waving his tail violently, and producing a whizzing noise, that sounded like the rushing of winds. The cockswain stood erect, poising his harpoon ready for the blow; but, when he beheld the creature assume this formidable attitude, he waved his hand to his commander, who instantly signed to his men to cease rowing. In this situation the sportsmen rested a few moments, while the whale struck several blows on the water in rapid succession, the noise of which re-echoed along the cliffs like the hollow report of so many cannon. After this wanton exhibition of his terrible strength, the monster sunk again into his native element, and slowly disappeared from the eyes of his pursuers. Which way did he head, Tom?" cried Barnstaple, the moment the whale was out of sight. "Pretty much up and down, sir," returned the cockswain, whose eye was gradually brightened with the excitement of the sport; "he'll soon run his nose against the bottom, if he stands long on that course, and will be glad to get another snuff of pure air; send her a few fathoms to starboard, sir, and I promise we shall not be out of his track." The conjecture of the experienced old seaman proved true, for in a few minutes the water broke near them, and another spout was cast into the air, when the huge animal rushed for half his length in the same direction, and fell on the sea with a turbulence and foam equal to that which is produced by the launching of a vessel, for the first time, into its proper element. After this evolution, the whale rolled heavily, and seemed to rest from further efforts. His slightest movements were closely watched by Barnstable and his cockswain, and, when he was in a state of comparative rest, the former gave a signal to his crew to ply their oars once more. A few long and vigorous strokes sent the boat directly up to the broadside of the whale, with its bows pointing towards one of the fins, which was at times, as the animal yielded sluggishly to the action of the waves, exposed to view. The cockswain poised his harpoon with much precision, and then darted it from him with a violence that buried the iron in the body of their foe. The instant the blow was made, long Tom shouted with singular earnestness "Starn all!" "Stern all!" echoed Barnstable; when the obedient seamen, by united efforts, forced the boat in a backward direction, beyond the reach of any blow from their formidable antagonist. The alarmed animal, however, meditated no such resistance; ignorant of his power, and of the insignificance of his enemies, he sought refuge in flight. One moment of stupid surprise succeeded the entrance of the iron, when he cast his huge tail into the air with a violence that threw the sea around him into increased commotion, and then disappeared, with the quickness of lightning, amid a cloud of foam. "Snub him!" shouted Barnstable; "hold on, Tom; he rises already." "Ay, ay, sir,” replied the composed cockswain, seizing the line, which was running out of the boat with a velocity that rendered such a manœuvre rather hazardous, and causing it to yield more gradually round the large loggerhead that was placed in the bows of the boat for that purpose. Presently the line stretched forward, and, rising to the surface with tremulous vibrations, it indicated the direction in which the animal might be expected to reappear. Barnstable had cast the bows of the boat towards that point, before the terrified and wounded victim rose once more to the surface, whose time was, however, no longer wasted in his sports, but who cast the waters aside as he forced his way, with prodigious velocity, along their surface. The boat was dragged violently in his wake, and cut through the billows with a terrific rapidity, that at moments appeared to bury the slight fabric in the ocean. long Tom beheld his victim throwing his spouts on high again, he pointed with exultation to the jetting fluid, which was streaked with the deep red of blood, and cried— When "Ay, I've touched the fellow's life. It must be more than two foot of blubber that stops my iron from reaching the life of any whale that ever sculled the ocean!" "I believe you have saved yourself the trouble of using the bayonet you have rigged for a lance," said his commander, who entered into the sport with all the ardour of one whose youth had been chiefly passed in such pursuits; "feel your line, Master Coffin; can we haul alongside of our enemy? I like not the course he is steering, as he tows us from the schooner." 'Tis the creater's way, sir," said the cockswain; "you know they need the air in their nostrils when they run, the same as a man; but lay hold, boys, and let us haul up to him." 66 The seamen now seized their whale-line, and slowly drew their boat to within a few feet of the tail of the fish, whose progress became sensibly less rapid as he grew weak with the loss of blood. In a few minutes he stopped running, and appeared to roll uneasily on the water, as if suffering the agony of death. "Shall we pull in and finish him, Tom?" cried Barnstable; "a few sets from your bayonet would do it." The cockswain stood examining his game with cool discretion, and replied to this interrogatory "No, sir, no-he's going into his flurry; there's no occasion for disgracing ourselves by using a soldier's weapon in taking a whale. Starn off, sir, starn off! the creater's in his flurry!" The warning of the prudent cockswain was promptly obeyed, and the boat cautiously drew off to a distance, leaving