to take such a light view of the situation. Money was money, and she told William that he was a fool to speak so easily of it. 'Siller's none sae easy come by-buiks indeed!-me tae pay guid siller for buiks for Easie!' Her indignation knew no bounds.

'Haud yer clash, wife,' said William at last, as he rose from the table. He was not such a bad sort of man when all was said and done, and some idea of Easie's unusual capacities had penetrated his thick brain during the late household crisis. It must have been some feeling about this which made him speak now. Easie's a handy wee body,' he said, as he stood lighting his pipe by the fire, and she was gey guid wi' Grannie, mind.'

Aye,' Lizzie chimed in. She's real handy wi' the bairn.'

'And what's the use o' a handy lassie if she's tae be in the school a' the day?' Kate demanded.

'Aweel,' said William, 'there's nae mair aboot it. See here, Easie, dinna fash aboot thae buiks-there's two-three shillin's for them, an' ye maun be off till the school the morn. I'm no' wantin' the pollisman after me.' He fished out the coins from his pocket as he spoke, and handed them to Easie with a grin; but Kate darted across towards her.

'Haud aff!' she cried. 'I'm no' sic a saftie as you, William. She'll can pay hersel'. She's had a shillin' a week these three month frae me-that's twelve shillins she's got-an' she'll pay thae buiks oot o't.'

'I've no got twelve shillins, mistress,' Easie urged piteously. 'Ye mind I crackit the bairn's bottle, an' ane and saxpence came aff me for't-an' there's been a bawbee for the kirk on Sundays-sax o' them--that's a shillin' an' ninepence, and there was a shillin' for the patch tae my boots-that's twa and ninepence aff the twelve-it's nine and thruppence I've got.'

'Weel, tak yer nine and thruppence and buy thae books,' Kate retorted. But McLeod turned upon his wife savagely.

'Think shame on yersel', Kate,' he said. 'Let the lassie keep her bit siller; she's wrocht for it, I'se warrant.'

'Aye, has she, mother,' Lizzie chimed in.

Kate, finding herself thus in a hopeless minority, banged out of the room, leaving Easie to settle the matter with her defenders. Now that the first bitterness of the blow was past, McLeod was inclined to look upon the whole thing as something of a joke. Easie's bite and sup counted for nothing, and, when he came to think of it, the books were nothing either. He represented this to

Easie quite good-naturedly, and she began to face the idea of returning to school with a little more courage. Still Kate's hint that she might herself pay for the books rankled in her soul, and when McLeod had gone off to his work, she approached the subject again with Lizzie.

Instead of listening to her, however, the young woman got up and went out of the kitchen without a word. In a few minutes she returned, carrying one and sixpence in the palm of her large red hand. There, Easie,' she said, 'yon's for my bairn's bottle. I think shame that mother took it aff ye.'

'Eh, but I was real careless,' Easie protested, holding back from this lavish repayment.

'Hoots, lassie, yer wee-tak' it an' dinna say anither wurd,' said Lizzie. Easie looked up at her and was surprised to see that her eyes were full of tears. She took the money, and ran away upstairs, to add it to the little store in the bag.

Easie's first day at school!

In the excitements of life at Leeks Farm, she had forgotten all the hateful monotony of school routine. Here she found herself back again at the desk, adding up sums, writing out exercisesno longer a responsible being occupied with tasks of portentous human interest, but one of a foolish band of children engaged upon subjects which did not bear upon life in any one way. Easie did not express this thought; it was formless in her mind, but she felt it quite distinctly.

The schoolroom was close, and Easie, activities of Leeks, nodded over her desk.

accustomed to the Nothing interested

her. Of what use were those questions the master was putting to them all? It was her turn now.

'Easie Dow, what are the constituent parts of air?'

Easie shook her head. Had he asked her how to wash and dress a baby, her answer would have come pat enough. But what to Easie were oxygen, nitrogen, and carbonic acid gas? Names, names, names !

The master passed her by contemptuously, and a glib child on the next bench gave the required answer.

Then came a series of questions on the circulation of the blood to the heart, illustrated by a diagram of that organ on the blackboard. It was a general knowledge' class; but of course it seemed to Easie that all this information was supremely useless.

༔

She listened contemptuously to this prattle of red and white corpuscles, of valves, and what not. . . .

But when the recitation class was called, Easie's interest quickened a little. She could understand something of what was going on now. True, it was a ruthless murdering of the masterpieces of English literature, but then our heroine was not critical in these matters.

