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was to befall, and it seemed as if the position was reversed, and Zairy was endeavoring to comfort them.

and had left him another goodly stage those whom a fate worse than death nearer helplessness. Zairey came through the winter with the burden of many years added to her load. and the Lord had seen fit to take neither of them that winter. She comforted herself with the thought that graves were dug in the summer likewise.

In the following summer they sold the cow and heifer and their front room furniture. The proceeds carried them through the winter and the earlier days of spring. They were very near to damnation now.

Mrs. Pointon, Mrs. Grantumen, and a few others went to condole with the old couple. The same fate might be theirs, for aught they could tell, with the feebleness of old age, and the blow that felled another produced in them a tremor of disquietude.

Mrs. Pointon, for one, shed tears over them, and the old man lifted his skinny arms. "It be wonnerful, ma'am, what a spell ov sickness do," he cried in a querulous treble. "Thease was mighty pow'ful a yer or two agwone. It be hard, ter'ble hard!"

"And why shouldn't us?" Zairey said pertly, when "Damnation" was named. "We've paid rates and taxes reglar, zo reglar as clockwork, vor nigh vorty yer. We've paid our share, and we've a right to the best in the workus. When we've paid why shouldn't us have the benefit? We've paid vor others, and we've paid reglar."

"We knows 'ee have a right to it, and to zomethen a zight better," said Mrs. Pointon. "But it be ter ble hard vor 'ee both, that be what we zay, after liven togeder man and wife zo long. And to go ther and be parted at last! It do zim hard."

"But 'ee'll vind it hard," Mrs. Pointon repeated. "Pore Wold Jimmy'll vind it hard down to-there. You'll not be better thought of becos you've paid vor it zo long. It be ter'ble."

"Zo it be, zo it be, ma'am," chimed in the old man in his pitiful quaver. "Strong, and worked hard. And my strength went like watter-like watter, ma'am."

"There, don't 'ee trouble, wold man," said Zairey with a laugh. "As 'ee haven't been able to smoke lately, not haven bacca won't hurt 'ee, and as for beer, why, 'ee can drink watter and think it zider."

The visitors left, sorely puzzled, and before nightfall all Barleigh knew of "Wold Zairey's" indifference. Nobody could believe that there was any person in Barleigh who could face calmly the woeful ignominy of the workhouse.

But Zairey had other words and another face when her neighbors were gone. "My man, my wold man," she cried in a tempest of agony, "we be come to the workus at last. We be disgraced at last, my man. We be gwaïn to the workus. And we worked hard-nigh vorty yer-and zaved-and held our heads zo high-the workus at last vor 'ee, wold man."

"Don't 'ee take on, Zairey," said the old man soothingly. "I be strongish yet, and there be work to be had. We'll zell the cow."

"Zell the cow? What cow? Didd'n we zell it last yer-and the heifer too? We've nothing left, nothen but the workus."

She passed the night sobbing and "I baint zayen it be pleasant and a crying, while the old man, whose keen vurst-rate plaäce, ΖΟ like we was gwaïn to the zquire's; but we've paid vor it. Nobody can up and zay, "You haven't a right here," zeën as we've paid vor it times and agen!"

The visitors looked at one another with a mournful shake of the head. They had come to offer sympathy to

days of anguish were gone, slept peacefully at her side. But the next morning, when she went into the village to make her last purchase at the grocer's, she met all condolence with the same brave words.

"Workus! why should us care? It baint as iv we be paupers. We've

paid rates and taxes vor

vorty yer, workus be the best. And I hopes, ma'am, that vor all your kindness to we, you may vind a home in the workus when you gets wold."

and we've a right to the best in the workus. Why should us mind, zeën as we baint paupers?"

The following Monday was the day fixed for the sale of their few household goods, after which they were to make that last journey together. The district visitor called, at the vicar's request, on the preceding Saturday, and was greatly relieved to find that there was not a hard task before her. "Yours is quite the proper spirit, Mrs. Manney," she said with smiling graciousness. "The union is food, and shelter, and comfort to those who are obliged to enter it, and, as you say, you have a perfect right to its privileges." "Mrs. Manney murmured, "Yes, ma'am," very meekly, but her eyes gleamed.

