"How delightful it is!" said Anne, | girl, lightly. But there was a moisture aloud. "Yes, it is delightful," said some one below, replying to the girl's sentence. It was Rast, who had come across the plateau unseen, and was now standing on the old bastion of the fort beneath her. Anne smiled; then turned as if to descend. "Wait; I am coming up," said Rast. "But it is time to go home." (6 Apparently it was not time until I came," said the youth, swinging himself up without the aid of the ladder, and standing by her side. "What are you looking at? Those steamers ?" "Yes, and the spring, and the air." "You can not see the air." I "But I can feel it; it is delicious. wonder, if we should go far away, Rast, and see tropical skies, slow rivers, great white lilies, and palms, whether they would seem more beautiful than this?" "Of course they would; and we are going some day. We are not intending to stay here on this island all our lives, I hope." "But it is our home, and I love it. I love this water and these woods, I love the flash of the light-houses, and the rushing sound the vessels make sweeping by at night under full sail, close in shore." in her eyes and a slight tremor in her Anne Douglas and Rast went through the fort grounds and down the hill path, instead of going around by the road. The fort ladies, sitting by their low windows, saw them, and commented. "That girl does not appreciate young Pronando," said Mrs. Cromer. "I doubt if she even sees his beauty." "Perhaps it is just as well that she does not," replied Mrs. Rankin, "for he must go away and live his life, of course; have his adventures." "Why not she also?" said Mrs. Bryden, smiling. "In the first place, she has no choice; she is tied down here. In the second, she is a good heavy sort of girl, without imagination or enthusiasm. Her idea of life is to marry, have meat three times a "The island is well enough in its way, but there are other places; and I, for one, mean to see the world," said young Pro-week, fish three times, lights out at ten nando, taking off his cap, throwing it up, and catching it like a ball. "Yes, you will see the world," answered Anne; "but I shall stay here. You must write and tell me all about it." "Of course," said Rast, sending the cap up twice as high, and catching it with unerring hand. Then he stopped his play, and said, suddenly, "Will you care very much when I am gone away ?" "Yes," said Anne; "I shall be very lonely." "But shall you care?" said the youth, insistently. "You have so little feeling, Annet; you are always cold." "I shall be colder still if we stay here any longer," said the girl, turning to descend. Rast followed her, and they crossed the plateau together. o'clock, and, by way of literature, Miss Edgeworth's novels and Macaulay's History of England.” And a very good idea," said Mrs. Bryden. Certainly, only one can not call that adventures.' "But even heavy girls, as you call them, come upon adventures sometimes," said Mrs. Cromer. "Yes, when they have beauty. Their beauty seems often to have an extraordinary power over the most poetical and imaginative men, too, strange as it may appear. But Anne Douglas has none of it." "How you all misunderstand her!" said a voice from the little dining-room opening into the parlor, its doorway "How much shall you care?" he re-screened by a curtain. peated. "You never say things out, Annet. You are like a stone." 'Ah, doctor, are you there?" said Mrs. Bryden. "We should not have said a Then throw me away," answered the word if we had known it." VOL. LXII.-No. 369.-26 "Yes, madam, I am here-with the colonel; but it is only this moment that I have lifted my head to listen to your conversation, and I remain filled with astonishment, as usual, at the obtuseness manifested by your sex regarding each other." 66 'Hear! hear!" said the colonel. 66 Anne Douglas," continued the chaplain, clearing his throat, and beginning in a high chanting voice, which they all knew well, having heard it declaiming on various subjects during long snow-bound winter evenings, "is a most unusual girl." "Oh, come in here, doctor, and take a seat; it will be hard work to say it all through that doorway," called Mrs. Bryden. "No, madam, I will not sit down," said the chaplain, appearing under the curtain, his brown wig awry, his finger impressively pointed. "I will simply say this, namely, that as to Anne Douglas, you are all mistaken.' "And who is to be the judge between us ?" “The future, madam." "Very well; we will leave it to the future, then," said Mrs. Bryden, skillfully evading the expected oration. "We may safely do that, madam-safely indeed; the only difficulty is that we may not live to see it." 66 'Oh, a woman's future is always near at hand, doctor. Besides, we are not so very old ourselves." "True, madam-happily true for all the eyes that rest upon you. Nevertheless, the other side, I opine, is likewise true, namely, that Anne Douglas is very young. "She is sixteen; and I myself am only twenty," said Mrs. Rankin. "With due respect, ladies, I must mention that not one of you was ever in her life so young as Anne Douglas at the present moment." "What in the world do you mean, doctor?" 66 What I say. I can see you all as children in my mind's eye," continued the chaplain, unflinchingly; "pretty, bright, precocious little creatures, finely finished, finely dressed, quick-witted, graceful, and bewitching. But at that age Anne Douglas was a-' Well, what?" "A promise." 