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daring to face the truth that God had suffered this thing, yet clinging like a simple child to her old faith in Him. That childish faith, that worked itself out in her common life, Paul Blecker set aside, in loving her. She was ignorant: he knew the world, and, he thought, very plainly saw that the Power who had charge of it suffered unneeded ills, was a traitor to the good his own common sense and kindly feeling could conceive; which is the honest belief of most of the half-thinkers in America.

"You were but a child," he said again. "It matters nothing to me, Grey. It left no taint upon you."

"It did," she cried, passionately. "I carry the marks of it to my grave. I never shall be pure again."

Why did your God let you go down into such foulness, then?"-the words broke from his lips irrepressibly. "It was He who put you into the hands of a selfish woman; it was He who gave you a weak will. It is He who suffers marriages as false as yours. Why, child! you call it crime, the vow that bound you for that year to a man you loathed; yet the world celebrates such vows daily in every church in Christendom."

"I know that"; her voice had gone down into its quiet sob, like a little child's.

She sat down on the ground, now, the long shore grass swelling up around her, thrusting her fingers into the pools of eddying water, with a far-off sense of quiet and justice and cold beneath there.

"I don't understand," she said. "The world's wrong somehow. I don't think God does it. There's thousands of young girls married as I was. Maybe, if I'd told Him about it, it wouldn't have ended as it did. I did not think He cared for such things.'

waltzes with musk-scented fine ladies: when this girl put her cool little hand in his sometimes, he felt tears coming to his eyes, as if the far-off God or the dead mother had blessed him. She sat there, now, going back to that blot in her life, her eyes turned every moment up to the Power beyond, in whom she trusted, to know why it had been. He had seen little children, struck by their mother's hand, turn on her a look just so grieved and so appealing

"It was no one's fault altogether, Paul," she said. "My mother was not selfish, more than other women. There were very many mouths to feed it is so in most families like ours." 'I know."

"I am very dull about books,-stupid, they say. I could not teach; and they would not let me sew for money, because of the disgrace. These are the only ways a woman has. If I had been a boy".

"I understand."

"No man can understand,”--her voice growing shrill with pain. "It's not easy to eat the bread needed for other mouths day after day, with your hands tied idle and helpless. A boy can go out and work, in a hundred ways: a girl must marry; it's her only chance for a livelihood, or a home, or anything to fill her heart with. Don't blame my mother, Paul. She had ten of us to work for. From the time I could comprehend, I knew her only hope was to live long enough to see her boys educated, and her daughters in homes of their own. It was the old story, Doctor Blecker,"-with a shivering laugh more pitiful than a cry. "I've noticed it since in a thousand other houses. Young girls like me, in these poor-genteel families-there are none of God's creatures more helpless or goaded, starving at their souls. I couldn't teach. I had no talent; but if I had, a woman's a woman: she wants something else in her life than dog-eared school-books and her

Blecker could hardly repress a smile. "You are coming to political economy by a woman's road, Grey."

"I don't know what that is. I know what my life was then. I was only a child; but when that man came and held out his hand to take me, I was willing when they gave me to him-when they sold ine, Doctor Blecker. It was like leaving some choking pit, where air was given to me from other lungs, to go out and find it for my own. What marriage was or ought to be I did not know; but I wanted, as every human being does want, a place for my own feet to stand on; not to look forward to the life of an old maid, living on sufferance, always the one too many in the house."

Blecker was silent. What did he care for questions like this now? He sat by her on the broken trunk, his elbows on his knees, his sul-wages year after year." try eyes devouring her face and body. What did it matter, if once she had been sold to another man? She was free now: he was dead. He only knew that here was the only creature in earth or heaven that he loved: there was not a breath in her lungs, a tint of her flesh, that was not dear to him, allied by some fierce passion to his own sense: there was that in her soul which he needed, starved for his life balked and blank, demanding it-her-he knew not what but that gained, a broader freedom opened behind, unknown possibilities of honour and truth and deed. He would take no other step, live no farther, until he gained her. Holding, too, the sense of her youth, her rare beauty, as it seemed to him: loving it with keener passion because he alone developed it, drawing her soul to the light! how like a baby she was! how daintily the dimpling white flesh of her arms, the soft limbs crouching there! So pure, the man never came near her without a dull loathing of himself, a sudden remembrance of places where he had been tainted, made unfit to touch her, rows in Bowery dance-houses,

"That is weak and vulgar argument, child. It should not touch a true woman, Grey. Any young girl can find work and honourable place for herself in the world, without the defilemen of a false marriage."