to the animal a clear space while under its dying agonies. From a state of perfect rest, the terrible monster threw its tail on high as when in sport, but its blows were trebled in rapidity and violence, till all was hid from view by a pyramid of foam, that was deeply dyed with blood. The roarings of the fish were like the bellowings of a herd of bulls, and, to one who was ignorant of the fact, it would have appeared as if a thousand monsters were engaged in deadly combat behind the bloody mist that obstructed the view. Gradually these effects subsided, and, when the discoloured water again settled down to the long and regular swell of the ocean, the fish was seen exhausted, and yielding passively to its fate. As life departed, the enormous black mass rolled to one side, and when the white and glistening skin of the belly became apparent, the seamen well knew that their victory was achieved. VIRTUE. Sweet day, so cool, so calm, so bright, Sweet rose, whose hue angry and brave And thou must die. Sweet spring, full of sweet days and roses, A box where sweets compacted lie, Only a sweet and virtuous soul, But though the whole world turn to coal, GEORGE HERBERT. BEAUTY'S PRAYER. [Mrs. Frances Sargent Osgood, born in Boston, U.S, 1812; died in New York, 12th May, 1850. A favourite American poet; author of the Casket of Fate: A Wreath of Wild Flowers from New England; and editor of several volumes of poetry.-"Grace of expres sion, and delicacy of moral feeling pervade all she ever wrote."-Sarah J. Hale.] Round great Jove his lightning shone, With her tresses all untied, Touched with gleams of golden glory, Beauty came, and blushed, and sighed, While she told her piteous story. "Hear! oh, Jupiter! thy child: Right my wrong, if thou dost love me! Beast, and bird, and savage wild, All are placed in power above me. "Each his weapon thou hast given, Each the strength and skill to wield it: Why bestow, Supreme in heaven! Bloom on me with naught to shield it? "Even the rose-the wild-wood rose, Fair and frail as I, thy daughter, Safely yields to soft repose, With her lifeguard thorns about her." As she spake in music wild, Tears within her blue eyes glistened; Yet her red lip dimpling smiled, For the god benignly listened. "Child of Heaven!" he kindly said, "Try the weapons Nature gave thee; And if danger near thee tread, Proudly trust to them to save thee. "Lance and talon, thorn and spear: Thou art armed with triple power, In that blush, and smile, and tear! Fearless go, my fragile flower. "Yet dost thou, with all thy charms, Still for something more beseech me?— Skill to use thy magic arms? Ask of Love-and Love will teach thee?" Member, of all sorts of scientific societies, and on certain days in the week he attended the boards of various Assurance companies, examined papers, and passed or rejected lives proposed for insurance. He was hard-working and prosperous. Few men in the profession, it was said, made so large an income. Go to what part of the town you would, you seemed to be for ever encountering Dr. Dendy's twohorse carriage rattling along at a great pace, going to or from patients and the accompanying golden fees. When the doctor started in the morning, be gave his coachman a list of the places he was to drive to. In this list the coachman had Dr. Dendy was not good-looking. He might even have been called ugly, but that there is an excellent precept impressed on all well-known entered now for some months a certain cared for minds in their nursery stage of formation, to the effect that no one may be so offensively described, except it be a certain notorious personage whom it will not be necessary to name. Let us say, therefore, that Dr. Dendy was plain. He was a physician in large practice. Jocose people said of him that, in the course of his professional career he had had occasion to thrust so many guineas into his pockets that eventually the gold coin, carried so much about his person, had got into his own circulation, and affected the colour of his skin. Certainly his complexion was deeply tinged with yellow. He was very bald, with a narrow festoon of iron-gray hair at the back of his head. His small, neat, wiry figure was always clothed in black his coat being invariably buttoned tightly across his chest. He was of middle age, perhaps a little better; which expression, as applied to age, is generally understood to signify a little worse, or older. He lived in a grand, gaunt, murky house in Harley Street, seldom setting foot in more than two rooms in it, however his library and his bedroom. He was the author of an admired Treatise on the Pathology of the Heart, to which work he was constantly adding annotations and commentaries, with a view to completely exhausting and settling the subject. When he was able to devote a little more time to it, his book, he was satisfied, would be the only authority on the heart-physiologically and pathologically considered. But his time was very much occupied. He saw patients at his own house almost before he had swallowed his breakfast; later in the day, he saw other patients at their own homes; he was one of the physicians to St. Lazarus Hospital, and gave lectures on Materia Medica, course after course, to the students of that excellent institution; he was a Fellow, or a house in Calthorpe Street. You called it Calthorpe Street, Russell Square, if you were desirous of consulting the predilections of its inhabitants; if you were heedless in that respect, you