the figures that moved among the trees when a hostile tribe was lurking
about his mountain.

"There'll be a weddin' in the ol' house," she said, "before there's
roses on them bushes ag'in. But it won' be my poor Elsie's weddin', 'n'
Ol' Sophy won' be there."

When Helen prayed in the silence of her soul that evening, it was not
that Elsie's life might be spared. She dared not ask that as a favor of
Heaven. What could life be to her but a perpetual anguish, and to those
about her an ever-present terror? Might she but be so influenced by
divine grace, that what in her was most truly human, most purely
woman-like, should overcome the dark, cold, unmentionable instinct which
had pervaded her being like a subtile poison: that was all she could
ask, and the rest she left to a higher wisdom and tenderer love than her
own.

* * * * *


GYMNASTICS.


So your zeal for physical training begins to wane a little, my friend? I
thought it would, in your particular case, because it began too ardently
and was concentrated too exclusively on your one hobby of pedestrianism.
Just now you are literally under the weather. It is the equinoctial
storm. No matter, you say; did not Olmsted foot it over England under
an umbrella? did not Wordsworth regularly walk every guest round
Windermere, the day after arrival, rain or shine? So, the day before