slept that night in a little humble lodging at the house of a poor widow, a native of Briarly. And thus he pursued his journey, taking notice of any remarkable objects on his way, and frequently noting down in a book he had bought for the purpose some account of any striking object he saw, or remarkable fact which he heard of, and thought especially worth recollection. At length he crossed the border, and set foot in Scotland, and ere another night had passed he had been warmly welcomed at the house of Agnes Ferguson. The Captain was at home and received his guest with great cordiality, and Aunt Mabel appeared much pleased to make his acquaintance.

Frost paid but a short visit in Scotland as he had to perform his return journey chiefly on foot, and also to visit a relation in Northumberland. Ere the school holidays were over he appeared again at the wheelwright's door, and said that he had enjoyed his trip amazingly, stating it to be his determination to perform a similar journey again on the first opportunity.

It was early in the spring of the following year that Joseph Frost took possession of the home of his boyhood, and placed in it a goodly stock of neat strong furniture. A few days after he once more left Briarly, and report says that he took with him a "bran new suit of clothes;" and that instead of travelling on foot, he took his place, like any other gentleman, outside the mail coach. All we know about it is, that he certainly returned by the coach, but he did not return alone, for the pretty Agnes Ferguson had listened to his persuations, and had consented to become Agnes Frost.

They had in fact been engaged for more than six months, but they had kept their secret so well that no one in Briarly knew anything about it till Joseph had concluded the agreement about the house, and then he satisfied the village curiosity by making known his reasons for taking it. He had often said he would not marry till he could properly afford it, and he kept his word. He had a comfort

able house, well fitted for so nice a wife as he had gained to become its mistress. They were married in summer time. Such a blithe wedding it was, the bridegroom so joyous and proud, the bonnie bride so smiling and happy and modest withal. Her father gave her fifty pounds down on the wedding day, and her aunt supplied her with a stock of linen and other valuable additions to her wardrobe; so Agnes did not come empty-handed to her new home.

"It's hard to lose ye, my birde," said her aunt, "but ye've got the best blessing the warld can give a gude husband; so I'll no' complain."

66

"Ye'll tak' care of her, I know, lad," were the Captain's last words to his son-in-law. She's aye been a gude chiel, and I doubt na' but she'll be a gude wife. She loe's ye weel now, and I know ye'll cherish her love; and so I gie' ye baith an old man's blessin." Agnes felt very shy, as once more she walked into the little old Church at Briarly, for all eyes were directed towards her as she went up the aisle to her place near the Squire's seat. But once there, her thoughts were given to the Service. Fervently did she

PPP

pray for assistance to lead a godly life in the new state which she had honorably entered; and it was a curious fact, that the sermon touched upon some of the duties of married life. The clergyman's text was from the last chapter of Proverbs, the 10th and 11th verses. "Who can find a virtuous woman? for her price is above rubies. The heart of her husband doth safely trust in her," &c.

After the service, when Frost had seen the school children quietly leave the Church, he went to Agnes, who had waited for him, and they walked home together; first, however, receiving a few kind words from the Squire and Mrs. Forester, and the Clergyman whom they met in the churchyard. A well and happily matched couple were Joseph and his wife, each had endeavoured to do their duty towards God and towards men. As years went on, they were not without their share of trials and difficulties, and yet they were cheerful, hopeful, and very happy. Those who recollect how fond Joseph was of his little nephews, will like to hear he had a baby of his own to fondle and caress just eleven months after his wedding day.

Several years passed, the Briarly Mystery was not yet cleared up. Suspicion indeed still rested on Lane: his behaviour at Mrs. Johnson's tea party was still talked of, and the coincidence of his death with the anniversary of the murder was considered very remarkable. His poor mother, too, was plainly oppressed by some hidden cause of disquietude or misery. She was more like one overpowered by dread and horror than a mourner over a departed relative. She shunned society, avoiding even her former friends. The poor remnants of her husband's property yielded her a scanty maintenance, and she lingered on in a corner of the old house which had not been injured by the fall of the chimney, till she died of premature old age, three years and three days after her son's death. Her end was sad: no loving heart to watch over and soothe her last hours; no child to close her eyes.

Such is the story yet related by the fire-sides of the village of Briarly. The events took place some fifty years ago, but they are of too striking a character to be easily forgotten, and they are now for the first time put into print, with the hope that the lessons conveyed in them may be uttered in a wider sphere.

And what are these lessons? Could that murdered girl speak from her untimely grave, would she not warn the daughters of England against the sins which wrought her ruin? Disobedience, imprudence, wilfulness, unbridled passions. And the murderer ? Spared human punishment to receive it direct from the hands of Him who said, "Surely your blood at your hands will I require.'

The ruins of John Lane's house were purchased by the Squire, and Mr. Forester ordered the whole to be pulled down, as he wished to have a new house built on a different plan. A heavy old mantelpiece was being removed by the workmen, when something fell out from a chink in the wall behind it. It was a very large clasp knife, stained with blood, and having a jagged blade.

[THE END.]

A Legend of the Forget-me-not.

A knight and a lady wandered forth
Along the banks by the river's side,

And they watched the glint of the sunlight fall
All golden bright on the sparkling tide.

Bright flowers were blooming along the stream,
And among the islets which slumbered there;
But some fair blue star-like blossoms most
Attracted the gaze of the lady fair.