66 'To be magnificently fulfilled in the future?" 66 That depends upon fate, madam; or rather circumstances." "For my part, I would rather be fulfilled, although not perhaps magnificently, than remain even the most glorious promise," said Mrs. Rankin, laughing. The fort ladies liked the old chaplain, and endured his long monologues by adding to them running accompaniments of their own. To bright society women there is nothing so unendurable as long arguments or dissertations on one subject. Whether from want of mental training, or from impatience of delay, they are unwilling to follow any one line of thought for more than a minute or two; they love to skim at random, to light and fly away again, to hover, to poise, and then dart upward into space like so many hummingbirds. Listen to a circle of them sitting chatting over their embroidery around the fire or on a piazza; no man, with a thoroughly masculine mind, can follow them in their mental dartings hither and thither. He has just brought his thoughts to bear upon a subject, and is collecting what he is going to say, when, behold! they are miles away, and he would be considered intensely stupid to attempt to bring them back. His mental processes are slow and lumbering compared with theirs. And when, once in a while, a woman appears who likes to search out a subject, she finds herself out of place and bewildered too, often a target for the quick tongues and light ridicule of her companions. If she likes to generalize, she is lost. Her companions never wish to generalize; they want to know not the general view of a subject, but what Mrs. Blank or Mr. Star thinks of it. Parents, if you have a daughter of this kind, see that she spends in her youth a good portion of every day with the most volatile swift-tongued maidens you can find; otherwise you leave her without the current coin of the realm in which she must live and die, and no matter if she be fairly a gold mine herself, her wealth is unavailable. Spring burst upon the island with sudden glory; the maples showed all at once a thousand perfect little leaflets, the rings "A mollusk," said the chaplain, bring- of the juniper brightened, the wild larches ing out the word emphatically. "And what is she now, doctor ?" beckoned with their long green fingers from the height. The ice was gone, the "I shall not go one step, even now, unless you promise to write regularly, Annet," said Rast, the evening before his departure, as they stood together on the old piazza of the Agency watching for the lights of the steamer which was to carry "Of course I shall write, Rast; once a week always." You "No; I wish no set times fixed. are simply to promise that you will immediately answer every letter I write." "I will answer; but as to the time-I may not always be able—" snow was gone, no one knew whither; the Straits were dotted with white sails. Bluebells appeared, swinging on their hair-like stems where late the icicles hung, and every little Indian farm set to work with vigor, knowing that the time was short. The soldiers from the fort dug in the mil-him away. itary garden under the cliff, turning up the mould in long ridges, and pausing to hang up their coats on the old stockade with a finely important air of heat: it was so long since they had been too warm! The little village was broad awake now; there was shipping at the piers again, and a demand for white-fish; all the fishingboats were out, and their half-breed crews hard at work. The violins hung unused on the walls of the little cabins that faced the west, for the winter was ended, and the husbands and lovers were off on the water: the summer was their time for toil. And now came the parting. Rast was to leave the island, and enter the Western college which Dr. Gaston had selected for him. The chaplain would have sent the boy over to England at once to his own alma mater had it been possible; but it was not possible, and the good man knew little or nothing of the degree of excel-swering within the hour, and then my lence possessed by American colleges, East and West. Rast was in high spirits; the brilliant world seemed opening before him. Everything in his life was as he wished it to be; and he was not disturbed by any realization that this was a rare condition of affairs which might never occur again. He was young, buoyant, and beautiful; everybody liked him, and he liked everybody. He was going to set sail into his far bright future, and he would find, probably, an island of silver and diamonds, with peacocks walking slowly about spreading their gorgeous feathers, and pleasure-boats at hand with silken sails and golden oars. It was not identically this that he dreamed, but things equally shining and unattainable-that is, to such a nature as his. The silver and diamond islands are there, but by a law of equalization only hard-featured prosaic men attain them and take possession, forming thereafterward a lasting contrast to their own surroundings, which then goes into the other scale, and amuses forever the poverty-stricken poets who, in their poor old boats, with ragged canvas and some small ballast of guitars and lutes, sail by, eating their crusts and laughing at them. "You may if you choose; and I will not go unless you promise," said Rast, with