intentness, as of belief, upon unrealities, has a confusing and deadening effect in regard to the actual, which might easily become morally and spiritually injurious. I am seeing a house in flames, or a sunset over the sea, or inventing soft speeches for two lovers in a leafy dell, and when my cousin says, 'Please, Miriam, will you pass me the scissors?' I look up with vague, doubting eyes, on the cozy room and work-littered table, hardly knowing where I am, and hand her the needle-case instead. Some one tells me a neighbour is ill; I hear and understand; but the mind returns so quickly, and with such absorption to the interrupted train of ideas, that the impression is faint, and when, a week after, I am told that Mrs. Smith is dead, I am shocked at my unneighbourly indifference; that she was ill had passed as completely from my mind in the interval as if the fact had never been communicated to me at all. A disused garment that might be giving comfort to some one hangs in my wardrobe, weeks after the cold has set in; a friend, expecting a letter of congratulation or of condolence, is left expecting it still, all because the unreal has become real, and I am engaged with these fancied wants, and woes, and joys.

"But sometimes there is quite a different condition of things; the illusion suddenly vanishes, the places are not real places, the people are not real people, the events never happened, it is all a vapid makebelieve, and if our numerous readers' choose to wade through all this, very stupid readers they must be! Then there is no nervous excitement, no heart-palpitations, no staying awake at night because of undue brain activity; only a sense of weariness and drudgery, of vanity and vexation of spirit, a despondency as to success. Interruptions even more constant and harassing than usual will sometimes bring about this disillusion; and yet more surely any reality which comes near enough strongly to affect the feelings. Mrs. Smith's illness is forgotten in the story; but the long sickness of a friend, near and dear, is drawing to a close, and writing seems an impossibility. The sick room, the worn, pained face, the few words prized as possibly the last; these are realities, for the moment the chief realities in the whole world, present night and day. To tear the mind thence, and force it into contact with such empty, contemptible shams, is a thing unreasonable and repulsive; it cannot be done.

"You will gather that in the first month of this year little was accomplished.

"Five sheets! all filled with these 'Confessions of a Storywriter!' I have had repeated experience of your kind interest in all that concerns me, or I should hardly have trespassed on your patience so; I am almost ashamed as it is.

"I had intended telling you what books I have been reading

lately; and, indeed, I must speak of just one, it has interested me so greatly in many ways, although it is very painful-the Autobiography and Diary of Benjamin Hayden,' edited by Tom Taylor. I had commenced it when the bank failure occurred, but sent it back to the library; it was quite too depressing to be read then; but now I have gone on to the lamentable end. One reads with a strange mixture of sympathy, impatience, reprobation, and admiration; and I am sorely perplexed in what degree his indestructible belief in his own transcendent genius was or was not founded upon fact. I wish that I could see for myself one of his great pictures. Not, of course, that I make the smallest pretension to connoisseurship; but I believe strongly in the right of private judgment' in matters of art: in a value both in painting and poetry, relative, subjective, rather than objective, absolute.

"But whether poor Hayden, with his half-blind eyes, could or could not paint surpassingly well, he could write with vividness and power. Witness this sentence upon which, taking up the book, I have lighted: Resting a moment makes me start up as if I heard Time's eternal waterfall tumbling into the gulf below. I bestir myself into action, and get rid of the roar.' And here is a saying coming strangely from his lips, proving once again how much easier it is to give wise maxims than to act upon them: The safest principle through life, instead of reforming others, is to set about perfecting yourself.'

"Now, dear Agnes, this unreasonably long and egotistic letter shall come to a close. My aunt and cousin send their love, and with much, very much, from myself, I am ever yours,

"MIRIAM ELLIS."

The last line had been closely written, and the name was crushed into a small space in the corner of the quite-filled page. Room had, however, just been found to add "P. T. Over," and on the other side of the leaf appeared a postscript:-" P.S.-This letter was finished last night, but was not posted. This morning I received a letter from my cousin, Mr. Morland, who is spending his holiday in Oxford. I have been debating with myself all day whether I had better, or had better not, mention something which his letter contains. My cousin, in describing what he has seen in the city, incidentally mentions a gentleman he has met in the streets and libraries, of remarkable appearance, tall and dignified, possessing considerable means, and devoting himself to literary pursuits; but who has been for many years afflicted with blindness. Would you, dear Agnes, like me to inquire the name ?"

Before the morning was far advanced, a brief note was dropped by Agnes Braden's own hand into the letter-box placed i he

churchyard wall, and as quickly as the making of the inquiry allowed, a reply was returned, briefer still:

"DEAREST AGNES,-The name is Michael Wolfendale. Ever lovingly yours,

CHAPTER VI.-IN OXFORD.

"MIRIAM."

Matthew Morland's holiday was over. He was again hard at work through the day in his schoolroom, and in the evenings giving more advanced instruction to his pupil-teachers, and with registers, lists, forms, statistical tables ;-ingenious devices in their elaborateness and multiplication, so Matthew sometimes thought, for yet more completely cramping, stiffening, and deadening the unfortunate public schoolmaster, and degrading him from an educator into a teaching machine. But he felt elevated, strengthened, refreshed, and knew that he should teach "the three R's" none the worse, and perform the wider work of his calling all the better by reason of all the new impressions received; because, a first standard "reader" in hand, there came a momentary vision of the treasures of the Bodleian or of All Souls; walking down the room, desks on either hand, of the grand sweep of the High Street; or amid the sudden silence when he struck the school bell, a memory of the cooing of the wood pigeons, or the whispering of the leaves in the water-walks of Magdalen.

