ALYPIUS OF TAGASTE. music, and of her home at Alexandria, and of all that she should have to tell their mother of her meeting with her beloved sister. Meanwhile Alypius had hurried from the apartment, and, without waiting for Claudia to follow him, he had proceeded to Pyrrha's room, where he found her in deep conference with Yanina. Rapidly Pyrrha repeated to him all that she had told to Claudia; and she then informed him that Medora's offer to Yanina's husband had proved tempting enough to induce him to abandon his present position, and share in the projected flight. While she was detailing to him the plan which Indah had confided to his wife, as the best that he could devise for effecting the desired escape, Claudia joined the little conclave, and listened eagerly to all that had been so cleverly arranged. "And now for the execution, Alypius," she said. "Not one moment is to be wasted in our preparations." "And is Medora to be left alone among these fanatics?" asked Alypius, sadly. "No; that shall not be," replied Claudia, firmly and decidedly. "She is ready to depart with us, and to share our dangers, as "-she added in a whisper "she shares our faith. We will not leave her here, where she could no longer be safe; for she will never again take any part in the worship of the gods of Phylæ." "Now God be praised for that assurance," said Alypius, fervently. "Has she declared this? Has Medora owned herself a Christian?" "She has," replied Claudia, smiling at his excited manner, even in the midst of all her present fears and anxieties. "She has done so this very evening, in the belief that we were to part to-morrow. But we will not part. Both my sister and Pyrrha shall accompany us -and even if we should fail in effecting our escape, and the cruel priests should arrest us, they cannot injure her; for they will not suspect the pious and devoted Medora of having abandoned her cherished faith in Isis." "Now I feel ready to face every danger, and overcome every difficulty, since Medora is to be one of our party. We cannot fail, Claudia-it is impossible !" 66 "I trust you are right," answered Claudia, more composedly. "But we must act-not talk. Time is passing rapidly; and we must be on the other side of the river before daybreak. Pyrrha, I trust to you to make every necessary arrangement for Medora's comfort. She must not arouse the suspicions of our aunt by absenting herself from her until the usual hour of retiring for the night." "All shall be ready," replied the devoted Pyrrha. "I would lay down my life willingly to be sure that my dear young mistress would leave this island tonight, and would never again set foot upon it. It is a den of cruelty and wickedness, Lady Claudia. I never knew anything of the vile mysteries of this place, until Yanina told me what she had seen and heard. Most thankful shall I be to find myself once more in Alexandria !" "We shall all be equally thankful, Pyrrha. And in order to accomplish our desire, we must be quick, and we must be cautious. Go, Yanina, and express our gratitude to your husband. At the hour he has named we will meet him." Claudia and Alypius returned to the abbess's apartment; and soon afterwards Orestes took leave of them, promising to see them in the morning, and attend 645 them to the landing-place, where the boat would bo ready to convey them to the opposite shore. No sooner had the priest left the house, than Alypius also bade the abbess and her nieces good night; and retired to his own abode-not to seek rest in sleep, but to make hasty preparations for a midnight escape. Indah awaited him, as had been arranged with Yanina; and their plans were finally settled-not, however, without much anxiety; for Indah feared the vigilance of the sacerdotal band, and their attendants; and both he and Alypius were well aware that no personal courage could avail to save all their party from the vengeance of the priests, if once their scheme were detected. The bare idea of Medora being in any way exposed to their wrath, was anguish to Alypius. He would have sacrificed all his own feelings and wishes, if, by leaving her at Phylæ, her safety and comfort could have been secured. But he knew that it would be far otherwise he knew that Medora would never act the part of a hypocrite-and that if she were convinced of the truth of Christianity, she would never again join in heathen worship. And then-a cruel fate might be hers, and her brother would have no power to save her. No; she must escape with him and Claudia; or they must fail, and suffer together. With this conviction, he completed all his arrangements with Indah; and then returned to the residence of the abbess-wrapped in a large bornouse-and took up his position in the deep shadow of a heavy colonnade, to await the appearance of his female companions. The moon was high in the heavens, and her soft