quick passage; of being out less time by some few hours than other ships. So we made for shore when we ought to have stood out to sea waiting for daylight, for it was blowing hard, and the night was rainy and pitch dark. By some fearful mistake about the lights, the North End of the Gap was held to be the North Head. There was a sudden cry of 'breakers! The helm was put hard to starboard, to bring the ship round. We were on a dead lee-shore. Almost immediately the ship struck-was lifted off, and then flung again broadside on the rocks. The screaming passengers hurried on deck from their berths. For a few minutes there was hope that the ship would hold together, and all might yet be well. Then the decks burst up from the pressure of the water; the good ship was torn into a thousand pieces, and all on board, a helpless, huddled, frightened flock, were hurled into the boiling sea. With three others I found myself holding on to a piece of plank. A huge wave broke over us, and washed away two. Another wave came, tore me from the plank, and hurled me on to the rocks, bruised, bleeding, half maddened by the terrors of the scene. I scrambled on to a higher shelving rock above me, before the wave should return and drag me back again to destruction. From this I climbed still higher, and so out of reach of the waters. There I found, also clinging on to the rocks, with the energy of despair, another man, a crazed seaman, a Norwegian, who, from his weak intellect, had been something of a butt among the company during the voyage. Not another soul was saved of all the one hundred and thirty that had sailed from England."

Janet shuddered, but she did not speak. After a short pause Hugh resumed.

"For thirty-six hours we remained upon the rocks, unable to climb up the almost perpendicular cliff above us, or to attract the attention of the one or two ships that passed by far off out at sea. Beneath us the raging waves were still churning up the fragments of the wreck, mangling the bodies of our lost companions. At length some labourers on the cliff perceived us. Ropes were lowered, and we were slowly hauled up to the top, two hundred feet above us. And we were saved: what a wretched fragment of the lost ship's company!- the poor madman, whose feeble mind had now gone for ever, and who never ceased to moan a long tuneless song, and I, who seemed to have so little that could make life worth my having. How full of hope and plan and purpose were many of those who had gone down in that fearful wreck! Yet I was not unconscious of the great mercy that had been extended to me, and fervently I rendered thanks to the Heaven that had saved

me.

"Then a new thought came, or rather an old thought returned. Gradually I thawed back into my former self. My rage, my hardness, my bitterness, seemed cast out of me like the evil spirits from the sick men of old. My love, buried deep in my heart, and shrouded and coffined in all sorts of wrong feelings, was living yet. And I set myself hard to

work; gave myself up to labour with a sort of feverish earnestness, beset with the strange notion that I was toiling for you, Janet; that I was conquering myself and my proud savage nature, and somehow reforming myself for you. Then it came to me how utterly cold and wretched had been my wooing; what a miserably foolish conceit had moved me when I sought to wear without winning you. O Janet, how bitterly I blamed myself; how I fed upon the memory of you! For hours I would sit disinterring old things that had seemed to be for ever forgotten and gone; tracing you back, from the time of our last parting, as far as I could remember, when you were a tiny child addressing an endless monologue to your doll. I could recall all our old playmate pleasures, all our long fireside gossips, each thing that we had ever done, or that had ever happened to us; could recollect your look and gesture when you spoke, what you said, nay, each inflexion of your voice. In spite of the distance that severed us, all this stood out freshly and distinctly. Still more evident was the thought of how wretchedly I had flung from me all chance of making you mine. So I brooded until the thing seemed to grow into my mind-that I loved you ever; that I could love you only; and that through my own folly I had lost you. This took fast hold of me, day and night followed and possessed me, till it became too strong for me-till it subdued and bound me quite. Fever struck me down in the bush. I was positively pleased in my convalescence to learn that even in my worst delirium I had been in a measure true to you; that your name was ever ringing from my lips; that even madness had not torn my love from me. I recovered from the fever, but the yearning to come home and seek you out again grew to be insupportable. My love would not be appeased; my heart would not be quieted. My return home became a necessity, and I took ship for England again, Janet, to see you, and you only,-to make this plain confession; to do now humbly and reverently what I did so wrongly and rudely five years back; to tell you, Janet, that I love you with my whole soul, dearly, tenderly. O Janet, it cannot be that this love, so deep and strong and true, has no answer in your heart!"

