be proper: she did not like to ask her mistress, for she knew she would be ridiculed unmercifully by that proud and selfish woman. She thought of all her dresses-they were pitifully few-and decided, with a sigh, that none of them would answer. Finally, she deter. mined to go to some strange store, and there she could ask the clerk what would be the most suitable.

She asked leave of absence of her mistress for the first time in her five years of servitude (for where had she to go in the whole world ?), and with a cold stare of surprise it was accorded. Going to her miserable little room, she took her slender purse and counted the contents. Five dollars and a half were all that it contained. Janie wondered eagerly if that would buy a dress. However, with a little sigh of relief she put on her bonnet and shawl and went to the store to make her purchase.

The clerk, pitying her hesitation and embarrassment as she explained her wants, understood at once (Heaven bless him for it!) and pleasantly showed her some tarletan, pink, white, and blue.

Poor Janie had an unsuspected, unformed vein of poetry in her stunted nature, and she mentally compared the fleecy white to the drifting clouds, the blue to the azure sky, while the pink was like the morning light. She would have chosen the white, but she accidentally laid her rough, red hand on it, and seeing the contrast, she put it by and chose the blue; not knowing, poor soul! that it would make her sallow skin look positively yellow.

That paid for, she had just fifty cents left to buy gloves, shoes, ribbons and all those other etceteras, which ren ler femininity so charming. She thought regretfully of those articles; but she was two happy on her main idea to fret over them. She had no money

to pay a dressmaker; so on evenings, after her multifarious duties were done, she would sit and sew, her face almost handsome with the sweet, tender smile that now played over her lips. "Why should she not be happy? Charley was so good, she had known him so long, and now he had asked her to go to this ball with him." Charley had just finished building a darling little cottage for himself, and Janie thought, with a sweet thrill of delight, that perhaps he might ask her to live in that little cottage as his wife. Could mortal felicity ever reach higher?

The night before the ball Janie asked her mistress for permission to go. She had expected a scolding, but was not prepared for what she did hear, and it cut deep. Why will women, be so hard on women because they are servants, when a few words of kindness cost so little? Her mistress had laughed to scorn the idea of her going to such a place, shamed her, ridiculed her, until poor Janie's heart was like to burst. Finally she said -

"You can go, if you want to; but, remember, I will have no

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

Janie crept off and sobbed, and wept over the bitter words; but finally she thought, "Charley knows how I look; and if he had not 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.''

NO CROSS-NO CROWN.

SHOULD the way be dark and dreary,
Should thy heart be sad and weary,
Should thy brow be marked with sorrow,
With deep lines of heavy care;
Fear not-bright will be the morrow,
There will be no sorrow there.
Faint not heart, be not cast down,
Ne'er forget that many others
Bore their cross and won their crown.

Each cloud has its silver lining,
Therefore, cease thy sad repining;

For the darkest hour is ever

Just before the dawn of day.
Fear not-just across the river,
You will soon for ever stay;
Faint not heart, be not cast down,
Bear the Cross before the Crown.

Ev'ry day must have its sorrow,

Which will brighter make the morrow.
Ev'ry heart must have its gladness,
Ev'ry heart must have its woe.
And, unless 'tis tinged with sadness,
Joy will not seem sweet you know.
Faint not heart, be not cast down,

Soon you'll reach the brighter shore,
Drop the Cross and wear the Crown.

CLELIA ROSALBA CRESPI.

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