'But, Talbot, this is very sudden.'

'Sudden ! how can you say that? Why, it is a month and more since you agreed to be my wife. Sudden, by Jove! We have gone through a good deal since then, haven't we? It would be hard to surprise either of us now. I should propose tomorrow morning, but for one thing. Before you marry be sure of a house wherein to tarry.

It is

necessary to look up a lodging suitable for a young couple. I have been already prospecting in the Bloomsbury district, but failed to choose from mere embarrassment of riches. It won't take long to arrange, however. I shall settle it this very night after I have returned from Westminster. Could you manage to say after to-morrow morning? That will give you sufficient time to think over your sins. You will be glad to know that my sister acts as bridesmaid. Is there no substitute for the Twitterley?'

'How good Edith is!' with fervour. And with so great an injury to forgive me!'

Talbot put his forefinger under her chin, lifted her cheek off his shoulder, and looked at her.

'A great injury to forgive! Eh?' 'Yes, indeed. It is only now I feel what a dreadful price others must pay for my happiness.'

'O, well, there's no use torturing a fellow with that sort of thing. By the way, did you not learn all that from my father?'

'No. He never breathed a syllable of it. He said only that such relations between one in your position and one in mine were absurd and impossible. He said he had other arrangements for you, and— and I suspected what these were when I saw what happened immediately afterwards. He said more which I thought cruel at the time. But,' she added gently, 'I think differently now. I know what

great reason he had to speak as he did. Talbot, it is awful to think of.' 'What is ?'

'That one is the cause of so much suffering. It changes my life to me. If he had only told me what would come of it!'

Talbot this time put her a little from him, in order the better to look at her.

'And suppose he had told you?' She did not answer. Her thoughts had escaped unconsciously.'

'If he had told you, what would you have done ?'

'It is so hard to be happy on the grief of others. I tremble to say it, but if your father had told me all, or if you had told me what you were enduring for me, I think I should have asked you to spare yourself and to save your people. I now wonder at myself that I never saw and never felt what it has cost you to care for me, and to conceal the cost lest it should give me pain. Did you, then, believe I cannot bear something for your sake, and in return for so much?'

And with that, down went her head upon his shoulder. This was a most unlucky humour to foil the mood of a man, in whose desperation there was a sense of guilt which sought an accomplice in this girl, who was now deserting the position that, to be endurable at all, must be maintained without qualification, and as far as possible without remorse. A temper already chafed now winced at this. He wilfully misinterpreted her meaning.

Do you know what you say? Do you mean to say that anything which could happen would induce you could induce you to go back from where we now stand-to fall short of the part I have played for you? Is it that you begin to be afraid? Well, I am not the rich man's son-no, forgive me- I

never meant that. But tell me, do you mean to say you could give me up?'

After a while she made reply. 'I would rather die,' she said softly, I would rather die. But short of giving you up I would do anything to prevent this misfortune, to return your sacrifice for me and show myself worthy of it. Talbot, try me-try if I cannot play my part with you by doing the thing you would spare me at such expense to you and yours. Provided I may save my love, I will do anything you wish to prevent this trouble. I am not unselfish, like you, dear Talbot, but at least I can give my share. Do not fear to ask me any sacrifice short of the one. If you can give up all for me, try if I cannot give up something for you.'

The creature sought his regard, her face glowing with heroic purpose. But how was she stupefied when he broke out,

'Woman, you'll drive me mad! You've waited till now to say all this-now, when you know it is too late! You want an excuse to draw back. Why, by Heavens, this is most-this is terrible! Blossom, you're not worthy of a love like mine. You never loved me-your love was a mockery! Good God, is this the end!'

And exclaiming in his incoherent passion as though possessed by one among the most eccentric and cruel of the demoniacal legion that surprise the soul, he rushed from the room, past Mr. Warnock, whom his transit left as though petrified with a cabbage in his hand, and out into the narrow alley, which he traversed with the aspect and motion of a man-betrayed and God. forsaken wretch.

Such grotesque sport did his passion make with the man. He had hardly reached his chambers, hard by as that refuge was, than

the mocking fiend altered his promptings, and whispered that Talbot Welbore had been headlong and unjust. From this the inner voice rose to the suggestion that if there was a brutal, ungrateful, cowardly scoundrel cumbering this weary and disgusted orb, he must be Talbot Welbore. Amazement and shame were checked withal by the indignation of the wronged man. He tried to fix that picture of himself, and to keep the colouring vivid, lest when it cooled he should see, not an injured lover, but an unspeakable poltroon.

He

In twenty minutes he was battling with the thought of going back to beseech pardon. Yes, he would do that. But no, better perhaps to wait a little; somebody might come. After all, there was some provocation for this. Where a man had ventured so enormously, the very breath of defection might well scare him out of himself. waited a quarter of an hour, but nobody came; that helped to keep up his sense of grievance. It was time to start for the House of Commons, to take his opening notes for the series of potboilers, whereby in the frugal and sanguine ardour of his love he hoped to defray the vulgar cost of the double

state.

How could he turn his mind to business now? Pish! let the thing go! The castle in Spain had tumbled, the income had become needless. There flashed before him his fond ideal of a humble ménage, humble but comfortable, with himself therein, and reading, like Crébillon, his feats of literature to his dear little critic and housekeeper Blossom. That drove him

out.

