newspaper, within the next few days, referring to the wreck of a ship from New Zealand, in which it was said that all the passengers, ten or twelve in number, were drowned; they had taken to the boats and the boats were swamped.

Mr. Burke wrote to all the New Zealand shipowners in England to try to make out anything about this wreck, but he learned nothing. The name of the ship was the White Dove. It was a merchant vessel, of no very large size, had become a total wreck, and it was believed that no one on board had been saved, unless a stray passenger here and there might have been picked up by the boats of other ships; but nothing had been heard of any of the boats of the White Dove after they had left her sinking sides, filled by her crew and passengers, till the present moment. If any survivors had been picked up by other ships, it was probably by foreign vessels, or they would have been heard of before now.

This was all the information that Uncle Archie could gather. Rose was to live with him, and he began at once to make arrangements for her happiness.

The governess, the idea of whom Bridget had been so alarmed at, was found-a Miss Smyly, whose father, a clergyman, was dead, and who lived with her widowed mother; and she was to come as a daily governess. Rose slept in a little bed in Bridget's room, who dressed her in the morning; she then ran fearlessly to Mr. Burke's apartment, and, battering against the door with her chubby hands, was allowed to come in while he finished dressing. After that she breakfasted with him, sitting up in a high chair.

Following this came a most affectionate parting between the uncle and the niece-Rose always standing at the window to watch him down the street, and always rapping on it, that he might look up and smile and nod to her ere he disappeared from her sight.

Miss Smyly then made her appearance, and lessons began at first of a very slight and playful character-in a pleasant room on an upper floor, that was turned into a sitting-room for the governess and little Rose. The playful lessons over, real play began, and then walking and early dinner, and out again after it if fine; or Miss Smyly would play the piano to Rose while she danced, or tell her stories, and amuse her in a hundred ways. In this manner the day glided by, the brightest spot in it being Uncle Archie's return, when Rose was allowed to open the house door for him and climb up him with her little eager legs, to perch on his shoulder, and so be afterwards carried by him triumphantly upstairs.

By the end of a month Uncle Archie found it the most natural thing in the world to have little Rose in his house, and wondered what the cold old days had been like, and how he had ever got on without her.

Rose was quick and intelligent, without being particularly clever. It was through her affection that her mind was most easily led to work. Miss Smyly found some difficulty in impressing all the letters of the alphabet on her memory, from big A to crooked Z, till Uncle Archie said one morning it was a pity she did not know them, and what a pleasant day it would be for him when she could say them all to him on his return home from the Four Courts before she went to her bed.

This was quite a new light to Rose. She had no idea before that her lessons concerned any one but herself; but if “Uncle Archie" were interested—if it would be a pleasure to him-why, that made it a pleasure to her also! and so assiduous was she, that on the morrow of the day on which he had made the remark, when Rose opened the door for him and climbed up to his shoulder, she began shouting out, “A, B, C,” amid chuckling laughter, and had said through the whole alphabet, including those three very difficult letters X, Y, and Z, before they reached the drawing-room: Uncle Archie was delighted, and Rose was too.

The same inducement made her learn to join the letters into words, and read, considerably before she could have done so without it. Uncle Archie was longing that she should be able to read him a story, and that was quite sufficient to cause Rose to long for it also; and so the reading of the story followed with surprising rapidity on the learning of the alphabet of which the story was made.

Rose was very fond of Bridget, whom she tyrannised over with an irresistibly coaxing tyranny, and who let her do whatever she liked; and of Miss Smyly, who, young and gentle, was more a playmate than a governess. But for Uncle Archie her love was passionate; for him I verily believe she would have laid down her life, could that act have done him any good. He petted and indulged her more than any one else, and that is saying a good deal, for it must be owned that Miss Rose was greatly spoiled in her new home, whatever she may have been in her old one; but I think if Uncle Archie had been stern and strict she would have been as fond of, if not as familiar with him.

Rose was sweet-tempered, and as obedient as a somewhat over-indulged child could be expected to be. She did not mind Bridget at all; she did inind Miss Smyly when she found she must; and Uncle Archie she did always and in everything.

The principal faults that she showed as time went

knee, and rubbing herself against his waistcoat with that peculiar purring sound that is natural to a pleased cat.

