"It was all settled to be at a village three miles off, and the clergyman was a friend of Mr. Walter's own.

"It was such a sweet summer morning, and I dressed Miss Mabel as like a bride as I dared, without it looking too like, and we set off all three together, as if we were going to take a walk.

"When we reached the church, we found the clergyman all ready, and another friend that was there to give her away; and never was a bride looked lovelier, for all she wore a plain white dress and a straw hat. And Mr. Walter, he looked so happy and handsome.

"It was very soon over, and we set off to walk back again. They were talking together how they would go straight to the master, and tell him what they had done; and I heard Mr. Walter say, 'He is my father, you know, now, dear, as well as my uncle, and he is sure to forgive us.' When we came near to the house, we met Mr. Bevan, and Mr. Walter gave me a look to go away; so I left them, and went into the house at the back, and up to Miss Mabel's room, to wait for her.

"I hadn't been there many minutes, when my young mistress ran in, with her face like crimson, and panting for breath.

"Oh, nurse, nurse,' she said, 'you can't think how angry my father is, and I am terribly frightened! He said he must speak to Walter alone, and his face was as white as death.' And then my dear young lady sat down, and began to cry.

"I tried to comfort her, but in truth I was very much alarmed, and didn't know rightly what to say. We sat there for what seemed a very long time, and then I went down-stairs, just because I was so anxious to get to know something, that I couldn't stay with my poor young mistress any longer. As I got near the master's room, I heard voices very loud, and I couldn't help but listen. I expected to hear Mr. Bevan very angry, but Mr. Walter's was the fiercest voice, and the master spoke quite low, as if he was pleading. Then I listened, and I heard words that turned me as sick as death. That moment I heard my mistress calling me, and I went trembling up the stairs back to her room. I could not have spoken a word to save my life, and I just sat down near her in silence. She didn't ask me any thing, but she looked in my face with her large eyes very wide open, and her face went very pale. We sat silent, looking at each other for a long time; and when I tried to speak, I couldn't, for my tongue was dry and stiff in my mouth, and the words I had heard seemed to have struck me stupid.

"The door of the room was wide open; and all at once we heard a noise down-stairs. I sprang to my mistress, and held her in my arms while we listened. There was the sound of feet in the hall, and then the hall-door was opened and dashed to again. My young lady broke from me, and ran to the window which faced the front. I followed, and I saw Mr. Walter running away from the house very fast, without so much as looking back. His poor little wife turned to me, and said in a crying tone, 'What does it all mean, nurse? oh, what does it all mean?'

"The next minute the baby's nurse stood at the door, and said the master wanted me in his room. So I kissed my poor little mistress, and told her I'd come back directly with good news, though, God forgive me, I had heard words that made me sure there was no comfort and no good news for her ever again.

"When I got to the master's door, I shook till I could scarcely stand; and as soon as I was in the room, I sat down on a chair without waiting for a word,-what I had never done before in the master's presence.

"I don't remember how he begun, nor what words he used; but he told me that his sin had found him out, for Mr. Walter was not his nephew, but his own son, that was born before ever he had seen my mistress that he married.

"I cried out at that,―no ways afraid though he was my master,—that he was a bad man and a coward not to have told the truth at first. I had no mercy on him, for my heart was broken to think of the poor young thing upstairs. He said he had told Mr. Walter, and that he had cursed him for the lie of so many years, and was gone away saying he should never come back; and he told me that I must tell Miss Mabel.

"But I spoke up; and I said I would not, for it was part of his punishment; that he had broken her heart; and after all that was gone before, surely this was not a hard thing for such a man to do. And when I said that, he rose up, and asked me where his daughter was, with such a fierce look in his eyes, that I cried out in terror that I would tell her myself, and he must not go to her. So I left the room, and went slowly up-stairs to Miss Mabel.

"I sat down, and she came and stood by me without a word. So I drew her upon my lap as I used to nurse her when she was a little child, and she laid her face on my shoulder, trembling like a leaf in a wind storm. I don't know what words I used; but as soon as I begun to speak, she raised her head up, and sat still staring at me, growing whiter and stiffer every moment. I held her tight, and looked for her to faint, or to die perhaps, as her face got whiter, and more set like death; but she kept staring on, till I couldn't speak another word. When I stopped she drew the ring from her finger, and let it fall upon the floor. Then she said, 'Nurse, lay me down; for I shall die. My heart is broken, and is bleeding to death;' and I laid her on her bed, and kissed her cheek, that was cold and white and stiff like stone.

"She lived three days, and the colour never came back to her face and lips, and her poor eyes never closed, but just stared on, as if they saw some horrible thing before them.

"I never left her but once, to tell the master that he had killed her; and I had some pity even on him when I saw the change in him. I used to speak to her, but mostly she took no heed; only when I asked if she would like to see her father, she said 'No.'

"On the third day, while I was standing by her side, and praying to see her eyes closed and her sleeping, she turned towards me and said,

'Nurse, tell my father I forgive him; and I send my love to my-brother; and then her eyes closed, as I had prayed they might, and I thought she was sleeping. But it was the death-sleep, as I soon saw, though her face was no paler nor colder.

"I fetched the master, without saying what it was, and brought him to the bedside. The strong man's agony was a fearful sight.

"In a few days my work was ended. I laid my poor lamb in her coffin, and followed her to her grave.

