you. He is an intelligent fellow, and understands these things better than I do."

After the first moment of emotion, as soon as he had time to remember, he seemed to become embarrassed and cold. His estranged voice filled poor Josephine's brimming cup. She got up, tried to stand, and fell back into the chair.

The porter who had let us in put out a strong arm, and helped Josephine, still half fainting, to her room. I saw the doctor make a half motion to come to our assistance, but he drew back almost immediately.

"Good-night," he said, looking hard at Josephine for an instant, and then he walked back through the open window to the balcony.

"The Herr Doctor's room leads from the balcony," said the man. "I can bring the lady tea. I have hot water. Tea is good when you are tired."

Here was this casual porter helping us with friendly cheer, while he who should have done more than all the rest to befriend my poor Josephine went off with hıs odious pipe. I was in a rage with the doctor.

IX.

I ROSE early next morning with a purpose in my mind, and dressed myself and knocked at Josephine's door, but she was not in her room and did not answer. It was a bland and lovely morning, with indescribable peace in the air and in the dawning sunlight. This peace and tranquillity seemed everywhere, in all the place, on the steep slopes, on the wide shining valleys, on the clear mountain line that seemed carved against the chill sky. I needed not to ask my way to the church. I walked quietly up the village street and across the bridge that spanned the stream. I could see the quaint-shaped spire with its leaden nightcap at the turn of the road. The church stood in its sacred little garden, the shadows of the many crosses and footstones were slanting on the turf, the flowers were glistening with morning dew, so were some footsteps that had already crossed the grass. An old man was at work, feebly striking with an iron bar at the churchyard wall, and when I asked him to show me poor Arnheim's grave, he amid his blows raised one hand and pointed, saying in his German, "That is the grave where the mourner is standing," and then he bent to his work once more.

hands and a drooping head; some quick, heavy, large tears were falling from her eyes - tears of pity, of remorse for the Pity, past, and few remembering tears, alas ! are without some such salt in them. She held out her hand to me. It was only for a minute that we stood there, saying goodbye in our hearts to our old friend.

"I will try, I will try, to make up to Fina for all the things in which I have failed to them," said Josephine, in a low voice; and then she burst out crying once more; then stopped short and wiped her eyes and looked up into my eyes, and her face looked very sweet. As we came back the little street was waking and bustling into the day; the first sweet blinding rays of morning light were dazzling and striking upon the stream and the windows of the houses; the mountaintops flashed; the mighty Wetterhorn seemed almost floating in early radiant mist. Other travellers were assembling in front of our hotel, where our carriage was already being prepared. Our friend the porter was at his post, discussing some point with a neat little old man in knickerbockers; a short, stout lady, accompanied by an artistic-looking person in a cloak and a troubadour-like hat, was handing parcels to a guide and directing the loading of a mule. The coffee-room, which had seemed so silent and dreary the night before, was cheerful enough now, and full of clatter, which is not bad furniture in its proper place and time. One or two people were breakfasting at the little tables; jugs were smoking, insects buzzing round about the honey-pots; an energetic waiter was chasing coffeecups and wasps, and tumbling over the chairs and the breakfast-tables. John Adams, with a great pair of horn spectacles on, came into the room just after we had entered; he was evidently looking for us, and Josephine went to meet him. She had taken off her long cloak and was carrying it on her arm; her broad hat still shaded her face; her eyes were still soft with tears. She looked very sad and sweet, I thought, and she put out her hand.

"Perhaps you will soon come over to Meyringen and see us," she said, simply. The great emotions of life, even its regrets, make people real, and not ashamed of being themselves for a while, and Josephine was herself at this moment.

I saw the doctor brighten and look

and of use. They come when they can only bring discord and pain by their presence." She spoke excitedly, and scarcely looked like herself.

"I cannot think why Doctor Adams did not come on with us a little way," I said, in as matter-of-fact a voice as I could

muster.

"Don't you see that he only left because we were expected?" said Josephine. "He said as much when I asked him if he would not come over and see us," and she looked at me hard.

There are times when one would be thankful to be wiser than fate, to say some word by which to reconcile and explain away facts as inexorable as these mountains on either side; but I could think of nothing. I was too much disappointed to pretend not to understand. I could only heap her plate with wood raspberries by way of showing my sympathy. We were not the only occupants of the big salle. All the while we had been talking a voice had been scolding steadily from the balcony outside, while at the other end of the room a couple of athletic clergymen, dressed in a certain grey and black plaid which the clergy affect on their travels, and with beards, and with a trophy of umbrellas and knapsacks be tween them, sat enjoying their cutlets and their subdued jokes. The scolding voice on the balcony was anything but subdued

"Well, then, you should have seen that it was in time. It is inconceivable. I desire you to see that the mule is ready -and I am kept waiting, ten minutes, who knows, ten hours. Ring the bell (ding dong). Do you call that ringing the bell? Ring hard, or they never come (ding dong, dong dong). Mossieu, Mossieu! Vien ici! Why have not they brought my mule? What does he say, Eliza?" "He says it is there, Aunt Matilda, waiting in the shade." Really, Eliza, I sometimes think you mean to laugh at me. Now then, do think of something for yourself. Get me my capote and my large ombrelle, and do not be an hour about it." Then came a tap of heels, and two women bundled across from the window to the door.

