Janie's Little Romance.

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shirking of to-morrow's work. You will look such a figure in a ball-room; Charley will be ashamed of you."

RCANTU

Janie crept off and sobbed, and wept over the bitter words; finally she thought, "Charley knows how I look; and if he had t wanted me to go, he would not have asked me," and she dried her tears, and set about arranging her clothes for the coming night, that they might be entirely ready.

The night of the ball came, and it was nearly ten before Janie had fulfilled all the tasks set by her mistress, who had been more exacting and captious than usual that day. But at last she was dressed for the ball, and surveyed herself critically in the little glass to her own satisfaction.

Her dress did not fit her, though she did not know it, and made her poor figure look more ungraceful than ever. Where it should have been loose it was tight, and where it should have been tight it was a world too wide. She wore large hoops, and, taken all in all, she resembled in shape precisely the form of an old-fashioned Dutch churn. Her beautiful hair was crammed tightly in a spangled net, and a large scarlet bow was at her throat. A bright plaid sash (borrowed from the cook), and thick, coarse shoes (the best she had), completed her costume. She wore no gloves, and her poor, coarse hands were painfully conspicuous.

Charley, man-like, never paid any attention to what she had on: but he somehow dimly felt that she did not look so well as he had seen her. They went to the ball, and the novelty of it all, the beautiful girls, the flowers, and music, made it seem more like fairy land, to poor unsophisticated Janie than a reality.

Charley was kind and attentive to her, and she, happily, did not perceive in the general gaiety of dress the shortcomings in her own attire, as contrasts with the others. She would have been perfectly content to sit for ever and watch the gay couples float by in the waltz, or dash past in the polka. It was all pure delight and joy without the semblance of a shadow. At last it was time to go home, and as they walked along the silent street, Charley said—

"Janie, I have got some good news to tell you; I know you will be glad, for you and I are like brother and sister. I got a letter from my wife to-day, and she and my boy will be here next week, and then you must come and live with us. Are you not glad?"

"Yes," said Janie after a while, with an effort; but when they came in the light, Janie's face was like the ghastly face of a dead woman of fifty years. And it always remained so, for her youth had suddenly died with the ending of her one romance.

"OLIVE HARPER.''

LIBRARY

NEW YO

THE WATER TOWER:

A STORY OF THE FIRST ROYAL LANCASHIRE MILITIA.
BY MRS. HIBBERT WARE,

Authoress of "Dr. Harcourt's Assistant," "The Hunlock Title Deeds," &c

CHAPTER LXI.-Continued

TERESA'S SECRET.

Ar an early hour of the following morning, the chaise drove down the spacious Highgate, through the quaint, narrow Kirkland, over the bridge spanning the lovely river Kent, and so out of the old town, in which Teresa had spent the night.

Heart-sore and sorrow-stricken as she was, her weary eyes lingered for awhile on the wintry, but yet fair landscape, where hill and valley, sweeping meadows, and woodland heights rapidly succeeded each other; the old baronial Castle of Kendal rising up, a dark mass against the snow-covered background, whilst long icicles hung pendant from the openings in the stonework, where windows once had been. A massive relic, this, of an age long past, when the first Norman king gave the barony of Kendal to Ivo de Taillebois.

It was late in the day before Teresa and Okey reached Preston -proud Preston, as it was once called,-owing to the heavy state of the roads; and here a fresh fall of snow compelled the former, most unwillingly, to suspend her journey once more.

They started again early the next day, but a sleepless night, fatigue, and the benumbing influence of the cold, induced a feeling of drowsiness, which, at length, overpowered Teresa; and it was only the sudden stopping of the chaise, the sound of voices, and the hum and bustle, usual in the streets of a large town, that aroused her from her uneasy slumber, when she became aware, that at last, after many years, she was once more in Chester-once more in sight of those old walls, endeared to her from early childhood, and then remembered only as forming a link with the darkest and saddest epoch in her life.

Again, she was in sight of the Water Tower, unchanged since that February morning, long years ago, when she had passed from under its shadow a sorrow.stricken woman. A clear, blue sky just as there was then, a flood of bright sunshine gilding the distant hills, and gleaming on the broad waters of the Dee; the frozen

meadows, and the fields white with hoar-frost, stretching away in unbroken solitude, as she had seen them that day from the old Walls. She, alone, was changed; for the fair, young girl had passed away into the woman, whose steps were going down the hill of life, the smooth brow was marked with the lines of care, the bright eyes had grown din, and the soft, rich hair thin, and striped with grey.