Rose regarded her from afar with enraged displeased eyes. Kitty on his knee, in her place-how dared she? Uncle Archie stroked her, and said, "Poor, dear little Kitty."

This was too much for poor, dear little Rose. She became redder than the flower after which she had been named, and making a rush forward, seized Kitty in both her hands, pushed her on the ground, regardless of the consequences, and taking her place, buried her head in the waistcoat that she considered belonged to her alone, and burst into sobs and tears of outraged affection, and so continued for some time.

Fortunately Kitty was uninjured, and Rose was soothed and comforted, while she was gently told that she must not push Kitty about as if she were a ball, or she might hurt her; but Uncle Archie understood from that day that he had better not take Kitty on his knee, and Rose was never again fond of the little cat, or, at least, she was never fond of her in the same room with Uncle Archie, and if she had been playing with her till the very moment when he came up the steps to the hall door, she would drive Kitty ignominiously into the kitchen as she flew to open it for him.

Miss Smyly often told Rose stories-sometimes they were droll, amusing tales-that would make her laugh and clap her little hands with merriment. Sometimes, too, she would tell her Bible stories, of Joseph and his brothers, and Benjamin, the little boy whom his father loved so, and of Samuel, whom God called in the night, and who thought it must be old Eli calling him, and of the little coats his mother Hannah used to bring him when she came once a year to see her child, and of the shepherdlad David, who slew big. Goliath with a stone, and even of Adam and Eve, and how they were driven out of their beautiful garden full of flowers because they were disobedient. In the evening, when tired out with romping, and nestling in his kind arms just before she was carried off to bed, Rose would sometimes call on "Uncle Archie" to tell these same stories, repeating bits herself, and asking for the next words; and when his little Rose had left him, he would take the Bible down from the shelf and read what she had been talking about, and think it over, so that he might explain it clearly on the next occasion; and then he would read other bits, thinking he would tell her about them himself, and he would turn to the New Testament, and ponder how she might best first be taught the beautiful story of the life of our Lord Jesus, and he felt that it would be sweet and

pleasant to guide her steps along the path of religion.

And these were thoughts and studies that Uncle Archie, in his busy city life, had found little time for till Rose came into his home like a sunbeam from the sky, and child-life in the house brought heaven a little nearer to earth.

Rose was a happy child, and never longed for companions, as some children often do. But Uncle Archie had friends in Dublin, and some of these friends had children of their own, and occasionally they took walks with Rose and Miss Smyly, and spent a day with her, or she with them. At that time a duke was Lord Lieutenant of Ireland, and "the duchess," who was the wife of the duke, was a familiar name on every lip, and because of her little queenly imperiousness, the other children used to call Rose the duchess; but they only did so in love and merriment, and they always yielded to her, and gave her her own way in everything, partly because there was something about Rose that made it pleasant to spoil her, and partly because they had been told by their parents the story of how Mr. Burke had found her in his arm-chair, and how she had neither father nor mother, nor brother, nor sister, and had come from a far country beyond the seas, and been wrecked in a big ship, and brought home by a foreign sailor, who left her at her uncle's door and was never seen again afterwards, and that she now lived, a little child all by herself, in the house with Mr. Burke and his servants. So they one and all regarded her as not an ordinary every-day little girl like themselves, but something different and more precious, set apart from them, to be petted and made much of and considered, not to rough it, as they might do in small ways, but have her life rendered as smooth and pleasant as possible. She was "Mr. Burke's little Rose," not only little Rose Burke; but soon Mr. Burke ceased to be thought of or spoken of as Mr. Burke at all, but became Uncle Archie to everybody, and then his heroine was "Uncle Archie's little Rose," and the words were seldom spoken except in loving tones and with kind glances.

