CHAPTER XXXIV.

"For then, and not until then, he felt himself,
And found the blessedness of being little."

-HENRY VIII.

It is five o'clock the morning after the events described in the last chapter, and the scene is a constantly changing one nearly two hundred miles away.

The lights are still burning in the close, unventilated cars; but it is lighter now without. Some passengers with backs to the windows are already reading; some are sleeping; some are staggering through the aisle for a drink of water; some are gazing dreamily at cottages in the woods, at fields of stumps, at frightened barnyard fowls and prancing horses.

But who is he in the rear seat who hates to see the light? who wishes that the plunging train would plunge still faster? A well-dressed gentleman of small stature and closely-cropped hair. Now and then he puts his hand to his face as though to smoothe a beard which yesterday was there and now is not.

Listening to the mocking whistle, looking through the window at the monotonous picture of smoke and snow, the fast-moving train eastward-bound makes every flake look like a bullet moving swiftly westward, and he half dreams how there might be motion swift enough to make those snow-flakes kill.

"Sand Hill," cries the brakeman as he slams the door. One or two passengers enter the car, and the

little man buries his face in a newspaper; but it was only an advertisement toward which his eyes were turned.

At last he reaches the great city, with ten minutes to change cars. Only one hundred miles more and he will be on British soil. He moves with quite a respectable swagger as he enters the lunch-room and calls for a cup of coffee, but there is too big a crowd here, and he draws his hat over his eyes as he buys a newspaper and hastens to the car.

Trembling he opens the paper-yes, there it is, with a large display head! How much space to give to such a matter in a daily two hundred miles away. Ah, they had adjourned until morning. He knew the hour, but took his watch from his pocket. In two hours the Assembly would convene, and in four hours he would be under the protection of the English flag.

What was that which the dispatch said? Mr. Villars had not been seen, but it was known that he had not left the city on any train. He dropped the paper, having caught a few words of a conversation in the seat behind him:

"Yes," one of the gentlemen was saying, "he had already bought half the Legislature, but he couldn't buy his colleague, whose vote was badly needed."

"Then it was simply a blackmailing plot?" the other asked.

"Simply blackmail, and it would have succeeded but for the backbone of this young man."

"Well, do you suppose these leaders will dare stay to face it?"

"I imagine that they are already out of the State." He buried his face in his hands. Did he see to-day

the image of a long-lost sister turned from his door when it was snowing thus and blowing wildly? And then did he see her trudging through such snow to die? Did he hear little Mollie telling him that his own thoughts must be his punishment?

Did he foresee an uneventful life at a Canadian hotel -visited once or twice in the year by a daughter grown peevish and morose? Did he see himself reading newspapers by day, seized with vague dread by night, going each morning to the river to catch a distant glimpse of the American flag?

Did he catch some warning to-day of the death which awaited him from that loathsome contagious disease which, in a few years, was to sweep over that same Canadian city, when Mr. Villars, of small stature and curly hair, was to be placed at dead of night in a small box and join his fellow-worms?

There were such warnings in the mocking whistle. and in the monotonous picture of smoke and snow.

CHAPTER XXXV.

"And after dreams of horror comes again

The welcome morning with its rays of peace."

-BRYANT.

It was two or three days before the members of the Assembly could be made to believe that Mr. Villars had confessed his guilt by flight. There was no evidence against Mr. Clipperton, who asserted to the last that the letter Mr. Villars showed him that night was the letter which had been put in evidence.

Mr. Snyder did not take a journey. However, he stopped working for the park bill-in fact, he stopped working for anything or anybody. There was no evidence of his having written the letter, and his name was not mentioned in connection with the case. He continued giving Mrs. Snyder complete solutions of many economic questions-like all of his solutions, considerably diluted with metaphorical wisdom.

Mr. Madmire, on the night of the trial, demanded "the keys" of Oliver in a tragic manner. He afterward saw that this was injudicious, for, in the general censure which followed the disclosure, he was obliged to resign his position. He left Capitol City to live with a nephew in the country, limping each summer morning to the old corn-crib covered with cobwebs, eating apples, and watching with Malthusiastic glee the spiders as they caught the flies.

John White received all the vindication which it is possible for resolutions and eulogy to bestow. Many the hearty hand-shake which he received. But he would never hold another office.

Oliver had learned how hard it was to battle with temptations, to be alone with conscience; but that nature's capacity for suffering was not exhausted he was now to learn. As he stood by his mother's bedside the morning after the trial, and the doctor had called again and said that of pneumonia, Oliver knew how little he had really experienced of anguish and suspense.

probably it was an attack

"It was very cold last night," the doctor said in a low voice, "and her system was possibly weakened by some anxiety."

"Yes, God bless her," Oliver answered remorsefully.

Pearl sat by her side, hopeful and cheering, and seemed to have the faculty of helping the sufferer even when she did nothing.

Through all these anxious, agonizing hours, like a sweet angel of mercy and love was Pearl. Sleeping little herself, with too delicate a sympathy to suggest to Oliver that he needed rest, constantly the noble girl remained by the bedside; and when the dozing mother would wake to see both watching so tenderly, she would smile even in her pain.

Down! down with the blasphemous philosophy that it is selfishness which moves the world-a philosophy which fails where martyrs die and patriots fall--where children love and mothers suffer! Down with your pseudo-scientific twaddle that the ideal society is a brute struggle for existence! Above and beyond your