GRANT ME A SMILE.

GRANT me a smile or a sigh! Let me see thee and touch thy hand

(For in love there is so much to yield, so little to hope or demand), Then, perchance, I might learn from thine eyes if thy soul could surrender mine,

If this silence more poignant than pain be the herald of love's decline.

For I am a part of thy life, a reed that the gods have given

To fill the dark aisles of thy soul with the music and laughter of heaven.

Wilt thou hurt me and cast me aside ?-not knowing, nor caring to know,

The span of thy future loss, the depth of my present woe.

Would my of regret, Like a jest on thy sacred sorrow, or a crimson blood-drop set 'Mid the diamond gems of thy tears, that are pure with a holy pain, Waking a keener remorse, renewing the ache and strain

voice seem a break in the stillness, a stain on the snow

Of a spirit at war with itself, oppressed with the haunting past, Whose billows of failure and wrong surge back to thee full and fast?

Am I to be numbered with these, as a temptress that lured thee to ill,

Who sought but to gird thee with chains, and spared not her aim to fulfil ?

Nay! I, too, have suffered and wept; I have shared in thy trouble and grief;

For the throb of my heart echoes thine, as the sway of the bough shakes the leaf.

Can a smile wrong the dead or the living when the soul and the thoughts are free?

Grant me this! It will cast no reflection between thy atonement

and thee.

MARIE CONNOR.

"AFTER TWO DECADES."*

BY LADY RAMSAY.

A

WARM and well-lighted cheerful apartment, the freshly banked-up fire struggling bravely with the damp depression of the outer air, the shaded lamps casting a glorious glow, fairly putting to shame the lurid glare of their gaseous rivals as they timidly blinked a sickly light in the world of mist and fog of a chill November evening. Outside all was darkness and wretchedness; inside Tipton House all was light and warmth and welcome! The soft carpets, the inviting easy-chairs, the general air of comfort were all in pleasing contrast to the raw and enwrapping air without.

Mr. Lorrimer stood on the hearthrug, from time to time ominously snapping his watch; his wife placed the most comfortable arm-chair in front of the fire; the door was opened every now and again by the butler, who appeared for the ostensible purpose of settling the papers, or of poking the fire, but in reality to relieve himself in some degree of that fidgety state of mind which is engendered in the domestic breast when the dinner hour is nearing, the cook is fuming, and the expected guest has not as yet arrived!

"Train's late, I take it," remarked the master of the house. "Suppose it is the fog. Then, you see, there are two miles to drive," rejoined his wife. "I suppose William had lights. Hush! I thought I heard wheels."

A clanging ring at the door-bell followed this remark; the horses stood steaming at the door, more from the state of atmospheric pressure, than from the length of their journey; their flanks were smoking but not heaving, and a very thick vapour enveloped their nostrils, which were certainly not distended in such a manner as to warrant the existence of the clouds of moisture circling around them. Mr. Lorrimer went to the hall door to receive his guest.

A warm greeting between the two men followed. From the drawing-room Mrs. Lorrimer could catch a few words, spoken in a rather gruff voice, and soon found herself shaking hands with Donald Brewster, her husband's friend.

"I am so pleased to see you, you must have had a tiresome journey."

* A fact.

"Nothing bad about it, I assure you; it's England, and that's everything, but inside is better than outside such a night as this, for certain."

"You must get thoroughly warm; take this chair," and Mrs. Lorrimer pushed it forward as she spoke. "I will put dinner off for a little, and the most hasty toilette will suffice, that is to say, if you care to even change at all."

"You are too good, Mrs. Lorrimer; I will not keep you waiting another moment; pray ring for dinner. I will be with you at the sound of the saddling bell, as we call it," and Mr. Brewster left the room.

"What a beard!" was Mrs. Lorrimer's first remark when their friend had left them."

་

"Rather of the bushy' order; not bad, for a pun on the spur of the moment! He's a good fellow that; I never had a better friend in the colony."

"Rather a rough exterior, Jack. Possibly, with a sound and smooth interior, especially about the beard-quite soft, in fact." Donald's entrance put an end to further parley, and the trio sat down to dinner.

Over their wine, when Mrs. Lorrimer had retired, Jack Lorrimer and Donald Brewster opened out; there were so many incidents of their lives to be recalled, so many ups and downs of their colonial experiences to go over.

Fortune had smiled on the former's undertakings; he had bought "land and flocks," and by dint of steady perseverance and unflinching determination had amassed a very ample competency; in fact, had made the circumstances of Australian life the stepping stones to the attainment of the fortune which now enabled him to purchase Tipton House and grounds, and to fill a stable with hunters.

Brewster, his senior in years, had on his first arrival in the colony put him in the way of things, and stood his friend, and there was a bond of friendship thus early sealed between them, in a foreign land, which neither the lapse of years had loosened nor absence rendered less binding. Donald had indeed tasted far more of the bitter side of colonial life. In fact, in his case it had been one more of exile, and the words of a contemporary Australian poet might haply have found their application :

"Booted, and bearded, and burnt to a brick,

I loaf along the street;

I watch the ladies tripping by,

And I bless their dainty feet.

