of feeling he would ward off sternly. One day sped with him like another. At six he would take his frugal breakfast of beer, soup, and coarse black bread, at one he dined as frugally, at eight he took his supper, read for his instruc- | tion or amusement until ten, then went to bed. Paul's grief had not diminished by his brooding on it as the years rolled on. Before he had been three weeks at his new home old Emil Bergen died, and Paul was left without a friend in the world. The only people with whom he might have visited were the keepers of the hotel on the top of the Brocken, to whom it was a two hours' walk over a rough, stony road. But he never sought their society; besides, in summer they were too busy with constant visitors, and in the winter they were either totally snowed up, or left the place altogether.

One winter night, the wind howled and moaned, and beat against the firm-built house as though it would level it at one gust, and when the wind ceased, the snow began steadily to fall, and falling still for eight whole days, lay so high upon the ground that the only way out of the house was by its roof. This was not unusual, and when the snow had hardened over, the inmates turned out by the roof as though it were a most natural thing. After a few days it snowed again, and one night Paul was roused from sleep by hearing some commotion in the house.

"What is it?" he called out; "what is the matter?"

"Travellers lost in the snow, sir; we are bringing them in.”

"Right," he replied, "I shall be down directly." And in a few moments he was standing among his men in the long dark passage, where by the dim light of a candle a woman's body was being borne into the house, followed by a man carrying a child. The boy was living, there was no doubt of that, but the woman's fate was doubtful. When he saw that it was a woman, Paul approached no nearer.

"Prepare a warm bedroom at once," he commanded. "Hand her over to the female servants, and let me know if she be alive or dead. For all restoratives come to me. You, my brave fellows," he said, addressing the rescuers, "come in here and drink something hot."

This invitation they were not slow to obey, and while drinking, they told how they had been belated at their work, how they had heard something moaning at their feet, and how they had found this couple half buried in the snow. Presently a woman servant came in and reported that the mother was alive but very ill, and Paul ordered that if it were possible, some one should go over to Andreasberg next day to fetch the doctor. Meanwhile they should take the usual precautions for her and the child; for the care of people rescued from the snow was not a new experience at Oderbruck. Had the unfortunate wanderer been a man, Paul would have been the first at his bedside; but a woman, such a case had not occurred before, and he avoided women. For weeks this woman lay in his house

half dead. Daily he inquired after her, allowed his two maids to devote themselves entirely to her and the child, but in no other way allowed this incident to interfere with his life. The child, which had once run in his way and stood in mute admiration of the splendid man in grey and green, he sternly ordered to be kept out of sight. "Feed and keep the boy well, let him have all he needs, but do not let him run in my path," he said. And it never happened again.

After months of illness, weeks of convalescence, the sick woman was restored to health, and with her complete restoration spring also had set in, and she was anxious to proceed upon her way. But though warned and dissuaded by all the servants, she could not be induced to leave the house without seeing its master, and thanking him in person for his kindness.

So one evening in the twilight, when she had heard his firm heavy tread along the gravel, had heard him close the outer door behind him, and when he was about to enter his parlour, she ran down from her room and encountered him in the dark passage.

"Who is it?" he asked; he seeing still less than she, for he had come from out of the light.

"The woman whom you have sheltered for so long, sir. May I not speak a few words to you?" she asked, for he seemed inclined to enter the room and leave her standing without.

"What is it? Do you want to know your way? My men can tell you. Or money?— you shall have some."

"Neither," she said, taken aback by the hardness of his address. "I wanted to thank you." As she spoke, she followed him into the room.

He stood with his back to the window and disembarrassed himself of his gun; she was opposite him and the failing light fell full upon her face.

"I do not love thanks. I have done no more than common humanity demanded." He looked up at her with a mien that said, you can go now. But when he saw her, he was spell-bound; a wild glare came into his eyes, and he seized her fiercely by the hand. "Beatrice, is it you?"

It was her turn to be amazed; she had not seen him clearly before; now he had turned more to the light. "O no, it

"My God!" she stammered. cannot be Paul Smitt!"

sternly that she might be brought no more into his presence.