"I know that now. But young girls are not taught that. I was only a child, not strongwilled. And now, when I'm free,"-a curious

clearness coming to her eye,-" I'm glad to think of it all. I never blame other women. Because, you see,"-looking up with the flickering smile,-a woman's so hungry for something of her own to love, for some one to be kind to her, for a little house and parlour and kitchen of her own; and if she marries the first man who says he loves her, out of that first instinct of escape from dependence, and hunger for love, she does not know she is selling herself, until it's too late. The world's all wrong somehow." She stopped, her troubled face still upturned to his.

"But you you are free now?" "He is dead."

She slowly rose as she spoke, her voice hardening.

"He was my cousin, you know-the same name as mine. Only a year he was with me. Then he went to Cuba, where he died. He is dead. But I am not free"-lifting her hands fiercely, as she spoke. "Nothing can wipe the stain of that year off of me."

"You know what man he was," said the Doctor, with a natural thrill of pleasure that he could say it honestly. "I know, poor child! A vapid, cruel tyrant, weak, foul. You hated him, Grey? There's a strength of hatred in your blood. Answer me. You dare speak

truth to me."

"He's dead now"-with a long, choking breath. "We will not speak of him."

She stood a moment, looking down the stretch of curdling black water-then, turning with a sudden gesture, as though she flung something from her, looked at him with a pitiful effort to

smile.

"I don't often think of that time. I cannot bear pain very well. I like to be happy. When I'm busy now, or playing with little Pen, hardly believe I am the woman who was John Gurney's wife. I was so old then! I was like a hard, tigerish soul, tried and tempted day by day. He made me that."

against her own! She looked up, with a sudden blush and smile. A minute ago she thought herself so strong to renounce! She meant, this weak, incomplete woman, to keep to the shame of that foul old lie of hers, accepting that as her portion for life. There is a chance comes to some few women, once in their lives, to escape into the full development of their natures by contact with the one soul made in the same mould as their own. It came to this woman to-night. Grey was no theorist about it: all that she knew was, that, when Paul Blecker stood near her, for the first time in her life she was not alone; that, when he spoke, his words were but more forcible utterances of her own thought; that, when she thought of leaving him, it was like drawing the soul from her living body, to leave it pulseless, dead. Yet she would do it.

"I am not fit to be any man's wife. If you had come to me when I was a child, it might have been, it ought to have been"--with an effort to draw her hands from him,

Blecker only smiled, and seated her gently on the mossy bole of the beech-tree.

"Stay. Listen to me," he whispered.

And Grey, being a woman and no philosopher, where he had let them fall, her face upturned, sat motionless, her hands folded, nerveless, like that of the dead maiden waiting the touch beautiful life. of infinite love to tremble and glow back into He did not speak, did not touch her, only bent nearer. It seemed to him, as the pure moonlight then held them close in its silent bond, the great world hushed without, the light air scarce daring to touch her fair, waiting face, the slow-heaving breast, the kindling glow in her hair, that all the dead and impure years fell from them, and in a fresh new-born life they stood alone, with the great Power of strength and love for company. What need was there

of words? She knew it all in the

promise and question of his face waited for her the hope and vigour the time gone had never known: her woman's nature drooped and leaned on his, content: the languid hazel eye followed his with such intentness, one would have fancied that her soul in that silence had

found its rest and home for ever.

She could not bear pain, he saw : remembrance of it, alone, made the flesh about her lips blue, unsteadied her brain; the well-accented face grew vacant, dreary; neither nerves nor will of this woman were tough. Her family were not the stuff out of which voluntary heroes are made. He saw too she was thrusting it back-ring out of thought: it was her temperament to do

that.

"So, now, Grey," he said, cheerfully, "the story's told. Shall we lay that ghost of the old life, and see what these healthful new years

have for us?"

He took her hand, and drew from it the old that yet bound one of her fingers, the sign of a lie long dead, and without a word dropped it in the current below them. The girl looked up suddenly, as it fell: her eyes were wet: the woman, loosed from her infirmity of eighteen years, might have thanked God with such a look as Grey's that night. Then she looked back to her earthly master.

"It is dead, now, child, the past-never to live again. Grey holds a new life in her hands

He stopped: the words came weak, paltry, for his meaning. "Is there nothing with which she cares to fill it? no touch that will make it dear, holy for her?"