While Morland was thus taking up again in dull Netherbridge the burden of his anxious toil, Agnes Braden was occupying the pleasant rooms which a few days before had been his; and was yet oftener sitting where he had sate, beside one or other of the curtained windows, looking down upon the High Street.

And this was how it had come to pass.

Often during the long hopeless silence Agnes had said to herself that if she could but cnce hear of that lost friend of her youth, could just know whether he were living still, then she could be at rest. But when, through Miriam, such tidings and somewhat more had reached her, the rest had not come. Instead of that, a tumult of feelings had been reawakened; the almost wild grief because of the terribleness of the deprivation suffered for her sake, the old yearning to be allowed to render service and solace, the regretful anger against herself, that this lot, which she now felt to be the most enviable in the world, she had once wilfully cast away from her. And, at length, when the restless agitation subsided, there arose an intense longing, into which all other feelings seemed to have concentrated their force-the desire to see him, to look on his face once more.

Such a wish had often sprung up in the past, but had been of necessity repressed because of the impossibility of its fulfilment; now that its accomplishment was no longer impossible, it reasserted itself with the steady, strong persistency of a want, a necessity, which might not be gainsaid or resisted.

And Agnes yielded. When Annie had left for her long visit, it had been with the understanding that her aunt (for so she called her adoptive mother) should herself leave home for a portion of the time she was absent, though whither she should go had not been exactly determined. Annie would be a little surprised when she learned that it was not on a visit to any friend, but to a place where she knew no one her Aunt had gone; yet Oxford was a city which any one of intelligence and taste might well desire to see; so probably no great curiosity or wonder would be occasioned.

From Miss Ellis she obtained the address of her cousin's lodgings, for to her she made full confession; and Miriam sent the requested information, wondering a little at these new revelations of her friend's inner life, which were considerably at variance with previous experience and impressions. She almost wished that she had withheld the mention of Mr. Wolfendale as still living, and resident in Oxford, and had not thus risked disturbing anew the tranquillity which had been partially regained after so much agitation and sorrow. Yet another thought came. If Michael's love had been as constant as that of Agnes, might not chance or friendly intervention bring to pass a meeting, and these long divided lives flow on together after all? And then the idea arose, that if all this had been heard by accident and of strangers, not told her in confidence and concerning a friend, it might, perhaps, have served for the plot of a story! And she realised again as she had not seldom before-especially in those first days when she feared that authorship alone might stand between herself and actual need—how possible it would be for a writer of fiction to fall into the habit of regarding human joys, griefs, failures, successes, heroisms, and follies, in the business-like aspect of so much raw material for the manufacture of novelettes.

It was not on a day of exceptional pleasantness that Miss Braden travelled towards Oxford, and when from the window of the railway carriage she first caught sight of its domes, towers, and spires, they stood blankly under a leaden sky, which brightened only a little as the cab carried her through the New Road and Queen Street on to Carfax, and along the High Street, past All Saints' Church and St. Mary's, past All Souls' College and University, and Queen's, to her final destination.

The journey had been made long by several changes as well as by the preliminary drive to Norbury, and Agnes was wearied and

felt no inclination to take a solitary walk that evening. So she drew her chair to a window and looked out, as Morland had done on the first afternoon of his arrival.

But the same outward action, in the same place, and under circumstances apparently so similar, could not easily have been performed with feelings more entirely unlike. "This is the High Street of Oxford;" that was Matthew's thought, as enjoying a sense of holiday unrestraint, of having broken away from daily habitudes, he scanned with a general observant interest everything passing by. "This is the city where Michael dwells" was for Agnes the sole idea while, with an unresting eagerness into which seemed concentrated the wistful longing of years, she watched and watched for one form, and for one only. After this long separation, complete as of death, it seemed wonderful-a strange, fascinating dream—that she should be so near to him that at any moment, just below on that very pavement upon which her gaze rested now, he himself might pass, and her eyes should behold him once again.

The hope, the mere possibility, seemed so much that when the daylight had faded she continued the watch unwearyingly by the dimmer light of the gas, until she was roused by the deep burr of the great bell of Christ Church ringing its long curfew. Then she rose, drew down the blind, raised the lamp, which, when brought in, she had lowered, and rang for supper. It was brought by a young girl, the sister of the lad who had waited on Morland, with a sweet face and gentle manners; and Agnes, who felt a little sense of loneliness creeping over her, was glad that her attendant was one with whom occasional conversation could not be otherwise than a pleasure.

In the days of restless wandering which had followed the loss of her parents, she had more than once found herself in a strange place, wholly among strangers; but of late years her journeys had, for the most part, found ending in the home of some friend; and when at any time it had been otherwise, she had not been companionless, Annie being with her. It was natural, she said to herself, that she should feel just a little solitary. But when she had retired for the night, and the sound of voices had presently ceased in the house, and, the night being cloudy, almost total darkness shrouded the room, the feeling of loneliness grew and grew until it became oppressive.

How still it all was! She had thought some church bell within hearing would have tolled out the hour, or some clock in the wide house have struck, letting her know how the night was progressing. At home, if she lay awake, she could always hear the church clock, and the silver chime of the timepiece over the drawing-room