spoke of it with perhaps greater accuracy as Calthorpe Street, Gray's Inn Road. Dr. Dendy always appeared to prefer the first-mentioned designation. The coachman treated himself to a furtive smile whenever he read Calthorpe Street in his list. The doctor had a patient there, of course. But then, as the coachman noted, his master went there oftener and stayed there longer than anywhere else. Of course the patient might be in a more deplorable state, might stand more in need of protracted visits from a medical adviser than any other of Dr. Dendy's patients; but the coachman was inclined to think that such was not the case. On the first floor of the house in Calthorpe Street visited by Dr. Dendy, there lodged one Captain Lance, a retired Indian officer, and his only child, Miss Milly Lance. Captain Lance was in feeble health from a distressing asthma, and from other infirmities of a painful nature. He did not bear his sufferings patiently; was, indeed, very peevish and petulant and hard to please; exhibited all the selfishness and want of consideration which a long course of ill-health is apt to develop in almost any one, however great may have been his original stock of equa nimity and good-nature. But Captain Lance had not begun with much excellence of temper; and now, a confirmed invalid, it may be said of him that he had no temper at all, except of the very worst sort. He was attended, however, with a ceaseless solicitude, an untiring affection, by his daughter Milly, a slim, fair girl of eighteen or so, not very remarkable-looking, beyond that she possessed a profusion of glossy brown hair, and a pair of large, luminous, dove-like eyes. No wonder she was pale. She was always by the side or within call of her invalid father. She was hardly ever permitted to stir from his sick room. It was dull, tiring work. "Don't go, Milly," he would say, sharply; "I may want you; there's no knowing." She could only escape when he dozed: his asthma lulled for a while by anodynes. Awake, he would have her ever near him, waiting on him, slaving for him, nursing him. Now and then he would upbraid her bitterly for some fancied neglect of him, the poor child with a twitching face patiently standing by him the while, replying only by her tears, her caresses, and her increased exertions for his comfort. Then he would make her the audience of his repinings, tell over and over again the story of his sufferings, bursting out occasionally into passionate lamentations over his broken health and ruined fortunes. What could she say? What could she do? It was tiring, cruel work for poor Milly Lance. The Captain was poor. The fact was too often harped on and groaned over for Milly not to be conscious enough of it. Yet it must be said that Dr. Dendy had made no inroads on the sick officer's straitened means. "No, my dear," he said to Milly, on his first visit, putting from him with a smile the proffered fee, "it musn't be. We doctors have all our crotchets. Each of us has his free list. One enters clergymen upon it; another, authors; a third, artists. For my part, I never take a fee from a soldier. I should be ashamed to do it. My father was a soldier, and served in India, as your father has served; only he was more fortunate. He was a general of division when Don't let us hear any more talk about fees. It musn't be thought of for a moment." he died. "Oh, Dr. Dendy, how good of you! Butyou'll come and see him again?" Milly said, timidly thankful, yet alarmed. Would so great a man as the physician be content to continue labouring without his due reward? "My dear, I shall come again and again, as often as possible, till between us we've made poor papa quite well again." This was on the occasion of Dr. Dendy's first visit to Calthorpe Street. Milly's gratitude seemed to know no bounds. And then, thanks to Providence and the doctor's remedies, her invalid's health had certainly mended of late. He had not scolded her for nearly three days, and for about a quarter of an hour he had been almost cheerful. Indeed, she had reason to be grateful CHAPTER II. The doctor left Milly Lance with a fluttering sensation about his heart, such as he had taken no account, made no mention of whatever, in his famous treatise upon that organ. He returned to Calthorpe Street often. He alleged that it was very necessary for him to watch closely the effect of his prescriptions upon his patient. And each time that he saw Milly Lance—and he now felt a curious desire to see her as frequently as possible-he experienced a return of that strange fluttering sensation in the cardiac region. He was not alarmed at it; he did not think it was disease; and if it was, he didn't care, for it was not at all disagreeable. Indeed, he liked it. Professionally, he was inclined to regard it as a new development of action-quite healthy in its nature. His For the first time he felt the chosen pursuits of his life not sufficiently attractive or absorbing. Thoughts of a new kind broke in upon his studies, disturbed his practice, interrupted the flow and harmony of his lectures. great house seemed to him very dreary, his existence very desolate. "Who would nurse and tend me," he asked himself, "if I were to fall ill like that poor Captain Lance?" Yet he dismissed the reflections suggested by that inquiry as selfish and unworthy. "No," he said, "I couldn't wish to chain a fair young creature like that to my side only to be my nurse and my servant. If I fall ill which Heaven forbid!