took the little money she had left, went to the grocery and bought coffee and butter and fruit, things she had often longed for. She stopped on the way home and left two of the largest oranges with a neighbor who was sick and poor. Oh, but this was the very luxury of wealth, to be able to give to others!

Filled with this new and exquisite joy, Miss Lavinia trod lightly homeward, dined sumptuously, and turned her attention to the needs of her wardrobe. She sat a long time with pencil and paper, anxiously adding and subtracting, but the next day she who had drawn her tiny dividends with trembling forebodings, boldly drew twenty-five dollars from her principal and went shopping.

Having the instincts of a lady, her first thought was of her hands and feet. She bought a pair of neat shoes-not too good, for they would not be needed so very long-and some soft gray gloves, the first good gloves she had ever owned. Then to the milliner's. Really, Miss Lavinia was learning her lesson very readily.

The milliner came forward, smilingly, for though she expected no enrichment, she knew and liked her customer.

"I see you have your spring bonnets in the window, and I suppose it is time I was thinking of mine." she said, easily, as if a new bonnet each season was the natural order of things. "How much is that one?" indicating a tasteful bonnet on one of the standards.

"That is six dollars. The straw is fine and the ribbon extra quality."

"Oh," said Miss Lavinia in dismay, "haven't you anything cheaper?"

"I've got a bonnet here, somewhere, that we trimmed for the doctor's wife, last spring. Then she went into mourning for her brother and didn't want it."

Rummaging among her boxes she produced a gray straw trimmed with soft silk and violets. "There, that might have been made for you," setting it on her customer's head and deftly tying the shining ribbons. "It suits you to a T," and she turned her around to a mir

ror.

Miss Lavinia looked and could not help seeing how perfectly the modest bonnet framed her pretty gray hair. "How much?" she asked in a very small voice.

net

"Well, seeing it's you, and the bonnet is a little out of style, I'l call it three dollars." To Miss Lavinia, whose one bonhad been worn, with few changes, for ten years, it seemed radiantly fresh, and she promptly took out her worn pocketbook. When she reached home she carefully dusted a stand by the window, set her new bonnet upon it, laid the gloves beside it, and sat down and feasted her eyes. How pretty they were, and how perfectly they suited each other! This was the first æsthetic gratification of her life, and she had a sense of being fed more than by her good dinner.

That night she lay awake a long time, pondering a fearsome step. It seemed like flying in the face of Providence, but the nibble she had had whetted her appetite. The next morning she took a trolley for

On the beautiful May Sunday foilowing, the congregation of the Cranfield Baptist Church experienced a distinct shock, for as the people turned after the benediction there came from Miss Lavinia's humble sitting under the gallery a well dressed lady in a quiet gray suit, with irreproachable bonnet and gloves. Was it? No, it could not be! It certainly was Miss Lavinia! Church etiquette forbade surrounding her and demanding the how and when, but it did not prevent sundry nudgings and smiles and raised eyebrows. A good many people shook hands with her, and on her way home several dropped behind her to inspect her at leisure. It was really a triumph in a small way.

Over their Sunday dinner the doctor's wife told him about it. "And how she managed it beats me," she finished, "for everybody knows she has the merest pittance. Either she has come into money or she is losing her mind and using up what she has. Somebody ought to look into it."

"I knew a man once," remarked the doctor mildly, reaching for another biscuit, "who amassed a fortune by minding his own business. It's worth trying. My dear, I don't believe there's another woman in town who can make biscuits like these."

One of the keenest sorrows of Miss Lavinia's poverty had been its loneliness. The chill barrenness of the little gray house and her anxious face had not drawn her neigh

others to her table, she had declined. her few invitations. She had nothing to give. Even her small friendly services had their materiai value and were paid for in one way or another.

But now things were changed. She occasionally asked a neighbor to tea, or carried a loaf of bread to some poor, overworked overworked mother. The bunches of sage and spearmint from her little garden, which, heretofore, she had sold, now she gave away, and she often did little neighborly kindnesses, for which she would take no pay. She subscribed for a religious weekly, and instead of the dollar a year which, out of her poverty, she had given to missions, she now gave five. People wondered, for it had become known in some mysterious way that she was using up her principal; but the one man who understood made no sign.

One day, driving his rounds, he overtook Miss Lavinia a little way out of the town and brought her in. "I don't see any one who seems to enjoy life more than you do," he said, looking at the peaceful face beside him.

