alone. So, after a few moments, I told her I was going away, and would come back, to bring her some tea and sugar, and some things to make her comfortable. She still looked unreconciled to me. I went hurriedly.

The snow had ceased falling, and the sky was not so dark. I went to the nearest neighbor, and got a horse and wagon, and a man to drive me. Then I went to the village doctor, and to a magistrate. I explained what I had discovered. They were alert and interested, and in a very short time we were all at the door of the poor creature's hovel. She was angry and stubborn when she saw the men; she thought they had come to take her to the poorhouse, which was the object of her greatest dread. Not a word could be got from her. She turned over with her face to the wall, and clutched the bed, as if to resist being dragged off from it.

"Now, look here, Ann," said the doctor, sitting down beside her, "we've gone through all this before. I made up my mind, last winter, I wouldn't send you to the county house, no matter who said that you ought to go. I've come to give you medicine and to help you to get round again, so as to take care of yourself. This lady here promises to pay for taking care of you while you're sick. Nobody wants to take you away from this house, while there's anybody'll take care of you in it, that's sure."

Ann's only answer was to turn her head and give a threatening look at the magistrate, who stood behind him. It was difficult to re-assure her about him, though happily she did not know his office. We all sat down, after the magistrate had brought in a few armfuls of wood for her, to show his good will, and the doctor dexterously began his cross-examination. I don't know

how, exactly, he managed it, but the results were all we could have asked. Of course, the testimony of an insane woman would have been worth nothing in a court of law; but, thank Heaven, we were done with courts of law, and poor Ann's only tribunal would be a higher one, and it seemed to me that it was very

near.

She evidently was distressed and uncomfortable about the murder, but it was not at all upon her conscience. The detaining of the toy from me was a much more serious matter in her eyes, as approaching to the recognized sin of theft. She defended herself warmly, and affirmed she hadn't known I wanted it. That led her to speak freely of the children, and of her taking it out of Baby's arms. She remembered the night, s stillness and darkness, and the time the train went out, and when Matilda went up-stairs to bed, while she looked in the window. It was all confused and rambling, but there was enough to satisfy any mind that was capable of judging, even without the proof that I had found hidden in the trunk up-stairs. She had no power to give her motive; no power to uistinguish between right and wrong; she seemed to have no remorse for what she had done; a dumb instinct of fear and apprehension had led her to keep out of the way while search was being made, and to resist us now when we probed incautiously.

It was a strange study, that shattered mind. We sat beside her for an hour or more. The magis trate, withdrawing himself from sight a little, wrote down every word she said. At last the doctor and he went away, leaving me to care for her till some one else should come. Before night, the power to give

even the poor, fragmentary story we had got from her was gone. Delirium and fever came, and the clouds

closed in forever round the broken mind and heart.

She only lived two days more. I staid with her until the last. When I soothed and bathed and held in mine the poor hands that had dealt me such a mortal hurt, I thanked God hat He had given me the chance to do it. I prayed Him to forgive her for even her unwitting sin; I loosed the bands that, perhaps, only the sinned against can loose. As I knelt beside her in the dark, dreary hovel, with the night wind roaring outside, and the fire burning low within, her moans grew fainter, her breathing softened; "me foine ghirl --me foine ghirl," she murmured, "it's all roight wi' me, it's all roight."

The hand in mine relaxed; her head fell back. I knew it was all right with her at last, poor soul!

These incidents made a great sensation in South Berwick. There had been no doubt of Macnally's guilt before. It came like an awful revelation to them, the nearness they had been in to the shedding of innocent blood. They accepted the facts simply, and honestly acknowledged their mistake. My one desire now was to get this news to the ears of Macnally, if he should be living still. To that end I did everything that lay in my power to give it publicity. But it was little use fanning the flame. It was a burned-out sensation. The local papers, of course, gave it great prominence. But the larger journals, which were the only ones that would convey it far enough to reach him, contented themselves with an insignificant paragraph or two, which might most easily be overlooked. I put advertise

ments in the papers, English and Irish, but they never met any eye for which they were intended.

ness.

Of course, at the very first moment, I wrote the Emlyns Several weeks passed, and no word came. At last, I wrote directly to their banker in Paris; in a few more weeks came an answer, inclosing my letter to Mrs. Emlyn, and a very civil note from a clerk, telling me the news which I must have missed during my week at South Berwick, where I saw no papers. Mrs. Emlyn had died at Naples, after a very short illColonel Emlyn's condition of mind, wrote the civil clerk, rendered him unable to receive or answer letters. The young lady and gentleman who had been under their charge had sailed for New Orleans some weeks before. He was unable to give me their address. The door was shut in my face, in fact. I wrote again, asking that the New Orleans address might be found for me, if possible. But no answer ever came. Probably the civil clerk had left the office. I wrote letters to Naomi and to Ned. But New Orleans is a big place, and Naomi and Ned were small people. It was no wonder that they never got them, with that very general superscription.

My heart was sore with this reopening of past wounds and coming of new ones. The desolation that had swept over all that happy summer was complete. My good friends; how many tears I shed for the one in her foreign grave; the other, in his no less dire oblivion. The two children of their love, set adrift upon the world at an age so tender; how hopeless and dark the mystery looked;

"If thou wert all, and naught beyond, oh, earth!”

TWO

CHAPTER XXV.

THE EASTERN MOON.

“The pure calm hope be thine,

Which brightens like the eastern moon,

As day's wild lights decline."

Keble.

WO or three years after this, I can't exactly remember when it happened, a great piece of good fortune befell Sophia. Some distant relative left her what was quite a grand fortune for a person in her walk of life. She received the news characteristically. It was quite unexpected, but she bore herself with great equanimity; in fact, towards me, in almost utter silence. After the first glow of satisfaction, a gloom settled on her. I think it seemed to her " on the uprooted flower, the genial rain." What might it not have been, if it had come earlier, and when there was some object in making our lives happy.

After a few days, she came to me, and I saw she had been bracing herself up to the necessary discussion of plans.

"Well, Sophia," I said, with something between a smile and a sigh, "I suppose I am now to take care of myself. You have done it for me a good while. I am not unreasonable enough to feel hurt. You must tell me just what you mean to do, and I am not going to make the least objection."