Her father dead, the father to whom she was now about to go, to fall down at his feet and entreat his forgiveness, to pray him to grant a home, if not to herself, at least to her child. Led away by childish vanity, Beatrice had trusted the promises of the young squire of V that he would make her a lady, elevate her to his own rank. She had firmly believed until some few years since that he had married her, that the paper he had given her to sign was a true document, and that she had been basely deserted by her husband. When he left her, she had settled down quietly and soberly in busy little Andreasberg, where neither her name nor her story was known. There she had lived, respected and beloved, working her way steadily, keeping herself and educating her child, and even her own keen shame was beginning to deaden somewhat in feeling from its having no nourishment from without. Till one day, as she was walking through the marketplace to take some work home, she met the man who had played her false. He was arm in arm with another gentleman, smoking and laughing. She flew towards him, stammering she knew not what. He turned upon her fiercely, and muttered: "You shall suffer for this, woman!" Then with some light laughing remark to his companion, of which she could only distinguish "Some mistaken resemblance-must be mad!" they passed along.

From that day, Andreasberg was no refuge for her. Her story, mutilated and aggravated, was in every one's mouth, and one day, goaded to despair and frenzy, she determined to run from the town and seek her father's house once more. At least he could not be harder than the world. An angry visit from the squire, whom she had crossed effectually in a plan of marriage, caused her to pack her few valuables about herself, take up her child, and fly from him into the dark cold night with the snow lying thickly on the ground. She had gone on and on in a condition of half dream, with only sense enough to cover her boy from the cold; she felt how the chill air was benumbing her, how the snow clogged her footsteps, and at last knew nothing more till she found herself at the forester's house. From the wrath of the deceiver to the wrath of the deceived.

Beatrice threw herself on the floor in an agony of grief. As she lay thus, the servant Anna came in.

"I'm afraid he's sickening for some child's illness, ma'am," was the reply; "at any rate you cannot move him as he is, you must wait and see what it turns to."

"But I can stay in this house no longer," she cried, "I must, I must, go."

"The Herr Förster would never turn you out while he could offer you a roof. You do not know him, madam; you do not know how good he is. I will go to him and tell him the child is ill, and he will, I am sure, press you to remain," and before Beatrice could prevent her the girl was gone.

While Beatrice was fighting with herself, holding her child in her arms meanwhile, the door opened and a firm step passed along the floor. She did not need to raise her head. She knew who stood there.

"Beatrice," he said, and his voice was softer than it had been that morning, "Beatrice, you must stay here; you must not imperil your child's life. I shall not come into your way more than before; had you not sought me, you would never have known under whose roof you had been all this while; nor should I have known," he went on, his voice failing him somewhat, "whom I had sheltered.”

For some seconds there was silence in the room, then: "Have you any belongings?" he suddenly asked, “who will be anxious at your long absence? I will send a messenger if you will tell me where and to whom."

It had cost him much to ask this question. "None."

He felt strangely relieved by the answer; why, he did not know. "Are you a widow?" "I was never a wife."

He said no more, but stood for some time silently before her. His usually firm-set mouth worked ominously, and some tempest was brewing in his inner man; but he beat it down, and said, after some time of silence: "See that the child wants no comforts, the doctor will, I hope, be here to-morrow; it is difficult to get one to come, we are so out of the world. I wish the boy a good recovery. Farewell!" He turned to leave the room.

"Paul!" she cried, "Paul!" and she stretched out her hands imploringly after him. She understood that he meant this to be a farewell for ever; he did not wish to see her again; and yet she felt through it all that he loved her still. She could not bear to see him depart thus.

"Hush!" he said, turning round, with his hand upon the lock of the door, "you will excite your child;" with that he opened it and vanished.

A fearful time followed this! The child lay for weeks ill of scarlet fever, combatting between life and death. Beatrice never left his bedside; neither she nor the doctor dared venture a hope for his recovery.

