in the future but for the desperation of an imperial impostor conscious of the quaking of the ground under his feet at home, and his game of "double or quits" in gratifying the enthusiasm of a warlike nation. Our historian traces these striking episodes with so penetrating an understanding of the varied elements entering into them, that one's knowledge is easily and fully refreshed in his masterly summary. The history of Europe is brought down to the year 1878, and closes with the Turco-Russian war, the last of the great conflicts which have wasted the blood, energy and treasure of Europe. The story is told as far as possible concurrently, and by this synchronism the reader acquires a much more distinct notion of the relations of things, the close interweaving of events which makes the history of each European people in this age of the world in part the history of every other nation. It is a convenient book for reference, as well as an interesting work for continuous reading, and has many qualities to recommend it to the intelligent book-buyer. The index to each volume is very full and greatly adds to its usefulness.

A GUIDE FOR THE YOUNG. READY FOR BUSINESS; OR, CHOOSING AN OCCUPATION. A series of Practical Papers for Boys. By George H. Manson, author of "Work for Women." New York: Fowler & Welis Co.

The press reeks with ready-made panaceas to medicine the ignorance and uncertainty of young people starting in life. The profusion of advice given is really almost bewildering. When we consider that parents, with their large experience of the world, are almost as much at sea as their sons are, and find the problem of selecting an occupation for a boy the most perplexing of all questions, one is the more impressed by the difficulties. There is no doubt that thousands of people are square pegs in round holes, and would have