66

How vividly I can see it all! At the time the scene made but little impression upon me. Now, as I think of it, the figures rise before me like the witches' ghosts in Macbeth, and the midday heat, and the scolding voice, and the hum of

waiting in the valley below. That poor child's tears dimmed the splendor of the summer day.

We reached Meyringen, stumbling and sliding down the precipitous road, walking most of the way, and only mounting again at the foot of the pass. Meyringen lies in a valley among battlements of granite, natural outposts of rock, boundaries that enclose you on either side. The Gremsel rears its stony forts across one far end; only to the west do the rocky gates seem to open out, where the sun sets radiant, unconfined, over lakes and across gentle slopes, where distant towns gleam by distant waters.

Holiday-makers from the north and the west come up this valley on their way to Italy, and struggle over rocks and snow and dreary heights into shades of chestnut - into the languor and wonder of Italy. Notwithstanding the icy gates of snow and rocks that separate Meyringen from that happy land of Goschen, whither we all turn wistfully at one time or another, some flash of Italian sunshine seems to play upon the village, with its vine-bound galleries and windows, on the pretty square terrace and the balconies of the inn and its flight of stone steps upon which we dismounted.

x.

THE usual guard of honor turned out to receive us - landlord, landlady, the cook from the kitchen, the waiter from his kingdom of knives and forks.

"Here you are," cried Mrs. King's shrill little cracked voice from a balcony, from whence she waved her pockethandkerchief, and through the midst of them came another figure, Sophy King herself, in her muslin dress, with a straw hat on her head, carrying something in a little covered dish, which she set down quickly when she saw us, and came with two wide cordial arms flying to meet us.

"At last," said she, "at last! Where did you go to, you poor things? We were almost despairing of you when Dr. Adams telegraphed this morning to say you were coming. Dear Fina is longing to see you. I have not left her since her good doctor went away. He waited until he heard of Miss Ellis coming."

I could not think what odd change had come over Josey. She began a set speech to my annoyance, something about - " I am sure my mother and I have every wish to go to her or to refresh yourself first?" she asked, with some shade of sarcasm. "If you like, I will go on and tell her you are coming, and the landlord will show you the way.'

"We will come with you," said I hastily, "dear Sophy. It has been such a comfort to think of her with you all this time."

"You know she is in the convent," said Sophy, relenting a little; and then going back for the covered dish, she added: "The nuns' fare is rather austere, so I get the landlady to help it out. The convent is close at hand." And so saying she set off quickly.

I seemed to hear voices buzzing on every side, and people saying that the friends of the poor young lady had come. One person and another joined on to our little procession, still headed by Sophy carrying her dish. Then came Josephine, silently following with her silk dress trailing; she looked stern and pale, I thought. At such a time, with such a meeting before, surely jealousy and egotism should have had no place in her heart, and indeed, by degrees her better self asserted itself; her looks changed and softened, the thought of the little lonely girl must have put out all others less worthy. Sophy once glanced at her over her shoulder, and then, seeing that she was crying, softened in a minute.

It seemed to me as if all the inhabitants of the hotel must have come down from their various balconies to follow us and our guide stumping ahead in her straw hat. She led us past the châlets and the balsam-pots, past the church and the fountain, to the market-place, at the corner of which the convent stood. It was a curious tall house built upon piles

or arches.

"Our sisters keep a school," said the landlord, who had also joined us, having only waited to get his felt hat. "They know Miss Arnheim well. Allow me, Missis," - to Sophy, as he nimbly ran up the stone steps and rang the bell, conscious that the eyes of the whole company were upon him. Besides the people who had come along with us, were all those assembled in the wine-shop with the red curtains opposite. I could see eyes peeping curiously from between the flowerpots in the window and from the doorway. The bell swung with a melodious deep clang, the low door opened, and the

leading to a steep wooden staircase, an oaken ladder leading to an oaken heaven, where some very dirty little angels were flapping their wings and scratching on slates under the supervision of a sister, who looked up smiling. She had a bright face framed in black muslin frills, that seemed intended to shade bright eyes and rosy cheeks and the unholy radiance of health and youth that lingered in her smiling face. Perhaps this is an article in many of our creeds, and we are only too ready to consider as sacred those earthly veils of black, those cobwebs of dust and disappointment, that fall upon us all in our life's journey until one day we find that these too pass away.

