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"And why did you not answer me at once?" "I do not like that such questions should be put to me," replied the attendant.

5. For a moment the advocate was silent. A feeling of disappointment seemed to pervade the whole court; now and then a half-suppressed sigh was heard, and here and there a handkerchief was lifted to an eye, which was no sooner wiped than it was turned again upon Therese with an expression of the most lively commiseration. The maid herself was the only individual who appeared perfectly at her ease; even the Baroness looked as if her firmness was on the point of giving way, as she drew closer to Therese, round whose waist she now had passed her arm.

6. "You have done with the witness?" said the advocate for the prosecution.

'No," replied the other, and reflected for a moment or two longer. At length, "Have you any keys of your own?" said he.

"I have!"

"I know you have," said the advocate. "Are they about you?"

"Yes."

"Is not one of them broken?"

After a pause, "Yes."

7. "Show them to me."

The witness, after searching some time in her pocket, took the keys out and presented them:

"Let the trunk be brought into the court," said the advocate.

8. "Now, my girl," resumed the advocate, "attend to the questions which I am going to put to you, and deliberate well before you reply; because I have those to produce who will answer them truly, should you fail to do so. Were you ever in the service of a Monsieur St. Ange?

"Yes," replied the attendant, evidently disconcerted. "Did you not open, in that gentleman's house, a trunk that was not your own?"

"" "Yes," with increased confusion.

"Did you not take from that trunk an article that was not your own?"

"Yes; but I put it back again.”

"I know you put it back again," said the advocate.

"You see, my girl, I am acquainted with the whole affair; but, before you put it back again, were you not aware that you were observed?"

The witness was silent.

9. "Who observed you? Was it not your mistress? Did she not accuse you of intended theft? Were you not instantly discharged?" successively asked the advocate, without eliciting any reply. "Why do you not answer, girl?" peremptorily demanded he.

before

"If you are determined to destroy my character," said the witness, bursting into tears, "I cannot help it." "No," rejoined the advocate; "I do not intend to destroy a character; I mean to save one, one which, you quit the court, I shall prove to be as free from soil, as the snow of the arm which is leaning upon that bar!" continued the advocate, pointing towards Therese.

10. The trunk was here brought in.

"You know that

"Were these keys out of your possession the day before that trunk was searched, and the jewel found in it?" "No."

"Nor the day before that again?"

"No."

11. "Now mind what you are saying. You swear, that, for two days preceding the morning upon which that trunk was searched, those keys were never once out of your own possession?"

"I do."

"Will not one of these keys open that trunk?"

The witness was silent.

"Never mind! we shall try. As readily as if it had been made for it!" resumed the advocate, applying the key and lifting the lid.

12. There may be fifty keys in the court that would do the same thing," interposed the public prosecutor.

"True," rejoined his brother; "but this is not one of them," added he, holding up the other key, "for she tried

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this key first, and broke, as you see, the ward in the attempt.

"How will you prove that?" inquired the prosecutor. "By producing the separate part."

"Where did you find it?"

"In the lock!" emphatically exclaimed the advocate. A groan was heard; the witness had fainted. She was instantly removed, and the innocence of Therese was as clear as the noonday!

LESSON XIX. The Bob-O'Linkum.

1. THOU vocal sprite, — thou feathered troubadour !
In pilgrim weeds through many a clime a ranger,
Com'st thou to doff thy russet suit once more,

And play, in foppish trim, the masking stranger?
Philosophers may teach thy whereabouts and nature,
But, wise as all of us, perforce, must think 'em,
The school-boy best has fixed thy nomenclature,
And poets, too, must call thee Bob-O'Linkum !

2. Say! art thou, long 'mid forest glooms benighted,
So glad to skim our laughing meadows over,
With our gay orchards here so much delighted,
It makes thee musical, thou airy rover?
Or are those buoyant notes the pilfered treasure
`Of fairy isles, which thou hast learned to ravish
Of all their sweetest minstrelsy at pleasure,

And, Ariel-like, again on men to lavish?

