"Who is it?" I asked, pressing forward; and lifting the cloth they had flung over his face, I saw Sandy the Tinker!

"He had been fou' coming home, I tak' it," remarked one who stood by, "puir Sandy, and gaed over the cliff afore he could save himsel'. We found him just on this side of the Witches' Caldron, where there's a bonny strip of green turf, and his cuddy was feeding on the hill-top with the bit cart behind her.""

'Yes, I think so,' said the minister. • If you like to go round by Dendeldy to-morrow, my son, who now occupies the manse, would show you the scene of the occur

rence.

The next day we all stood looking at the 'bonny strip of green, at the frowning cliffs, and at the Deldy, swollen by recent rains, rushing on its way.

The youngest of the party went up to the rock, and knocked upon it loudly with his cane.

'O, don't do that, pray! cried both the ladies nervously; the spirit of the weird story still brooded over us.

'What do you think of the coincidence, Jack?' I inquired of my friend, as we walked apart from the others.

'Ask me when we get back to Fleet-street,' he answered.

I..

FRANK MORLEY, a young man of six and twenty, was one of the heads of a great old firm of claret merchants, for more than a hundred years established in London and Bordeaux. His father had sent him to France to learn his business when he was quite a lad, in consequence of which his manners were excellent; and he spoke like a Frenchman, with a slight accent of the South, hardly strong enough to mark him as provincial. For the last three years, since his father's death, he had lived at Bordeaux and managed that end of the business entirely, his partners, who were oldish men, living in London.

Frank was clever, steady, hardworking, and thoroughly awake to his own interests. He meant to be a very rich man, to retire at forty, and not to marry till then. In spite of living abroad so much, he was unmistakably English, both in looks and ways; but this did not prove a hindrance to his popularity among the French. He was well known at Bordeaux, and a great favourite there, admired for his liberality, his physical strength, his fearless openness of speech and manner. He never suspected, probably, that some of his young French friends laughed at him, and called him jeering names behind his back-the only real satisfaction they could have, poor fellows, in their intercourse with such a provoking mass of advantages.

But Frank had one friend who really cared for him, though he borrowed money from him like the others. It was a true mutual liking that had drawn them together— the jolly, auburn-haired Frank Morley, and the black, sallow, melancholy Albert de Saint-Flor. Albert was as loyal to his friend Frank as to Henri Cinq himself. He knew all Frank's plans, and admired them. The idea of putting off one's marriage till one was forty met with his special approval after he had sounded Frank on the possibility of a marriage with his own only sister. This, it seemed, was far too high an honour for Frank to aspire to. It was necessary that he should marry an Englishwoman-of his own rank in life, he modestly added, being quite aware that the Saint-Flor family would look upon him as a mere bourgeois. Also he knew in his own mind that Mademoiselle de Saint-Flor was no longer younghow old he did not know; but older than her brother, who was five-and-twenty-and Albert had several times assured him, thinking it probably a recommendation, that they were the image of each other. He spoke so positively, and yet with such good-humoured compliments, that Albert saw the idea was a hopeless one. But he did not swerve from his friendship with the obstinate Morley.

In the month of December 1879, early in that long painful winter, Frank chose to go to Paris on business, and Albert eagerly con

sented to go with him. They started on a snowy day; and while they were yet some way south of Tours, at about five in the afternoon, the earth being wrapped in snow and the sky black and heavy with more, their train ran into a deep drift on the line, and it was soon too clear to the passengers that many hours of the night, at least, would be spent where they were. After the first shock, most of them bore this prospect with the resignation of French people. But the one Englishman in the train, hanging himself out of the carriage window, shouted to the nearest official, who answered by begging monsieur to sit down and be patient.

'Patient be hanged! said Frank, or something equivalent in French. 'I am not going to sit here and be frozen, or stifled, which is more likely. Look here, what do you call the nearest station?'

'Maupas shouted the official from the distance, as he plunged through the snow.

Maupas! Why, Saint - Flor, that's your place!' said Frank quite angrily to his friend, who jumped up in a state of tremendous excitement.

He had thought they must be at least eight leagues short of Maupas. But even now they were some distance from the château, which lay a mile beyond the station. Nothing would give him greater delight than to introduce his dear friend there, but it seemed to him a simple impossibility.

'A simple necessity,' said Frank, laughing. Look at it in that light, and come along.'