"We are glad to see you," said the nun kindly; "the poor child will be glad. She is asleep; go up, go up."

Fina, wearied out, had fallen asleep that hot autumn afternoon in the little bare room to which the kind and pitying nuns had brought her. The window was open; all night she must have seen the stars twinkling in the sky, while she tossed to the distant roar of the mountain torrent; and now by day the sun streamed through the deep casement, half shut out by a green curtain, and the sound of the torrent came still, but softened by daylight and its many echoes. She had fallen asleep, tired out, lying on the outside of her bed, with all her dark hair tangling on the pillow. She slept, and peace came, for she was smiling in her dreams. A round-faced sister standing in the doorway peeped at her, and gently crept across the room and drew back the blind. The child started, and awoke with a little exclamation.

"They are come, darling," said Sophy, standing by the bedside, and flinging her arms round the little prostrate figure.

"Who are come?" said Fina, bewildered still. "Is mamma come?"

Alas! "they" only meant Aunt Josephine - only meant me, a poor, helpless old governess. Fina did not repel us though she broke out crying again. She rose slowly from her bed in her long white dressing-gown and came to meet us, and lay in Josephine's close-folding arms.

"Oh, yes! you are like mamma," said Fina. "She used to kiss me as you do." Then she went on : "Just now I was dreaming, and I thought papa was giving me a music lesson, and mamma came with the light and I awoke. It must have been the light from the window when the nun drew the curtain back."

Poor little maiden! Though veils and frill-caps do not seem to me sacred, though lighted candles seem little worth the solemn protests of belief which are given to them, other symbols there are, other signs and sacraments, which few among us do not acknowledge. A child's trust and admiration for its home relics and beloved home saints, a father's ceaseless, tender, protecting love, seem to me among the most holy things of life. These simple creeds and early unquestioning beliefs are not less true because, as time goes on, other things less complete, less easy to understand, less home-like, arise. The day comes, indeed, when children leave their mother's arms and their father's sheltering care; they have to struggle for themselves, to accept doubts, and disappointments, and perplexities - some human, some ghostly; but not the less true are these simple traditions because of the wider and more complicated experience of later life. There is something almost supernatural in this book of childhood, of common things and common people made wonderful to the love of baby eyes.

It was fortunate we came when we did, for almost immediately after our arrival Fina fell ill. For ten days the poor child, parched by burning fever, lay tossing in her little convent room. I telegraphed to Dr. Adams, who had gone back to Interlaken, and who came at once. His presence was the greatest help and comfort to us all. What did we not owe to his skill and perseverance as day after day went by? It was a curious phase of existence. The little nuns, who were kindness itself, let us come and go as we liked, while they kept their monotonous and peaceful rule. We could hear the hymn from the chapel as we sat by Fina's bedside. Sometimes it seemed to keep time to the mountain thunders, for the weather was unsettled during Fina's illness, and storms were constantly breaking.

The doctor always spoke very cheerfully, and declared that his patient was much too well nursed not to recover; and, indeed, the result proved that he was right.

looked up quickly, nodded, and smiled gravely as we went by, but did not speak. Josephine flushed, as she always did when she saw him.

"He has gone back to his experiments," I said, "now that he is no longer anxious about his patient. As Sophy says, Fina certainly owes him her life."

"Dr. Adams attributes Fina's recovery to Miss King's wonderful nursing," said Josephine; "she repays his compliments."

What childish creatures human beings are after all, and how oddly that which somebody else prizes or despises gains or loses in value in our eyes! Poor Josephine did not need any one to teach her to love John Adams, as I knew better than Sophy did; but she had not been able, so it seemed to me, to appreciate him hitherto. She would not own it, and yet Bessie's supercilious strictures must have had a certain effect upon her mind. That is just the difference; people can influence our minds, but not our hearts. They can prevent us doing justice to the powers of others; but they cannot prevent us from feeling in unison with them, from realizing certain inexplicable links that bind us mysteriously together.

The doctor, for some time, seemed unaware of the jealousy between the two, and went his way; but one day, coming in upon a discussion, he spoke very sharply to Josephine, who had refused to give up her place by Fina's bed when Sophy's turn for watching came round.

"A good nurse not only knows how to watch her patient," said he, "but when to leave her post; she takes rest when necessary, and does not give unnecessary trouble to other people.

Josephine got up at once, but I met her in the passage in tears soon after. Poor soul! her heart yearned after the child, and she would gladly have carried her away from every one of us.

These troublesome confusions of life are among its most painful experiences, the too much which is no less vexing than the too little. Things which might have brought so much blessed joy and tranquillity only seemed to lead to pain and complications.

I remember walking home to the hotel one night, and speculating as to what might have been if only the Ellises had behaved in a more reasonable manner. Nobody's feelings would have been wounded, not even my poor Sophy's, who would never have come across this doc