one of the most remarkable instances of a fatal superstition infecting a whole people ever known in the history of the world. We are told that 'a Kaffir loves his oxen as an Arab loves his steed'; and yet at least one hundred and fifty thousand cattle were killed. More than twenty thousand people died of starvation, and the survivors had to be fed for a considerable time by the charity of the white men whom they had been so anxious to drive into the sea. Such was the state of things amongst his own people when the first educated and ordained Kaffir Minister, after preaching in the English churches of the towns on his route, including our own Commemoration Chapel at Graham's Town, at length reached the spot selected to be the scene of his future labours. (To be concluded.) ETCHINGS FROM LIFE: II-ADELAIDE'S TREASURE, AND HOW THE THIEF CAME UNAWARES. BY SARSON. CHAPTER VII. THE CUP OF BLESSING OVERFLOWS. As torrents, in summer LONGFELLOW. TRUE love is always shy. The risk fa 'No' from the lips of a woman more intimidating than a ball from The mouth of a cannon to as brave men as that redoubtable blunderer, diles Standish. For some time after The alteration of the plan of his life, Herbert Forrester would not have ppeared to an indifferent eye to have my dearer object at heart than his wn establishment at his old vocation mid new scenes. In the suburbs of ewfoundland's chief town a house as taken for a school. It was pable of extension as the necessity or it should arise. The grounds were marked off for play-ground, garden and small farm. There was a noticeable effort on the part of the proprietor to furnish the parlour and principal rooms as elegantly as possible. This might have led to conjecture, but somehow people took it for granted that he exercised taste and refinement in his arrangements as due to himself. But the style in which the school-room, class-rooms, studies and the boys' bed-rooms were prepared, showed that, whatever the master's respect for himself, he would respect his his pupils also, and endeavour to make them self-respecting too. The school opened most promisingly. After all his hard buffeting with the waves of adversity, he had been able to take the tide at the flood. To his friend Ralph Holyoke, who came to see him soon after his installation as tutor to the well-born youth of Newfoundland, he confessed the blow that had been dealt to his faith and to what, in all humility, he hoped was a sanctified ambition. 'It is over now,' he said, 'and I am well content. Would that with all men the trial were so short! I believe that it is God's will that I should teach. He has stirred up my nest, changed the scene of my labours, but I feel that I am a Missionary still.' Was it some consolation to reflect that now a tract of four years did not exist between him and a certain young lady, who, it was greatly to be feared, might sail for England .or ever he was aware? He hardly knew the case seemed to him so hopeless. In proportion to the strength of our desire for an object is our doubt of its attainment. He knew that it was for her he had bought that chair, that picture, that vase. It was her figure that he saw now on the steps and now amid the evergreens. It was her head that rested beneath the carved figures on the high, antique-looking mantelpiece. Yet he did not write to her. The only perceptible difference in him was that he ceased to avoid her. Bound to his post as he was during the day-time, he accepted the invitation for an evening party if he imagined that he should meet Adelaide Brignall. His one assistant was trustworthy. He might occasionally leave him in charge when the business of the day was done. Adelaide was never long at one stay. Along with Mr. Fortescue and Nellie she had done our hero the honour to look over his house, a day or two before the school opened. They had stayed to take tea, and Nellie had begged his acceptance of an antimacassar that she had worked for him in the tedious fancy knitting that was so fashionable till crochet superseded it. Forrester valued the child's offering, and thanked her so warmly that Adelaide was quite shy of undoing an ungainly-looking parcel that she had brought with her, containing a pair of footstools worked in delicate shades of Berlin wool. His acknowledgment of her kindness was so brief, and at the same time so flattering, that she thought he was making fun of her. But that was really a golden afternoon. Adelaide was all alive to the pleasantness of it. There was no sudden, chilling change of tone, no mysterious shadowing of the countenance to cause uneasiness and the wonder as to what string had been unhappily jarred. When the little party broke up, Forrester wondered whether she would ever be in his house more than an invited guest, if indeed she would visit him a second time. The sweet, shy face! the earnest mien ! the questioning, thoughtful eyes! They met him everywhere. At last his opportunity came; rather, he made it. He held a hand that seemed to rest in his more re luctantly than it did when the iceberg inspired terror. He tried to look into eyes then upraised to him, but now baffling his wistful gaze by persistent drooping. He told her that all the appreciation he had to show for her little gift was by telling her that he wanted of her all, or he could take nothing-not even a good wish. What right had she to steal a man's heart if she meant not to give an equivalent? She had bantered him about his home appointments, didn't she know that it was for her he had done his modest best? (As if she could be expected to know until he told her!) He had only the riches of affection to offer her; but the heart was woman's kingdom, would she rather take its sceptre from another hand? 'No' only one word, tremulously spoken, but still with no uncertainty in it. 'Then take it from mine. You have told me of your sympathy with boys. You will help me?' The schoolmaster sits next only to the Ministers of God's truth,' said 6 Adelaide, with flashing eyes. His vocation is a holy one. Yes, Mr. Forrester, I will help you if you will but show me how. I have wanted so much to do some good work in the world, not caring for it to be high, you know, ever since I suffered so on shipboard and there was no help for any one but in God. He brought us through, and it seemed to me afterwards as if He owned us doubly. But till papa is asked we mustn't talk about this any more.' On Mr. Brignall's next return from a short expedition, Adelaide awaited him with trepidation. Was this dear father, who had always been her best friend, who had taken her part in many a little contest with her mother, all at once to be transformed into an enemy? a kill-joy? a something to be supplicated, with wrench of heart and appeal of agonized sensibilities? It seemed so. But what was Adelaide's astonishment when her father returned to her, not alone, but accompanied