supernatural influence had been thrown around her, and his flesh actually crept with awe as he asked himself, "Whether, perchance, one stronger than he, might not be contending with him for her

soul ?"

The suspense of the next few minutes seemed like an age to his excited fancy; but at last Aline lifted up her brow, still white and radiant with the light of heaven, and slowly and distinctly answered:

"No, Henri! I will not—I cannot, wait. It would be treason alike to God and you, Henri. When the last guest leaves this house (it will be sunrise by that time) I also will depart for the house of my Father in heaven. I will not even stop to change my dress, but I will go just as I am to my convent home, and once the gates are closed behind me, believe me they will never be opened for me again until they are opened for my funeral."

"This, then, is your answer, Aline ?" Henri asked, in a tone which showed that all hope had departed from him.

"Not mine, but God's," she answered, sadly, for her heart was sore over the sorrow she was inflicting. "Not mine, Henri, but God's."

She hesitated a moment, and then taking his hand placed a small gold cross, similar to the one sparkling upon her bosom, in it. "The cross has a language of its own for those who love it," she added, in a low voice. It will tell you, if you ask it, all that I would say and cannot."

"Thank you," said Henry, bitterly, yet putting her gift at the same time into his bosom. "I asked for happiness and you give the

cross.

It is not like you, Aline." "The cross is happiness, Henri, if you would only think so,” said Aline, gently placing her hand in his in token of adieu.

He held it one moment in his own, but he did not lift it to his lips he did not even press it. She was God's henceforth, not his― and to be thought of only as a saint in heaven; so, with a smothered "Adieu, Aline! adieu!" upon his lips, he gently let it fall, and turned on his heel to go.

Aline took the signal and retreated to her expectant flock, while he passed through the ball-room as carelessly as if there was not another living creature in it, and then out into the dark, sultry night beyond, to recommence his journey.

Grief and admiration still contending in his soul, he flung himself into his saddle and galloped off as quickly as if he hoped to forget his misery in the rapid movements of his horse.

But he had scarcely reached the heights commanding the city ere the storm which had been brooding in the air throughout the evening, burst upon him in all its fury. Torrents of rain beat against his face; flashes of lightning well nigh blinded him; thunder rolled among the hills, backwards and forwards without intermission, until the earth trembled beneath its echoes; while through rain and wind and deafening thunder, came every now and then the muttering of the distant pond, filling the air with a weird-like wailing of strange sounds, and giving a final and indescribable touch of horror to the scene.

In his present excited mood Henri rather enjoyed than otherwise this wild warring of the elements, and no presentiment of coming woe mingled with the passionate feelings which made him urge his horse recklessly forward into the very teeth of the raging storm.

A flash of lightning, vivid and blue as steel, which almost blinded him, brought him at last to his senses, and forced him to draw bridle. With a slackened pace came calmer thoughts, and sadly and slowly he went over in his memory the events of the previous evening.

Dripping with rain as he was, it was no great wonder that he should look back somewhat regretfully to the warm, well-lighted room he had left behind, and from thence his thoughts went onwards to visions of gaily-attired guests, of dances and of merry music, until at last he found himself standing in spirit once more in the quiet conservatory, face to face with his lost Aline.

"Was she there still ?" he asked himself, "and what was she doing? Was she still telling tales to her rose-lipped darlings? or had she, in some scrupulous compliance with her parents' wishes, joined the circle of the dancers ?"

It was impossible, he knew, yet he ground his teeth at the bare idea, and a sense of maddening jealousy swept over his soul, as something within him seemed to ask-"Why he alone was absent ?" Why, indeed?

Even as the thought passed through his mind, the earth shook as if an earthquake had cleft it into two, and a roar as of a thousand thunders went up to the clouded heavens.

Henri heard and wondered, and yet never guessed.

The great pond had burst its bounds, and rushed, rapid and wild as an angry ocean, down upon the devoted city!

Half an hour and the floods had risen to the second story of its stately mansions—and yet one half hour more, 'the streets were deep rivers of running water, and the gay dancers-the fair young girl-the group of little ones seated at her feet-all were buried beneath its waves!

Henri heard nothing of the catastrophe until the next afternoon, when he instantly took horse for Châteaulandrin. The sun was high in the heavens as he reached the spot whence he knew the doomed city would first strike his vision, and after one wild glance forward, a cry of unutterable horror escaped his lips.

And well it might. Chateaulandrin had vanished! The great city was no more; and in its place a mighty sheet of water rolled through the valley, bearing on its surface the remains of houses and furniture and uprooted trees, with the bodies of men and women and children, and domestic animals-all mingled together in inextricable confusion.

Three long, long days he had to wait before the floods subsided sufficiently to admit of entrance into the city, and then at last he found himself standing at the gates of Aline's abode.

Iron rails and oaken door, all had gone down before the flood, so there was nothing to prevent his entrance as he passed silently within. He hardly knew, he hardly felt-his head was confused, his heart seemed turned to stone, and he stumbled as carelessly

over the victims of the inundation as if their tragic end was a mere matter of course to him. Servants lay dead at their posts in the vestibules; gossips and gamblers in the saloons had talked and gambled until death silenced them for ever; dancers lay in all sorts of contorted attitudes just where the floods had left them; and it was only after some blind stumbling among their corpses that Henri found himself standing at last on the exact spot from whence, only a few hours before he had watched Aline sitting erect, and shining like a lily, under the boughs of the dark magnolia.

And there he found her still-like one not dead but sleepingsleeping in the self-same attitude in which he had then beheld her.