beams fell on all the solemn and mysterious-looking buildings which surrounded Alypius. So strangeso dreamlike-and so beautiful was the scene-so perfect was the stillness-and so serene the clear vault that overarched the whole-that he could have spent hours in that spot contentedly, had his own feelings partaken of the deep repose that rested on all visible objects. But his heart was beating with strong excitement, and his attention was on a painful stretch for any faint sound, or any moving object that might reach his quick ear or eye. At length, when the stars told him it was midnight, he beheld four female forms issue from the dark entrance of the college buildings; and with noiseless tread, cross the moonlit court, and approach the spot where he stood. They were all dressed in the costume of the lower order of Egyptian women-such as was worn by the female domestics and attendants on the sacerdotal families residing on the island. With these Yanina had provided them; and so entirely were Claudia and Medora disguised, that-until they raised their veils-even Alypius could not distinguish them. They all carried baskets, in which were deposited such articles as they cared to take away with them; and this added to their menial appearance, and completed their necessary disguise. Yanina made a sign for silence; and the whole party followed her without uttering a word. Cautiously she led them to the great temple; and Claudia and Medora trembled as they passed through the grand entrance. It seemed like rushing into destruction-but it was the only way of escape; and it must be attempted. The regular landing-place was alway vigilantly guarded at night; and only those who could avail themselves of the secret passages which led from the temple to the rock-bound shore of the island, could leave its precincts unknown to the authorities. Yanina knew all the mysterious passages; for she had been employed with her husband in various things connected with the temple service, which had given her a considerable knowledge of its subterranean construction. She, therefore, advanced with confidencethough with care and caution. She trusted implicitly to Indah, who had preceded the party, in order to ascertain that no one was in the way; and who was to hasten back, and warn them to retire, if any signs of danger should appear. each seized an oar, and were on the point of leaving the shore; when the former dropped his oar, and sprang again on the rocky pathway, exclaiming : "I must secure that door. If we are pursued, it will be by the way you have come. We must prevent any one from following us !" He bounded up the steps, and hastily locked and barred the door. He was not a moment too soon; for as he leaped down the steps, he heard the door violently shaken from within; and then several voices called upon his name. But he was in the boat, and had pushed it from the rock; and a few strokes of the oars had carried the little vessel to a safe distance, before the man, who had so evidently given the alarm, appeared on the pathway by which he had left the spot. He carried a large cloak on his arm; and, in a friendly voice, he begged Indah to return and take it. While he spoke, he unfastened the door; and several dark figures rushed out, and hurried down to the water's edge. But One dark lantern, which Yanina carried, was all the light with which they were provided; and guided by this faint glimmer, they passed along gloomy, arched passages, down winding steps, and through cold, vaulted chambers; where the slightest sound of their footsteps was echoed, and filled them with alarm. At length they reached a heavy closed door that Loudly they called on Indah to return, and proseemed to forbid all further advance; and, at the same mised him a full pardon-and even a rich reward-if time, they heard hurried footsteps overhead, which he would bring the fugitives again to shore. resounded fearfully in the subterranean apartment. Indah only indulged in a low chuckling laugh; and Yanina tried the door-it was fastened on the out-plied his oar with a vigour that was well seconded by side. For a moment she stood, pale and aghast, for she feared her husband had been discovered, and arrested, and that the door was secured by the dreaded priests. If so, they were all indeed lost, for they were completely in the power of those who would show them no mercy. The fugitives did not speak-they feared to hear even their own voices in that dungeon-like chamber. But Alypius instinctively drew a dagger from his breast, and placed himself close to Medora; as if he felt that he had power to protect her from every danger. Vain thought-he might have died for her, or with her he could not have saved her! Happily his courage and devotion were not thus put to the test. The Christians had placed all their trust in Him for whose name's sake they