Peeps at the Far East. Sixty- 128 264 IX. Calcutta X. Calcutta (continued). By the Rev. Charles Pritchard, late 689 776 45 RAJA Brooke, The Last Days of 572 578 Chap. I. The Education of the V. The Arrival of Hers- chel's Faithful As- sistant THRIFT: A Lecture to Ladies. By 609 343 I. The Merthyr Iron-Worker 35 . 489 WORKHOUSE Girl, The. By Mrs. 758 . 284 . 353 II. The First Discovery IV. Recognition and Eman- 22, 24, 25, 96, 184, 185, 249, 330, 332, 333, 32, 33, 34 [66, 71, 73, Spring Flowers The Connaught Cotter. T. Dalziel . PAGH E. C. Dalziel . 121 Nine Fras. Walker. The Staffordshire Potter. Five Four Sonnets. Four Illustrations E. C. Dalziel T. Dalziel 129, 136, 137 7. Mahoney 169, 170, Under the Palms. Two Illustra-T. Sulman. tions The Spirit of the Spring A Burial at Machærus Colonel A. R. Dunn The Way Iona. Five Illustrations The Widow and the Priest. 496, 497 712, 713 The Last Days of Raja Brooke. From Photographs 376,577 Two Illustrations BY AMELIA B. EDWARDS, AUTHOR OF " BARBARA'S HISTORY." PROLOGUE-A.D. 1842. twilight. Neither spoke. In the house all was silent. There were no drovers at the tap, no wayfarers in the parlour, no wheels upon the road. The coach has passed long since, bringing neither passengers nor letters; and save a monotonous dull sound of wood-chopping in some yard close by, and now and then the bark of a sheep-dog far away, no token of life was audible about the place. Na tiny wayside inn at the head of one of the wildest passes of the Snowdon range, a traveller lay dying. An invalid on his It was a low, large room, fronting west; first arrival the ceiling intersected by one heavy, black there some six beam; the window lozenge-paned; the floor oreight weeks sunken and uneven. A four-post bedstead, before, he had from which the hangings had been removed, been slowly stood in one corner, and near it a smaller bed fading ever for the child. A few varnished prints in black since; and frames hung over the mantelpiece. A dilapinow, towards dated easy-chair, a huge Elizabethan chest dusk, to the with ponderous clasps and handles, a small low wailing of square of faded carpet in the middle of the the wind, and floor, some rush-bottomed chairs and a the soft in- rickety Pembroke table, made up the total cessant patter of the rain, was passively of the furniture. Poor as it was and it drifting away. His wife sat by his pillow, could not well be poorer this lodging might as she had been sitting since mid-day, by no means be classed with "the worst inn's listening in an agony of apprehension for worst room." The remoter Welsh hostelries his every breath. His child, a tall pale boy are sufficiently comfortless to this day, but of some eight years of age, lay coiled in a they lagged still farther in the rear of English big arm-chair beside the half-opened window, progress some twenty or thirty years ago. A watching the changing mists and thickening landlord who stammered a dozen words of Sassenach, a landlady acquainted with the properties of bohea, a bedroom which the traveller was not called upon to share with some stranger whose tongue was as unintelligible to him, and whose habits were as barbarous, as those of a South Sea islander, were then people and conditions not only rare to find, but, in certain mountain districts, wholly unknown. The room, in short, was an exceptionally good room, and the inn an exceptionally good inn, as those times went; and the occupants thereof, being provided with the actual necessaries of life, had reason to be well satisfied. more than a sigh, and scarcely audible; but it thrilled both listeners like a trumpet call. The boy started to his feet, pale and shivering. The mother held up a trembling finger. "Hush!" she whispered. "His lips move he may speak." They knew that he was dying. They knew also that hope was past. The doctor, who came all the way from Corwen, and was anxious to spare both his pony and his time, had dismissed himself the night before, bluntly declaring that the patient had not a dozen hours to live. But twenty hours had dragged by since then, and still with half-closed eyes and parted lips, and a pulse growing feebler with every passing minute, he lingered. Again he moaned. Again his lips stirred feebly. Something was there for grace, however, as well as for necessity-a large dish filled with wild flowers and mosses; a few well-worn but richly bound books; and an antique silver inkstand, elaborately chased. These, apparently, were the property of the travellers; The boy crept to his mother's knee. She, for the dish was of the rarest Gubbio ware, watching that white unconscious face with a lustrous with gold and purple, and the book-passionate eagerness that might almost have plate in the book, and the lid of the inkstand, called it back to life, wiped the damp brow, were engraved alike with a stately coat of put aside the scattered locks, and waited arms. Theirs also were the boxes and port- breathlessly. manteaus piled together in a distant corner; the garments hanging on the door; the songbird silent in his cage. To a practised observer, certain of these trifles might have told a whole history of wellborn poverty and homeless wandering. Only the dwellers in tents carry their household gods from camp to camp. Such was the interior of the room, growing momently dimmer in the coming dusk. The scene without was scarcely less gloomy. It had been raining for several days without intermission, and the water lay in troubled pools about the road and yard. The sky was low and leaden, and hung like a dense curtain over the mountains which here closed round in every direction, leaving only their lower slopes obscurely visible. The wind came and went with long sighs, like the breath of one in pain. A few last leaves fluttered shiveringly down now and then from the solitary ash tree at the door. In the air was a confused murmur, as of the rushing of many torrents; and the barren, boulder-strewn flats which stretched away from the head of the pass to the brink of the little heron-haunted tarn some three-quarters of a mile farther up, were almost wholly under water. And all this time the rain poured on, beating a monotonous measure on the roof of the inn, and dripping mournfully from the eaves above the sick man's window. Presently, for the first time in several hours, he uttered a faint moan. It was little Such a young face as it was, too, to have death written on it so legibly! Prematurely worn, and lined, and grey; but still young, still handsome, still instinct with a sort of pathetic dignity that not even approaching death had power to efface. He was only thirty-three years of age, and had been sickly from boyhood. Disappointment, reverse of fortune, exile, privation, were alike familiar to him. Young as he was, he had suffered bitterly; but the time for suffering was now almost gone by, and everlasting peace was at hand. "If it were but one word-only one!" It was as though her supplication were answered. A faint shiver swept over the pallid face. The languid hand became suddenly contracted. He looked up, and, not so much uttering the word as shaping it with his lips, asked for "water." She gave it to him steadily, tearlessly. Her hand did not even tremble. And yet she had thought never to see those lips move or those eyes open again. Then she asked if he had slept. "Yes," he murmured, faintly, “I have slept-and dreamed.” "Dreamed, my dear love?" Ay-of Benhampton. I seemed to see it so plainly." She looked in his face with a wan smile. |