"I am just finding out how good life can be."

"Do you find it so pleasant that you would wish it prolonged?"

He marked her fluttering breath and the veins throbbing in her temple, and said gently, "I see no reason, Miss Lavinia, to change the opinion I gave you a year ago. May I ask if you have enough to carry you through?”

"I have three hundred dollars left. I've spent a great deal of money this year." She looked at him as if expecting blame, but the good man's smile reassured her.

"The money has been well spent. You know what it has done for you, and I often find traces of it among my poor patients. When you need more come to me. I will lend you the value of your place and you can will it to me, and nobody need. know anything about it till afterward;" and he set Miss Lavinia down at her gate with her one great anxiety smoothed away.

One July Sunday, as she sat read ing her Bible, she came to the words, "There shall be no more sea."

"No more sea," she repeated to herself. "I did hope that some of the things I haven't had here I should get there. But that settles it. If there ain't going to be any ocean I never shall see it. And I always wanted to." Was it chance that, in her very next week's paper, an advertisement caught her eye of board at moderate rates in a small fishing village some two hours' ride from Cranfield?

Miss Lavinia called it a providence, and immediately wrote a let

ter.

When it was known that she was going to the seashore, her part of the town fairly rocked. Some thought she should be forcibly de

tained, but she quietly made her few preparations, and one day stood, for the first time, at the ocean's edge. North, east, and south, to the horizon, stretched the undulating green plain. Miss Lavinia gazed and gazed entranced. At last out of her starved experience leaped the words, "Oh, how good it seems to see something there is enough of." Later its power and beauty and majesty laid hold upon her so that when at a week's end she journeyed back to Cranfield, she took with her something which she kept to the very end, and whenever the minister read about "the wonders of the deep," she had only to close her eyes to feel the salt breeze in her face and see again the wondrous shining vision.

In her years of loneliness she had longed for a bird or a cat,-anything she could talk to, but the tiny expense of its food could not be thought of. Now, as if to prove the words, "To him that hath shall be given," she opened her door one. morning upon a half-starved yellow kitten. Miss Lavinia welcomed it as a gift from Heaven, and under her generous feeding and tender care it developed into a purring ball of happiness, the very apple of her eye. It was an ever fresh delight to her to see the little yellow head against the window when she returned from an errand, and to hear the scampering little feet about the rooms that had been so deadly still. She held long one-sided conversations with it, and Goldie's affection and cunning ways furnished her with a constant theme. Life had grown very full and rich.

A

burning heat the troop pushed on. The night before they had camped on the low ground, and the number of men added to the sick list the next morning had warned the captain to brave the heat of the day in search of a village, rather than risk another night in the swamps. Encouraging the men by leading the way himself through the tangled vines and underbrush, he was rewarded toward evening by suddenly coming upon a small sugar plantation. Scouts were immediately sent ahead and soon the bearer of the white flag was demanding the inhabitants of the little village to surrender.

But there had been no need of any such precaution. All the men of the place, down to the boys large enough to carry a gun, were away with the army which was to drive the hated white stranger from the islands. The few old men who were left, together with the women and children, ran and hid themselves in their miserable huts, out of which they could be enticed only after long arguments by the troops, and after being convinced that they were not to be led out and shot, but that all the men wanted was food and lodging. An hour after the detachment had entered the village every woman in Bereo was preparing food for the strangers, but not with

Night settled down, and sentinels having been posted, the troops were indulging in a well earned rest, with the exception of Captain Nelson and Lieutenant Graham. They had taken possession of the hut of the chief of the village, now guarded by his daughter, a girl of sixteen, and the old grandfather. All overtures of peace on the part of the two men toward the old patriarch had been unavailing, and not a word of response could they get from the man whose son was now a hunted wanderer, with a price on his head, and whose village had been twice entered and despoiled by the white troops. In silence he watched them eat, and after partaking of his own meal, retired to a corner of the room, and gradually sank into slumber.

Wenina, meanwhile, went about her accustomed work, and now that the white men had eaten, and there was no immediate sign that she and her grandfather were to be massacred, her fear gradually wore away, and she listened curiously to the strange language of the bearded man and his smooth faced friend. After her work was finished she sat down in the doorway of the hut, apparently watching the road, but with one eye constantly on the strangers. They were poring Over an old map, and from places