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very sight of which wooed her to repose. But Frank appeared to be in a conversable mood, and in an unwontedly amiable framo of mind. With her he was, as a rule, reserved and taciturn, and seemed or so she fancied-to regard her with a certain air of disapproval and distrust. It would never do to refuse the unexpected invitation; she must not forego the happy chance thus offered, as long as she could keep her eyes open and suppress her yawns.

But the air and her supper revived her, and soon she felt equal to the conversation. They walked across the lawn, which seemed all ready for tennis-players-only the game had not then been introduced-down another flight of steps, set in a grassy bank and bordered by a rough sort of rockery rich with ferns and saxifrages, till they came to a broad gravelled terrace, bounded by a heavy balustrade, from which there was a beautiful view of the estuary of the Bere, and of the sea and of the cliffs beyond. A large red moon-a little past the full-was just rising above the ridge of the lofty downs, crested with grey rocks, and in the daylight glorious in their royal mantle of deep purple heather. It was, indeed, a scene to have gladdened the heart of painter, or of poet, or of any true devotee of Nature.

And Frank was extremely susceptible to such influences as those just now surrounding him. Notwithstanding his plodding business habits, his mercantile acumen, his long devotion to mart and 'Change, and his somewhat monotonous London life, which he always professed to prefer to any other, his heart needed only a single touch to make it vibrate and thrill to the echoes of past time. He had always loved Chalkshire, and particularly Southcombe, in which he had first seen the light. It was ten years and more since he had last set foot in his native village, and then not Janetta, but Martha, had been by his side, and he had pointed out to her this feature of the lovely landscape and that, as it lay softly unfolded around him, shut in by those vast undulating, heathery downs and grey, scarred cliffs, and by the wide, ever-restless sen, whose deep, low murmur was even now sounding in his ears.

"Did you ever behold a fairer scene, Janetta ?" he asked, after a silence which neither seemed inclined to break.

And Janetta, for once, could unfeignedly assent, for her experiences of travel had been few; and one might go far east or west, north or south, and not find a sweeter piece on God's earth than that which lay sloping from the rocky brows of the great hills to the wild, lovely coast of Chalkshire, where it stretches itself between the green promontory and the many-coloured sands of Ravenage on the one side, and the mighty headland of the Heron, with its lonely cloud-capped ruins, on the other. And seen now

under its silvery veil of summer twilight, mellowed in the soft beams of the rising moon, and set in its shadowy frame of distant moorland and far-sounding sea, it was "beautiful exceedingly."

"I only wonder I have stayed away so long," resumed Frank, pleasantly. "Till I found myself in those old-world streets yonder, overshadowed by those wonderful antique ruins, I did not know how much I really cared about the place. Of course, I cannot judge of it by this uncertain light, and after so brief a glance; but it seems to me that it is scarcely altered since the day when I, a poor farmer's lad, and my young master and benefactor, Edward Warleigh, used to haunt yonder wave-swept shore, and climb those hills and scour the country for miles and miles around. Of course you know I was born here ? "

"Oh, yes! I cannot recollect when I did not know that, Cousin Frank. Was Uncle Tobias born here, too?"

"No. Uncle Tobias-he was only my half-uncle, I am glad to say was a cockney. I do not know that he ever set foot in Chalkshire-I am sure I hope he never did; I hope he never breathed this pure, sweet Southcombe air. He was no father of yours, Janetta, or, of course, I would not speak of him with so much disrespect. I always wondered why your mother married him. I could not help being his half-nephew, but she could help taking him for her husband. How any one totally unconnected with Tobias Snape could bring himself, or herself, rather, to connect herself with him, and that by indissoluble ties, passes my imagination."

"My poor mother was left very badly off for one thing," said Janetta, excusingly. "She married Tobias Snape for a home and a maintenance, doubtless, and perhaps for my sake; a woman often dreads poverty for her child which she would face unshrinkingly for herself.

"Perhaps so! Perhaps so! But, Janetta, if I were a woman I would at least, I think I would-work my fingers to the bone before I married a man whom I neither loved nor esteemed. And as for being linked, inseparably linked, with a nature such as was that man's, your stepfather's-I would have starved rather. Ah, well, poor thing, if she erred, if she sinned by legally selling herself, she was bitterly punished-how bitterly none, who were strangers to her husband could ever know. To estimate the depths of his malignity, of his fiendish brutality, one must have lived with him, and felt the heavy weight of his oppression, as she did, as I did, and as you must have done, Janetta."

"No one suffered more than I did," she answered, "and I was thankful when death released my poor mother from his power. You did not know her, cousin Frank; you had left home before she

married your Uncle Tobias; but, though she might have been to blame, she did not deserve the cruel fate that befell her as that man's wife. Ah, well! it is all over now; she is in her quiet grave, and he has gone-to meet his just reward. How strange it is to think that, of all living creatures, only you and I know the awful wickedness of that monster of cruelty and injustice. And here we are to-night, standing together in the moonlight by this summer sea. Cousin Frank, it is a bond of union between us that I, at least, shall never overlook. There are some experiences which no one on earth could fully comprehend save you and I— which we could never share with any other person."

"Martha knew what a miserable life I had with him! She could not bear to hear his name; all her gentle nature was roused to something little short of fury when he was mentioned."

"J, too, feel moved to anger. Why should we talk of him tonight?"