She marked the blossoms quite alone

On the grassy marge of an islet

green,

And she sighed that the emerald flow'rs grew

Where the waves of the swift stream rolled between.

But the knight, when he knew the lady's wish,
Plunged boldly into the rushing tide,

And gained the islet fair and green,

And the blossoms which

grew on its grassy side.

But the tide was swift, and the current strong,

And vainly he strove to reach the shore;

But his strength was spent, and his eyes were dim,

So onward the river its burden bore.

He casts the flowers on the blooming bank,

And "Forget me not!" he cries;

Then the wild stream whirls him faster still

Away from the lady's eyes.

The weeping lady bore the flowers

Far from that fatal spot,

And she vowed that the bright-eyed blossoms blue

Should be named "Forget-me-not!"

W. B.

TOTAL-ABSTINENCE, AND THE PLEDGE.

Almost every thing is good in moderation; almost every thing is bad in excess. Those good people, however, who take total-abstinence as their watchword, and the "pledge" as the countersign, do not include moderation in their vocabulary. It must be, according to their teaching, one thing or the other—a total-abstainer or a harddrinker. A man who drinks anything stronger than water must be a drunkard; a man who takes his glass of wine after dinner never gets up till he has finished his bottle. This seems to be their doctrine, for to any and every one the request is made that they will enrol themselves under this banner.

The promoters of total-abstinence seem to go out to their work with a falsehood on their lips. They tell those whom they importune to become members of their society, that it is not right to drink any liquor that can cause intoxication; they always forget to add, if taken in excess; and they moreover insist on it that these liquors cannot be taken in moderation; that if they are taken at all they must be taken in excess. Now, taking them in excess causes drunkenness, therefore any one taking them at all is a drunkard. I do not imagine that any of your friends will like to take this interpretation of their beer at dinner, or their glass of wine after dinner. Just as if, forsooth, a man cannot take one glass without taking a second; for one of their chief points of argument is that one glass leads to another glass.

Every right-thinking person, every intelligent person, knows that glass does not in most instances lead to glass, nor does drinking necessarily imply drinking to excess. There is one class of persons, however, and we grieve to own it, who do drink in the vulgar acceptation of the word. Drink, drink, night after night, day after day, at the public house or at home, till delirium ends their life and its enormities. But, now, does total-abstinence, does the pledge, offer itself as a cure, as a help-meet, for all these? Assuredly not. The most it can do is to give relief for the time, and that it does but very seldom.

What does the pledge require of a man? It binds him by an oath to refrain from intoxicating liquors for some given time. Now, does the man who has taken this oath, in nine cases out of ten, keep it? Ask those who have taken it. There will be the best answer. But it is a cowardly, it is an unmanly part, to vow a thing which common decency, and manliness bids us do; for by taking the pledge we confess that we are not strong enough to do that which it is our duty to do; we confess that our sensual nature has so got the power over our better nature as to bring us to a level with the brute creation, which eats and drinks till it can eat and drink no longer. Is a man who has to take an oath to keep himself

from drink fit to occupy any position in life, or to associate with his fellow men? Are those who advise the pledge fit to direct the temporal, or instruct in the spiritual welfare of their fellow-men ?

There is one thing which both sides seem to have quite forgotten. We all of us made in our baptismal vows, a promise to renounce the sinful lusts of the flesh; here is one of these staring us in the face. What do we do? What are we advised to do, and that by those who should know better? We take a pledge. We are advised to take a second vow to supplement the first, as if indeed we are likely to keep the one when we have broken that solemn other. Stay one minute, though; perhaps there was no such promise made for some of the advisers and advised; they have never been bound by such a vow. But health and morality, that most awfully dangerous of all teaching, seems to require that they should give up their sensual ways, and they take a vow, because they have lost in the dissipation the power of governing themselves. Miserable subterfuge indeed, to seek refuge under an oath from what they have not the manliness to forego on their own strength and will.

The promoters of total-abstinence do not, cannot know, either how the pledge when taken is evaded, or how often constantly broken. Under plea of illness and medicine large quantities of intoxicating liquors are taken, the illness being the hush-word for breaking the vow. Stimulating drinks, too, do not rank in these easy-going people's minds as drink, and taking them does not break the pledge. But the question will be asked, "If about to be broken in this way, why take the pledge at all ?" That is just the question. It is often over-persuasion or the holding out of some bribe that does it. Where the pledge is taken with entire free will, and broken, it only more clearly exemplifies its uselessness and mischievousness, for it shows that what a man's own strength cannot do a pledge cannot do, but rather adds to the drinking, lying, and deceit. I would sooner wean one man from his enemy by kindness, by argument, and gentle persuasion, than I would twenty by inducing them to take the "pledge.'

But this teaching loses even the little respect which we may have for it, when its promoters make an inroad on some country parish, and publish its delusive and dangerous doctrine. Here some visitor at the great house finds his or her way among the poor, and upsets altogether or sets shaking what some good man has been years inculcating amongst his people. In another place some young clergyman who thinks he is called to do something, what he does not exactly know, undertakes to reform the poor in the matter of drink. Let us ask such people as this, if they have taken the pledge themselves do they not feel degraded, do they not think it a mean thing, a cowardly thing, to be obliged to take a vow to restrain an animal passion which they cannot restrain as men? Do they not think it a sacrilege to take a second vow, and that a secular one, because they have broken a former vow, and that a religious one?

The harm which "teetotal" publications do themselves will