—I must have a paid attendant from the hospital; that will be quite good enough for me. It isn't for such a reason I should wish to make her mine." For it had come to that. He wished to make Milly Lance his wife. It was love that was so restless in his heart playing as many pranks with him as "that shrewd and knavish sprite called Robin Goodfellow" among "maidens of the villagery," housewives and night wanderers. At least, he surmised that love was the disturbing cause of his heart's pulsing. He had had no experience of the sort of thing before; but still he thought he could hardly be mistaken. His disorder must arise from what people generally called Love. It got to be more than he could bear at last. So he plucked up courage, and in an oldfashioned formal way he spoke to Captain Lance on the subject, and besought permission to address himself to Miss Lance. And he named a very handsome sum which he proposed to settle on his future wife-if he might regard Miss Lance in that light. It shall make no difference to you, captain," he said in conclusion, with an adroit consideration for his patient's selfishness. "There's plenty of room in my house. You must pitch your tent there. You shan't be deprived of your nurse. And your medical attendant will be on the spot always. We'll soon make you your old self again." "I congratulate you, Milly," Captain Lance said presently to his daughter, the doctor having taken his departure. "You'll accept him, of course. He's ill-looking enough, but he can't help that, and one gets accustomed to ill looks. I don't think him nearly so plain as I first thought him. And he's old; he can't help that either, and he'll the sooner make you his widow. And he's rich, Milly; very rich. Thank goodness, we shall have done with this infernal poverty! You'll accept him at once?" "You wish it, papa?" Her face was very white, and there was a sort of choke in her throat as she spoke. "Of course I do," he answered sharply. "You must be a fool to ask. You don't expect such another chance, do you? And there's no one else in the way. You don't love any one else?" woman. "No," she answered faintly. "I congratulate you. You'll be a happy You'll have more money than you'll know what to do with. The luck's turned at last. Give me a glass of wine, and I'll drink your health and his." She obeyed; then stooped to kiss him, by way of thanks for his good wishes. Soon she made an excuse to quit the room. She did not want him to see how fast the tears were streaming down her face. The doctor received a favourable answer to his suit. Milly only pleaded in a faint voice, with a frightened look on her face, that there might be no hurry that time might be allowed her-because-because she so wanted her father's health to improve before she left him, if only for a day. "Certainly, certainly," said the elated doctor. "Your will is my law," he added, gallantly; but, at the same time, he thought she need not have seemed quite so much scared at him. Then, not a little embarrassed at so unaccustomed a performance, he kissed her on the forehead. It was hard to say which was the more blushing and confused, the kisser or the kissed. | CHAPTER III After this the doctor was more than ever at the captain's lodgings in Calthorpe Street. Hz care for his patient was unremitting. Captain Lance mended-slowly, but certainly. The doctor's coachman treated himself to more and more smiles of a furtive sort, espec ally when the doctor persuaded Milly now and then to take a drive, and accompany him on a round of professional calls; she remaining in the carriage, of course, while he saw his patients, wrote prescriptions, and fingered pulses and fees. The coachman even ventured to confide to a few favoured intimates his opinion that there would, before long, be a “young missus" presiding over the establishment in Harley Street. Perhaps he Dr. Dendy was very happy. wished, now and then, that Milly would look a little less grave; but then he consoled himself with the reflection that it was best so. "It would be too absurd, at my time of life, to marry a romping, giggling girl. I have no right to expect from her extravagant affection. I must work for her love and earn it. In that way I shall surely gain it at last; at present it is a little too like gratitude. But time will change that—time and my own great affection for her. Dear little Milly!" He was himself a staid, forbearing, rather stately lover. In such wise he surely recom mended himself to Milly, and obtained a ready grant of all her regard and esteem. For her love he was content to wait, and labour, and hope. Like most men of great mental activity, the doctor was always very busy with his fingers. His abundant vitality demonstrated itself in a certain restlessness of body and limb. As he talked he liked to curl up a string, or fold up a pipelight, or snip paper with a pair of scissors. He toyed with Milly's tapes and cottons, let loose her needles from their case, stuck pins into her pin-cushion in curious forms and patterns. One day as he sat by her in a playful mood (Captain Lance being asleep in an adjoining room), he turned her workbox over bodily, strewing its contents all about the table. He took up a carved ivory card-case, and examined it curiously. "That was a present from Hong-Kong. Is it not beautifully cut?" Milly demanded. There was a flush upon her cheek as she spoke. He had opened the card-case, which was deemed, perhaps, too good for use; indeed, |