"And," went on the district visitor, her imagination on fire with the poetry of the picture, "they take such care of the poor aged folks in Suckton Union. Books! and papers! and a lovely Christmas dinner! and ladies to read good books to them! and a clergyman to preach to them! and such a nice dress! It really distresses me when poor people are so misguided as to object to go in the Union. It is an insult to the good kind people who find the money to support it, and besides, it is disobeying the Bible, which tells us we are to be content in that state to which it has pleased God to call us. Union! why the very word itself is a most beautiful one."

"Yes, ma'am," said Zairey, a little grimly.

"And you will have old people like yourself to talk to, and you will be as happy as the day is long. You ought to be really thankful that God has chosen such a place for you."

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The district visitor looked up sharply. But Zairey's look was all innocent sympathy, and not a shade of irony was to be detected. "Yes, yes, Mrs. Manney," she said hurriedly. "Whatever-whatever the Lord calls me to. And now I must be going. I shall come to see you on Monday. There are two little tracts here which I am sure will do you good. This one, "A Meek and Lowly Heart," is very suitable, very suitable. The vicar will be pleased to hear that you are so willing to look upon the matter in a proper light. Good-afternoon, Mrs. Manney, and never forget that all is for the best."

"Good-avternoon, ma'am. And may the Lord bless 'ee. I veel zure that he will-vor thease avternoon.”

Zairey took up the wooden chair on which the district visitor had been seated, as if it were reeking with nameless horrors, and having carried it out into the garden, threw a few buckets of water over it. Taen she carefully swept the floor, keeping time to the words, "May-the-Lord bless 'ee." And then, having done, she sat down and cried and sobbed again.

The district visitor reported to the Ivicar that she had been to see the Manneys. The old man took little no tice, but Mrs. Manney was in a very proper frame of mind, and was quite cheerful at the thought of the Union. It was a pleasing contrast to the un

thankful behavior of most in the same circumstances.

"I am very glad, Miss Geal. I feared there would be a storm," said the vicar. "I hope the neighbors won't go and upset her."

"I hope not," said the district visitor. "It is quite cheering to me to find one of these poor families who can take a rational view of the matter."

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very likely."

she said to her husband, "we be time avore we come to Barleigh again gwaïn to church thease marnen the las' time, my man, the las' time. P'raps iv we pray togeder in the church the Lord 'll zee fit to take we togeder at once. The las' time, my man; on'y another day where we lived zo long! On'y another day!"

"We'll gwo togeder, Zairey," said Wold Jimmy, "and I'll zeek vor work in the marnen. Have 'ee milked thease marnen?"

It was more than a mile to church, and a very tiresome journey. Wold Jimmy could only drag himself along by the aid of his stick and his wife's arm. But she was sublimely patientit was for the last time.

They were a strange-looking couple, and their appearance did not spell tragedy. Zairey had put on her silk dress with its wide skirt-a treasured relic of her former greatness-and her best bonnet, that was new twenty years before. It was only on special occasions that she adopted that COStume-the black silk was too elegant for ordinary wear. Time was when that black silk had excited the envy of her neighbors, a black silk being the hallmark of prosperity. Wold Jimmy was dressed in his broadcloth, which had been his Sunday uniform for fifteen years, and in which he like a lord, Zairey had often remarked. Now it hung on his shrunken figure like an empty sack.

looked

The old man slept through the greater part of the service. Zairey looked dejected at first, but after a time sat upright with a smile on her face. She had found comfort in the service.

When the service was over she got up to go, but sat down again, and, presently, led her husband up to the altar to take communion together. It was for the last time.

When it was over they took leave of acquaintances who lived at a distance, and Zairey tossed up her head "as pertsome as when she was Я young maid," said Mrs. Grantumen.