A very short drive, now, brought Teresa to Brewood Park, a spot long unseen, but never forgotten. Pictures of the past became so vivid, that she almost expected to see the form of the man she had loved so truly, crossing the glades of the park, as she had often seen him, with his gun on his shoulder and his dog at his heels, and to hear his warm and welcome greeting; but the sighing of the wind amongst the bare, leafless branches of the giant beeches in the avenue, was the only sound that broke the stillness.

Robert Norris met her in the hall, and when she stood face to face with Piers Thorold, she started back involuntarily, and gazed half-doubtfully at the haggard-looking man, with hollow cheeks and sunken eyes, lying back in his chair, propped up with pillows, the pallor of death on his face, and its seal set on every feature.

Could this be Piers, the gay and handsome young squire of Brewood?-Teresa's first and only love? His voice, strangely altered as it was, broke the spell, and he murmured out the words that had fallen from his lips when he was first struck with his death-blow-"Poor Teresa."

There was all the old love and tenderness in his tone, it seemed like an echo of the past; and as the faded, sorrowful woman bent over his chair, she forgot the present and the years that divided her from that brief dream of happiness, and recalled only the recollection of his love.

With something of reverence almost in his manner, Thorold pressed his. lips on her forehead, and then motioned to her to sit down by his side, keeping her hand clasped in his own.

"Robert," he said, after a pause, "I have already told you that I wish you to be present during my first, and possibly my last interview with Teresa; because, while I have still speech at my command, and my intellects clear, I wish to make a confession which you must hear, my dear old friend. You must be the

depository of the fatal secret which has embittered my life for long years past, and that of this loving, faithful woman;-for that she has shared it with me I have never doubted for an instant, though how she became aware of it has always been a mystery to me,-a mystery which will, however, be solved to-day. I have, already, Robert. made my confession to Mr. Scruton. It is almost beyond the bounds of human probability that any

circumstance will occur that may call upon either of you to divulge this secret, but in such an event your testimony would save the innocent, by revealing my guilt."

"You speak in enigmas, my dear Piers," replied Norris, in a tone of the deepest emotion; "put these gloomy, strange thoughts out of your head. I would as soon believe myself guilty of crime as you."

"Oh, do not stop him-let him speak," said Teresa, raising her drooping head. "I know it will ease his mind of a frightful burthen-it will raise a load from his heart. O Piers," she added, turning to him, "I have hoped and prayed that I might see you again, and yet I feared that might never be."

"Well for you, Teresa, if you had never known me," said Thorold, bitterly. "What sorrow I have caused you! what a cruel return for a love of which I was so unworthy!"

"I have suffered, indeed," replied Teresa, mournfully; "I have suffered for you, Piers. My fears were always alive-I was never at rest; and, like yourself, my hair has whitened, and I have grown old before my time, in the long struggle. My own blighted hopes were nothing, they had not the weight of a feather in the scale; it was that secret cause of fear and anguish, to which you have alluded, Piers, and which, locked in my own bosom, embittered my waking moments, and haunted my sleep with frightful dreams. But I feel it is all over now for you and for me, -all terror, and doubt, and restraint; and hope whispers that your lips may give a less dreadful reading of that dark page, which has ever been before my eyes during these long years.'

"And hope whispers rightly, dear Teresa," said Thorold, as letting her hand drop, he spread out his own, thin and emaciated, and continued in faint but firm tone; "these hands are stained with blood, with the blood of a fellow creature, whom I sent before his Judge, without warning, and with all his sins upon his head, but the brand of Cain is not on my brow. On the oath of a dying man, who has no motive now for concealment, I swear to you both, that I slew Emile Vaucour in a moment of rage, that I was utterly innocent of any design upon his life, and that, when I struck him, I had not the faintest idea that I was dealing his death-blow."

"Now, may God be praised!" exclaimed Teresa, fervently"not 'poor Teresa,' now," she added, "but rich -rich in hope for you, dearest, of full forgiveness in the world beyond the grave, and everlasting rest."

"I am amazed, bewildered!" ejaculated Norris, as he came and seated himself beside Thorold, and clasped his friend's hands in his own. "Why, Piers, did you not confide in me, your early friend? why have you passed all these years in fear and torture of