what would I not give that you were by my side: but I write this not only from a sense that it gives me that I am communing with you, but also that you may know, if I never live to tell it you myself, how very much you have been to me in life. But I must not write more, for this has been written at different intervals since last post, as my strength would bear it. Remember how deeply I am convinced that God's Hand is in all the circumstances of my life, and that the trial I am now bearing is absolutely necessary to bring me to heaven. It seemed hard, at first, to be cut down in the youth and strength of my days; but who can tell what temptations and falls I might have had if I had been spared? It has become my hourly thought now that the LORD has given, the LORD has taken away, blessed be the Name of the LORD.' The time that will elapse between my departure, if I die, and your following me, cannot be long; and we shall meet in that as yet unascertained world where, at least, we know there is no more sin and no more anxiety. Goodbye; may every blessing go with you. Your own

ALLEN."

The widow read this with strange emotions. While her own deep affection for her boy had led her to conduct and to acts which had raised in him so intense a gratitude and so living a memory, she had been unconscious herself of what she had been doing. True! she had read to him for the hour together; devoted her life to him been the quiet, unchanging form at the end of his bed whenever his eye opened in his long illness; sold the few trinkets that were given her on

her marriage day to pay for the hired carriages which took him out in those early spring drives; and walked to Chelsea, on a hot spring day in London, to buy that pink hyacinth and that yellow narcissus; had stood doubting in the gardener's shop amid all the glowing colours of the year's first flowers, whether she could afford to buy the jonquil or no; had called the ragged sweeper boy from the crossing to carry them for sixpence, the last in her purse. True! she had done all this and more: but she never saw round what she did: she never meant it: she never saw its end and result before her. It was an instinct; not a principle. Ay! there is the very point. Those unintending things in life are the ones that make the impression. Try to create an association, you will fail; and having failed after the effort of hours, the slightest and most transient accident, light as the wind that bears the feathered seed from the southern to the western hedge, will bear to your mind on its soundless wing something which will leave an impression there never to be erased,—a feeling of unexplained melancholy, a memory of inexplicable joy, which you try in vain in after years to spell into words. The tune we heard when under some peculiar phase of weal or woe; the glow of sunset on which we happened to look through the dark ebon boughs in the deep stillness of the October twilight, shut up in the narrow lane of the village of our home; the low of the distant cow, which uttered her evening call in the meadows beyond; or the dreamy laughter of cottage children at their twilight play in the far distance; trivial acts and scenes like these will have the power in

after days to awake dormant energies with a power beyond all human ken or control, while we may try and try for years to recall the circumstance which may recreate the impression, and we recall it in vain.

Such was the widow; and it was, as I said, that very unconsciousness that made her the object of deeper love. I do not mean to say that it is ever so; sometimes the most powerful affections are called out through a conscious reciprocity; we love because we know we are loved: "We love Him because He first loved us." But never mind; love has her different ways, and so as she reaches the same end in all her ways it matters not.

The widow closed her letter, and looking on her corded box thanked GOD she was going to-morrow. She could not help remembering, as she gazed round on the furniture which she had loved with Allen, those words of Ruth, when for a moment she thought of any possible hindrance to her journey, or any persuasion used for her not to go, such as Mrs. Loraine had attempted, came to her mind,-" Entreat me not to leave thee, nor to return from following after thee; for whither thou goest I will go, and where thou lodgest I will lodge; thy people shall be my people, and thy God my GOD: where thou diest I will die, and there will I be buried. The LORD do so to me and more also, if aught but death part me and thee. So they two went on until they came to Bethlehem."

"Yes; and," said the widow, "if God's blessed will consent, thou and I, my Allen, will go on together until we come to the heavenly Bethlehem."

The widow rose, for a gentle footstep outside the door, and a gentle knock upon the panel, announced the presence of Jessy Seymour.

It was on the arrival of one of these posts which had been looked for so anxiously in England and in France, when the tidings of a nation's glory and a nation's loss were expected to be the two wings which bore the bird of fame from the distant scene of war, that among the letters which reached Brandon, one came addressed to "Mr. Richard Dennis, New Pond Bottom, Hatchend, Brandon." It bore a foreign postmark, and that postmark having something in it connected with Constantinople and Balaklava was looked upon by those who received the letter as something of the same kind as the blue ribbon is by the knight of the garter, and the Waterloo medal by the veterans of the last war, In fact, come what would on opening the letter, weeping eyes or smiling faces, whether the seal were black or red it did not very materially affect that question; the receipt of such a letter was an honour and a credit anyhow. And no poor family were more inclined to feel the full weight of that credit than the Dennises. John had gone out with the highest character, and a good scholar; he was Mr. Leonard's servant and attendant; he was a fine young fellow, and he was fighting the Queen's battles.

The Dennises at home were of that highminded, severe character, many of whom we find among the

English poor, who lay all feelings and selfishness under such control, and bear so patiently the lot of poverty, look so respectable, respectful, and civil, that you are inclined to wonder what it is which hinders their being angels; and yet they clearly are not.

Mrs. Dennis and Jane were at home; Dennis was out, and Jane took the letter in; she danced, sung, and examined it all round, held it up for Sally Hutchins to see, who was carrying a baby on the further side of the road; shut the door, smiled again at both sides of the packet and laid it on the table; called her mother to come down, and entreated to be allowed to break the seal. This Mrs. Dennis permitted, and the letter was read.

But poor little Jane's joy was soon to be diluted, as she stood with her arms behind her, her bright morning face looking up at her mother, and her brown hair parted neatly over her forehead. It was not from John.

"Sir,-I am sorry to inform you that your son, John Dennis, is taken a prisoner

Up to this point neither Jane nor her mother had discerned the real state of the matter; and what with excitement and confusion, and with the peculiar grammatical structure of the letter, Jane understood the words "is taken a prisoner," to mean that he had taken a prisoner. Jane's ideas, like most children of her kind, were very exalted about prisoners and captives. Some wild tales connected with Jack the Giant Killer, were among the foremost impressions of the kind. She accordingly rushed wildly off round