The brother smiled at his sister's eagerness and told her he must have a substitute, and money to pay him.

འ

"Well," said Christine, I will give you everything I've got. My gold cross, my ear-rings, my silk neck-kerchief, my collerettes; in a word, all my trinkets, to him who will consent to go,"

"All that does not amount to the price of a man," replied Eugene.

Christine reflected awhile, and said, catching her brother's

arm,

"Well! I am well worth a man-worth more than a manoh, certainly I am! I will give myself, then. I will tell somebody or other, 'Go in my brother's place, then, and I will be your wife. You see I am pretty—a little spoiled, but what matters that? I will love you so, if you will save my brother!' Oh, yes! I swear by the golden cross, in which is some of my mother's gray hair, I would willingly marry him who would devote himself to you."

At evening, as they were seated at their humble meal, without being able to touch it, and looking tearfully at each other, some one knocked at the door.

"Come in," said the young man, hastily drying his eyes. An old sergeant made his appearance saying,

"Health! Is the conscript Eugene Leven here?" "Yes sergeant.

"There," said the soldier, throwing a letter on the table. Eugene read slowly at first, but afterwards devoured the paper. It was his discharge in due form. He looked at the old soldier with astonishment.

"That means that your place is taken, conscript. It's a pity, though; for your mustaches would have sprouted with a little gunpowder. But enough, you are happy now-farewell.” And he was going away.

"Oh the devil!" said he, as he returned, "Christine Leven -is that your sister? Where is your sister?"

"Here," said Eugene, pointing to Christine, who was pale with joy and emotion.

"This one is for you, miss ;" and he threw a second letter on the table, but stopped short as he saw Christine trembling with agitation, crumpling the letter in her hands, and gazing fixedly on the table.

"What is the matter, what is the matter?" said Eugene. "Dear Christine, let us see that letter? Selfish being that I

am,

I never thought of it. Let me see who dares to write to you? What does all this mean?"

And he ran over the letter hastily.

66

Oh, read it aloud," said Christine, "it's the same to me! Good heavens! this is but just !"

Eugene read aloud.

"Miss-I ask nothing-I go away without making any terms-I take your brother's place; you need him, and no one needs me. But I am honest and love you, ever since I saw you weep. I send you a ring of my mother's. If you have pity upon me, you will take the golden cross, in which is some of your mother's grey hair, and which glitters on your neck in the moonlight, this evening you will place it in the crevice of the large yew tree, near the branches. I will get it to-morrow morning; then you will wait two years, and, if I am not dead, I will bring it back. Will you remember what you swore on that cross? Farewell."

"What does this mean?" said Eugene, slowly. "How could any one know? Sergeant, do you understand this?'' "Some fellow on the look-out near you."

66

Why then did he not come to us frankly?" answered the young man. "What a way of obliging is this!"'

66

Ah," said the soldier, "there's the thing! one's afraid of being treated as a spy; and then, when one is young, and timid, and all full of romantic sentiments, one knows how to write and is afraid to talk, for want of practice; that's it!" Eugene shook his head.

"Soldier!" cried he, "your hand!

I will not have this substitute-my sister shall not be sacrificed-I will go with you. See!" And he took up his discharge, and prepared to tear it in pieces.

Christine stopped him.

"After all,

"But what if I want to have him?" said she. it's a fine action on his part. And then he goes without making any terms-and then he is unhappy-and then I have no other means of keeping you-and then I want to be in love with him! He did well, however, in not showing himself-one might have regretted him too much. I will take the crossbut I should like to know-sergeant, have you seen him?" "Yes, now and then."

"Well! he is not humped-backed, or bandy-legged, is he?"

"A good joke! Is the French army recruited with such

sort of stuff under the little corporal? Is it not composed of individuals irreproachable as to their persons, and no fools as to morality?"

"Is he a man of worth?" asked Eugene.

"Very much so, I answer for it."

"Well, sir soldier," said Christine, removing from her graceful neck the cross with the black riband which supported it; "tell him that he has done well; and place this cross in the hollow of the great yew; and then, say nothing more to him, but do not quit him, do you hear! and try to come back with him, to tell me, 'There he is, it is he himself, he is wrothy of you.'

Eugene and Louise looked on, without being able to speak. The grenadier rose, took off his cap, received the cross, wiped away a tear, and said "Enough!"

She

Christine turned to her brother and future sister. was no longer the same person. Her character had assumed a more serious hue. She told Louise, "I, too, am betrothed; the pledge of my faith is in the hands of a soldier of the guards."

