got upon Mr. Gilbert's trail. I distinctly heard him whistle when he heard that Ruth and the Hon. Arthur were married. 'They har, har they?" he said. "Never mind" (apologising to himself for having got upon the wrong track), "when it comes to howning 'er in England, see if 'e does it; not 'e."

pause:

After a

"A convict's daughter! Lord Wot's-'is-name, the swell's father, won't have nothink to do with 'er."

There is talk of Arthur's friend Ralph Crampton, against whom Ruth has an unexplained prejudice.

"He's been makin' up to the gal," said the barber, with conviction, "and there'll be a shindy between him and Harthur. He's the villain, 'e is, this Crampton."

Crampton and a lawyer enter.

"A lawyer," chuckled the barber; "I know wot 'e's come about. Harthur 'as to go back to England immediate.”

Crampton and Ruth are left on the stage, and before either spoke I was told all about it.

"This 'ere Crampton 'll make up to the gal, and then, just when 'e's tryin' to kiss 'er, you'll see Harthur chuck 'im across the stage, and Crampton 'll gɔ away sayin' as 'ow 'e means to 'ave revenge.'

That is so; and then it appears that Arthur must return to England to look after a monster fortune which has been left him. Ruth cannot leave her father.

The ship 'll be wrecked," said the barber; "and they'll think Harthur's drowned; but, bless you! it ain't as bad as that."

The scene of Acts II. and III. is Brantinghame Hall, eighteen months having elapsed since he, Arthur, set sail. His father, Lord Saxmundham, who is heavily in Crampton's debt, has claimed his son's fortune, not being aware of the Australian marriage.

No sooner had the barber looked about him than a smile of satisfaction covered his face.

"That there Crampton 'll turn hup, you'll see," he said, "and horder the old boy to pay the money. You mind as 'ow 'e spoke about 'aving 'is revenge."

"But the earl is a rich man now," I pointed out, addressing my neighbour for the only time.

He twisted his mouth contemptuously.

"That's hall you know," he said; "w'y, wot do you think the

gal is adoin' of hall this time? Ain't she comin' to England to see the hold man? I tell you wot," he continued, "if you don't see the gal come in at that door in ten minutes I'll eat my 'at."

The "gal" appeared the next moment, at which he nodded his

head pleasantly.

"She'll hoffer the hold man the money," he told me, “but the earl won't believe as she is 'is son's wife."

Here my neighbour was wrong. The earl believes at once ; but he will accept nothing from a convict's daughter. In Act III. Ruth pretends that she is prepared to marry Crampton on the understanding that he will trouble Lord Saxmundham no more.

"Just as they are agoin' to be spliced," said the barber, "'er real 'usband, Harthur, 'll turn hup, and she'll faint in his harms."

This, too, was incorrect; but the barber was only off the scent for a moment. Ruth makes a greater sacrifice than the one expected of her. She had just begun to make it, when my neighbour, as it were, shot past her.

"She's to say she ain't Harthur's wife at hall," he cried quickly, and that was just what she did say.

I did not sit out the last act of Brantinghame Hall (though I see that "Harthur" does turn up at the end). There was once a famous actor who, seeing a gentleman in the stalls putting on his coat before the curtain fell, said irritatingly, "Excuse me, sir, but the play is not over yet," to which the genial reply was given, "Thank you, Mr. So-and-so, but I've had quite enough of it." I felt that I had had quite enough of Brantinghame Hall, the only poor play by Mr. Gilbert known to me; and, besides, the stout gentleman's elbow was heavy on my chest. He had not once smiled during the first act, but he had guffawed repeatedly in Acts II. and III. I met him in the passage on my way out, and he was still tittering to himself.

"You are enjoying the piece?" I asked; for I was curious to know what had amused him so much.

His face expanded into a grin.

"I'm glad I came,” he said.

"I saw you were delighted, but I confess I could not discover what it was that pleased you. You laughed when Ruth was apostrophising the portrait of her dead husband."

"I wasn't thinking of her," he said. Bless

the chairs."

"Why, what chairs ?"

you, no. It was

"The two arm-chairs, one on each side of the stage. I never saw such a thing in my life."

Why, was there anything droll about the chairs?"

"The funny thing," said the stout man, "is, that I have two chairs identical with them. I couldn't take my eyes off them chairs. That's what I was laughing at, I tell you.. I mean to bring my wife to see them."

I looked behind me from the pit-door. The stout gentleman was telling some other body about the chairs.

J. M. BARRIE.

FAR away in an interminable vista of rock and forest, which lay behind the king's hunting castle like the littered ruins of a world, stretched out the wilderness. Silent lay the piles of desolation, rank after rank, and voiceless save for the tales which none could understand of the ages that were gone. And wildest of all, and more silent and full of inarticulate eloquence, was the rift where the Cañon of the Hermits split the waste in two.

Deep into the bowels of the stony land a soft, little, laughing river had licked its way; and now in a cool channel, flanked with perpendicular walls, it ran on, hundreds of feet below the level of the wilderness, and seemed to rejoice to think how unenduring beside itself was the everlasting rock.

He

Once or twice in a century a man might find the spot as he followed a trail or sought the riches that lay hidden in the hills. And there, as he stood upon the brink of that Titanic trench, he could not but feel the overpowering presence of the ages which were young when the foundations of the world were laid. could not but feel, when he listened to the river far below, singing over its never-ending task, what a paltry scratching was the greatest work a man could do between the cradle and the grave.

Perhaps it was this that made the hermits choose it for a resting-place, and its utter solitude as well. Whatever was the cause, here they had settled, where the perpendicular walls were grimmest and highest; and here, far up in the face of the gaunt cliffs, they had hewn out caves to dwell in. Visibly there was no approach to them; but he who found his way to the little meadows at the foot, and pierced the luxuriant shrubs out of which the mighty ramparts sprung, would have discovered on either hand a larger cave, which served at once as entrance-hall and corral to the monastery. From the inmost recess of these a rude spiral stair, cut in the solid rock, led upwards to a maze of crooked, and inclined galleries communicating with the cells.

Strange as was the hermitage, the hermits were stranger still. Their order was probably without parallel in the history of Christian monasticism. For here in each cell lived monk and nun as man and wife.

The origin of the order was lost in obscurity and unknown. The literature on the subject was consequently prodigious. It is hardly too much to say that Oneirian archæology lived on it. The accessible data were, however, confined to two rubbings of symbols, said to be carved on the walls of all the cells. The younger members of the Royal Society were prepared to prove from these that the order was pagan in its origin, and, further, that it was the original unreformed oriental predecessor of the Eleusinian mysteries. Smart scientific and literary society took this view to a man; but plain people, such as local antiquaries, believed it to be a very ancient heresy of the Carthaginian Church. Both, perhaps, were right. The gloomy pessimism of African Christianity took many fantastic forms; and this, the most fantastic of all, may well have been a Montanist modification of some pre-existing pagan brotherhood.

At any rate, it is certain that the order was in existence when Kophetua's ancestor founded his colony. At that time it was an isolated print of the Cross in a waste of heathendom; and, as soon as it was discovered, the old knight took it under his protection. He found a place for it in his absorptive community, along with all the other ruins of peoples and social systems with which the country was littered. He affiliated it to his beggar