dying wife and mother. They both bent over and kissed her and then knelt beside her. Colonel Freeman wore his hair long over his temples; it was silvered, but it still retained the softness and waviness of his youth. She put up her little hand and held it off his brow and looked calmly and intently into his eyes till her arm dropped from weakness.

"My friend !-father!-husband!" she faintly articulated, "may I call you husband ?"

"Oh, Lucy!-dear wife !-yes!" "You have forgiven me ?"

"Forgiven !-don't speak that word-you are dearer to me than my own soul. Don't," he said, speaking with per fect calmness, for he feared a breath might hurry away her fluttering spirit, "don't speak of the past don't think of it, dearest child."

"I must speak-for I am going away from you all; and I have much to say. How long is it since you came home and stood there at the foot of the bed and looked at me? Oh, my heart! be still one minute." She laid her hand on her throbbing heart. "And Willie was there where he is now, and Sylvy sat by the table, with my poor baby-how long?" "Four years, yesterday !"

"Four years!--four years!-how strange-strange! I thought it was yesterday morning. I remember nothing since, but a strange dream of shadows-and a long, long walk with you, my husband-up through the clover-field, and being so tired-and a feeling that you loved me, and pitied me-and that you all would love me if you were any thing -but you seemed all, but shadows. You took care of my sinless baby, dear husband? God received it, and you, I know, did not cast it out."

"I did not, my child. Sylvy took it to her own room—

and we got a wet-nurse for it—and they told me it thrived— but at the end of the year it pleased God suddenly to take it. I did what I could for it-I never saw it."

Lucy drew a deep sigh. "Right-perfectly right," she said. "What a long dream I have had four years! I waked from it early this morning. It seemed to me, this was not my room."

"No, dear child, it is a room I built for you."

"How strange-I got out of bed and crept, I was too weak to walk, to the window. I opened the shutter, the clouds were rose-coloured. I had a feeling I should soon be beyond them. There was the sweetest scent came into the windows-it seemed to me the breath of an angel. I tried to think, I could not think, but the past came back -one thing after another, as we see objects as the light of day increases. And I had no distress-no distress. It seemed to me, you all loved me, all were at sweet peace with me! I recalled that hour of darkness and distress, when you came home, my honoured husband; I seemed again to see your look of pity, and compassion and forgiveness, and it was that gave me a sense of God's infinite mercy—yes, peace fell upon me, God's peace, and all the world cannot take it away." She spoke in the lowest audible tone, and audible only in profound silence, and to senses made most acute by intense feeling. "Stand up, dear Willie," she said. "Ohhow tall-it is four years! Willie, put your cheek down to mine, dear. Willie, when you are a man, you will not blush at your mother's name? the sin that has been repented in tears, and misery not to be told as mine has-that God and man has forgiven, you will not blush for, my son ?"

"Oh, no-dear mother, no-never!"

Sylvy," resumed the dying woman, "I have not breath

to thank you. were."

How long-suffering, and slow to anger you

"Oh, dear little Lucy," said the faithful creature, “don't waste your breath on me— -I did nothing, I could not do any thing for you-but love you—that I did."

A faint smile played over Lucy's pale-still beautiful lips. "Yes--and doing that you could do-did do all the rest," she said—“ Sylvy, I have a message for Mr. West. Give my respectful love to that good man, and tell him God has taught me better than when I cried in my despair that my hope was gone for ever, and for ever-tell him that I returned to Him who forgiveth and upbraideth not—and fell asleep in my Heavenly Father's arms." She then again kissed Willie, motioned him aside, and drew her husband to her. "My husband," she said, "dearest-best-we are again united !"

Yes, my wife," he answered, “ for ever and for ever!"

A gleam of joy shot through her eyes, a heavenly brightness overspread her whole face, it came and went like a flash of lightning, but it left an ineffaceable impression on those faithful ones who saw it. To them it was a preternatural light—a visible token of God's presence.

Two days after, the neighbours assembled to perform the last services. When Mr. West rose to make the prayer, he repeated, with a trembling voice, and overflowing eyes, the message of the departed to him. It was his only allusion to any thing peculiar in the circumstances of their friends. The good man's mind, glowing with a sense of God's infinite love, kindled with divine life spirits lower than his own.

Lucy Freeman was tenderly and reverently borne to her grave, and when the sods were laid upon it, human, for once, reached heavenly love-there was more joy, on earth as in

heaven, over one that repenteth, than over ninety and nine that had not gone astray.

Colonel Freeman returned to life, not with a bowed head and faint heart, but with that cheerful activity that springs from an assured faith in God, and love to man. The only indication that he had suffered more than others appeared in pity for the erring, and earnest efforts to reclaim them, and in sympathy with every form of sorrow. It was said of him that not a day passed over his head without some good, purposed and done. The prosperity of his outward life overflowed the more barren condition of his neighbours.

His son grew up to place and honour in the State. He kept his promise to his mother. Her name was transmitted to his children a dear, familiar, honoured household word. And when he laid his father (after a serene and sound old age) in a grave beside her in our village burial-ground, it was with "a peace that passeth understanding."

ΤΗΕ ΤΟΚΕΝ.

THE WHITE SCARF.

"Be just, and fear not.

Let all the ends thou aim'st at be thy country's,

Thy God's, and truth's; then, if thou fallest, O Cromwell,
Thou fall'st a blessed martyr."

THE reign of Charles the Sixth is one of the most humiliating periods of the French history, which, in its centuries of absolute kings and unquestioning subjects, presents us a most melancholy picture of the degradation of man, and of the disheartening prolongation of the infancy of society. Nature had given Charles but an hereditary monarch's portion of brains, and that portion had not been strengthened or developed by education or exercise of any sort. Passions he had not; he never rose to the dignity of passion; but his appetites were strong, and they impelled him, unresisted, to every species of indulgence. His excesses brought on fits of madness, which exposed his kingdom to the rivalship and misrule of the princes of the blood. Fortunately for the subsequent integrity of France, these men were marked by the general, and, as it would seem, constitutional weakness of transmitted royalty; and were besides too much addicted to pleasure, to