"All who can will 'ee come to zee we th' morn?" she said. "It'll be a long

The vicar passed and complimented them on being so cheerful and resigned, and then, after some handshaking, they left the churchyard. Mrs. Pointon made them come in as they passed her house to "have a bit ov somethen," and I had my first and last glimpse of Mr. and Mrs. Manney. "I'll call and zee 'ee to-morrow," called Mrs. Pointon, as they went down the garden path.

She told me all about it after dinner. "It be strange, zur, but Wold Zairey allus did have a dread ov the workus, and now she be like thease, zo pleased as pleased because they be gwain there. It do be strange, zur."

Mrs. Pointon startled me about ten o'clock the next morning by rushing into my room, and after saying, “Oh, zur!" bursting into tears.

"Oh, zur-Wold Jimmy and Zairey. She have been hiden it vrom we all. It have druv her mad. Oh dear!

"She smothered Wold Jimmy last night wi' the pillow, zur, and then she hang herself on the stairs. Varmer Wenton's man Zam vound 'em thease marnen when he went to help with the things. Oh dear!

"And avore she did it she wrote it all down in chalk on the table, and why she did it. And she hided it vrom we all. God help us, zur. I wish there were no workhouses!"

I saw Zairey's last message, chalked in great printed characters on the table. It ran, "We baint gwaïn to the workus, I shall kill my wold man and myself, and zo the Lord will have to take we togeder. The furnisher will bury us. No workus vor we. Zairy Manney."

ORME AGNUS.

From Macmillan's Magazine. PHILOMELE.

Of the two sisters the eldest, Marguerite de Vieilleville, was evidently

should step down.

the favorite. We are told at length of shapes. In such a press it was only to her manifold perfections, with those of the young d'Espinay, her gallant husband, whose debonair encounter under the walls of Boulogne with Lord Dudley's eldest son (neither youngster being yet out of his teens) set every kerchief fluttering. The Royal Servitor devotes at least a dozen pages of his painstaking manuscript to elucidate the rare virtues, transcendent beauty, and incomparable excellence of this fair daughter of this illustrious house of Scépaux, whereas her younger sister, Philomèle, he dismisses in as many lines. To be sure the honors are not niggardly dealt out in that brief space, and we learn with pleasure that our heroine, like Charles of Orleans's mistress, was gentle and good and fair. She was, moreover, of a pleasing modesty, accompanied by so much grace and youth and fair courtesy, and a voice SO heavenly sweet (in harmony with her name) that no one could desire better. And what better could one desire. Or so at least it would seem until brought into contrast with those other dazzling portraits of the time, sketched by courtier pens whose extravagance their grim Huguenot critics do not fail to fall foul of. "Not sufficient," say they, "for these glutton courtiers and fulsome flatterers, the comparison of their idols to things terrestrial, such as roses, lilies, coral, ivory, pearls, and so on through the whole floral calendar and lapidary's stores, but they must needs climb high heaven, rifle the sun of his rays, the moon of her silver disk, and steal colors supernal from the morning orb, which in their heathen gibberish they style the aurora. Waxing bolder, nothing now remains but to pass beyond, and trespassing upon holy ground seek out their blasphemous hyperboles amidst the very angels, archangels and saints in glory!"

together be expected that the mere mortal Mademoiselle de Vieilleville was no startling beauty, we are fain to admit. It was not for her to vie with the dazzling goddesslike splendor which radiated from Madam Marguerite of France, or to stand in the light of that other goldenhaired beauty of Catherine's court, Madam Mary, the young Queen of Scots. Nevertheless, she possessed her own naïve charm which lingers still, like the scent of a rose plucked long ago and left forgotten between the covers of Maître Carloix' musty old document. The dry leaves are fast falling to dust, yet even now, as one fingers them tenderly, there comes wafted back the faint sweet aroma of the queen's garden at Fontainebleau. Who knows but that we hold that very rose of a morning celebrated by Ronsard?

