Although I was well acquainted with the privileges accorded to beggars in this part of the country, and had been accustomed to see them, when once admitted, place themselves on a perfect equality with the masters, I was astonished at the imperious, not to say menacing tone, assumed by the old woman. While thus scolding, she relieved herself of her wallet, and having deposited it in a corner, advanced to the hearth, where she perceived me. "Ah! there is a gentleman here," said she, stopping short, and fixing her piercing glance on me" a gentleman with fine linen, a watch-Jann had one too-and gold earrings, and ribbons in his shoes! While Jann lived, old Timor was not obliged to knock at people's doors with a beggar's staff! But he has gone to rejoin his father and sisters! So now every one tramples on the widow who has buried her only son." And she began to croon almost unintelligibly

"J'avais neuf fils que j'avais mis au monde ; et voila que la mort est venue me les prendre Me les prendre sur le seuil de notre porte, et je n'ai personne pour me donner une goutte d'eau."

While she murmured this song she knelt down on the hearthstone, and extended her skeleton hands over the fire, whose dying gleams flickered over the sparkling rime in her hair. Her haggard, restless eyes wandered, meanwhile, from face to face, till they fell upon Dinah, when a flash of hatred crossed her features. "You here, you raven!" she cried; "what business have you among honest folks; you, the ropemaker's daughter?"

I glanced at Dinah, who turned very pale. The words "ropemaker's daughter" explained the young girl's timidity, and the vague feeling of ill-will evinced toward her by her neighbors. She belonged to the race of Kakous, still esteemed among the peasantry of Bretagne an accursed one.

"You carry yourself mighty high!" continued Anaïk, "because a young man of the village took it into his head to like you; because you have a young child. I, too, had a husband and children! But wait a little; it is just a year since I foretold you evil days—”

"Why do you wish me ill, Timor ?" asked Dinah, in a gentle, timid voice.

"Why? do you ask me why? Has not your husband chased me from his door?"

แ

"Because your taunts made me weep."

"My taunts!" repeated Anaïk; “I called you the ropemaker's daughter! Was it not true? And yet Jean declared I was drunk! He threatened me; yes, he threatened me, old Timor! ah! ah! ah! He thought he had set his foot on the viper; but it can sting yet. An hour is coming when I shall be revenged on all who have despised me-who have made me wait af the door! Ay, ay, good folks, your pride will have a fall, and your misfortunes will come from Tréguier."

66

From Tréguier?" repeated Dinah, quickly. "Have you seen any one from there?"

"I have," replied the beggar.
"What, this night?"
"Just now."

"And did you hear any news?"
"A ship has arrived."

"The Saint Pierre ?" exclaimed every voice.

Anaïk glanced wickedly around, and laughed aloud.

"No; a Saxon* ship."

The spinners uttered an exclamation of disappointment. "Heaven confound those pagan islanders!" spitefully exclaimed one : "I thought it had been our people."

"These Saxons have also been to Newfoundland," observed Timor.

"Do they bring any news of the St. Pierre ?" asked Dinah, disturbed by the beggar's malicious smile.

The latter did not appear to have heard

her.

"They stopped to drink at Marechs; and as the captain could speak French, I heard what he said."

"And what was it about?"

"He talked of pieces of ice as large as mountains, which float in those seas and crush the vessels."

"And he has seen such ?" "He has seen them."

"And he has heard of shipwrecks?" "No, but on his way home he met with spars and masts."

"The wreck of ships?"

"And on one of the planks he found the words 'Saint Pierre!" "

This speech of Anaïk Timor's fell like a thunderbolt among the spinners, who dropped their spindles.

"The Saint Pierre !" they all ex

*The Bretons call the English Saxons,

"You have just heard them pass." The women rushed tumultuously to the door.

"Stop!" cried the recteur, barring their passage. "You cannot see them."

"Are they not here?"

"They are here; but they have all vowed not to lift their vails till after the holy service."

"Their names, at least their names," cried the excited Dinah.

"It would be a violation of their oath," replied the priest; "for they have sworn that neither to wife, to mother, nor to sister, will they make themselves known till after the accomplishment of their vow. Respect their solemn promise made before God."

There was a cry of despair, and, as it seemed, a moment of hesitation. Each woman named aloud her father, son, brother, or husband, endeavoring to glean some answer from the recteur's face, as name after name was pronounced; but the priest immovable continued to invoke the sanctity of the vow, and to entreat them to submit to its conditions. At last several, listening only to the promptings of their grievous impatience, exclaimed that, at whatever cost, they must know their fate. The recteur vainly attempted to detain them they rushed to a second door, and opened it precipitately.

