a good draught of ale from my last October brewing."

"I shall not refuse it," said his prisoner, "if you bring it to me in three or four hours hence; but now-hark!"

"Yes," replied the now contented Mr Smutt, "that's your early wisitor, I suppose, and a nice young fee-male she is. It's a guinea every morning as correct as clockwork, and I've often thought, when the machinery's stopped, what a loss there'll be in my perquisites."

"And yet you seemed just now to be calculating on the profits of the end," rejoined Ned.

66

Maybe I did," returned the gaoler. "But what I say and what I mean are not always hand and glove."

"Perhaps you'll oblige me by standing sentinel outside of the door this morning, while she is with me," said Ned. "I think your presence renders her more unhappy than

she otherwise would be, although there are no secrets between us."

"I'll oblige you with pleasure," replied Mr Smutt, placing his bed under his arm and waiting for the opening of the cell-door. "But you'll remember," continued he, impressing upon the mind of the prisoner that he was granting a boon, "that it's against the rules."

"I'm aware of that," rejoined Ned, "and have therefore more cause to thank you.'

"Wery good!" added Mr Smutt, listening with pricked ears to the heavy footstep of an approaching turnkey and the lightness of one to be heard occasionally in the rear. "Here comes your wisitor."

CHAPTER IV.

"Now it is the time of night,
That the graves, all gaping wide,
Every one lets forth his sprite,
In the church-way paths to glide."

The

GAY things flutter in the sunshine. humming bee and the herald of summer, the painted-winged and varied-coloured butterfly, flit from flower to flower, yielding their unfolded charms to each rifler's kiss. Buzzing insects and chirping grasshoppers load the air with their million sounds, and birds, rivalling each other in their sweetest songs, break the silence of the deepest shades.

But in the gloom of night, ill-shaped and sluggish forms crawl from their hiding-holes

and corners to hail and welcome the reign of darkness. Then the screech-owl stoops

from the hollow carved in the time-worn cankered tree, or from the nook in the greymossed ruin, and, startling many an ear by her harsh discordant scream, flaps her broad pinion slowly through the mist, and just skims the ground as she sails along. Then the sluggish toad creeps from his earthy bed and croaks hoarsely to his mate, while the mis-shapen bat soars round and round its narrow beat for the bat is no rover-and snatches the drum-winged gnats from their dancing revelries. Now the heavy-bodied beetle takes his lazy flight, and the noisy cricket calls loudly to his love. The glowworm glistens on the mossy bank, and the brightness of his light betokens no approach of the coming day.

How silent and lonely is a churchyard at such an hour. There the green grassy mounds, tipped with the moon's pale light,

point out the beds of those in the long, last slumber of mortality, the struggles of life long since closed, and all-the rich and the poor, the high-born and the lowly-hushed in peace by the levelling hand of death. The cherished objects for which each suffered, perchance, the pains and penalties of years, are now but the broken bubbles upon their stream of life. All, all is over, and in one common end. Where is the thrift hoarded

by the self-denying niggard, who was not even charitable to himself? Where is the honour won by sleepless nights and restless days of unintermitting toil?

"Out, out, brief candle!

Life's but a walking shadow."

When there was no human eye to watch the holy action, in the depth of the silent night, the vicar paid a visit to the yet grassless grave of his child, and by the side of it he knelt and breathed a long and