Paul Blecker's voice was never so strong or pure: whatever of coarseness had clung to him fell off then, as he came nearer to the weak woman whom God had given to him to care for; what-to-night." ever of latent manhood, of chivalry, slept beneath, some day to make him an earnest husband and father, and helpful servant of the True Man, came out in his eager face and eye, now. He took her two hands in his: how strong his muscles were! how the man's full pulse throbbed healthfully

There was a heavy silence. Nature rose impatient in the crimson blood that dyed her lips and cheek, in the brilliance of her eye; but she

forced back the words that would have come, and sat timid and trembling.

I

"None, Grey? You are strong and cool. know. The lie dead and gone from your life, you can control the years alone, with your religion and cheery strength. Is that what you would say?"-bitterly.

She did not answer. The colour began to fade, the eyes to dim.

"You have told me your story; let me tell you mine"-throwing himself on the grass beside her. "Look at me, Grey. Other women have despised me, as rough, callous, uncouth: you never have. I've had no hot-house usage in the world; the sun and rain hardly fell on me unpaid. I've earned every inch of this flesh and muscle, worked for it as it grew: the knowledge that I have, scanty enough, but whatever thought I do have of God or life, I have had to grapple and struggle for. Other men grow, inhale their being, like yonder tree God planted and watered. I think sometimes He forgot me"-with a curious woman's tremour in his voice, gone in an instant. "I scrambled up like that scraggy parasite, without a root. Do you know, now, why I am sharp, wary, suspicious, doubt if there be a God, Grey?" turning fiercely, "I am tired of this. God did make me. I want rest: I want love, peace, religion in my life."

She said nothing. She forgot herself, her timid shyness now, and looked into his eyes, a noble, helpful woman, sounding the depths of the turbid soul laid bare for her.

He laid his big, ill-jointed hand on her knee. "I thought," he said-great drops of sweat coming out on his lips-"God meant you to help me. There is my life, little girl. You may do what you will with it. It does not value much to me."

And Grey, woman-like, gathered up the despised hand and life, and sobbed a little as she pressed them to her heart. An hour after, they went together up the old porch-steps, halting a moment where the grape-vines clustered thickest about the shingled wall. The house was silent; even the village slept in the moonlight: no sound of life in the great sweep of dusky hill and valley, save the wreaths of mist over the watercourses, foaming and drifting together silently before morning they would stretch from base to base of the hills like a Dead Sea, ashy and motionless. They stood silent a moment, until the chirp of some robin, frightened by their steps in its nest overhead, had hummed drowsily down into sleep.

"It is not good-night, but good-bye, that I must bid you, Grey," he said, stooping to see her face.

"I know: but you will come again: God tells me that."

"I will come. Remember, Grey, I am going to save life, not to take it. Corrupt as I am, my hands are clean of this butchery for the sake of interest."

Grey's eyes wandered. She knows nothing about the war, to be candid: only that it is like

a cold pain at her heart, day and night-sorry that the slaves are slaves, wondering if they could be worse off than the free negroes swarming in the back-alleys yonder-as sorry, being unpatriotic, for the homeless women in Virginia as for the stolen horses of Chambersburg. Grey's principles, though mixed, are sound, as far as they go, you see. Just then thinking only of herself" You will come back to me?" clinging to his arm.

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Why, I must come back," cheerfully, choking back whatever stopped his breath, pushing back the curling hair from her forehead with a half-reverential touch. "I have so much to do, little girl! There is a farm over yonder I mean to earn enough to buy, where you and I shall rest and study and grow stronger and healthier, more helpful every day. We'll find our work and place in the world yet, poor child! You shall show me what a pure, earnest life is, Grey; and above us - what there is there," lowering his voice. "And I-how much I have to do with this bit of humanity here on my hands!" - playfully. "An unhewn stone, with the beautiful statue lying perdu within. Did you know you were that, Grey? and I the sculptor?"

She looked up, bewildered.

"It is true," passing his fingers over the low, broad, curiously moulded forehead. "My girl does not know what powers and subtile forces lie asleep beneath this white skin? I know. I know lights and words and dramas of meaning these childish eyes hold latent, that I will set free. I will teach your very silent lips a new language. You never guessed how like a prison your life has been, how unfinished you are; but I thank God for it, Grey. You would not have loved me, if it had been different; I can grow with you now, grow to your height, if He helps me."

He took off his hat, and stood, looking silently into the deep blue above-for the first time in his life coming to his Friend with a manly, humble look. His eyes were not clear when he spoke again, his voice very quiet.

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'Good-bye, Grey! I'm going to try to be a better man than I have ever been. You are my wife now in His eyes. I need you so-for life and for eternity, I think. You will remember that?"

