Read them and bring them up to-morrow. I am anything but well; botherations unfit me for healthy work. You must pat me on the back to-morrow; at the same time, if anything has turned up more attractive don't bind yourself to me.

"I should not dislike a drive or a walk to-morrow before dinner."

He writes once again :

"I have a great horror of the smell of a trick, or a money motive." "My dear Hills,-My health (or rather condition) is a mystery quite beyond human intelligence. I sleep well seven hours, and awake tired and jaded, and do not rally till after luncheon. J. L. came down yesterday and did her very best to cheer me. She left at nine. ... I return to my own home, in spite of a kind invitation from Mr. and Mrs. Gladstone to meet Princess Louise at breakfast.

"I wonder if you are free to-morrow. I shall try and catch you for a little dinner with me, tho' I am sure to find you better engaged. "Dear H., ever thine,

"E. L."

Then comes the sad concluding scene-the long illness and the anxious watch. Was ever any one more tenderly nursed and cared for? Those who had loved him in his bright wealth of life now watched the long days one by one, telling away its treasure. He was very weak in body latterly, but sometimes he used to go into the garden and walk round the paths, leaning on his sister's arm. One beautiful spring morning he looked up and said, “I shall never see the green leaves again;" but he did see them, Mrs. Mackenzie said. He lived through another spring. He used to lie in his studio, where he would have liked to die. To the very end he did not give up his work; but he used to go on, painting a little at a time, faithful to his task.

When he was almost at his worst-so some one told me they gave him his easel and his canvas, and left him alone in the studio, in the hope that he might take up his work and forget his suffering. When they came back they found that he had painted the picture of a little lamb lying beside a lion. This and "The Font" were the last pictures ever painted by that faithful hand. "The Font" is an allegory of all creeds and all created things coming together into the light of truth. The Queen is the owner of "The Font." She wrote to her old friend and expressed her admiration for it, and asked to become the possessor. Her help and sympathy brightened the sadness of those last days for him. It is well known that he appealed to her once, when haunted by some painful apprehensions, and that her wise and judicious kindness came to the help of his nurses. She sent him back a message: bade him not be afraid, and to trust to those who were doing their best for him, and in whom she herself had every confidence.

Sir Edwin once told Mr. Browning that he had thought upon the subject, and come to the conclusion that the stag was the bravest of all

animals. Other animals are born warriors, they fight in a dogged and determined sort of way; the stag is naturally timid, trembling, vibrating with every sound, flying from danger, from the approach of other creatures, halting to fight. When pursued its first impulse is to escape; but when turned to bay and flight is impossible it fronts its enemies nobly, closes its eyes not to see the horrible bloodshed, and with its branching horns steadily tosses dog after dog up one upon the other, until overpowered at last by numbers it sinks to its death.

It seems to me, as I think of it, not unlike a picture of his own sad end. Nervous, sensitive, high-minded, working on to the end, he was brought to bay and at last overpowered by that terrible mental rout and misery.

He wished to die in his studio-his dear studio for which he used to long when he was away, and where he lay so long expecting the end, but it was in his own room that he slept away. His brother was with him. His old friend came into the room. He knew him, and pressed his

hand ...

As time goes on the men are born, one by one, who seem to bring to us the answers to the secrets of life, each in his place and revealing in his turn according to his gift. Such men belong to nature's true priesthood, and among their names, not forgotten, will be that of Edwin Land

seer.

Zelda's Fortune.

CHAPTER VII.

ZELDA WINS.

UT, as Harold Vaughan would have said, it is Fate that disposes; and his Fate incarnate, Zelda, had still her part to perform. Claudia believed she was the opponent of Aaron in the game-she was in truth the adversary of an unknown player who held unseen and unsuspected cards.

The words "I am not his sister" literally scorched her like fire. What was she then, if, without any intelligible tie of blood between them, he was nevertheless more to her than all the world? She demanded the old tinker's hospitality with the air of one who had just stepped from the invisible universe, and who preferred her claim with the authority of no earthly queen. Then she set out to bring him-him who was not her brother-to the tents of those who were his people and but half hers. But she did not reach him-she sat down under the bush again.

What could it all mean? She had worshipped Harold Vaughan without knowing or heeding why, and had accepted their supposed bond of blood-relationship as a mysterious but still all-sufficient cause. Now that this was swept away, she was driven to look below the surface of her life and, with a quick rush, every word that Lord Lisburn had spoken when he offered himself to her came back filled with most intense meaning. She was incapable of thought, but her mind saw-and it saw that what Lord Lisburn asked from her she had already, even then, given ten times over to Harold Vaughan. That was why the Earl's words had not