As for Paul, he went about his daily work steadily and sternly as usual, but there was a greater thoughtfulness about his mouth, and a deeper sadness about his eye, and his people dared approach him less than ever. For inwardly a fierce battle was raging. He loved

Beatrice still, blindly, devotedly; the sight of her had roused him from his life in death. He had learnt that she was free, could still be his, and yet he hesitated. All would he forgive and forget, but could he forget with the child daily under his eyes? Perhaps he might die in this fever; and that was his one hope and wild desire, that the child might die. He inquired constantly as to its welfare and if he heard it was worse, a fierce pleasure would shoot through his heart.

At length, one day, when he was returning from his work, he met Beatrice in the little wood behind the house. Her face had become thin and drawn with care, her eyes were sunk and red with weeping, her whole aspect piteous. The nurse had sent her into the air, declaring that if she did not go out, she too would be ill, and then what would become of the boy. She moved along the walks like a sad spirit, and when she saw the tall figure approaching from the opposite side, she started and turned paler. "How is the boy?" asked Paul, coming up to her.

"He is dying, I fear; and O! I cannot bear to lose him." She rung her hands in her agony of distress.

When Paul saw her grief he felt ashamed of his wicked hope. Was that true love, he asked himself, to wish a grief thus intense to her whom he adored above all else in the world? No, and it was not worthy of a true heart. "Let me see him," he said, suddenly. have had much experience of illness during my lonely life."

"I have been here all night, and my prayers have gone up to Heaven with yours for the recovery of your boy. May I say our boy?"

She disengaged one hand from the child's neck, and gave it to Paul. He took it and pressed an ardent kiss on its attenuated fingers, and then he kissed the child.

"You must go now, dear Paul," said Beatrice, softly: "we must not excite the boy." "May I not stay?" he pleaded, his tone gentle and the old tender look in his eyes. "Not now, Paul, not just now. We will meet soon."

"Never to be parted again?" "Pray Heaven no!"

Six years later, a lady and her companion visited the Brockenfeld and put up at Oderbruck. The lady was a sad embittered woman, who neither loved nor was loved in this world. Walking in the Forester's little garden after dinner, she saw him sitting there, smoking a long pipe; by his side a bright woman who held a child upon her knee, with whom the father was playing and which crowed merrily at him. A little beyond, a bigger boy was coachman to a small girl, harnessed as his horse. They were running in full gallop towards their parents, unaware of the presence of strangers.

She led the way, and he followed. As they opened the door, the nurse motioned them to silence, her finger on her mouth. "He sleeps," she whispered, "we must not wake him. This is the crisis," she murmured, turning to the forester; "either he will pass away in this slumber, or recover."

They softly approached the bedside. Beatrice kneeled down and buried her head in the clothes. She was praying. The nurse slipped softly out of the room. Paul stood at the foot of the cot and looked on. The child's little face, which Paul had last seen so bonnie and bright, was worn and thin; his breath was drawn so softly that at times it seemed to come no more; one small arm lay on the coverlet, its thin hand was clasped in its mother's grasp. She remained on her knees immovable, he knew not how long; only by her deep-drawn sighs he could see how earnestly she was wrestling and imploring for the little life that lay there so passively.

The blinding tears welled into his eyes, the first tears he had shed since he had learnt her untruth towards him.

Thus the night passed; he still standing; she kneeling. When the first cold streak of dawn fell into the room the child awoke.

"Mamma!" he said, feebly.

Suddenly she arose. "My child!" she exclaimed. "Saved! Thanks be to God.” "Amen!" answered a deep voice at the foot of the bed.

She started. "Paul, you here ?”

them.

At that moment Paul Smitt perceived the ladies, and rising politely, accosted them, saying he hoped they had been content with the very frugal hospitality it was in his power to offer "Oh, quite," said the lady. "Is that your family, Herr Förster? You all look very happy : more happy than I have seen most people look in the town. How do you manage to exist up here? And to be happy ?"

"One is happy wherever one's beloved are," he answered, fervently.

The reply was unexpected, curiously solemn, and sounded strange to the Squire's wife.

POPULAR SONGS OF ITALY.

THE songs the people sing in Italy are very different from the doggrel verses we are accustomed to hear at the Italian Opera. They are real songs, and tell us something of the habits and customs of the people-something, too, of their aspirations. They are like wild flowers. They have sprung up everywhere. No one knows who wrote them; you might as well ask who wrote the songs of the linnet.