were now in peril, and He did not desert them. While they all stood in anxious expectation, and Claudia was whispering a few words of comfort and encouragement to her sister, a gentle knocking was heard on the other side of the door. "It is Indah!" exclaimed Yanina, in a voice of sudden joy. "Open quickly, my husband," she continned, applying her lips to the door. "There are footsteps in the hall above!" Instantly the door turned on its heavy hinges, the bright moonlight streamed into the dungeon. and Now make speed!" cried Indah; "and we are safe. I kept the door fastened until I could get rid of one of the temple-servants, who met me in one of the passages, and followed me hither, curiously enquiring what might be my errand to the private landing-place. I pleaded a secret commission, and entreated him to go round by the pathway along the rocks to his own dwelling, and to bring me a boatcloak. He went at length, but there was suspicion in his eye; and I fear he may have aroused those whose footsteps have alarmed you. Hasten to the boat." He gave his hand to Claudia, and Alypius assisted Medora-whose steps were steady, though her cheek was deadly pale. A small boat lay in the shadow of the rock, which they rapidly descended by steps cut in its surface; and Pyrrha and Yanina followed. Indah and Alypius the strong arms of Alypius. Then the entreaties of their pursuers were changed into curses loud and fierce. The souls of the whole party-and especially Indah-were consigned to all the horrors of Amenti; and threatened with a transmigration into the forms of the most loathsome and degraded animals-even into toads and swine. The habitual fear and reverence which both Indah and his wife entertained for the priests, and their belief in their being endowed with supernatural power, caused them to tremble as these awful denunciations reached their ears. But their knowledge of the unscrupulous and fanatical character of their spiritual teachers, led them to doubt the fair promises they now made; and, even if they could have secured their own safety, and a rich remuneration for their treachery, they would not have delivered up those who had placed so much confidence in them, into the hands of such cruel enemies. "THE MIRACLE OF MORNING.” Tis summer the writer was crossing North Wales by a midnight express train. The usual futile attempts had been made to induce sleep, which will but seldom be persuaded to abide in a railway carriage: and had been given up in favour of the more feasible look-out into the midsummer-night's visible darkness. For never did total gloom environ the landscape during that June midnight; always a lingering of lightness somewhere, high in the heaven among the clear stars, or on the borders of the hills. After we had passed Rhyl at tremendous speed, and were drawing on towards Abergale, another light appeared in the north-east, diffusing from over the dark rine of the sea. "Dawn!” said one of the lookers-on in the careering train. But our watches declared that the hour still wanted a quarter of two; could dawn be so early? Rather as if the darkness was growing pale, than as any increase of illumination, the faint blueness spread higher in the heavens. Two or three black blotches of clouds were hung in its midst, as if lower than its influence. Broad bare sea and empty sands were beneath, lit by scarce a gleam of reflection. Afar on THE MIRACLE OF MORNING. some point of land was a scarlet spot-the only positive colour in the whole scene; a vivid immovable glow from a lighthouse. Presently, as the train fled along, we saw dim shapes at sea which we knew to be ships; one or two of them had lanterns suspended astern. The land side was utter blackness, and over its masses of mountain hung a planet of great brilliancy. Larger grew the pallid radiance over the sea, ebbing higher towards the zenith. Dusky Orme's Head darkened sleeping Llandudno from a gleam of it. Across it flashed the Conway suspension-bridge bars for an instant, and our train was sweeping through the tubular way, and along under the old castle, and by the straitened little town. To the left, soon, were visible great glimmering mist-clothed Carnarvonshire mountains, with shadowy white houses at their base, sometimes. To the right, again the wide waste of sands and slow-creeping tide. Afterwards, tunnels and short glimpses of the Menai Straits; the lions of the great Britannia-bridge fleet past; and a vision was revealed which made all in the carriage exclaim-how beautiful! For over the shining straits, in the centre of the growing dawn, which was becoming tinged with saffron and with rose, there hung a massy curved moon of silver that could be grasped. The clouds had piled themselves about it as a frame for the picture above the dark-wooded banks of the Menai. And One yellow star, the largest and the best, We