With stammering lips and an uncertain tongue, a big stupid boy was repeating Milton's sonnet "On his Blindness." The effect was somewhat as follows:

When-A-conseeder hoo-ma-light-is-spent,

Ere hauf ma days in thus-dark-wurrld-and-wide,
And that one taulent which-is-deith-to-hide,
Lodged wi' me useless tho' ma-soul-more-bent
To sairve ma-Maker-and-present,

Ma-true-account . . . .

The words, garbled indeed by their rendering, penetrated somehow into Easie's drowsy brain. She sat up, listening and wondering what they might mean. 'A talent which 'twas death to hide'—what was that? 'Lodged with me useless.' Ah, she had it now! A sudden illumination from the flashlight of experience came to her aid. Didn't she know what it was to be kept from the work she loved and be set to useless tasks? Had Easie known the language of melodrama, she would have cried, 'Avaunt these books!' But as she was happily ignorant of it, she contented herself with letting her new 'Reader' fall off the desk on to the floor. There she administered a savage kick to its smooth new boards, thus giving expression to her sense of its worthlessness.

Wicked Easie, and foolish Easie too, despising in this way the sources of knowledge. But you must remember that, with all her practical capacity, she was only a child after all. And, as a child, she had now to begin again humbly, and acquire some more of this much-despised book-learning. She must lay aside her newly acquired lore of life, and take up these less exciting but quite as necessary studies. The short, vivid chapter of her life was closed. and from being a bairn-keeper she had turned again into a bairn.

But when schooldays are over for Easie, I fancy she will have little difficulty in finding another sphere for her talents that Kingdom of Heaven where the merciful man will find himself out of a job' not having yet arrived.

781

IN THE NEW FOREST.

BY SIR CHARLES DARLING.

I.

ON A TUMULUS.

YE, who have lain through ages long beneath
This hillock; on whose top the rangers stand,
To mark the deer that roam this forest land
Of wood, and marsh, and purple spread of heath,
Where rusty bracken lays a withering wreath
Above your heads-low pillowed in the sand-
Continued are ye in this sylvan band,

To whom your woodland lore ye did bequeath.
Though conquering races-vanquished in their turn-
Pursuing o'er your grave, have gone their way,
Ye linger ever-here your cries resound

When the pack whimpers through the shuddering fern,
While the view-halloo fills the autumn day,
Or the sharp horn recalls the wandering hound.

II.

AT RUFUS STONE.

If forest story mark the glade aright,

Where careless children deck yon weather'd stone,
There has the hunter's murderous arrow flown,
Urged from the bow of that unfaithful knight,
Whom timid chroniclers too ill requite

Pretending that fell stroke not all his own—
Naught might for kingly blood outpoured atone-
And Tyrrel patriot in his own despite.

Or was it blind mischance-not splendid crime-
That drove the shaft through Rufus' heathen heart;
Some senseless stem that helped the archer's aim,
When else had sped in vain the destined dart-
As oft it chance that we proclaim sublime
Some deed deserving neither laud nor blame?

A BUDGET OF MEMORIES.

BY SIR GEORGE OTTO TREVELYAN, BART.

It is undoubtedly the case that the very last of all the pages upon which the eyes of Lord Macaulay rested was one of the CORNHILL MAGAZINE; and that the last illustration he saw, on the last day of his life, was the quaint little vignette by Thackeray which appeared on the first page of 'Lovel the Widower.' It is, then, appropriate that the words spoken by Macaulay's nephew, Sir George Trevelyan, at a recent gathering of authors, publishers, and booksellers, under the auspices of the Publishers' Circle, should be preserved in the pages of the CORNHILL. It was a surprise to more than one of those who heard the speech to realise how far back into the years the speaker's memory travelled-to know that he could recall Ruskin at Venice, and Thackeray in his habit as he lived, and that he remembered Carlyle as an untiring walker and talker. But the writer of Ladies in Parliament' entered very early in life, alike by inheritance and by his own right, into the republic of letters. Those privileges have given him, in the words of the 'Spectator,' delightful reminiscences, and he has been persuaded, at the suit of the CORNHILL MAGAZINE, to give permanence in these pages to those recollections, for the benefit of a larger audience.-ED. CORNHILL.

Ir is a great honour to be invited to respond to this toast on this occasion, and I do not deceive myself as to my own claims to be selected for it. I have been but a casual and intermittent craftsman with the pen, but I stand very high in point of seniority among men of letters. Indeed, I am almost their doyen-if we count for that office those authors only who still are able to enjoy so excellent a dinner as has been set before us to-night. The earliest of my productions, which people continue to be good enough to read, were written at the end of my Freshman's year at Cambridge, exactly half a century ago from this month; and I have a very large store of literary reminiscences which are worth recalling, because they do not relate to myself, but to others. I have enjoyed rare privileges. I have ridden with Mr. Carlyle a good many of the thirty thousand miles which he rode while he