Almost all their songs are songs of the affections: cradle songs, serenades, and dirges, which have been handed down-maybe with alterations from generation to generation. Every pretty girl has her poet-laureate; every village has its improvisatore. Many, many,

ballads relate to brigandage; some few to hunting and the delights of the table. Wine, gambling, and a disgraceful kind of gallantry are the themes of a thousand songs. In Calabria, it is the fashion to idolise assassins and write songs about them, which the girls and young men sing at harvest time. In Corsica, it is the fashion to sing Voceri (or Vendetta songs) when any one dies a violent death. Hags are hired for the purpose (called Voceratrici); it is their duty to dance and brandish knives around the coffin of the deceased, and to drink wine (some say blood) to his memory. Of all the songs of Italy, the songs of Tuscany are the most poetical and the least tainted with sensuality. Being written in pure Italian, they have a strictly national character and serve as models to the rest of the peninsula. The Stornelli or Pastoral Odes, and the Nanne or Cradle Songs, are all Tuscan in their character. They become corrupted in the different villages into which they are introduced, but in print they are nearly always the same. Scratch the patois with your pen, and you will find the pure Tuscan underneath. Venice is famous for its serenades; Naples for its love songs, properly so called; Rome for its Novelle or Sacred Ballads-the epics of the saints, the only tracts tolerated by the Church of Rome. The Maggi (Songs of May) are sung in every village in the land, from the borders of Istria and Tyrol to Cape Pesaro.

One reason why the Italians have no national ballads is that, until recently, they had no nationality. They never cared much about their history; they never took enough interest in their local patriotism to write ballads about it. The Italians are a brave people, but they are not self-reliant. They are affectionate, but not faithful; hospitable to strangers, but not famous for gratitude. They illuminate their streets in honour of the incoming dynasty, but they never sang songs about a dethroned king as the Scotch did about the Stuarts. They have plenty of old castles, but no chivalry; plenty of old families, but no old familiar name like Robin Hood or William Tell. Their oldest "myth" is Garibaldi; their oldest battle songs were written in 1859. One of the best of these, the Three-coloured Flag, was written by a Garibaldian :

III.

The flag that we love is so pretty, Its fame shall be sung in a ditty; Its virtues are seen

In the red, white, and green,

When it waves on the walls of a city!

Hurrah for the Three-coloured Flag!

These Volunteer songs are helping on the great work of regeneration in Italy. Borne from north to south, from east to west, and back again, by soldiers who sing them in the village inns while on the march, and at home in work and play after their term of service, the love songs of Italy, as well as its ballads and war songs, get scattered over the length and breadth of the land. A few years hence, every Italian peasant who has a brother, a father, or a son in the army (and no peasant in Italy is without some such military connexion, owing to the conscription) will know something or other of his mother-tongue. The songs of Tuscany will work their way into the provincial dialects, and in process of time a united language no less than a united territory will be the result. Never did popular songs do a better work than the patriotic songs of Italy are doing at the present moment. The conscript soldiers of the north and south of Italy-compelled to become Tuscans, or they do not understand the orders of their chiefs-are carrying the germs of language, of literature, into lonely places and uncultured villages, and are making boorish peasants ashamed of their jargon. It is already becoming a point of pride with country girls to sing in pure Tuscan: perhaps in remembrance of the volunteers who rushed wildly about the country, a few years ago, in search of foes and sweethearts, finding both, and leaving with each some striking souvenir-a kiss, a song, or a bullet! In no other way can we account for the prodigious number of Tuscan songs which village girls, who do not know how to read or write, and cannot speak anything but patois, know by heart. The girls will become matrons, and the children of the future will become Italians-not mere Neapolitans, Lombards, and Piedmontese-and will speak their mother-tongue in the good time coming.

FOR every boy there is his hero-a splendid, valiant, noble creature, to whom he looks up, physically. As the hero holds the smaller hand in his, and strides along, the boy admires and treasures every speech. Such a one for me was once the brave and gallant Tom Butler, who knew the world, which I did not; who could talk, could go anywhere, and do anything. Yet there were not so many years between us. It was clear action that interposed the large interval.