by a handsome yet weather-beaten looking sailor, in whose face might be traced a bold likeness of herself! Yes, here was a pleasant adventure to set against those harrowing experiences of a little while ago. Mr. Brignall had met with his boy Fred. The delight of the brother and sister at the reunion, so far from home, baffles description. It seemed like the realization of their dreams in the Dingle. But it was not till Fred had spun a very long yarn that Adelaide was able to comprehend the strange train of circumstances that had led up to the present rencontre. The long yarn being quite irrelevant to our story, it is enough to say that in this brother, who always did take her part, Adelaide had a powerful ally, to aid her in bringing Mr. Brignall senior into submission. That gentleman was approached very cautiously. Not a hint having been given him that could arouse suspicion, he went with Mr. Fortescue to see Forrester in his lately assumed character of major-domo. Fred accompanied them, seeing that Adelaide was anxious he should. Mr. Fortescue always abetted any proposition of Adelaide's. The visit was satisfactory. The two young men so sharply contrasted were struck with mutual admiration. Fred, on leaving Mr. Forrester's, expressed much dissatisfaction that to a mind so choice the pulpit and platform should be denied, but envied his scholars the felicity of being directed by such a heart and brain; learning from one so young and yet so mature. Mr. Brignall was equally high in his praise, little thinking how soon his words might be quoted against him. Ah, well! This happy state of ignorance did not long continue, and then he resisted, of course. He would have none of it. He had not taken his daughter from her home to leave her behind him in an alien land. He should marry her to neither a missionary nor to a schoolmaster. If he had foreseen this she should never have stirred from the shelter of her mother's wing. Back to that safe asylum he should shortly take her, for much maternal clucking might he expect to hear if he failed. Adelaide meekly allowed that it was for him to decide. She would say good-bye to Mr. Forrester if her father wished it, but she would never marry any one else. Fred conducted his special pleading on his sister's behalf with acuteness, with a keen intuition as to his father's salient points, and with all the earnestness his affection for Adelaide and his admiration of her fiancé could inspire. The opposition was weakened, but after all it was Mr. Fortescue who carried the day. He could not but be accredited with superiority to the young people's standpoint. He could enter into the merchant's feelings; for he, too, had a daughter. His position and high character gave him a right to be heard. The reliability of his judgment respecting the future of the parties and their chances of domestic and social happiness made Mr. Brignall waver. Entering fully into the delicacy and peculiarity of the situation, Mr. Fortescue told him that all the objections that could be raised were too trifling to be considered in view of the risk he ran of spoiling two lives and wrecking his own child's earthly happiness. 'It is hard to leave your daughter behind; to give her to a man who is a stranger to her mother. Possibly you might marry her to a richer man, or to one in a higher station; but would it be any satisfaction to you to do that, if you knew that her heart went not with her hand? Consider how beautifully she is adapted to him, he to her. In mind, in education, in nobility of soul, there is much of that likeness and unlikeness between them which we imagine existing between the typical man and woman.' 'What you say is very true, but-' 'But worldly considerations influence you.' They ought not, unduly. I have passed through scenes that are calculated to awaken a man out of his worldly-mindedness, Mr. Fortescue. Apart from all that, it is hard. Really, when I left Liverpool with Adelaide, I did not suppose that a hair's breadth could have been added to the height of my love for her; but if you had seen her behaviour on the voyage, her solicitude about me when she was suffering herself, her desire to spare my feelings when her high-strung fortitude gave way, you would not wonder that my affection for her grew by cubits. Just as I find out what my child is, others want to take her away. Forrester is not the first candidate.' There was a long pause. Fortescue would not weaken the effect of his words by another appeal. Mr. Brignall was the first to speak. 'And it is for this I have brought her here! Well, I must not be rebellious.' So paternal reluctance capitulated; and if either of the combined forces against which Mr. Brignall had waged war could have seen the reasons which he assigned to the Head of the Home Department for so doing, a strong element of self-satisfaction must have mingled with their happiness. The terms in which Herbert Forrester was described were enough to have flattered into a momentary elation the meekest of natures. Mr. Brignall compensated himself in some measure for his submission. He affected austerity towards Adelaide, who could not help looking radiantly happy, however unbecoming to her in the circumstances. He professed to be thoroughly sceptical of her expression of sorrow at not taking him back to England, as she had promised her mother. But in grave earnest he sent word to her mother to be generous with the house linen and trousseau, which were to be sent out with despatch; and, though he received Forrester when he came to see him with the air of a martyr, he uttered no protest. In due time Mr. Fortescue had the pleasure he had so long coveted, of joining Herbert Forrester and Adelaide Brignall in holy matrimony. The father of the bride was thought to give her away with more sadness than hearty good-will. 551 ORIGINAL POETRY. JANET GREY.* A SCOLDING woman, 'deed, was Janet Grey- One gentle deed condones her brainless strife. The gudeman hurries mutt'ring from the door; Now Janet steps across the porch to see Ah! neebour Pearson knows what trouble is ! But, hark! a fearful clamour fills the street; All besides Janet. She was rather proud And after all, 'twas but a frighten'd horse, That foaming, panting, swiftly rush'd along. What if he blindly sway'd from his mad course ?Sure, Janet Grey, such hardihood is wrong! And now the brute is near her, and a cry, Ah! cruel death of infant playfulness! Will nothing stay yon terror-stricken beast? 'Tis said that brutes most fell and pitiless, Have helpless babes with gentle care releas'd. But fretful Janet has a mother's heart; Whose child? whose child? the gath'ring people ask, One asked her, 'Since the babe was not her own, 'Tis some one's bairn, -I canna tell the rest.' W. JAMESON. * The anecdote embodied in these lines was related by the Rev. Dr. Punshon during the course of a sermon preached at Clapham. |