irritation. "Do you want to spoil everything, my education and all my future? I would not be so selfish, Annet, if I were you. What is it I ask? A trifle. I have no father, no mother, no sister; only you. I am going away for the first time in my life, and you grudge me a letter!" "Not a letter, Rast, but a promise; lest I might not be able to fulfill it. I only meant that something might happen in the house which would keep me from an promise would be broken. I will always "You will not fail me, then ?” The girl held out her hand and clasped his with a warm, honest pressure; he turned and looked at her in the starlight. "God bless you for your dear sincere eyes!" he said. "The devil himself would believe you." "I hope he would," said Anne, smiling. What with Miss Lois's Calvinism, and the terrific picture of his Satanic Majesty at the death-bed of the wicked in the old Catholic church, the two, as children, had often talked about the devil and his characteristics, Rast being sure that some day he should see him. Miss Lois, overhearing this, agreed with the lad dryly, much to Anne's dismay. The next morning the sun rose as usual, but Rast was gone. Anne felt a loneliness she had never felt before in all her life. For Rast had been her companion; hardly a day had passed without his step on the piazza, his voice in the hall, a walk with him or a sail; and always, whether at home or abroad, the constant accompaniment of his suggestions, his faultfindings, his teachings, his teasings, his grumblings, his laughter and merry non Yet sense, the whole made bearable--nay, even | both the men were, to his idea, failures in pleasant-by the affection that lay under- the world and their generation. neath. Anne Douglas's nature was faith- Any other woman of Miss Lois's age and ful to an extraordinary degree, faithful strict prudence, having general charge of to its promises, its duties, its love; but it the Douglas household, would have rewas an intuitive faithfulness, which nev-quired from Anne long ago that she should er thought about itself at all. Those per- ask her father plainly what were his resons who are in the habit of explaining sources and his income. To a cent were voluminously to themselves and every- all the affairs of the church-house regubody else the lines of argument, the strug-lated and balanced; Miss Lois would have gles, and triumphant conclusions reached been unhappy at the end of the week if a by their various virtues, would have con- penny remained unaccounted for. sidered this girl's mind but a poor dull she said nothing to the daughter, nothing thing, for Anne never analyzed herself at to the father, although noticing all the all. She had never lived for herself or in time that the small provision was no herself, and it was that which gave the larger, while the boys grew like reeds, tinge of coldness that was noticed in her. | and the time was at hand when more For warm-heartedness generally begins at must be done for them. William Doughome, and those who are warm to others las's way was to give Anne at the beginare warmer to themselves; it is but the ning of each week a certain sum. This overflow. he had done as far back as his daughter could remember, and she had spent it under the direction of Miss Lois. Now, being older, she laid it out without much advice from her mentor, but began to feel troubled because it did not go as far. goes as far," said Miss Lois, "but the boys have gone farther." "It "Poor little fellows! they must eat." "And they must work.' "But what can they do at their age, Miss Lois?" Meantime young Pronando, sailing southward, felt his spirits rise with every shining mile. Loneliness is crowded out of the mind of the one who goes by the myriad images of travel; it is the one who stays who suffers. But there was much to be done at the Agency. The boys grew out of their clothes, the old furniture fell to pieces, and the father seemed more lost to the present with every day and hour. He gave less and less attention to the wants of the household, and at last Anne and Miss Lois together managed everything without troubling him even by a question. For strange patience have loving women ever had with dreamers like William Douglas-men who, viewed by the eyes of the world, are useless and incompetent; tears are shed over their graves oftentimes long after the successful are forgot-sons merchants, the merchant wishes to ten. For personally there is a sweetness and gentleness in their natures which make them very dear to the women who love them. The successful man, perhaps, would not care for such love, which is half devotion, half protection; the successful man wishes to domineer. But as he grows old he notices that Jane is always quiet when the peach-trees are in bloom, and that gray-haired sister Catherine always bends down her head and weeps silently whenever the choir sings "Rockingham"; and then he remembers who it was that died when the peach-trees showed their blossoms, and who it was who went about humming "Rockingham," and understands. Yet always with a slow surprise, and a wonder at women's ways, since "Form habits," replied the New England woman, sternly. "In my opinion the crying evil of the country to-day is that the boys are not trained; educated, I grant you, but not trained-trained as they were when times were simpler, and the rod in use. Parents are too ambitious; the mechanic wishes to make his make his gentlemen; but, while educating them and pushing them forward, the parents forget the homely habits of patient labor, strict veracity in thought and action, and stern self-denials which have given them their measure of success, and so between the two stools the poor boys fall to the ground. It is my opinion,” added Miss Lois, decisively, that, whether you want to build the Capitol at Washington or a red barn, you must first have a firm foundation." 