And so, holding her to his heart a moment or two, and kissing her lips passionately once or twice, he left her, trying to smile as he went down the path, but with a strange clogging weight in his breast, as if his heart would not beat.

Going in, Grey found the old negro asleep over his knitting, the candle with a flaring black crust beside him.

"He waited for me," she said, and as she stroked the skinny old hand, the tears came at the thought of it. Everybody was so kind to her! The world was so full of love! God was so good to her to-night!

Oth, waking fully as she helped him to his room-door, looked anxiously in her face.

"Er' ye well to-night, chile?" he said. "Yer look as yer did when yer wor a little baby. Peart an' purty yer wor, dat's true. Der good Lord loved yer, I think."

"He loves me now," she said, softly, to herself, as in her own room she knelt down and thanked Him, and then, undressed, crept into the white trundle-bed beside little Pen; and when he awoke, and, putting his little arms about her neck, drew her head close to his to kiss her good-night, she cried quietly to herself, and fell asleep with the tears upon her cheek.

Her sister in the next room to hers, with the same new dream in her heart, did not creep into any baby's arms for sympathy. Lizzy Gurney never had a pet, dog or child. She sat by the window waiting, her shawl about her head in the very folds McKinstry had wrapped it, motionless as was her wont. But for the convulsive movement of her lips now and then, no guttapercha doll could be more utterly still. As the night wore down into the intenser sleep of the hours after midnight, her watch grew more breathless. The moon sank far enough in the west to throw the beans directly across her into the dark chamber behind. She was a smallmoulded woman, you could see now: her limbs, like those of a cat, or animals of that tribe, from their power of trance-like quiet, gave you the idea of an intense vitality: a gentle facepretty, the villagers called it, from its waxy tint and faint colouring-you wished to do something for her, seeing it. Paul Blecker never did: the woman never spoke to him; but he noted often the sudden relaxed droop of the eyelids, when she sat alone, as if some nerve had grown weary: he had seen that peculiarity in some women before, and knew all it meant. He had nothing for her; her hunger lay out

of his ken.

It grew later: the moon hung now so low that deep shadows lay heavy over the whole valley; not a breath broke the sleep of the night; even the long melancholy howl of the dogs down in camp was hushed long since. When the clock struck two, she got up and went noiselessly out into the open air. There was no droop in her eyelids now; they were straight, nerved, the eyes glowing with a light never seen by day beneath them. Down the long path into the cornfield, slowly, pausing at some places, while her lips moved as though she repeated words once heard there. What folly was this? Was this woman's life so bare, so empty of its true food, that she must needs go back and drag again into life a few poor, happy moments? distil them slowly, to drink them again drop by drop? I have seen children so live over in their play the one great holiday of their lives. Down through the field to the creek-ford, where the stones lay for crossing, slippery with moss: she could feel the strong grasp of the hand that had led her over there that night; and so, with slow and yet slower step, where the path had been rocky, and she had needed cautious help. Into the thicket of lilacs, with the old scent of the spring blossoms yet hanging on their

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boughs; along the bank, where her foot had sunk deep into plushy moss, where he had gathered a cluster of fern and put it into her hand. Its pale feathery green was not more quaint or pure than the delicate love in the uncouth man beside her-not nearer kin to Nature. It had been like the Did she know that? breath of life coming into her nostrils to be so loved, appreciated, called home, as she had been to-night? Was she going back to feel that breath again? Neither pain nor pleasure was on her face: her breath came heavy and short, her eyes shone, that was all. Out now into the open road, stopping and glancing around with every broken twig, being a cowardly creature, yet never leaving the track of the footsteps in the dust, where she had gone before. Coming at last to the old-fashioned gabled house, where she had gone when she was a child, set in among stiff rows of evergreens. A breathless quiet always hung about the place-a pure, wholesome atmosphere-because pure and earnest people had acted out their souls there, and gone home to God. He had led her through the gate here, given her to drink of the well at the side of the house. "My mother never would taste any water but this, do you remember, Lizzy?" They had gone through the rooms, whispering, if they spoke, as though it were a church. Here was the pure dead sister's face looking down from the wall; there his mother's worn wicker work-stand. Her work was in it still. "The needle just where she The strong man was weak as placed it, Lizzy." a little child with the memory of the old mother who had nursed and loved him as no other could love. He stood beside her chair irresolute; forty years ago he had stood there, a little child bringing all his troubles to be healed: since she died no hand had touched it. "Will you sit there, Lizzy? You are dearer to me than she. When I come back, will you take their place here? Only you are pure as they, and dearer, Lizzy. We will go home to them hand in hand." She sat in the dead woman's chair-She. Looking in at her own heart as she did it. Yet her love for him would make He had her fit to sit there: she believed that. not kissed her-she was too sacred to the simplehearted man for that-had only taken her little hand in both his, saying, "God bless you, little Lizzy!" in an unsteady voice.

