against the fatal bush, pale to the very lips, but her veil was down; nobody saw. "What sort of a letter was it, David? Who was it to? Did you notice the handwriting?"

Why, I was such a little fellow," and he looked up in wonder and slight concern. "How could I remember? Some letter that somebody had dropped, perhaps, in taking the rest out of the box. It could not matter-certainly not now. You would not bring my youthful misdeeds up against me, would you?" And he turned up a half comical, half pitiful face.

Fortune's first impulse-what was it? She hardly knew. But her second was that safest, easiest thing-now grown into the habit and refuge of her whole life-silence.

"No, it certainly does not matter now."

A deadly sickness came over her. What if this letter were Robert Roy's, asking her that question which, he said, no man ought ever to ask a woman twice? And she had never seen it-never answered it. So, of course, he went away. Her whole life-nay, two whole lives—

had been destroyed, and by a mere accidentthe aimless mischief of a child's innocent hand. She could never prove it, but it might have been so. And alas, alas, God, the merciful God, had allowed it to be so!

Which is the worst, to wake up suddenly and find that our life has been wrecked by our own folly, mistake, or sin, or that it has been done for us, either directly by the hand of Providence, or indirectly through some innocent-nay, possibly not innocent, but intentional hand? In both cases, the agony is equally sharp-the sharper because irremediable.

All these thoughts, vivid as lightning, and as rapid, darted through poor Fortune's brain during the few moments that she stood with her hand on David's shoulder, while he drew from his magpie's nest a heterogeneous mass of rubbish - pebbles, snail - shells, bits of glass and china, fragments, even, of broken toys.

"Just look there! What ghosts of my childhood, as people would say! Dead and buried,

though." And he laughed merrily-he in the full tide and glory of his youth.

Fortune Williams looked down on his happy face-this lad that really loved her, would not have hurt her for the world; and her determination was made. He should never know anything. Nobody should ever know anything. The dead and buried" of fifteen years ago must be dead and buried for ever.

"David," she said, "just out of curiosity, put your hand down to the very bottom of that hole, and see if you can fish up the mysterious letter."

Then she waited, just as one would wait at the edge of some long-closed grave, to see if the dead could possibly be claimed as our dead, even if but a handful of unhonoured bones.

No, it was not possible. Nobody could expect it, after such a lapse of time. Something David pulled out-it might be paper, it might be rags. It was too dry to be moss or earth, but no one could have recognised it as a letter.

"Give it me," said Miss Williams, holding out her hand.

David put the little heap of "rubbish" therein. She regarded it a moment, and then scattered it on the gravel-"dust to dust," as we say in our funeral service. But she said nothing.

At that moment the young people they were waiting for came to the other side of the gate, clubs in hand. David and the two Miss Moseleys had by this time now become perfectly mad for golf, as is the fashion of the place. They proceeded across the Links, Miss Williams accompanying them, as in duty bound. But she said she was "rather tired," and, leaving them in charge of another chaperone-if chaperones are ever wanted, or needed, in those merry Links of St. Andrews-came home alone.

PART V.

"Shall sharpest pathos blight us, doing no wrong ?"

O writes our greatest living poet, in one of

S°

the noblest poems he ever penned. And he speaks truth. The real canker of human existence is not misery, but sin.

After the first cruel pang, the bitter wail after her lost life-and we have here but one life to lose! her lost happiness, for she knew now that though she might be very peaceful, very content, no real happiness ever had come, ever could come to her in this world, except Robert Roy's love-after this, Fortune sat down, folded her hands, and bowed her head to the waves of sorrow that kept sweeping over her, not for one day or two days, but for many days and weeks -the anguish, not of patience, but regret,— sharp, stinging, helpless regret. They came

K