remembered Milton's exquisite address to the 647 Not yet, however, is the sun clear this morning, but a warm burnt sienna tinge fills the clear spaces of the east. None of the vivid vermilion streaks in which some modern painters are wont to indulge, stain the horizon where he will appear, but it has been to-day as when Lycidas was mourned "And the still morn went out with sandals grey." A master hand at the neutral tints of nature, as well as at her brighter hues, the poet of "Paradise Lost" has also sketched the "civil-suited morn," "Kerchieft in a comely cloud, Where rocking winds are piping loud, Ending on the rustling leaves, With minute drops from off the eaves." But the rocking winds are hushed to a whisper now, and only breathe "The air that cools the heart in pathways dim with dew, We little think what a beneficent ever-recurring Our wakening and uprising prove: Through sleep and darkness safely brought, Hover around us while we pray; New perils past, new sins forgiven, New thoughts of God, new hopes of heaven." Then, this being so, should we not follow the Psalmist's example, and "sing aloud of God's mercy in the mornrushing?" It seems especially a season for gratitude, and Away still over the flat moory Anglesey, the and roar of the train affording a contrast most marked of the impetuosity and labour of human effort compared with the silent unchangeable working of God's laws. Without a sound or a struggle, the irresistible morning was coming up out of the east, incapable of defeat or of opposition as are the very purposes of God. Which is sublimely intimated in the allusion of the prophet Hosea "Then shall we know, if we follow on to know the Lord: His going forth is prepared as the morning !" Sure as is the return of dawn after dark, is the coming of the Lord in mercy to the soul that seeks him; the very secking, the very saying-"Come, let us return unto the Lord, for he hath smitten, and he will bind us up," is the heavenly earnest of finding him. And most often is the conversion of a human soul like the imperceptible growing of light, gradually conquering and expelling darkness; causing deeds of darkness to shrink away as evil mists contract before the spreading day. And "then shall thy light break forth as the morning, and thine health shall spring forth speedily; and thy righteousness shall go before thee, and the glory of the Lord shall be thy reward;" thy soul dwelling in the noontide of promise. That combination of beauty over the Menai Strait might well bring to mind another of the matchless illustrations of Scripture, where it is said in Canticles, of the church "Who is she that looketh forth as the morning, Fair as the moon, clear as the sun?" for prayer. If ever a heart is to feel glad all day, it will be glad in the morning, when the whole world with who knows what events of advantage or enjoyment seems to smile, and a fresh strip of time lies in front, possible? Let us ask the Lord to "be our arm every morning, our salvation also in time of trouble;" then but good, in some shape, and he will "cause us to hear can the wings of each returning dawn bring us nought his loving-kindness" in all his dispensations. How well has old Dr. Watts summed up the moral of the morning in his sacred poem: "God of the morning, at whose voice The cheerful sun makes haste to rise, To run his journey thro' the skies; Round the whole earth he flies and shines. O, like the sun may I fulfil Th' appointed duties of the day; With ready mind and active will, March on, and keep my heavenly way!" An older poet still, Henry Vaughan, expresses the same in this other form : "Let my course, my aim, my love, We think of that surely-coming last morning, as we 648 THE MIRACLE OF MORNING. stand on the deck of the steamer, and watch the faint colouring stealing over the hills and fields; enriching their neutral tints with the life of purple and emerald green. How wonderful to think that there will be such a closing day to earth's history, when the dawn will flush the east for the last time, and the morning sun will mount over the hills for the last time, and man will go forth to his work, and to his labour, for the last time. Such a morning dawned upon the cities of the plain, when Abraham "got up early to the place where he stood before the Lord," and looked towards Sodom and Gomorrah, and beheld that the smoke of the country went up as the smoke of a furnace. Such a morning | dawned on the hosts of the Egyptians as they marched between those terrible crystal walls of water, along the untried sea-path, until "in the morning watch the Lord looked unto the host through the pillar of fire and of the cloud, and troubled them;" " and the sea returned to his strength when the morning appeared." What an overthrow was that! without the wielding of a sword or the raising of a spear, Pharaoh and his