"Go, then," he cried, indignantly; "go, violate the sacred vow made before God. But tremble lest he punish your sacrilege, and the first who lifts the vails of the shipwrecked men seek in vain him she expects!"

The recteur endeavored to calm them, addressing to each some especial consolation. He reminded them of Mary's devout resignation, the holy patronness of broken hearts; and having announced that he was on his way to celebrate a mass for the deliverance of the shipwrecked mariners he made them promise to accompany him. to the church, and join their prayers to his

All followed, with the exception of Di nah, who, turning abruptly on her heel, ran up to old Timor, who was seated by the hearth, and seized her hand.

"You know who are saved?" she asked, in a voice choking with emotion. "Who? I!" replied Anaïk.

"You must have met them at Tréguier." "Well ?"

"Jean! Where is Jean ?"
The beggar sneered.

"The priest desired you to wait."

"No," exclaimed Dinah, who had sunk upon her knees, with clasped hands and wandering eyes; "no, tell me, I conjure you, Anaïk, if you have seen Jean; if you have recognized him. O! a mere sign to say Yes; or if he has perished; well, still let me know it! Better to die at once than wait. Anaïk, Anaïk! Ah, do not do not refuse me!"

"And what will you give me for my news?" asked the beggar.

"All that I have,” cried Dinah. "What will you have? Here, my ebony beads, my cross? Here they are."

"They are not enough."

"Well, then, take the gold ring he gave me. Take all, Anaïk; all that I have in

And she knelt at the old woman's feet,

"Submit yourself, and pray," he replied, authoritatively; "your suspense can endure only for a short time. Bear it unmurmuringly, as a punishment for your many sins. Be you one of the happy or of the afflicted, endeavor to bend to his Divine will. Let each of you consider herself from this moment a widow or an orphan; let her heart accept this sacrifice, and if he she mourns presently issue from the tomb, let her regard it as a miracle, for which it will be her duty to thank God as long as she lives."

The women burst into tears, and fell on heir knees.

one hand, while, with the other, she offered her cross, ring, and beads. Timor held her thus for several instants, as if expiring beneath her glance; then bursting into a wild laugh, she said,

"You may keep them all; for to torment you is better than anything you can offer me!"

Dinah rose with a bound, and darted out of the cabin.

I was too interested in the result to remain behind, and followed her.

She ran through the hamlet, and we reached the church together. The women were all there, the tapers burned upon the altar, the choristers were in their places.

Suddenly the door of the sacristy opened, and the six shipwrecked men appeared, enveloped in white shrouds, which effectually concealed their persons.

A smothered groan burst from the women; several names escaped amid their sobs, but the vails remained immovable.

It were vain to attempt to describe the awful solemnity of the scene which followed. The silence which reigned throughout the church was broken only by the voice of the priest; and if, for a moment, a murmur were audible, it rose as if to remind the murmurer of patience, and the sound died away!

What sublime power has the will over the human soul! Every woman there was awaiting the decree that was to influence the remainder of her life; yet each, with her hands clasped upon her bosom, knelt motionless before the altar.

I glanced round in search of Dinah, and discovered her kneeling in the porch, her face raised to heaven, her arms hanging powerless by her sides, and her babe lying before her, like a victim awaiting the blow, with no intention of evading it.

At last the recteur pronounced the blessing. A shudder ran through the crowd, and the moment that followed was one of intense agony. Every head was strained, and all arms were extended toward the altar.

"Put your trust in the Lord!" said the priest; and, taking by the hand the man who stood nearest to him, he made him step forward, and raised the shroud! There was a scream; and the next instant he folded his wife to his heart!

The priest raised the second shroud, and then the others. As each vail fell to the ground a scream of joy resounded, echoed by a sorrowful murmur; but as the last fell, loud groans and sobs of despair burst forth.

heavens; the birds, under its enlivening influence, flew among leafless branches glittering with frost; the hawthorn hedges had shaken off their robes of snow, and displayed their ruddy berries; all creation seemed to revive under the warm breath of spring, which passed over the frozen earth.

Just before descending the hill, I turned to give a last look at the desolated village I was quitting, and perceived in the distance Dinah, Jean's widow, descending the opposite slope, her child in her arms and in her hand a mendicant's white staff.

HAVELOCK, THE CHRISTIAN SOLDIER.