He made his way to the House, and found sitting or standing room, as best he could, in the strait and narrow way wherein a grudging Legislature cribs, cabins, and con

He

fines the press. The assembled wisdom, in all its groupings, aspects, and movement, was under his survey. He had counted on it that the sight would inflame the fiery particle of his intelligence, and set his descriptive faculty in spontaneous and profitable motion. had arranged with himself to treat the topic in a style of mingled elegance and point, with just enough of Attic salt to suggest the scholar, and sufficient of the esprit malin to give an interest of piquant personality. He would trim with rare but apt quotation, he would season with epigrams still edged with the drill and die of choice and limited currency.

All very fine. But here was the But here was the spectacle, with its varied inspiration passing before his eyes. Had he no observation in him? Why, the very mystery of so many bald pates would have furnished forth a pleasant speculation. What had tonsured them? Time, or what? What a paragraph might have resulted when the leader of the Fifth Party had signalled across the floor to the Prime Minister, and that statesman, despatching the Home Secretary to inquire, the envoy returned with a message which caused the head of the Government to assume forthwith a port of scorn and defiance! What had passed between these mighty opposites? Again, there was O'Trigger, a volume of Hansard under each arm, flitting and gliding from seat to seat and from post to pillar, in the furtive and anxious fashion of one burdened with a treasure for which he seeks safe hiding. What did O'Trigger with that material? A member attempted his maiden speech, and broke down. Another member sat on his hat; a cork went off with a loud explosion in one of the galleries. The War Secretary wore a white waistcoat, though it was yet the spring season.

Was that a fair portent of peace— a flag of truce to all the world?

Of such stuff is the parliamentary chronicle much composed; and such agreeable trivialities Talbot -if in the vein-might have prettily handled. But he took no heed of the scene and its salient points. In his present frame he would have walked from Dan to Beersheba and found all barren.

He did nevertheless give his eye once to the arena below, and saw with relief that the member for Muddlebury was not in his place. The poor man avoided the House since the enemy had fallen upon him in the Lobby.

Mr. Dodd, coaxing his bushy locks with delicate manipulation, so as to bring out their fullest luxuriance on each side of his brow, cast a roving and divided glance partly at the gallery, partly at the grille behind it. He wished to make certain of a fair audience; he wished also to satisfy himself that the historian who specially celebrated his legislative exploits in the local native journal was on his perch and ready. The member for Kilruddery caught sight of Talbot, and, good-natured fellow that he was, sent up an instant note by one of the messengers, informing the graphist of the society journal that he and several other members of the Irish party meant to raise a warm question presently on going into Committee; that there was sure to be a bit of a gale, and perhaps a collision with the Chair and a consequent naming. 'I'll push the affair for you, old man,' added the thoughtful writer; 'a scene in the House will give you something to work upon, and help to make your first letter go off like a flash.'

Talbot hardly made an attempt to distract himself to the winning of bread. His mind was saturated with the one miserable theme. He

PART I.

Ir is a common idea in the Alpine regions of Switzerland that glaciers advance and retreat with the regularity, if not with the rapidity, of the tides of the ocean. In the popular imagination, they are supposed to ebb and flow by periods of nine and fifteen years. It hardly need be said that this theory is a superstition, the only fact on which it is based being that there are times when glaciers wax and times when they wane. To these alternations depending as they do on the snow and rain fall, on summer heats and winter colds-no limit or definitive duration can be assigned. Of late years the movement has been uninterruptedly backward; and last summer was so warm and prolonged, and last winter so mild and short, that glaciers must have lost much more than they gained in the hard winter 1880-81.

His

But it was not always so. tory tells us of times when glaciers have gained ground year after year -times of terror and disaster which live long in the memory of the mountaineers of the Alps. For an advancing glacier frequently pushes before it huge masses of snow which overwhelm villages, destroy human lives, and sweep away flocks and herds. Many such instances are on record. People are still living in Switzerland who have a vivid recollection of the 'moving incidents' which marked the cold and hunger' years of 1815 and 1816, when the waxing glaciers thrust before them such

VOL XXXI.

heaps of snow and rubbish that meadows were devastated, woods cut down, dwellings buried and their inmates smothered, and goatherds starved to death in their huts.

One

Another like period was that between 1608 and 1611. In Canton Glarus alone hundreds of acres of forest and meadow land were wasted by glacier and avalanche. In Grindelwald a part of the village of Mettenberg' went under.' of the bells (afterwards found in the snow) of the pilgrim-chapel of Petronella-which also went under' is still preserved in the tower of Grindelwald Church as a memento of this calamitous time. In August 1585 a sudden forward movement of a glacier destroyed a herd of cattle in the Val de Tuorz (Canton Graubünden), burying them so deeply that their bodies were never seen again. On December 27, 1819, the village of Randa, in the Valais, was destroyed by a glacier-avalanche (Gletcherlawine). Almost every building the village contained was either overwhelmed and crushed or lifted bodily upwards and thrown on one side.

Millstones went spinning through the air like cannon balls, baulks of timber were shot into a wood a mile above the village, the Idead bodies of kine were found hundreds of yards from their pastures, and the church spire was propelled into a distant meadow like an arrow from a bow.

When the lower part of a glacier reaches the edge of a precipice or a dip in the ground, and breaks off from the main ice-stream, it is con

U