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May we know your worship's opinion?" said the chief speakers.

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Certainly," said the old mouse. "It is this; care, and discretion, and prudence, and self-denial are fine things, and wanted always; but if you, my friends, wish to be safe-if you will take my advice-you will keep out of the dairy."

JACOB WRESTLING WITH THE ANGEL.

GEN. XXXII.

COME, O thou traveller unknown,
Whom still I hold, but cannot see!

My company before is gone,

And I am left alone with thee:
With thee all night I mean to stay,
And wrestle till the break of day.

I need not tell thee who I am,
My misery and sin declare;
Thyself has called me by my name,
Look on thy hands and read it there:
But who, I ask thee, who art thou?
Tell me thy name, and tell me now.

In vain thou strugglest to get free,
I never will unloose my hold;
Art thou the man that died for me?
The secret of thy love unfold:
Wrestling, I will not let thee go
Till I thy name, thy nature know.

Wilt thou not yet to me reveal
Thy new unutterable name?
Tell me,
I still beseech thee, tell!
To know it now, resolved I am:
Wrestling, I will not let thee go
Till I thy name, thy nature know.

What though my shrinking flesh complain,
And murmur to contend so long,

I rise superior to my pain;

"When I am weak, then am I strong;"
And when my all of strength shall fail,
I shall with the God-man prevail.

Yield to me now, for I am weak,
But confident in self-despair;
Speak to my heart, in blessings speak,
Be conquer'd by my instant prayer;
Speak, or I never hence will move,
And tell me if thy name be Love.

"Tis Love! 'tis Love! thou'st died for me,
I hear thy whisper in my heart;
The morning breaks, the shadows flee,
Pure, universal Love thou art :,
To me let thy compassion move,
Thy nature and thy name is Love.

My prayer hath power with God; the grace
Unspeakable I now receive;

Through faith I see thee face to face

I see thee face to face and live :
In vain I have not wept and strove,
Thy nature and thy name is Love.

I know thee, Saviour, who thou art,
Jesus, the feeble sinner's friend;
Nor wilt thou with the night depart,

But stay and love me to the end:
Thy mercies never shall remove,
Thy nature and thy name is Love.

The Sun of Righteousness on me
Arose with healing in his wings,
Withered my native strength; from thee
My soul its life and succour brings:
My help is all laid up above,
Thy nature and thy name is Love.

Contented now upon my thigh

I halt till life's short journey end; All helplessness, all weakness, I

On thee alone for strength depend; Nor have I power from thee to move, Thy nature and thy name is Love.

Lame as I am, I take the prey;

Hell, earth, and sea with ease o'ercome;
I leap for joy, pursue my way,
And as a bounding hart fly home,
Through all eternity to prove
Thy nature and thy name is Love.

WESLEY.

CHAPTER III

WHEN my surprise had a little subsided, Mr. Martyn resumed the conversation.

"I am now quite sure that you did not intend to injure your old school-fellow, when you told that damaging story."

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Indeed, indeed I did not, sir."

"But mischief has been done. Ethel Ripon is now very ill; solely, as I believe, from distress of mind." "But surely," I reasoned, "this is foolish. there is no sufficient cause for such distress; for no one who

I mean

has any sense would think any the worse of Ethel, or of any one else, because she happened to get into trouble at school." I said this rather indignantly, for I thought it a little unjust that Ethel's present distress should be charged home to me-laid upon my shoulders.

'

"My dear young lady," said Mr. Martyn, kindly, "we are not all constituted alike. Some persons have a greater amount of nervous susceptibility than others, and cannot bear what to others might seem a light burden. For instance, you, Miss C., might only smile if ill-natured acquaintances were to spread abroad, to your disadvantage, a report of some indiscretion formerly committed by you. I cannot say how this would be; but I think such a result possible."

"I should have thought, sir, from my recollection of Ethel Ripon, that she would have laughed outright at any such report." I said this rather sharply, I am afraid for what right, thought I to myself, has Mr. Martyn to suppose that I ever did commit any indiscretion, or to judge what I might do under any conceivable circumstances ?-forgetting that I, at that moment, stood chargeable and charged with a very grave indiscretion, and that of no distant date.

Mr. Martyn looked at me keenly! "I presume," he said, "that your acquaintance with Ethel Ripon terminated in your school days. You have known nothing of her since then ?"

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Certainly not, sir. The last I saw or heard of her was
I hesitated; and Mr. Martyn supplied the

when

latter part of the sentence

"When she made her escape from Mrs. Franke's harsh rule. So I suppose. Well, my dear young lady, I have just returned, or am on my way home, from a long journey -a journey which I have made it my business to take, in order to investigate the cruel charges which have been brought against Miss Ripon. Now, I will tell you what I have learned. First of all, I went to poor Ethel's former home; there were many there who remembered her, and who had sympathised with her on the death of her father, and the sudden descent which she then had to make from apparent ease and prosperity to some of the hardships of life; for Mr. Ripon died poor, if not insolvent. Setting this aside, however, I met with one lady who had known Ethel from her birth, and had nursed her through a terrible

brain fever. That fever was brought on, the lady said, by undue severity exercised upon the poor child at school. With tears in her eyes, this compassionate friend gave me the history of that severity, and of the fault which had provoked it. Then she went on to tell how the brain fever gradually subsided-it was by God's mercy it did not prove fatal-and that the result of it was (not an uncommon result in such cases), that the poor sufferer lost the distinct memory of its cause. She had only a confused and misty recollection that she had passed through some miserable ordeal, which had been brought to a close by her illness.

"The lady went on to tell me," continued Mr. Martyn, "that it was thought best not to enlighten Ethel on this matter; and that afterwards she herself took charge of the young lady's education-finding in her a most affectionate, grateful, and dutiful pupil, but exceedingly timid and sensitive afraid even of doing right sometimes, lest she should do wrong. It seemed, according to this lady's account, as though her natural disposition were altered; for her former bold and high and buoyant spirit had sunk into a kind of sad submissiveness, which was occasionally painful to witness.

"But this disposition was eventually improved by the influence of religion on her soul. By God's grace, dear Ethel was led to see her need of his most precious gift, and became as a little child in the kingdom of Christ and of God. From that time the true lowliness of her character, as sanctified by God's grace, appeared in every action and word of her life."

While Mr. Martyn was thus describing my old schoolfellow, I was smitten with remorse. To think that I should have dared to make sport of that one act of delinquency of her's, even supposing that every word I had spoken was strictly true! Do not say more, sir," I cried, imploringly : "I have sinned. Dear Ethel! I did not know what I was doing. But surely, sir, it is not past remedy? Tell me only what I ought to do. You have very clearly shown me my fault; can you not show me also how it is to be

repaired?"

"It is for this that I am here," the benevolent old clergyman said, very kindly: "you may, perhaps, in part help to heal up the wound which has undoubtedly been made, if you will write a loving letter to Ethel, without