"What's that?" exclaimed Mr. Ketchum, sitting bolt upright in his chair and staring at her with a fierce frown, his whole body galvanized into immediate interest. "What's that you are saying?" he repeated curtly.

Mrs. Vane trembled inwardly at the change in his manner, but went boldly on: "I am asking what your intentions are with respect to my daughter, Miss Vane," she said, putting the case more formally. "You cannot be blind to the fact that from the very first you have gone out of your way in every place and company where you have met us to shower upon her the most pronounced and compromising attentions. You have singled her out repeatedly; you know that you have, perfectly well. It is useless to deny it. And I have a right to ask whether, after coming here day after day for weeks, and sending my child books and flowers and music and boxes upon boxes of sweets, and dancing with her in public five times in succession, you mean to go away from here without making her a proposition of marriage?"

Her temper had risen; gone were her mellifluous accents, and her voice was as sharp and rasping as a fishwife's as she turned and glared at poor Mr. Ketchum, who, instead of attempting to answer any of the charges on which he was arraigned at the maternal bar, only sank back in his chair, and exclaimed, "Well! If this don't beat the Jews!" He was so completely taken aback that he was positively speechless for several minutes, and returned Mrs. Vane's stare with interest. Then, to that lady's intense astonishment, he suddenly burst into a roar of laughter, and, getting up from his seat, walked rapidly up and down the room, shaking his head from side to side, waving his long arms about, and exclaiming, "This beats everything! This gets me, and no mistake!"

When the paroxysm of laughter had spent itself, he resumed his seat without apology and turned a quizzical face and a pair of twinkling eyes upon Mrs. Vane, who had spent the interval in bouncing about on the sofa in a state of fury.

"Is it, has it been your intention all along to compromise my daughter by engaging in a meaningless and contemptible flirtation?" she jerked out.

"Not if the court knows itself," he replied coolly. "But, if it comes to that, I should say that you are doing a great deal more to compromise her than I have done. What have I done, by the bye? I should say that, on a rough estimate, I had paid

five hundred girls as much attention in my time, and nobody ever thought anything of it."

This was a direct realization of Mrs. Vane's worst fears and suspicions, and she broke out upon him: "That sort of thing may be customary in America, Mr. Ketchum, where I have heard that the relations between the sexes are of a most extraordinary character; but let me tell you that it will not do in respectable English families. You have done my daughter a great wrong. You have blighted her future and kept off other

men."

A fresh twinkle lit up Mr. Ketchum's eye at the idea of his being supposed to have frightened off a hundred or two of Miss Vane's suitors, when that guileless child had already told him that he was the only man who, as she put it, "had ever been at all—well, you know, nice to me," or whom she had known intimately.

"I don't want to crowd the mourners," said he. "If she wants any fellow to take my place, I'm ready to take a back seat. I'll ask her about that."

"You shall do nothing of the sort," snapped mamma.

"I have a good deal to say to her about that and several other little matters," rejoined he, calmly.

And she, seeing that the battle was going against her, had recourse to the last refuge and safety valve of the sex, and burst into tears. She loved Mabel, and was really distressed and upset by the result of her interference. She dared not let the child know what she had done, feeling instinctively that it would be regarded as unpardonable. "Don't tell her," she whimpered. "She would never forgive me. And I thought I was acting for the best."

This speech not only changed the whole current of his feelings toward her, for he saw in it a genuine expression of maternal affection and solicitude, but it brought the delightful assurance that Mabel knew nothing about her mother's little plan for bringing him to book. "Now, look here! You stop crying," he said in his usual friendly tones. "I love your daughter, and I mean to ask her to be my wife. I'm a rough fellow, and I ain't fit for such a dainty, pretty piece of goods as that; but I made up my mind to it the first time I ever set eyes on her sweet face. But you oughtn't to have tried to hurry up the corpse as you have done. It may be the custom over here, but it ain't a pretty one, to my thinkin'. A man

ought to be ready to go down on his knees before a woman like that, and it hurts him to think of her being speculated with. If I thought Miss Mabel had a hand in this, I'd take the next steamer. But I know she hasn't. It would never come into her innocent mind. She'd never do anything she oughtn't to. She's the sweetest woman that ever trod shoe leather." He spoke very gently, and made little pauses after each sentence, while Mrs. Vane cried copiously in her corner. "You haven't got anything to fear from me. I want to do what's right and square," he went on presently. "I'll ask her this very day, if Lord! I wish I'd been a better man!"

you say so.

At this Mrs. Vane took her hands down suddenly from her face, and, with a real burst of womanly feeling, grasped his hand and shook it warmly, half crying all the while. "You are a good man, Mr. Ketchum! You have made me ashamed of myself. If Mabel will marry you, I shall be glad and proud to have such a son!" she cried.

BALLADE OF THE MYSTERIOUS HOSTS OF THE FOREST.1

BY THÉODORE DE BANVILLE.