I watch them here and there,

With a bitter feeling of pain;

Ah! what wouldn't I give to touch,
A lady's hand again."

After the lapse of some twenty years, no wonder that Brewster found people and places changed. There were few of his relations

who held out welcoming hands to the almost forgotten stranger. The prattling children who had erstwhile climbed Uncle Donald's knee were now married and settled, with new homes, new interests of their own; or again, some of them might be lying quietly sleeping under the mossy hallowed turf beneath the shadow of the dark yew trees, whose dense and permanent shade were amongst some of the first recollections of the wanderer's home. So no wonder that, after this gap of time, over which so many new and strange bridges had been thrown, so many of the old ones had fallen and crumbled in the dust, he came to renew his past friendship, to claim his greatest boon, a warm welcome and a shake of the hand, born of heartfelt gladness, from the companion of many lonely hours, the sharer of many hard roughings, the sympathizer in many a trial and disappointment. At this moment England was centred in Huntshire, and Huntshire was absorbed in Tipton; all men were but as one-Jack Lorrimer; all women but as Ethel, Jack Lorrimer's spouse!

"Fond of the old sport as ever, I see" remarked Brewster, pausing on his way from the dining-room to look at a certain collection of hunting crops and some trophies of the chase, which, in company with divers well-executed portraits of favourite hunters, adorned the walls.

"We're in good-enough quarters here for the indulging of it," answered his friend, "and for a couple of seasons I carried the horn myself; jelly dogs, you know! Ethel will have tea waiting; this subject we will continue in the drawing-room!"

Mrs. Lorrimer sat down to the piano, and her rich voice trilled forth a well-known air from one of the latest operas. Brewster sat leaning forward over the fire, his head between his hands. Here was civilization and refinement; how far away this evening the Antipodes seemed to him to be! When she had finished, the sporting element again entered into the conversation.

"The Gadthorpe hounds meet within distance on Wednesday, and thinking you'd like just to ride out and take a look at them I secured you a mount, old fellow. What with a thorn in one of their knees, and an overreach, to say nothing of a blistered throat, my own crocks are not as much up to the mark as usual. But next week you shall choose, I hope, from the stable, after a ride, and poke about on Wednesday on one of Mr. French's gees."

"I haven't hunted, Lorrimer, let me see, for how long? 'Pon my soul, I don't believe I have seen a fox found since, I'm afraid to say when! Kangaroo and wallaby have done duty occasionally, but over the pack of dappled beauties for many a long year my ken has never cast. The old fire never dies, they say:

"We have seen a run together
When the hounds run far and fast,
We have hearkened by each other
To the huntsman's cheering blast,

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How gay they bustled round him,
How gallantly they found him,
How stealthily they wound him
O'er each brake and woody dell."

"Hunting again!" broke in Mrs. Lorrimer, "I must set that to music! What time for breakfast to-morrow morning, Jack?" Any time; to-morrow's a bye day with me and Mr. Brewster too; Wednesday we shall hope to pursue; so you shall lionize him about the place, Ethel, and give those ponies of yours a turn, or they will be pulling like mad when you get to the meet at Rimington."

"I think I can hold them! Good-night, Mr. Brewster; as Jack says, breakfast is any time, but our nominal hour on non-hunting mornings is half-past nine," and Mrs. Lorrimer retired.

The next day was spent in going round the stables, and Donald Brewster was taken a turn by his hostess in her pony carriage, in the opposite direction to where the hounds would be on the day following, as she wished to give him some idea of the country, and to show him the features of the immediate neighbourhood, the principal points being familiarized to her in relation to the "Gadthorpe" hunt.

An immense pile of building was the master's house and stables, and farther down the kennels. A certain clump of fir trees, with a wayside inn hard by, was a favourite meet, and the point where three roads met Mrs. Lorrimer assured her companion was one of the best fixtures in Mr. Rastall's country.

Wednesday dawned, as far as the atmospheric aspect and the state of the elements predicted, full of hope for the fox-hunter, a grey still morning, the wind, what there was of it, softly blowing from the south-a morning on which, to quote the saying of an octogenarian Nimrod, "the goutiest and the oldest must fain follow with the boldest," a morning on which

"A hound with even half a nose

Might surely with its quarry close."

Mrs. Lorrimer started before the men-kind, as she had to make a short detour to pick up a friend whom she was going to drive to the meet, and Jack and his friend were waiting for the dogcart. A half smile crossed the countenance of the former as he contemplated the somewhat curious get-up of the aborigine. His nether limbs were encased in buff-coloured cords, which lost themselves in high butcher boots, a coat of a pepper-andsalt mixture which had evidently been not unfrequently under the scorching rays of the sun of the Antipodes, and had suffered accordingly, a hat which more than answered the purpose for which it was intended, namely, that of covering the head, as it descended in a threateningly extinguishing fashion, and but for the singularly remarkable length of his beard would almost have quashed the likeness out of its wearer.