The blood was tingling in his face; his eyes sparkled with excitement. With trembling fondness he gazed on Janet, waiting her reply. She had scarcely stirred during his confession. With bowed head, with downturned intent eyes, with tightly-clutched hands, she had stood; not listlessly, not coldly, for a flush of red was on her cheek, her heart beat almost audibly, and her breathing was very short and quick. And now he was waiting for her answer, and she must speak, she must act. But the words would not come. Her hands moved up mechanically to her parched throat; her lips parted, but no sound issued. With all her efforts the words she wished to utter were still-born. Hugh suffered torture in her silence. The suspense was more than he could bear.

"O Janet, don't throw me back again; don't tell me it can never be; don't drive me to despair. Say I may hope. Say you will be mine;

you shall not regret it—I swear you never shall. O Janet, all man can do to make you happy I will do."

With this burst of passion, he flung himself at her feet. It was only so he could see the wonderful, luminous, downturned eyes.

"It is not that." The words came at last, faint, trembling, broken. "You love another?"-he started, with a scream almost of pain; a strange look, half rage, half despair, quivering on his white scared face. "No, no, Hugh dear, not so."

He was at her feet again directly; the voice was so gentle, so tender, so touching.

"But"-and now the words hurried out in a nervous trembling stream-"things have changed with us. You can hardly appreciate this just now. We do not meet as we parted. Our positions are not the same. Then, I was at least your equal in wealth. Now, think of me. I am a poor orphan, without one sou I do not earn by my own work, and earn hardly. I am a teacher, a governess; artist with me is only a gentler name for the same thing. I know your goodness; I feel it to the full. I know you would do all in your power to aid me. But, O Hugh, be sure it is not love, but charity you offer me."

He seemed deeply pained, and his eyes were full of the fondest, tenderest reproach.

"Janet, this is money make to us?

cruel; this is not yourself. What difference can It cannot enhance your worth; it cannot quicken my love. It never would, it never could have come between us of old to sever us. Had I been in need, to whom should I have soonest come for aid but to you? O Janet, such a thought as this never would have parted us in the dear old days; should it do so now?"

She was so agitated, she leant on the chair for support.

"You are more generous than I am, Hugh, nobler, kinder, better in every way. I too have a confession to make. Hear me patiently. I do remember that evening in the garden-porch; how, with a wicked, cruel pride, I rejected the love you proffered me. What right had I to weigh your words, and deem them wanting; to judge your manner, and pronounce against you? I knew you loved me. There needed no words to tell me that. Your life had been all kindness, goodness, love to me. But I was mad. I felt the power I had gained over you. I saw that by one word it was mine to raise or crush. It seemed a grand thing to use that power; to make it known-felt; to use it even against my own happiness, even against you, Hugh dear. I was weak, vain, wicked. I turned from a love I knew-I knew was truth itself. O Hugh, forgive me; for I loved you,-loved you all the while. And when you darted away as from a snake's bite,-when you paced the lawn angrily, wounded to the soul by my cruelty, then burst upon me the full sense of what I had done; then I knew to what a fatal weakness I had yielded. And I sunk to the earth in the porch, crushed by my own act. Oh, and I hoped and prayed that you would come back, and speak to me once

again; that some little chance might yet be given me; that I might recall my words; that I might confess my sin, and beg your pardon for the wrong I had done you. But the opportunity never came. My misdeed seemed irretrievable. From that hour till now I have never seen you; yet I have never ceased to love you. And now, and now,-O Hugh, dear Hugh, pity me and forgive me."