"Why, indeed? No one was farther from my thoughts five minutes ago. It was you, I think, who first uttered his name. Well, he is gone. God forgive him! let us think no more about him. And it is time we went in; the servants will be wanting to shut up the house. The two maids and the man are taken with the house. I think I told you?"

"Yes; and though they are rather rough and blunt in their speech, they look as if they might be trustworthy, and do many a good day's work. Now, where is Warleigh Place?"

"Right over there-to the left; that promonotory and those woods hide it from us at this moment. We will go there to

morrow, if the weather keep fine."

"And is it really in Chancery?"

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Well, I suppose it is. It cannot be let or sold, it seems. And, really, I can quite understand that no prudent person would determine to risk so much money on such crazy title-deeds. Besides, the place was almost a ruin years ago! what it must be now, if no money has been expended on it, I cannot fancy. It must be uninhabitable."

"When was it last lived in?"

"There were some people tenanting Warleigh Place as caretakers, I think, when I was here last; but it has not been a home, a family residence, for full thirty years. Our Mr. Warleigh, Hilda's father, was born there, I know; but he left Southcombe soon after I did, and I don't believe the Place has sheltered him for a single night ever since."

"Hilda was not born at Warleigh Place, then?"

"Oh, no! how could she be? I am pretty sure Mrs. Warleigh never even saw the house-never set foot in Chalkshire, that I

know of Mr. Warleigh saw her first in the North, when he was on a visit. It was just like his luck to fall in love with a girl who had no fortune beside her lovely face and her sweet disposition! They were very happy, though; but she died not long after Hilda was born."

"Will Mr. Warleigh ever come back?'

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"Of course he will, if he live long enough; and he will come back a rich man, I hope, and redeem his family inheritance, and live at the Place in all the pride and state that becomes a Warleigh of Warleigh!"

"And, in the meantime, you take care of Hilda?"

"In the meantime I take care of Hilda, as if she were my own. I promised Edward Warleigh she should be to me as my own blood; and God do so to me, and more also, if ever I fail in my duty to the dear child, Hilda !"

(To be continued.)

A GERMAN VIEW OF SOUTH AFRICA AND ITS
MISSIONS.

THOSE who, as Christians, cannot but feel interested in human kind everywhere, and especially in the interesting races who occupy the rich and fertile southern portion of Africa, will find very attractive reading in Dr. Wangemann's new book, "South Africa and its Inhabitants."* There are many problems being worked out there on which, far beyond the bounds of Africa, the future of the world may probably hinge. On one point which, owing to the hasty manner of its settlement, still gives too much cause for uneasiness, Dr. Wangemann remarks: "The expedition of the English to the frontiers of their South African colonies is in no respect a war between the English and Zalas, but between the white and coloured races, between Christianity and heathenism. For this reason the present struggle is not localised on the borders of Natal, but arouses eager sympathy in the hearts of all the coloured tribes of South Africa, and is entitled to draw the attention of the whole Christian world, because the prize is

* Südafrika und seine Bewohner nach den Beziehungen der Geschichte, Geographie, Ethnologie, Staaten-und Kirchen-Bildung, Mission und des Racen-Kampfes, in Umrissen gezeichnet und mit vielen Abbildungen versehen; von Dr. Wangemann, Missionsdirector; Berlin, NO, Missionshaus, Friedenstrasse 6.

the firm possession of a country as large as all Europe, not alone for colonisation and trade, but also for the kingdom of God."

Whatever our political bias, we owe, as British people, much gratitude to Dr. Wangemann for the way in which, against the prejudices of his own country and of Europe generally, he has bravely stood forward in his acknowledgment of our services and rights in South Africa. He has also shown, but as a friend, wherein we have failed, and, though we must sometimes disagree with him in his estimate of motives, his judgment in matters of blame is at once true and instructive. Yet, from the beginning, our rule in South Africa has been marked by a wish to do right, and by a sense of justice towards all; which, we venture to say, would have scarcely been manifested by any other nation, and, with all deference to our good author, not even by Germany!

The spirit animating Great Britain in her South African dependencies is not inaptly symbolised in the quaint but very characteristic words of the record made by the two English ship-captains who took possession there in 1642, in this they remembered the salvation of the Hottentots, and expressed the hope "that, in the course of time, the blacks would, for their own advantage and out of need, come freely to serve His Majesty, and thereafter, as we hope, become also the servants of God." The Dutch surgeon, Ribeek, who, ten years after, set up his nation's standard there, seems to have been a truly pious man, and the prayer which Dr. Wangemann extracts from the opening of his deed of occupation is most beautiful, and might be a model of guidance for all governors. The original settlers, composed of by no means the best classes of Holland, were greatly improved by a considerable influx of the Huguenots who had fled from persecution in their own country. In the country of their adoption they were merely prevented using their own language by, says our author, "the Dutch, who, in a short time, forbade even preaching in the French tongue." Noble and others who have written on South Africa rate the number of the French emigrants higher than Dr. Wangemann, and that it must have been large is evident from the influences they left behind on the character of the colonists, which are, we believe, apparent in the natural politeness and lack of enterprise and other features in the Boers of the prcsent day. Dr. Wangemann tells also of an old German contingent drawn from some soldiers hired by the Dutch, and who settled in the country whither they were sent; among their descendants he claims a family, Pretorius, with whom our associations at all times have been the reverse of agreeable! There is much that is attractive in our white brothers of South Africa, especially in their "very energetic, old-fashioned inherited piety," and we cannot

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