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He may never say it again," the girl said, when she crept home from her midnight pilgrimage. "I'll come here every day and live it all over again. It will keep me quiet until he comes. Maybe he'll never come"catching her breast, and tearing it until it grew black. She was so tired of herself, this child! She would have torn that nerve in her heart out, that sometimes made her sick, if she could. Her life was so cramped, and selfish too, and she knew it. Passing by the door of Grey's room, she saw her asleep with Pen in her armssome other little nightcapped heads in the larger beds. She slept alone. "They tire me so!" she said; "yet I think," her eye growing

fiercer, "if I had anything all my own, if I had a little baby to make pure and good, I'd be a better girl. May-be-he will make me better."

Paul Blecker, heart-anatomist, laughed when this woman, with the aching brain and the gnawing hunger at heart, seized on the single,

saint-like love of McKinstry, a common bigoted man, and made it her master and helper. Her instinct was wiser than he, being drifted by under-currents of eternal order. That One who knows when the sparrow is ready for death knows well what things are needed for a tired girl's soul.

"CHRISTOPHER

COLUMBUS:"

A CONSIDERATION OF THE RIVAL CLAIMS OF THE PHŒNICIANS, CARTHAGINIANS, JAPANESE, CHINESE, NORWEGIANS, WELSH, ITALIANS, FRENCH, SPANIARDS, GERMANS, AND OTHERS, TO THE ORIGINAL DISCOVERY OF

"That fair world, whose fresh unsullied charms
Welcomed Columbus from the western wave."

"All things of heavenly origin, like the glorious sun, move westward."-ROMAN IMPROVISATORE.

The discovery of the Western Hemisphere is one of the grandest of those eventful epochs in the annals of the world, which have operated in producing an extraordinary and permanent change in human affairs.

Europe, at the close of the fifteenth century, found herself in a strait that demanded an immediate outlet for her overburdened population, which had increased with unprecedented rapidity. In the ages just preceding, the Crusades had been the principal instruments of such requisite ventilation; but these having ceased, a new channel was sought, into which might be directed the surplus multitude; and such a channel was presented by the timely discovery of the New World by Christopher Columbus. Many of the most valuable discoveries in art and science have been purely accidental-effected while in pursuit of some other object: so also, this memorable event in the history of the universe, resulted from an experiment made by Columbus for the purpose of finding a readier road to India, by a direct course across the Atlantic Ocean. This design he had formed from various circumstances, but the more especially through a mistake of the geographers of his own and of earlier ages relative to the form and position of the earth, and of the situation of India, which they supposed extended further toward the east than it actually did. Aristotle, centuries before, gave it as his opinion that India was not far distant from the Pillars of Hercules.

After eight years of fruitless application to the different influential courts of Europe for assistance in executing his cherished project, Columbus was about to abandon it in despair,

when he was recalled by Isabella, Queen of Spain, before whom he unfolded his plans with all the profoundness of a philosopher. With such enthusiasm did she enter into his scheme, that she offered, if necessary, to pawn her private jewels to fit out a fleet for him. Thus to the superior judgment of an enlightened woman is owing the discovery of this valuable portion of the globe. Cheered by her encourageinent, and supported by her generosity, he accordingly sailed with a small company of but three crazy vessels from the port of Palos, on the third of August, 1492, steering for the Canary Isles, and on the sixth of September boldly launched into an unexplored sea. The particulars and results of this memorable voyage, the most daring ever made by man, are familiar to nearly every one, and are emblazoned in letters of gold on history's page. Columbus made several other voyages to the new region; but being, at length, through the vile machinations of enemies, sent home laden with chains, overcome with age and infir. mities, but especially afflicted by grief and poverty, he expired in ignorance of the real magnificence of his discovery, which he still imagined to be only a part of India. Says a Spanish historian: "His soul was superior to the age in which he lived." His history will for ever remain a disgraceful monument of the ingratitude of kings and governments.

Although to Columbus unquestionably belongs the glory of making known to the inhabitants of the Old World the existence of this continent, yet the facts that at a very early period in ancient times the Phoenicians had attained to a high skill in navigation, and had extended their voyages to countries which until late years

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