In the autumn, or end of the summer, Mr. Burke, Rose, and Bridget went to the seaside together. Bridget was as happy as a queen there, for no governess came between her and Miss Rose. She was all in all to her, or, if that could not be said, for it was Uncle Archie who was all in all, she came next, and was the only person who had to do with "the darlin'" at home, except that same Uncle Archie, whom she gladly admitted to stand by himself, and first, as long as she was an equally undisputed second. Rose was very happy at the

seaside, as much so in her own way, I dare say, as Bridget was in hers. Uncle Archie would often lie with her on the sands, where she dug holes with her wooden spade, and watched them gradually fill with water. He made her great fortresses of sand, with buttresses and outer walls, and deep moats round them, and drawbridges by which the moats could be crossed, and then he and Rose would stand hand-in-hand to watch the great enemy, the sea, attack the fortress, and gradually undermine it, while now and again a wave, bigger and heavier than the rest, rose up and struck it a straightforward face-to-face blow, and by degrees and degrees the poor fortress, that had seemed so strong, tottered and fell, and was gone for ever and ever. Uncle Archie thought the sight of the sea might bring back some of the circumstances of her voyage, and the wreck of the White Dove to her mind, and that he might learn more from her than he had yet learned. But it was not so; perhaps Rose was too young for her memory to retain what had happened. She prattled away just as usual about everything that interested her, and even his questions brought nothing new from her. The first time she saw some ladies bathing she screamed out in a sort of panic, and nothing would induce her to be dipped herself; and she said something about the naughty ship, and "the poor heads that didn't come up again after they went down," and the "screaming and crying," but that was all; and before she left the seaside the daily sight of the bathers had effaced from her mind the recollection of the poor heads that went down in the storm, and never rose again to the surface of the sea. And so time passed on, and the autumn days at the seaside were pleasant, and the winters in Dublin were good also in their own way; and Rose grew tall, and learned to read and to write, and many other things, till two whole years had passed over her head since that evening on which Uncle Archie had found her curled up asleep in his arm-chair-two whole years, and Rose was supposed to be six years old.

CHAPTER IV.-WHO WAS FOUND.

LL Rose's little friends had birthdays, and of course she did not at all understand why she could not have one too; so Uncle Archie determined that his girl should have a birthday as well as the others, and what day could be better for that purpose than the one on which she had been left in his house-the day on which she had come to him, and on which her Irish life had been born for her? Accordingly, when that

day came round Rose was declared to be five years old. Uncle Archie, Miss Smyly, and Bridget all made her presents; yes, and Larry too-for Larry walked off to the College Gardens, where one of the under-gardeners was a friend of his, and brought her a beautiful nosegay of greenhouse flowers.

And now the second birthday was come. Rose was six, growing quite a big girl, and feeling that she should very soon be a woman. She was getting on well with her lessons, which were real lessons now, and Uncle Archie sometimes gave a sigh for the days when she lisped out baby words and played baby tricks. He was very fond and proud of his little niece, but now and then he wished the impossible wish that small children would not grow into big ones.

Rose did not share this wish at all, or understand it in the least. To her it was delightful to grow up, and she thought nothing in the world could be so delightful as to be a real woman, to sit at the head of Uncle Archie's table, and hang on his arm when he walked out. At the head of his table she always did sit on her birthdays; but then Rose was wise enough to know that this was a play, not a reality, and that she did it as a child, not as a woman. Notwithstanding this, she acted her part to perfection, and gave her orders with the air of a duchess to Larry, who stood grinning behind her, and obeyed them with a lavish deference that charmed his "little mistress," and made company-talk for Mr. Burke till he shook with laughter in his chair opposite.

On Rose's sixth birthday she begged Uncle Archie to come home early, and take her for a walk in the People's Park. The People's Park is in the middle of St. Stephen's Green. It used to be a private garden, in which nobody might walk but the families who lived in the houses round it, who had keys of the gates, and could let themselves in and out as they thought fit. St. Stephen's Green is a mile round; it is a square bigger than any square in London; each side of it is a quarter of a mile long, so the garden in the middle of it is very large too. Some of the houses in the square are extremely old, and there are interesting stories told about them. When the Huguenots were driven out of France, a good many of them went over to Ireland, and they were silk-spinners, and supported themselves by their work, and they built some of the houses on the side of the Green, which was not in Dublin then, but was a pretty suburb, not joined to the city, and these houses were not built in a row as they are at present, but were detached, and stood in little gardens, and in all their gardens the Huguenots always planted a pear-tree. St. Stephen's Green is in