"I left the hall; for though the master offered me to stay, I couldn't now my dear Miss Mabel was gone. I had saved a good bit of money, and I wasn't so young,-it is only ten years ago,-and so I took this cottage, and have lived here alone ever since.

"When I saw what the master had put upon the gravestone, I knew that he was a penitent man. The family left the neighbourhood soon after, and went to live abroad. Mr. Walter has never been heard of since."

I thanked the old woman for her sad story; and as I turned away, I prayed God to have mercy upon me, and not to visit upon my children the sins of their father.

A. D.

In the Mining Districts.

AN old and sacred writer has said, "Light is sweet, and it is a pleasant thing for the eyes to behold the sun."

It was not much of this kind of pleasure we received in riding from a large manufacturing town of South Staffordshire, along a portion of the Stour Valley Railway, into the heart of that mineral district. A stranger, with his Bradshaw before him, on starting for a short trip by this line, might indulge his fancy with bright anticipations of a delightful ride through a charming vale, full of bucolic associations. Is he not going by the winding Stour, and are not the rural stations of Priest Field, Daisy Bank, and Round Oak all lying on his way?

With a harsh sound, as though derisively exulting in our pleasant dreams, the engine sets off. On leaving large towns we in general find factories, foundries, brick-yards, and such-like placed on the outskirts; but here dingy places of business, girt with smoke, and resounding with metallic bump, thump, and rattle, seem more than usually in the ascendant, and by the look of the horizon we are not about to get clear of them just yet. On we fly, with rows of smelting-furnaces at our left, and chimney-stacks of all sorts,-short ones tipped with fire, and others huge and tall rolling out massive volumes of smoke, vieing in size and grandeur with a thunder-cloud, dying away in the distance until they resemble a forest of dismantled shipmasts, with the smoke of a fiery engagement yet wreathing around the scorched and blackened boles. "Priest Field! Priest Field! Priest Field!" cry the clerk, porter, and guard, in counter, tenor, and bass, as we are pulled up at one of the first stations. Who can describe the revulsion of feeling the poor traveller endures, who, from the name of the place, had been picturing to himself fat meadow-lands near to some noble priory, dotted over with sleek milch kine, with "the village spire among the trees," just seen at the end of the glebe, when the grimy nature of the locality is discerned through the murky atmosphere? The ground through which the cuttings of the railway have been made looks as though some of it came out of a volcanic region, and other deeps from the womb of mother Earth beyond the ken of ordinary mortals, but known well to those who live in this land "whose stones are iron."

Where a bit of the landscape is discernible through the smoke, the debris from the pits and the refuse of the furnaces seem to have it all their own way; and what little of the original surface has not been mounted over with smelting scoria or mineral rubbish, appears to have been turned over for making bricks, and then left in a chaotic state, with the hollows filled with ochry water, the idea of reducing it into an arable state once more being in this neighbourhood considered quite a preposterous notion. I think it was at the next station, which, if any thing, was more densely surrounded by fire and smoke than the last, that I saw an

attempt had been made to grow a few flowers along the side of the platform. For some of them, apparently just planted, I did feel sorry. There was the evening primrose, with its name recalling gentle emotions of sweet summer time in the country; the old-fashioned gilly-flower, so redolent of sweet scents when growing on the wall by the wayside cottage; and the chrysanthemum, which, long before it blooms towards next Christmas, will have had sad experience, and I doubt will not have found the change of air at all agreeable to its feelings. For another old favourite of the flowerborder, London pride, I did not feel so much hurt; for if any of its progenitors had formerly breathed the air of the great city, it would not be a little in the way of blacks and other atmospheric impurities that would affect its constitution.

Daisy Bank! Can any one wonder at a person on first seeing this hopeful name indulging in a poetical reverie of a grassy knoll, as bright with sunlit verdure as Hunt's famed picture of "Our English Coasts," where one could bask with indolent delight, and watch the "laverock" carolling blithely, and rising up and up till it became a wee speck in the sky, just discernible against the light fleecy cloud, and where the modest little flower, the day's-eye, turns its tiny face up to the sun, in all the purity of innocent loveliness?

Rather a different picture to this presents itself when the name of this station is called out, and you awaken to the stern realities of the scene Some days even here I suppose are darker and dirtier than others, and this seemed one of the worst of its kind. It was dull and cloudy, and more than half inclined to drizzle, and the smoke from the innumerable chimneys of the neighbourhood and the surrounding iron-works seemed to thoroughly permeate the air, and form a thick yellow atmosphere. The dense volumes of smoke issuing from some of the large stacks contiguous to the railway did not seem at all inclined to get clear away, but rolled down the sides of the chimneys, as though it did not wish to leave the locality.

Canals were numerous, and when you were far enough away from them to see only the light reflected from their surface, they rather improved the look-out; but a nearer inspection, revealing the dirty state of their turbid water, was far from pleasing. Notwithstanding, however, their impurity, and the coloured film which here and there floated on the top owing to their contamination by oil and grease from the mills and forges, a small boy was sitting on his heels on the bank, and patiently watching his float for a bite. I did not see any creel for the fish, so presumed he would stow them all away in his pocket, collier fashion, without inconvenience. The way this lad was sitting on his heels to enjoy his fishing, is almost peculiar to colliers. If you place your feet near together (flat), on the ground, and then, by bending your knees, bring that part of your person on which you usually sit close to the ground without allowing it to touch, you will (if you succeed in keeping your equilibrium) have some idea of a favourite position colliers very frequently