except if I miss seeing an iceberg, or a whale, or something of that kind. Now do, papa, be persuaded. I do so want to travel, and I'm like Fred: 'the North Pole draws.' I can't go so near it as he has done; but I'd rather visit Newfoundland, and Nova Scotia, and Labrador, than I'd go to France or Italy, or even to Jerusalem. They have a stronger hold on my imagination.'

'It all comes of some of the books you have been reading.'

'I think not; except as the books have shown me what I am to expect. I've read more books about the other places I have named, but you know even here I like winter. If I had been an artist, I should have excelled in winter scenes, I'm sure, and I never enjoyed Crummock-Water and Bassenthwaite so much as when there was skating on them, and the snow was deep on the mountains, and torches at night, and a deer roasted at the side of the lake gave one a faint conception of what the far North must be.'

'Well, Adelaide, I'll admit that you are as likely a girl to go out there as any I know. Your imagination, my dear, has never enervated you. I may say it has had a contrary effect. Perhaps, because you are like your brother Fred.'

" Thank you, papa. It is a high compliment to be told that I am like Fred. I know if he were here he would say, "Let her go. Why shouldn't a girl see the world and rough it, if she likes, as well as a man?" I see signs that you are wearing round to take my part, so do promise me I shall go.'

'Well, well, I'll speak to your

'Yes, papa; and she stole up to him to kiss him, thinking that after being so kind that was what he wanted. She was mistaken. He submitted to the embrace, which on her part was always shy, owing, perhaps, to a certain distance in him, and then said:

'All things want weighing, Adelaide. Are you sure in your own mind that you are right in urging this step? I sometimes hear you sing some lines about another Will, you know.'

'Yes, papa, I have thought of that,' she replied, blushing deeply; and if I must give it up I must, but I don't feel that I am wrong to try my very hardest to persuade you.'

'Not wrong in teasing, eh? It is enough. I can trust you, Adelaide.' After she had left the room he went to the window. 'Strange!' he soliloquized; but that kind of yearning is as strong in her, I believe, as it was in Fred. They both seem sensitive to the polar magnetism. To take her with me would at least satisfy her, and if her notion is a romantic one, might cure her. She'd be in the way, but it would be nice to have her so long as she didn't come to any harm.'

"Where's Adelaide ?' said Herbert, the youngest boy, coming into the room with a selection from Shakespeare in his hand.

'I don't know. She was here a

minute ago. She is packing up her things to go away with me, very likely.'

'O, that's all fun! I know you'd never take her, papa. I want her to help me to parse these lines, because if I don't give them in this afternoon, there'll be a row; and I quite forgot them till I was coming home; Jackson reminded me.'

'What are the lines?'

"There is a tide in the affairs of men, Which, taken at the flood, leads on, etc.";

"There's a divinity that shapes our ends, Rough-hew them how we will."'

And the little fellow ran away in quest of the sister, who never failed him as a 'coach,' frequently as she threatened to do so, seeing his dependence upon her.

'Strange again,' murmured Mr. Brignall; I suppose there's a tide in the affairs of women as well, and to hold them from taking it may be to mar their "fortune." It may be "Divinity," too, that's taking Adelaide abroad. It looks like it.'

Mr. Brignall's gentle reminder to his daughter proved his recognition of a Higher Will and his confidence in her submission thereto; but he was a reserved man, and could only speak lightly and distantly of things that often concerned him the nearest. His concession to Adelaide had to be accounted for to Mrs. Brignall, who came and told him that she supposed Adelaide must have been mistaken in thinking that he had yielded.

'I told her that I would speak to you,' said Mr. Brignall, in some confusion; but that does not commit me to taking her.'

'O dear! When you say that, the children think it all rests with me; and if I cannot consent to what they want, then I get the whole blame of the disappointment. It isn't fair. Everything with the girls gets thrown upon the poor mothers; the fathers never will take a firm stand. I declare it is not fair.'

'No, it is not,' said Mr. Brignall, meekly. Still, my dear, there may be no good reason for disappointing her. I will own that it appears a risk; but she is a hardy girl, and will be well taken care of. Then she will be good company for me. It will be like taking with me a bit of home. Do you think, as her heart is so set upon it, we are obliged to refuse her? Such a novel experience as colonial life may be a life-long benefit.'

'Dear child! however will she stand the cold?-and so careless

about her wraps. I shall hardly

know the kind of outfit to get for her.'

'O! you will soon find out. Only don't fall into the mistake of supposing that it is always cold there. She must have dresses for the short Indian summer, as well as the long winter.'

'What an expense it will be! And you have such an objection to a little extra luggage! You always seem to think that a woman ought, like a snail, to carry her house upon her back.'

'Then I must be resigned to have it made the affair of half a dozen porters and parcel boys,' he said, archly; so when the implied undertaking had reached the inevitable dress-question, it might be regarded as settled.

Nothing else was talked of at dinner, and Herbert, no wise pleased at the prospect of losing his coach,' said that it was a pity Adelaide had not been born an exile to Siberia.

Mrs. Brignall looked very grave.

'Dear mamma,' said Adelaide, 'it is only the distance that alarms you. As to the time, many girls go away to school for longer than I shall be away, and nothing is thought of it.'

'But the climate, Adelaide; and you won't have me near you if you

take cold.'

'O! I shall wear furs up to my eyes when it freezes hard; and I daresay I shall feel the cold less there than I feel it here. I should think, mamma, you'd be glad for me to go to take care of papa.'