Another moment, and Hugh's arms were fondly woven round her, and ber hot tears were damping his shoulder. With exquisite fondness he gazed upon her, assured and reassured her of his never-tiring love, and pressed her again and again to his heart. Then he brushed back the hair, and kissed her pure white forehead; then he smoothed on the hair again, and kissed that.

"My own dear darling little Janie !"

And what a delicious lulled happiness there was for a few minutes! Suddenly Janet started away with a guilty, self-reproaching look. Quickly she moved towards the invalid's room, and entered.

"Have you slept, mother dear?"

The daylight was gone, but by the gleaming of the little fire in the low grate Janet detected a look of quiet, shrewd pleasure in the face of the invalid.

"You had forgotten me, Janet. Hush! not a word. I have not been to sleep, and I know all."

And soon Janet, blushing very much indeed, led Hugh in. He knelt down by the side of the couch as the invalid laid her thin hands upon his shoulders, and drew him affectionately towards her.

"Oh, dear Hugh," she said in a low voice, "treasure her, love her always, she deserves all happiness,- she is my own good darling daughter."

Hugh swore he would do so, and his words sounded full of the music of truth and fervour; and in a loving group the three crouched over the diminutive fire in the darkened room, to them gladsome and radiant enough, for Joy was burning a very steady light among them. It would be hard indeed to say which of those three was the happiest.

Graduation-Day at Edinburgh.

It is nearly five years ago now since I left Dr. Bobus's school at Wtolerably grounded in Latin, Greek, and mathematics, and proceeded to Edinburgh to qualify myself for the degree of M.D. My governor drove me over to the railway-station, took out my ticket, and, standing on the platform, mingled good advices with his farewells. In a short time the train came up. I was thrust into a carriage; and, while my eyes were getting wet with the pain of my first parting, I felt my hand wrung, heard a sincere "God bless you, my boy,"-then the door was driven to, the railway-bell sounded, and before I quite came to myself we were rattling at a great pace through the midnight of a tunnel. It was the first time I had been from home, and my spirits were subdued enough as I sped northwards through the fair English landscape that autumn day. We reached Edinburgh at night, and to my hotel I at once proceeded. The beginning of the winter session was yet some weeks distant; and as I had to pass the preliminary Latin examination at the close of October (for which, thanks to Dr. B., I was not particularly afraid), I yet felt some little preparation for the same might be advisable, to avoid all chance of accident. Consequently my mornings were occupied with Livy and Cicero, and my afternoons and evenings were at my own disposal. I knew no one in the metropolis of the North, and I employed my spare hours agreeably in looking about me. I cannot tell how often I visited the little chapel at Roslin; how often I pored over the Rizzio blood-stains at Holyrood; how often I perused the Heart of Mid-Lothian, and visited every locality book in hand. In these early days the city was peopled with historical apparitions. Queen Mary sat in the palace beneath Arthur's Seat, and grim John Knox came in to scold; Hume was musing over his History in St. James's Court; with the skirling of bagpipes around him, Prince Charlie came riding down the crowded Canongate, and Flora M'Ivor, with a white rose placed in her fair bosom, looked down from an upper window; Dr. Johnson and Boswell were turning into the Whitehorse Inn when evening fell; a lame boy named Walter Scott went every morning to the High School; and once a tall swarthy blackeyed man, with a ploughman's stoop, came striding down the Canongate, and went into a churchyard there, and stood with cloudy eyes over Ferguson's grave, and when he came out, I heard people whisper, "There goes Robert Burns." Dreams like these were ever floating before my eyes, and hid from me the actual denizens of the place. I breathed the air of antiquity. At night, too, the city was to me a perpetual delight. Every evening there is an illumination in Edinburgh. Princes Street looks like a prophet's rod breaking into fiery blossoms. winds up the ascent like a fiery serpent; the North Bridge bestrides with its lamps an abyss of gloom, and the old town climbs up to heaven in a very

The Mound

VOL. III.

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