"I can scarcely believe this to be reality," returned the prisoner. "Surely it must be some deceptive conjuration of the brain."

"I told you once," added Grace, and there was a tone of almost reproach in her voice and manner-"I told you once," repeated she, "that I would love you, as I then did, in youth and in age, in health and in sickness, in riches and in poverty, in joy and in sorrow -are you surprised at the fulfilment of my promise ?"

"If I were to say no," replied he, "I should be guilty of a falsehood, Grace. I am surprised," and as he said so he tried to twine his manacled hand round the taper waist of the blushing girl, and to press her to his breast.

"And now," she rejoined, gently repressing him, "I must away. The broad daylight is coming fast, and I must gain the vicarage before many more eyes are open."

"When will you come again ?" anxiously inquired.

he

"Not one morning from this, while you are here," replied Grace, "but that you will find me a visitor at the same hour."

"God bless you, dearest," he returned, pressing a kiss upon her lips, and in a moment afterwards Grace's light footstep ceased to fall upon his listening ear.

CHAPTER XI.

"The weary sun hath made a golden set,
And, by the bright track of his fiery car,
Gives token of a goodly day to-morrow."

THE wearied had ceased to work, and yet had not retired to rest. It was evening-a cool, refreshing summer's evening. On the greensward a troop of wild, laughing, whooping lads ran and wrestled, and struck the swift cricket-ball whizzing through the air. Not far off, too, on an old farm gate, some children of a smaller growth were singing and hallooing until their o'er-stretched lungs seemed ready to crack. Reclining with folded arms and bended knees, the tired labourer rested against the post of his cottage door, and looked on with a smiling lip and approving

eye, while the good woman rocked on the threshold a ruddy-cheeked slumbering infant, to some old tune she was crooning to herself. The village alehouse, too, had its votaries. There, under an old, grim-looking, stunted elm, whose foliage looked dark and even blackened with the smoke so constantly sent curling among its branches, sat "a right merrie companie," with foaming jugs of bright brown ale, and making the welkin ring with the hearty roar.

Ha,

By the saints! it does one's inmost souladmitting that we entertain such a lodgergood to join in a burst of that noisy merriment. How it lifts the lazy blood! ha, ha!—that is the music for one who lives to love glad, jocund life! Ha, ha, ha!-who could frown to hear that rise from the heart and rattle from the throat? Ha, ha, ha!one laugh against a million tears shall sink the beam. Faugh! thou cramp-brained, stingy purse-drawer-thou niggard, denying

thyself the feast to join which never shall be thy chance or hope again! What will the close of life's day be to thee? The sinking of a pebble in the stream wherein not the mark of even a broken bubble shall remain. Where will then be thy plots and schemes, thy deep-resolved plans and projects? All will have passed with thy breath, and not so much as even the dull smear of a finger left to trace the track of thy being.

And there, at the roaring, blazing, hissing forge stood the blacksmith, with the sleeves of his shirt upturned and the collar unbuttoned, reeking and steaming over his work. A cozy lounge is that self-same blacksmith's shop for the idling gossip. There he stands or rests against the most inviting post, nook, or corner, and listens with greedy ears to the prevailing scandal and flying reports of the neighbourhood. That neighbourhood, by the way, is his world. He looks