Albert shrugged his shoulders, but his eyes shone with proud pleasure at the daring of his friend.

'My dear,' he said, 'I am ready to follow you to the world's end.'

'As the door won't open, we

will begin by getting out of the window,' said Frank. 'The best way at first will be along the roofs of the carriages.'

'Go, go on. I follow you, mon brave!'

:

An hour or two later these weary travellers stumbled up to the great iron-studded door of the Château de Maupas. Albert had lost his way once or twice, but at last the glimmer from the snow showed him the dark line of firs through which a rough narrow road approached the house. He was melancholy this unexpected coming home did not seem to give him any pleasure. Frank, who knew that the Saint-Flors were poor and old-fashioned, did not himself expect a very hearty welcome, either from monsieur, madame, or mademoiselle. About that, however, he cared very little. All he wanted was supper and a bed, flattering himself that he would get on to Paris the next day.

A shabby man-servant received their wet greatcoats in the hall, which was high and large, and dimly lighted by a hanging lantern.

'Get my room ready, François, and one for monsieur, do you hear?' said Albert. 'What time is it? Have they finished dinner?'

'I was taking in the bouilli,' answered François sepulchrally.

'Good; then we are in time. I have the appetite of a wolf-and you, Morley?

' And I too,' said Frank. But, my dear fellow, we can't dine in these boots.'

'No, no, come along to my room.'

They were certainly a pair of disreputable objects, covered with snow, which was melting slowly on their hair, their moustaches, in fact, all over them. There were pools of water where they stood on the stone floor of the hall. Sud

denly a bell rang sharply in some distant room.

'It is Monsieur le Baron for the bouilli,' muttered François, and he shuffled off.

'Let us make haste,' said Albert; and he was leading the way upstairs, having just reached the first step, when a lady's voice made Frank start violently. It sounded so sweet and strange in the desolate gloomy old house, where there seemed to be no welcome and no warmth.

'Do I hear Albert's voice?' said the lady.

She had suddenly appeared in a low-arched doorway, which framed her in like a picture. Frank, who was the nearest, made her a low bow. She curtsied with extreme politeness; but Frank was sure that there was the faintest quiver of amusement about her mouth, and felt miserably conscious of being an absurd object. It was a new thing for him not to be quite satisfied with his own appearance.

'Ah, there you are, ma belle!' exclaimed Albert, and he marched up to the lady. 'I dare not even allow myself to kiss your hand. May I present my friend, Monsieur Morley, to my sister, Mademoiselle de Saint-Flor?'

'I am charmed to see you, monsieur,' said the lady, smiling on Frank with a grave sweetness which reassured him. 'But how did you bring yourself and your friend into this sad plight, my poor brother? Tell me, then-you have walked in this frightful weather all the way from Bordeaux ?'

'No, indeed; only from the railway. But I will explain presently,' said Albert. 'Excuse us a moment, dearest. Beg my father and mother to pardon this sudden intrusion, and to give us something to eat.'

'But certainly, poor travellers! Make haste, then. Ah, let me

see-I will send old Marie to you with dry clothes.'

Albert tore up-stairs, followed by his friend, whose brain was in a strange commotion. Twenty railway accidents would have been less exciting than this encounter with Mademoiselle de Saint-Flor, whose pitying glance and smile, half pensive, half amused, seemed a revelation of something so completely new and charming. He thought he had never seen so picturesque a figure. She was rather tall, and very thin; pale, in fact completely colourless; but there was nothing painful or unhealthy in the look of her creamy skin. It was simply beautiful. Her face was delicate, full of expression, and very French. Her hair was almost black. She was dressed in a thick, soft, white stuff, with black ribbons; the only colour she had was in her eyes, which were those truly violet eyes possessed by one woman in a million.

to

As he hastily prepared himself appear before this angel at dinner, Frank shouted to Albert, who was in an adjoining room with the door open,

'I thought you told me that you and mademoiselle your sister were like each other?'

'My dear friend, our features are precisely the same.'

'Then you are a much handsomer fellow than I took you for,' said Frank, half to himself, but Albert was listening.

'Aha, you are always so droll! You find her handsome, then, my sister?'

'She is perfectly beautiful,' said Frank, in a lower voice still.

There was a suppressed irritation about the tone of these remarks which gave Albert a certain malicious pleasure. He laughed to himself as he stood before the chimney-glass brushing up his black hair.