AN

N unusual sight was witnessed in the harbor of New York one bright morning of the last winter. The flags of the countless ships in the port were flying at half mast. But that, in itself considered, was not a strange sight. It betokeneddeath; and death, even among those whom their country delights to honor, is no novelty. They pass away, and their country's colors are lowered to tell of their departture and mutely to do them honor. But now, no order has come from the government to hang out these insignia of mourning. It is not one of our own citizens who has finished his course. A stranger who had never visited our shores, whose very name until quite recently had been unheard among us, a foreigner, has died in a far-off land, away from his home and his kindred. The news of his death arrived by the last steamer, and spontaneously the flags in the harbor are trailed to do him reverence. The hardy mariners needed no prompting. It was the outgushing tribute of their respect for a brave man. Havelock is dead!

A soldier and a Christian, a meek disciple of the Lord Jesus, and a bold military chieftain! It is not easy to realize the union of these characteristics in the same indi

we have heard of a preacher of righteousness in military uniform. Captain Webb was faithful to Christ and to his country. The names of others are doubtless in the Book of Life; and that Henry Havelock, the hero of Lucknow, was a brave and successful soldier is the testimony of all who knew him, and that he was a devout Christian, a man of faith and prayer, his biography sufficiently attests. A sketch

Nena Sahib, whose name will be but another word for cruelty and treachery, had received news of the defeat at Futtehpore, and wreaked his vengeance upon women and little children. One hundred and thirty-six, many of them tender infants, and their mothers, after suffering every indignity, were cruelly and with ingenious atrocity put to death. These were fugitives who had been persuaded to put themselves under the protection of this miscreant. But he had not yet done. The women and children of the helpless garrison, consigned to a captivity worse than death, were still in his hands. Upon these helpless prisoners he would wreak his savage revenge, and ere the sun rose next morning he had perpetrated a deed of relentless cruelty to which history scarcely affords a parallel. Havelock

says:

He filled up the measure of his iniquities on the 15th, for, on hearing that the bridge on the Pando Nuddee had been forced, he ordered

the immediate massacre of the wives and chil

dren of our British soldiers still in his posses

sion in this cantonment, which was carried out by his followers with every circumstance of barbarous malignity.

This horrible catastrophe will never be remembered without a shudder. Modern warfare knows nothing equal to it for deliberate barbarity. The agony of mothers and the cries of infants come back to every man who reads the cruel story; and no one can wonder that the soldiers, as they passed through Cawnpore, and saw the words written on that bloody wall by mothers in their dying anguish, should have vowed vengeance against the perpetrators of this deed of blood. And the day of vengeance was at hand. On the 16th of July, 1857, Havelock reached Cawnpore, and with an army of thirteen hundred men attacked and utterly routed the rebels, who numbered at least five thousand men. The author of the Indian mutiny says:

Perhaps in no action that ever was fought was the superior power of arrangement, moral force, personal daring, and physical strength of the European over the Asiatic more apparent. The rebels fought well; many of them did not flinch from a hand to hand encounter with our

troops; they stood well to their guns, served them with accuracy; but yet, in spite of this, of their strong position, of their disproportionate excess in number, they were beaten.

But the general's gratification at the victory was sadly neutralized by the

shocking sight presented within the city. He had pressed on with the hope of opening the dungeon, and liberating the prisoners, of restoring children to their parents, and wives to their husbands. He found only their mangled and mutilated remains.

Rarely, indeed, since the massacre of the innocents, had men looked upon a more sickening sight. The very blood, in some places, went over the soldiers' shoes. Steeped in that blood they found locks of ladies' hair, leaves of religious books, the bonnets and hats of little children, and their mothers' combs, in strange confusion. Sword-cuts marked the wall here and there; and amid them were scattered the messages of dying mothers to their countrymen. There, too, was the well, into which the dead had been thrown for burial, and the wounded for death. Their corpses had been heaped together, and were still uncovered. The men of other regiments came up, exasperated and saddened at the mournful tidings. Rugged men, who had charged to the cannon's mouth on the previous day, wept like little children as they turned from that spectacle of guilt and suffering.

Cawnpore was now completely in the power of the conqueror; and yet under this terrible provocation, through the influence of their gallant general, the British soldiers raised not a hand against the inhabitants, and not a single English bayonet was soiled by their blood.

Remaining but a few days for rest and refreshment, General Havelock, on the 21st of July, crossed the Ganges, with his little army, and commenced his march for the relief of Lucknow. On the route he had several engagements with the enemy, and incessant vigilance was necessary, for their attacks were sudden, and were made frequently when least expected. In addition to this, cholera had begun to attack his little army. Soldiers who had charged with irresistible power by day, at night lay down weak with disease. The army had many wounded, but they had many more sick. He could not reckon on more than twelve hundred healthy men; and he already had nearly three hundred invalids. To send the sick and wounded back to Cawnpore, would require a convoy of at least three hundred men. He could not spare that number from his army and hope to reach Lucknow, still