66 "Yes, I know," replied Anne. "And I do try to control them." "Oh, General Putnam! you try!" said Miss Lois. "Why, you spoil them like babies." Anne always gave up the point when Miss Lois reverted to Putnam. This Revolutionary hero, now principally known, like Romulus, by a wolf story, was the old maid's glory and remote ancestor, and helped her over occasional necessities for strong expressions with ancestral kindness. She felt like reverting to him more than once that summer, because, Rast having gone, there was less of a whirlwind of out-door life, of pleasure in the woods and on the water, and the plain bare state of things stood clearly revealed. Anne fell behind every month with the household expenses in spite of all her efforts, and every month Miss Lois herself made up the deficiency. The boys were larger, and careless. The old house yawned itself apart. Of necessity the gap between the income and the expenditure must grow wider and wider. Anne did not realize this, but Miss Lois did. The young girl thought each month that she must have been unusually extravagant; she counted in some item as an extra expense which would not occur again, gave up something for herself, and began anew with fresh hope. On almost all subjects Miss Lois had the smallest amount of patience for what she called blindness, but on this she was silent. Now and then her eyes would follow Anne's father with a troubled gaze; but if he looked toward her or spoke, she at once assumed her usual brisk manner, and was even more cheerful than usual. Thus, the mentor being silent, the family drifted on. The short Northern summer, with its intense sunshine and its cool nights, was now upon them. Fire crackled upon the hearth of the Agency sitting-room in the early morning, but it died out about ten o'clock, and from that time until five in the afternoon the heat and the brightness were peculiarly brilliant and intense. It seemed as though the white cliffs must take fire and smoulder in places where they were without trees to cover them; to climb up and sit there was to feel the earth burning under you, and to be penetrated with a sun-bath of rays beating straight down through the clear air like white shafts. And yet there was nothing resembling the lowland heats in this atmosphere, for all the time a breeze blew, ruffling the Straits, and bearing the vessels swiftly on to the east and the west on long tacks, making the leaves in the woods flutter on their branchlets, and keeping the wild-brier bushes, growing on angles and points of the cliff, stretched out like long whip-cords wreathed in pink and green. There was nothing, too, of the stillness of the lowlands, for always one could hear the rustling and laughing of the forest, and the wash of the water on the pebbly beach. There were seldom any clouds in the summer sky, and those that were there were never of that soft, high-piled white downiness that belongs to summer clouds farther south. They came up in the west at evening in time for the sunset, or they lay along the east in the early morning, but they did not | drift over the zenith in white laziness at noontide, or come together violently in sudden thunder-storms. They were sober clouds of quiet hue, and they seemed to know that they were not to have a prominent place in the summer procession of night, noon, and morning in that Northern sky, as though there was a law that the sun should have uninterrupted sway during the short season allotted to him. Anne walked in the woods as usual, but not far. Rast was gone. Rast always hurried everybody; left alone, she wandered slowly through the aisles of the arbor vitæ on the southern heights. The close ranks of these trees hardly made what is called a grove, for the flat green plats of foliage rose straight into the air, and did not arch or mingle with each other; a person walking there could always see the open sky above. But so dense was the thickness on each side that though the little paths with which the wood was intersected often ran close to each other, sometimes side by side, persons following them had no suspicion of each other's presence unless their voices betrayed them. In the hot sun the trees exhaled a strong aromatic fragrance, and as the currents of air did not penetrate their low green-walled aisles, it rested there, although up above everything was dancing along-butterflies, petals of the brier, waifs and strays from the forest, borne lakeward on the strong breeze. The atmosphere in these paths was so hot, still, and aromatic that now and then Anne loved to go there and steep herself in it. She used to tell Miss Lois that it made her feel as though she was an Egyptian princess who had been swathed in precious gums and spices for a thousand years. Over on the other side of the island grew the great pines. These had two deeply worn Indian trails leading through |