host were annihilated by the mighty weapon of the waters, "and Israel saw the Egyptians dead on the sea-shore," as the early sun shone over the surging deep. In the wilderness days that followed for forty years, there were many mornings signalised by occurrences such as have never befallen on earth since, nor ever shall befall. That morning when the Lord rained bread from heaven on the camp, and when the dew was exhaled in the sunrise, and "behold, upon the face of the wilderness lay a small round thing, as small as the hoar frost upon the ground," was only the sample of a thousand such, till the miracle became common as is the growing of our own corn. And the mornings when the fiery cloud was lifted up off the tabernacle, and all Israel understood the signal to strike their tents and march away whither that God-given pillar moved, have no parallel or repetition in the world's history. Slowly the great sun rolled up over the distant hills of Wales, and flooded with glory the tranquil Irish Sea. The music of the morning was absent, but well we knew of a hundred woodland glades where the thrush and blackbird were long since awake and about their business of nest-providing, and singing between whiles; and of many an upland where The gentle lark, weary of rest, From his moist cabinet mounts up on high, And wakes the morning; from whose silver breast Who doth the world so gloriously behold The cedar tops and hills seem burnish'd gold." "But who," says Beattie "But who the melodies of morn can tell? The pipe of early shepherd, dim descried In the lone valley; echoing far and wide, The clamorous horn along the cliffs above; And the full choir that wakes the universal grove." Quaintly did the Earl of Surrey express the same awakening of nature, centuries ago, from a rather different point of view. It reads like the translation of one of the Italian concetti of the period: "The suu, when he had spread his rays, And laughs upon the earth: anon, And shows them forth, full orderly." The blackish blotches that hung awhile ago in the dawn light have melted away somehow, and it is "a morning without clouds." And we can appreciate what an exquisite character-comparison is that whence these words are drawn:-" He that ruleth over men must be just, ruling in the fear of God; and he shall be as the light of the morning, when the sun riseth, even a morning without clouds; as the tender grass springing out of the earth by clear shining after rain." How beautifully does David elsewhere bring in a similar illustration, proving that he was as close an observer of human life as of the world of nature, when he compared the desire of a renewed heart after God to the longing for daylight that imbues the watcher. Perhaps in his wandering life through the fastnesses of Palestine he often gazed through the dark hours towards the east, wistfully desiring the first pale streaks that told of breaking day; perhaps, king though he was, he had watched beside the couch of some beloved dying one, and seen the tardy grey light growing feebly among the gloom. But most forcible to any person who knows either position would be the words "My soul waiteth for the Lord more than they that watch for the morning; I say, more than they that watch for the morning." And from a happy experience of the results of such watchfulness would be the declaration-" His anger endureth but a moment; in his favour is life; weeping may endure for a night, but joy cometh in the morning." Ay, well may the believer anchor himself upon the hope, "joy cometh in the morning!" For God has given to him, already, "the Bright and Morning Star," which is the blessed Saviour; the earnest of that unclouded noontide of eternity, when "thy sun shall no more go down, neither shall thy moon withdraw itself; for the Lord shall be thine everlasting light, and the days of thy mourning shall be ended.” THE RETURN OF THE MISSING CREW. "THERE's two ends to every trouble, Mary; there's the end that goes downward and drags us to the earth, and there's the end that goes upwards and draws us to heaven. There's a deal in having a grief by the right end, Mary." And Christopher turned to examine his tackle and clean out his boat. Christopher Buckley, or " Old Kit," as he was usually called, was gray-headed, but his heart was youngbrimming over with loving kindness and sympathy; his sun-burnt face, tanned and wrinkled as it was, had such a pleasant smile, and such an upright, vigorous, honest look, that any one who knew the secret of perpetual youth might see at one glance he had it too. He was very sorrowful when he told poor Mary Methil of the two ends of a grief, sorrowful for hera wife of a few months, weeping over the widowhood which she believed had come upon her. Young Herrick Methil, her husband, had been as a son to Christopher, and there was not one of the people, |