3. They tell sad stories of thy mad-cap freaks,
Wherever o'er the land thy pathway ranges;
And even in a brace of wandering weeks,
They say, alike thy song and plumage changes.
Here both are gay; and when the buds put forth,
And leafy June is shading rock and river,
Thou art unmatched, blithe warbler of the North,
When through the balmy air thy clear notes quiver.

was that gush of song

Learned from the brooks, where 'mid its wild flowers,

smiling,

The silent prairie listens all day long,

The only captive to such sweet beguiling?
Or didst thou, flitting through the verdurous halls
And columned isles of western groves symphonious,
Learn from the tuneful woods rare madrigals,

To make our flowering pastures here harmonious?

5. Caught'st thou thy carol from some Indian maid,
Where, through the liquid fields of wild-rice plashing,
Brushing the ears from off the burdened blade,

Her birch canoe o'er some lone lake is flashing?
Or did the reeds of some savannahs south

Detain thee, while thy northern flight pursuing,
To place those melodies in thy sweet mouth,

The spice-fed winds had taught them in their wooing?

6. Unthrifty prodigal!-- is no thought of ill

The cadence of thy lay disturbing ever?
Or doth each pulse in choiring sequence still
Throb on in music till at rest for ever?
Yet now, in wildered maze of concord floating,
"T would seem, that glorious hymning to prolong,
Old Time, in hearing thee, might fall a-doting,
And pause to listen to thy rapturous song!

LESSON XX. Migration of Birds.

1. THE velocity, with which birds are able to travel in their aërial element, has no parallel among terrestrial animals; and this powerful capacity for progressive motion is bestowed in aid of their peculiar wants and instinctive habits. The swiftest horse may perhaps proceed a mile in something less than two minutes; but such exertion is unnatural, and quickly fatal.

2. An eagle, whose stretch of wing exceeds seven feet, with ease and majesty, and without any extraordinary effort, rises out of sight in less than three minutes, and therefore

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must fly more than three thousand five hundred yards in a minute, or at the rate of sixty miles in an hour. At this speed, a bird would easily perform a journey of six hundred miles in a day, since ten hours only would be required, which would allow of frequent halts, and the whole of the night, for repose.

3. Swallows, and other migratory birds, might, therefore, pass from Northern Europe to the Equator in seven or eight days. In fact, Adanson saw, on the coast of Senegal, swallows, that had arrived there on the 9th of October, or eight or nine days after their departure from the colder continent. A Canary falcon, sent to the Duke of Lerma, returned in sixteen hours from Andalusia to the Island of Teneriffe, a distance of seven hundred and fifty miles. The gulls of Barbadoes, according to Sir Hans Sloane, make excursions in flocks to the distance of more than two hundred miles after their food, and then return the same day to their rocky roosts.

4. Superficial observers, substituting their own ideas for facts, are ready to conclude, and frequently assert, that the old and young, before leaving, assemble together for mutual departure; this may be true in many instances, but, in as many more, a different arrangement obtains. The young, often instinctively vagrant, herd together in separate flocks, previous to their departure, and, guided alone by the innate monition of nature, seek neither the aid, nor the company, of the old; consequently, in some countries, flocks of young, of particular species, are alone observed, and in others, far distant, we recognise the old.

5. From parental aid, the juvenile company have obtained all that nature intended to bestow, existence and education; and they are now thrown upon the world among their numerous companions, with no other necessary guide than self-preserving instinct. In Europe it appears, that these bands of the young always affect even a warmer climate than the old; the aëration of their blood not being yet complete, they are more sensible to the rigors of cold. The season of the year has also its effect on the movements of birds; thus certain species proceed to their northern destination more to the eastward in the spring, and return from it to the south-westward in the autumn.

6. When untoward circumstances render haste necessary,