(Translated by Andrew Lang.)

[THEODORE FAULLAIN DE BANVILLE, French novelist and poet, was born at Moulins, March 14, 1823; died at Paris, March 13, 1891. He was the son of a naval officer; became a Parisian man of letters. His best-known works were the volumes of poetry, "The Caryatides" (1842), "The Stalactites" (1846), "Odes Funambulesques" (1857), "New Odes Funambulesques" (1868), "Russian Idyls" (1872), and "Thirty-six Merry Ballads" (1873). He wrote also prose tales and sketches; as, “The Poor Mountebanks" (1853), “The Parisians of Paris" (1866), “Tales for Women" (1881), and "The Soul of Paris" (1890). He published his autobiography, "My Recollections," in 1882.]

STILL Sing the mocking fairies, as of old,
Beneath the shade of thorn and holly tree;
The west wind breathes upon them pure
and cold,
And still wolves dread Diana roving free,
In secret woodland with her company.
"Tis thought the peasants' hovels know her rite
When now the wolds are bathed in silver light,

And first the moonrise breaks the dusky gray;

1 From "Essays in Little." By permission of Mr. Andrew Lang and Longmans, Green & Co. (Cr. 8vo. Price 2s. 6d.)

Then down the dells, with blown soft hair and bright,
And through the dim wood Dian thrids her way.
With waterweeds twined in their locks of gold
The strange cold forest fairies dance in glee;
Sylphs overtimorous and overbold

Haunt the dark hollows where the dwarf may be,
The wild red dwarf, the nixies' enemy;
Then, 'mid their mirth, and laughter, and affright,
The sudden goddess enters, tall and white,

With one long sigh for summers passed away;
The swift feet tear the ivy nets outright,

And through the dim wood Dian thrids her way.

She gleans her sylvan trophies; down the wold
She hears the sobbing of the stags that flee,
Mixed with the music of the hunting rolled,
But her delight is all in archery,

And naught of ruth and pity wotteth she
More than the hounds that follow on the flight;
The tall nymph draws a golden bow of might,

And thick she rains the gentle shafts that slay,
She tosses loose her locks upon the night,

And Dian through the dim wood thrids her way.

ENVOI.

Prince, let us leave the din, the dust, the spite,
The gloom and glare of towns, the plague, the blight;
Amid the forest leaves and fountain spray

There is the mystic home of our delight,

And through the dim wood Dian thrids her way.

TO THE LOST CHILDREN.'

BY THÉODORE DE BANVILLE.

(Translated by Andrew Lang.)

I KNOW Cythera long is desolate;

I know the winds have stripped the garden green.
Alas, my friends! beneath the fierce sun's weight

A barren reef lies where Love's flowers have been,
Nor ever lover on that coast is seen!

So be it, for we seek a fabled shore,

To lull our vague desires with mystic lore,

To wander where Love's labyrinths beguile;

1 From "Essays in Little." By permission of Mr. Andrew Lang and Longmans, Green & Co. (Cr. 8vo. Price 2s. 6d.)

There let us land, there dream for evermore;
"It may be we shall touch the happy isle.”
The sea may be our sepulcher. If Fate,

If tempests wreak their wrath on us, serene
We watch the bolt of Heaven, and scorn the hate
Of angry gods that smite us in their spleen.
Perchance the jealous mists are but the screen
That veils the fairy coast we would explore.
Come, though the sea be vexed, and breakers roar,
Come, for the breath of this old world is vile,
Haste we, and toil, and faint not at the oar;

"It may be we shall touch the happy isle."

Gray serpents trail in temples desecrate

Where Cypris smiled, the golden maid, the queen,
And ruined is the palace of our state;

But happy loves flit round the mast, and keen
The shrill wind sings the silken cords between.

Heroes are we, with wearied hearts and sore,
Whose flower is faded and whose locks are hoar.

Haste, ye light skiffs, where myrtle thickets smile;

Love's panthers sleep 'mid roses, as of yore:

"It may be we shall touch the happy isle."

ENVOI.

Sad eyes! the blue sea laughs, as heretofore.
Ah, singing birds, your happy music pour;

Ah, poets, leave the sordid earth awhile;
Flit to these ancient gods we still adore:

"It may be we shall touch the happy isle."

LAST TIME AT MGURK'S.1

BY JANE BARLOW.

(From "Bogland Studies.")

[JANE BARLOW, Irish novelist, was born in County Dublin about 1857, daughter of a professor in Dublin University. She has published: "Irish Idyls" (1892), "Bogland Studies" (1892), "Kerrigan's Quality" (1893), "The Mockers of the Shallow Waters" (1893), "Strangers at Liscounel " (1895)].

IN throth I've no call to be laid on the shelf yet, as ould as I be: There's Thady O'Neill up above, that's a year or so senior to me,

1 By permission of Hodder & Stoughton. (Cr. 8vo. Price 6s.)