Dublin now: it is no longer in the country, as it was then, but the gardens are still remaining at the backs of the houses, and the pear-trees are still in them; and in every garden where a pear-tree now stands you may be sure the poor Huguenots have walked and gardened, and thought of their native country. It is to a son of a very good man, Sir Benjamin Guinness-who himself did a splendid deed in rebuilding and restoring the old Cathedral of St. Patrick-that the people of Dublin owe their Park; for what did he do when he came into all his father's money but buy this private garden in the middle of St. Stephen's Green, and then make a present of it to the inhabitants. But before he gave it to them he changed it from a dull flat garden into a beautiful park; he had great mounds raised, and planted with trees and shrubs, and pretty flower-gardens laid out here and there, and he had a large lake made with rocks, and waterfalls, and bridges, and winding walks along its sides, and great lawns of smooth grass, and fountains, and grand terraces; and here in the summer evenings the people flock. All classes meet together, from the rich and great down to the quite poor and ragged; and the children who live in narrow alleys and courts play gaily on the lawns, and men lie stretched out there, resting happily after the toil and heat of the day, and often read their newspapers and books, while women and children sit on the benches, and watch the stately swans and pretty wild fowl gliding over the smooth lake, or feast their eyes on the lovely flowers planted out for their pleasure. It is very delightful to see them all, I do assure you, and to see how well they behave, and how quiet and orderly they are, and to remember how much happiness one man can give if he thinks of other people instead of himself.

Well, it was to the People's Park that Miss Rose wished to go on her birthday; and of course everything Miss Rose wished to do on her birthday Uncle Archie would manage that she should do, if it were possible. So, as it was a fine bright day in the beginning of February, he came home before two o'clock, and when she had finished her luncheon -it was called luncheon, you know, on this day, because she dined with him on her birthday, and so, though she was just as hungry at one o'clock as usual, and ate just as good a meal, that meal was luncheon, not dinner--and as soon as it was over, Bridget dressed her in her black velvet pelisse, and tied her black velvet hat, and with her hand in her uncle's, off she went to St. Stephen's Green as gay as a bird.

They walked about, and chatted and laughed. "Don't you like it better than the Four Courts, Uncle Archie?" she said very earnestly.

"A great deal better, my pet," he replied. Just as he spoke a shrill cry or scream was heard behind them, and they turned round to see what was going on.

There was a curious little group on the wide gravel road, just inside one of the great gates. A child of perhaps five years old, judging from her height and appearance, shabbily dressed, slight and pale, with brilliant brown eyes, and tangled black hair hanging down under her battered hat, was screaming with some sort of passion, and gesticulating at a small creature of two, who stood stolidly regarding her without moving a muscle of her countenance. Between them was a woman as shabbily dressed as the children, who, with a halfamused, half-perplexed, countenance, turned first to one and then to the other. When she touched the little one, the elder was ready to spring on her like a young panther, and as she then turned to her, the stolid baby set up a sudden shriek.

"Why, what is the matter?" asked Uncle Archie, while Rose looked on with shocked, amazed eyes.

"I'll tell yer what it is, sir. This wee girl," pointing to the elder, "I have taken up with from her infancy, an' it's a dale I've made of her; but she tould a story to her grandmother in the morning early, an' so I mane to have no more to say to her, and to take up with two other little children in her place; an' I've tould her so, an' it's herself is ready to hit them. An' what am I to do amongst thim, if yer plaze?"

"What do you say, Rose?" asked her uncle. "Couldn't you forgive her?" said Rose, rather timidly addressing the woman. "It is my birthday."

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See there, now," cried the woman, "what the swate, purty young lady says: I'm to forgive yer becase it's her birthday."

The child looked shyly at Rose and hung her head, quiet and subdued, while large tears rolled down her cheeks. She was a remarkably pretty child in her own dark brilliant way, and as she stood there would have made a beautiful picture. Mr. Burke felt more interested in her than he could understand any reason for.

"She is not your little girl, then?" he said, addressing the woman. It seemed impossible that the common-looking woman could be her mother.

"Deed she is not, yer honour. She is the child

of the sea-the little white dove she is that flew in to us in the night unbeknown.”

"But she is not a bird," cried Rose.

"True for ye, an' so she is; an' it's the gintleman's child she is, any ways from her breedin', though she is the orphin, with neither father nor mother. It is two years this very blessed day that the sailor from