which he allotted to himself for the visit were over, Dolls simply trotted home again, but, as sure as the moon, he returned again in another month. A bitter, bitter winter followed quickly on the heels of that pleasant summer of 187-. The snow fell fast, and the cold was intense, thermometer at times sinking below zero. You could run the thrushes down, and catch them by hand, so lifeless were they; and I could show you the bushes any day where blackbirds dropped lifeless on their perches. Even rooks came on to the lawn to beg; they said there wasn't a hip nor a haw to be found in all the country-side. And robin said he couldn't sing at all on his usual perch, the frost and the wind quite took his breath away; so he came inside to warm his toes. One wild stormy night, I had retired a full hour sooner to rest, for the wind had kept moaning so, as it does around a country house. The wind moaned, and fiercely shook the windows, and the powdery snow sifted in under the hall door, in spite of every arrangement to prevent it. I must have been nearly asleep, but I opened my eyes and started at that—a plaintive cry, rising high over the voice of the wind, and dying away again in mournful cadence. Twice it was repeated, then I heard no more. It must have been the wind whistling through the keyhole, I thought, as I sunk to sleep. Perhaps it was, reader; but early next morning I found poor wee Dolls dead on the doorstep. Aileen Aroon. F "Dumb innocents, often too cruelly treated, May well for their patience find future reward."-Tupper. BONNIE Berkshire! It is an expression we often make use of. Bonnie Berks-bonnie even in winter, when the fields are robed in starry snow; bonnie in spring-time, when the fields are rolling clouds of tenderest green, when the young wheat is peeping through the brown earth, when primroses cluster beneath the hedgerows, and everything is so gay and so happy and hopeful that one's very soul soars heavenwards with the lark. But Berks I thought never looked more bonnie than it did one lovely autumn morning, when Ida and I and the dogs walked up the hill towards our favourite seat in the old pine wood. It was bright and cool and clear. The hedges alone were a sight, for blackthorn and brambles had taken leave of their senses in summer-time, and gone trailing here and climbing there, and playing all sorts of fantastic tricks, and now with the autumn tints upon them, they formed the prettiest patches of light and shade imaginable; and though few were the flowers that still peeped through the green moss as if determined to see the last of the sunshine, who could miss them with such gorgeous colour on thorn and tree? The leaves were still on the trees; only whenever a light gust of wind swept through the tall hedge with a sound like ocean shells, Ida and I were quite lost for a time, in a shower as of scented yellow snow. My niece put her soft little hand in mine, as she said"You haven't forgotten the manuscript, have you?" "Oh! no," I said, smiling, "I haven't forgotten it." "Because," she added, "I do like you to tell me a story when we are all by ourselves." "Thank you," said I, "but this story, Ida, is one I'm going to tell to Aileen, because it is all about a Newfoundland dog." "Oh! never mind," she cried, "Nero and I shall sit and listen, and it will be all the same." "Well, Ida," I said, when we were seated at last, "I shall call my tale "BLUCHER: THE STORY OF A NEWFOUNDLAND." "We usually speak of four-inhands rattling along the road. There was no rattling about the mail-coach, however, that morning, as she seemed to glide along towards the granite city, as fast as the steaming horses could tool her. For the snow lay deep on the ground, and but for the rattle of harness, and champing of bits, you might have taken her for one of Dickens's phantom mails. It was a bitter winter's morning. The driver's face was buried to the eyes in the upturned neck of his fear-nothing coat; the passengers snoozed and hibernated behind the folds of their tartan plaids; the guard, poor man! had to look abroad on the desolate scene, and his face was like a parboiled lobster in consequence. He stamped in his seat to keep his feet warm, although it was merely by reasoning from analogy that he could get himself to believe that he had any feet at all, for, as far as feeling went, his body seemed to end suddenly just below the knees, and when he attempted to emit some cheering notes from the bugle, the very notes seemed to freeze in the instrument. Presently, the coach pulled up at the eighthmilehouse to change horses, and every one was glad to come down if only for a few moments. "The landlord,remember, reader, I'm speaking of the far north, where mail-coaches are still extant, and the landlords of hostelries still visible to the naked eye. The landlord was there himself to welcome the coach, and he rubbed his hands and hastened to tell everybody that it was a stormy morning, that there would, no doubt, be a fresh fall ere long, and that there was a roaring fire in the room, and oceans of mulled porter. Few were able to resist hints like these, and orders for mulled porter and soft biscuits became general. "Big flakes of snow began to fall slowly earthward, as the coach once more resumed its journey, and before long so thick and fast did it come down that nothing could be seen a single yard before the horses' heads. 66 'Well, there was something or other down there in the road that didn't seem to mind the snow a bit, something large, and round, and black, feathering round and round the coach, and under the horses' noses-here, there, and everywhere. But its gambols, whatever it was, came to a very sudden termination, as that howl of anguish fully testified. The driver was a humane man, and pulled up at once. "I've driven over a bairn, or a dog, or some o' that fraternity,' he said; 'some o' them's continually gettin' in the road at the wrang time. Gang doon, guard, and see |