Death had borne her away with such a reverent hand that nothing seemed changed or disturbed about her. Her soft hair was still braided smoothly on her brow; her white robes still fell in unruffled folds, modestly and maidenly, down to her very feet. One hand was laid on her golden cross, the other on the curly head of the urchin who had died gently sleeping on her knee, while the rest of the children lay closely nestled round her, as if their first impression in the terrible surprise of death had been to seek protection at her feet.

Henri gazed for one moment steadily upon her, and then he cast a shuddering and reluctant glance on the masses of distorted humanity scattered everywhere through the ball-room. Aline's last words seemed to ring once more on his ears,-a strange, strong sense of gladness took possession of his soul, and he fell on his knees, exclaiming:

"My God, I thank thee! Whatever may be the fate of these, surely for her there was no purgation. Free from every trammel of the earth-living for Thee and Thee alone-surely she went straight to Thee-surely death only bore her hence, to lay her for ever in the

bosom of her God."

JUDITH.

A STUDY.

BY THE REV. JOSEPH FARRELL.

AH me, but Juda's harps are very sweten

And passing sweet the songs that link my name
With strains that shall not die, but shall become

A portion of the history of my race.

'Tis a proud thing to win a people's thanks,
To shrine one's name within a people's hearts,
And fix it unforgotten on their lips;

Proud to have wrought such deed as I have wrought,
That blazed, as lightning blazes from a cloud,
Athwart the gloom that drap'd a nation's heart,
And made the gloom one mass of light and fire;

Proud, to have snatched a name-a woman's name-
From out the nameless host that pass obscure
From birth, thro' happy motherhood, to death,
And leave no record, save in children's hearts,

No history save the whispers of one home,
No mark to tell they ever were on earth,
Save the light mound that lies upon their graves;
Proud, to have set my hand to such a deed

As men shall talk of while the world shall last.

Proud thoughts are these, but ah, not happy thoughts-
Now that the wave upon whose crest I rode
Has died to scarce heard ripple in my heart-
Now that the sway of solitude has come,
Now that the spell distill'd from people's praise
Has loos'd its hold, and left me here alone.

Alone? Ah no, for Thou my God art here
Within my heart, as near as in the hour
When my weak hand undaunted took the sword
And eternis'd my enemy's drunken sleep
-The scene shall be before me till I die-

I looked with loathing on my country's foe,

Whose evil thoughts had pass'd to drunken dreams.
And from such dreams, unmoor'd by my red hand,
His guilty soul sailed into the great void

Where Thou sat'st waiting on Thy Judgment-seat.

That my hand slew him I have no regret;
But what a load to lay on woman's heart!
At too great price a woman buys renown;

And, when her name goes forth from her own doors,
A host of troubles sit about her hearth.

My doom began the day Manasses died.
I kept the house, preparing reapers' food,

When one came running whose affrighted face
Left nought of evil for his tongue to tell.
"We reap'd the barley, and the sun was hot
Upon our lifted brows, when suddenly,
With hand to head, Manasses gave a cry
And fell, as stricken, on the barley sheaves;
And, when we lifted him, he never spoke,
And the life left him ere I left the field."

Then with my widowhood began my doom.
No more for me the simple dream of fame
That Juda's mothers link with child of theirs
"Messiah or Messiah's ancestor."

No more for me the simple joys that fill
The common round of Jewish womanhood
Nor ever glance beyond the gates of home.
I sate me in my grief and widow's weeds,
And mourn'd my husband many heavy days;
And might have won from God by very tears
The boon of quicker passage to the grave,
Where, gathered to my husband and my sires.
I might await the dawn of Israel's day.

But the time came when over all the land
Flew rumour of a very present doom,
Till it were shame that any private grief
Should, midst the public trouble, lift its head.
And when the women throng'd the public place
To hear what Achior, lately come, could tell
My unfamiliar form mixed with the crowd
And in my weeds, like grief personified,
I walked, a living statue, thro' the streets.

Then my strange purpose rose within my breast,
Was laid in prayer before the living God,
Was planned--and all between that hour and this
Is as a phase of some momentous dream.

With every deed done by a mortal hand,
However great, however God-inspir'd,
The taint of mortal hand is apt to mix;
And we, like slaves, however pure the wine
Of inner aim we offer in the cup

Of outward act, are prone to leave the soil
Of a slave's hand upon the cup we bear.

That my hand slew him I have no regret,
Abhorrent as blood is to woman's soul;
And I would bear that blood-stain on my hand
Before the very judgment-seat of God.
But 'tis my penance that, while men shall see
The shining texture of the total web,

They will not see the stains that lurk in folds
Which conscience shall search out, till it forgets
The glory in the shame that will not die.

Men prize success, and to desirèd ends
Too easily condone unworthy means;
Nor do they deem it generous to bring
Too nice a scrutiny to bear on deed

Of which they reap the profit. So, they praise,
And praising, each to other, make one voice
That circles round the land and makes itself
A second conscience-when the first would sting-
That shields one, to his ultimate mischance,
From healthful stings that keep the soul alive,
Or even should it sleep well nigh to death

Or unto death itself, strike a new life
That wakes it ere death passes into doom.

He was my country's foe-I lied to him
And snared him, not with beauty of my face
Alone (that at his proper peril done
Must needs but lightly lie upon my heart)

But with fair words that paltered with the sense-
Words with two meanings, one upon my lips
And one upon the ears that drank them in.

Our very best God needs not for His ends,
Still less our evil; and the soul that does
A wrong that right may follow, little knows
How base the wrong, the right how very fair.

And for the part that human weakness mixed
With work that was the very work of God,
There must be penalty-and this shall be-
Whereas my utmost longings were fulfilled