Of a verity, to believe those highflown panegyrists, the courts of love and beauty over which Queen Catherine de Medicis presided, must have been fairly besieged by celestial

Mademoiselle de Vieilleville shared at least in one accomplishment with the peerless Queen of Scots: she sang in the sweetest of voices to the accompaniment of her lyre. For the rest, fancy pictures a slight young French girl, delicately pale and gracefully shy, like many daughters of her race, Brown or black the tresses (as we imagine) which mademoiselle wears, brushed off her smooth white forehead and caught back through a fillet of pearls after the fashion observed in portraits of the time. Brown her eyes also, under their long lashes, and clear as any child's. Yet think not to read at a glance this seeming transparency, or rudely summon the hidden thoughts, motives, hopes, and fears which garrison young Philomèle's white bosom behind her stiff gold-embroidered bodice and ruff of Flemish lace.

Was she, in point of fact, that fair enthusiastic girl whom we invoke for the honor of maidenhood? Or must one accept literally the account handed down by our chronicler (with some apologies to be sure), of a cold coquette, wise and worldly beyond her years? And there is still the other

theory, for those who seek farther, of pressure brought to bear on a young girl's inclination through the secret practices of the torture-chamber which are not yet obsolete, it is pretended, and were certainly efficacious in Catherine's hands. "I scarcely dared speak to the queen, my mother," writes Marguerite of Valois, referring to her childhood; "and when she looked at me I trembled lest I might have done something to displease her."

But to

resume our Carloix, who, after all, holds the only possible clue to the mystery, if mystery there be.

It befell in the winter of 1556, by an inclement season and roads deep in snow, that the Sire de Vieilleville, future marshal of France and father of the sisters Marguerite and Philomèle, was on his way up from Metz, where he held the post of military governor, to pay his court at Saint Germains. With him rode a certain young Provençal, De Saulx, or Sault, by name, of the illustrious stock of the SaulxTavannes, who had served under the said Seigneur through the memorable siege of Metz (the glory of French arms), and been enabled to verify the true temper of his steel, not in action only but also in idleness, which sometimes the severer test.

is

So it came to pass that, as these two were conversing by the way, the elder let drop a discreet hint to the purport that his second daughter, Philomèle (then enrolled among the queen's maids), had not yet been promised in marriage, and was not, perchance, beyond the reach of one who, like his young friend, stood well in the sight of honor and in the estimation of M. de Vieilleville.

You may be sure that this young gentleman could hardly believe his ears at first, so incredible seemed his good fortune. But finding they had not deceived him he jumped from his horse, and falling on his knees at his companion's stirrup swore, then and there, eternal gratitude, love, and obedience. In such amicable accord and good understanding the travellers ar

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Thenceforth the queen's presencechamber knew no more assiduous dangler than M. le Comte de Saulx. Nor was one ever better received by its laughter-loving, sweet-toothed inmates, among whom he scattered his sweet words and sweetmeats with equal success. Whether he was fortunate in winning the smiles of his shy young mistress history sayeth not, though 'tis on record that more than one would right willingly have changed places with her. It only remained for the gallant Provençal show his address in those games skill and athletic sports which were as much the rage of that day as of our own, and a sure road to court-favor. And this he did not fail to achieve, carrying off the prize three times out of five; besides leading the dance at a court-ball with so much grace, spirit, and agility that crowds followed him about, and a new figure, adapted from the farandole of his native Provence, had a prodigious run, and was long known under the title of La Volte de Sault.

of

In this manner the months of December and January sped merrily along to the satisfaction of all. But early in February important affairs, connected with a great land-suit which was then pending, called M. de Vieilleville up to Paris, and upon him, as by duty and courtesy bound, attended his future son-in-law. They were not detained long, thanks to his Majesty's letter of recommendation and other potent influences which the seigneur was enabled to bring to bear on the law's delay; yet brief as was this interval, scarce more than a fortnight, it took no longer to overcast our lover's fair prospect, and scatter the

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