A year afterwards Eugene had to leave his home. The enemy was in France, and he would not have accepted a substitute now if he could have found one. At Montereau his life was saved by a lieutenant of carabineers. As this officer informed him that he had no family, Eugene invited him home to his own.

Charles, such was his name, soon won Christine's favour; but she had plighted her troth to her brother's substitute, and she was faithful to him. Then Charles handed her the golden cross, and told her that it was he, who, a poor collegian, ashamed of the noble action he was about to perform, went away without seeing her, and finally rose to the rank of lieute

nant.

"At present, sir," continued the narrator, we are married. The sergeant died at Waterloo. Eugene and myself have prospered in the world; we live in that little red and white house you see yonder, and I go every evening to smoke my pipe under the Croissy yew."

THE MISOGYNIST.

MR. ETHELWAITE sick! exclaimed I, hastily leaving my bed. What is the matter? I saw him this afternoon, and he seemed unusually well.

"I don't know," said the little boy, "but mammy heered him groanin', and did'nt like to go and see, 'cause he always looks so cross at her; so she sent me down to call you."

Poor man! poor man! filled my sighs continually, until I had completed my preparations for braving the inclemency of the weather. But let me not forget my readers are unacquainted with the individual so abruptly introduced to their notice.

On a fine morning in the month of May, a message came to one of our church elders that a stranger wished to see him.

"Indeed!" said the good man, putting on his best coat in some little confusion; for a stranger was a rare phenomenon in our village, and those who did visit us were of a class seldom disposed to trouble the elders,-except, indeed, to gull their simplicity with some proverbial "notions."

But the trepidation of the kind elder had no effect on his politeness. Down he went, to meet the unexpected visitant, with as much gravity as if he had in mind the apostolical injunction, "let your deacons be grave," yet as cordially as if he felt himself equally enjoined to be "given to hospitality."

The stranger exhibited, in manners and dress, the model of a finished gentleman. He was, perhaps, fifty years old, and dressed in black, with extreme neatness. A pair of gold spectacles did not obscure the expression of his calm blue eye, and his gold-headed cane was grasped by a hand of most aristocratic proportions. Bowing to the elder's complimentary welcome, he observed, "In passing your little village yesterday I was so much pleased with its neatness and quiet, as to be tempted to stop and examine it more closely. The result is, I have been taken with the idea of terminating in it the span of my existence. Will you be kind enough to inform me if there are any vacant pews in your church?"

"We have several," replied the pious elder, almost revering the devotion that made God's worship the first care of its possessor-"we have several, but they are in a lonely, unfrequented part of the church, and may be disagreeable to you, But my own is too large for my family, and I need not speak of the pleasure it will afford me to have you aid us in filling it. The insignificance of the offer emboldens me to make it, and

my gratification will be so great as to make your acceptance of it a personal favour."

"Pardon me," said the stranger, his eyes glistening as if the voice of sympathy was an unwonted sound; "I appreciate your kindness, but if the pews you speak of are lonely, they will present fewer objects to withdraw us from our motives of entering them. Even the house of God is not sacred from the world, and if I have not begun to justify, I have ceased to condemn their weakness, who attempt to exclude it from their hearts, by secluding from it their senses."

The good elder said not another word, but, taking his hat, they quietly walked towards the church; one, with his eyes lifted in praise to heaven that he had at last found an Ararat for the ark of his wanderings, and the other, with his bent to the ground in humility, to think how far his conceptions of devotion and charity were surpassed by those of his companion. Nothing occurred to disturb their meditations, until the rusty key grated in the lock of the old church door, when they passed down the aisle, to examine the pews. Just as the stranger had selected one for his use, he happened to cast his eyes back towards the pulpit, and was startled to observe beside it a marble slab, sacred to the memory of Dorcas Lindsay--who had been, indeed, a Dorcas to our village. Without stopping to read the catalogue of her virtues, he rushed out, leaying the worthy elder, who had not observed the cause, almost petrified with astonishment.

Even the little boys snatched up their marbles and ran to hide themselves, as he brushed down the street, striking the ground violently with his cane, and muttering, "Now may God forgive these worse than heathen, who defy him in his own temple with a graven image, and beside the elevated stand of his ministering servant, record the qualities of a human idol; that the virtues of the one, as recorded on the dead marble, may be set over against the perfections of the other as proclaimed by his living oracle-and that idol a woman! world has long ago sickened me with its man-worship-but woman-worship!-I had thought that left for the fools of

France."

The

Reader, our devout, godly stranger was not only a misogynist, but a monomaniac.

I had been at his hotel, visiting a patient, and was leaving it, when he entered. There was that in his quivering lip, slightly frothed, and his hurried tone as he demanded his horse of the landlord, that not only excited my curiosity, but awakened