Then, mind you are equally conscientious about bringing him back. Don't leave him to find his way home alone.'

'O! that is too bad. As if-
'As if what, Emily?'

'Only that you'll go a little further North,' said Herbert, mischievously. 'For missionary purposes, of course; and to penetrate a little nearer the

Pole than Fred has done, or to meet him there some day.'

Said one of the sisters, 'You may like Newfoundland too well to leave it; some one may persuade you to stay.'

'What nonsense! I shall no sooner be there than I shall begin to sing "Home, sweet Home," and to long to get back.'

Adelaide Brignall was one of a large family; and generally accounted beautiful: all the Brignalls were; but there was a charm about her quite independent of her beauty. She scarcely reached medium height, had a robust little figure, finely rounded arms and dainty little hands and feet. One could well imagine her scaling a Welsh mountain, or adventuring a forbidding-looking peak in Switzerland, with a guide and an alpenstock. Those were days when it was fashionable to confound physical weakness and feminine delicacy, as an essential of fine ladyism. Young girls who had not long abjured the swing and the skipping-rope had a genteel horror of being accounted strong; and a slender, wasp-like figure and a fastidious appetite, with a facility for fainting at the shortest notice, were marks of 'good breeding,' if they were not the happy gifts of Nature. Adelaide's warm but clear complexion, regular white teeth and glossy hair corresponded with the physical health and energy that, given its own way, had so well moulded her form; but in the contour and expression of her face a higher beauty lay a beauty born of saddest thought'; therefore she was accounted 'pensive.'

The

clear, level, fronting eyes drooped readily if they met another's gaze. Often the play of her own thoughts and emotions made the colour glow and then fade on her cheek; so she was supposed to be painfully timid. She was the life of her home circle. No one could tell such droll stories by the nursery fire, while the chest

nuts were roasting; no one was so fond of recitation and innocent games of skill but her fondness for a cer-tain lonely spot called The Dingle was well known; also that she only cared to visit it by herself; that no one but the brother, who was now a frequent wanderer over dangerous seas, was ever a welcome companion to her there. So they called her a recluse.

To the lovers of nature and of solitude the Dingle was a paradise. It was refreshing to have such green abysses of retreat from a busy town as it enclosed. Adelaide had loved it from a child. For her it had done duty for a multitude of historic places. Now it was Woodstock Park with a labyrinth in it leading to fair Rosamond's bower, and she was Queen Eleanor seeking her rival with the poisoned cup and dagger; while the little playmate who enacted Rosamond wished she would be quicker in following up her clue, and not delay the consummation of the tragedy. Anon it was the Garden of Eden: and from that Imagination changed it into the enchanted ground of the Pilgrim's Progress; and then into some scene from the Arabian Nights' Entertainment.

But Adelaide's happiest associations with it were in connection with her brother Fred. There they had played Robinson Crusoe and his man Friday; had read the adventures of Captain Parry; had essayed the civilization of imaginary Esquimaux; and, in Winter, had watched, at hastily improvised ice-holes, for seals, crouching like a cat over a mousehole; or had fashioned snow-bears and wolves with which they did battle to the death.

Yes it would be pleasant to travel anywhere; but to be an Arctic traveller must be the finest fun of all.

Fine fun for Fred, but for Adelaide nothing but make-believe; because she was only a girl. And Adelaide sighed as if that were a great

misfortune. At home they told her it was a mistake; because she was always so much more in companionship with her brothers than with her sisters. And it must be admitted that of her they were ready to say: 'O fondest object of' our 'care,

Still dearest found where all are dear.' She had outgrown her childish romance now, but the memory of it was still pleasant to her; and Fred's letters bore frequent allusion to the wonderful spirit at the North Pole that, according to their old belief, allured thither the hearts of the noble and the brave. They had many a dispute about this spirit. Fred said she was of the Esquimaux type, clothed in skins; had a broad nose, large teeth and cross-eyes; but her magic lay in the loadstone that she carried in her bosom. Being five years older than Adelaide, it is possible that he only conjured up the ugly phantom to tease her; for Adelaide declared that she was no witch, but a spirit; that she was not often seen, for her beautiful robes were of the same glistening whiteness as the snow, over which she trailed them; that her eyes were like the white stars that one might see shining through the boughs of the fir-trees in the Dingle on a frosty night, and all her jewels were of the sparkling ice. It was in her bosom that the loadstone was concealed. She never showed it to anybody, but it drew.

O dreams and fairy visions of -childhood! Who would be so cruel as to disturb them? knowing the pictures they paint before the happy eyes that will find them all blotted out in tears some day. Who would banish the roseate cloud of Imagination that hangs over the innocent child-heart? knowing how soon the world will try to fill it with sordid cares and petty, low ambitions.

Do not, ye teachers of a Utilitarian age, take from the little folk their

Hans Christian Andersen and their La Motte Fouqué, till ye yourselves are prepared to resign your Shakespeare and Milton; for is not their ministry a similar one, and their mission to the mind of the child just as special as the mission of your great poets is to your grown-up intellects ?

Fred Brignall was at present sailing in the ship Terror, sent out by the Government in order that the coastline between Regent's Inlet and Point Turnagain might be fully explored. Letters few and far between had reached home, and in one of these he had said to Adelaide :

'Do you remember our old conceit about the spirit of the North Pole? Now I am face to face with the stern realities of snow and ice, it comes back to me. It has been a torture in times of special hardship to dream I was with you in the Dingle, and then wake to find myself a gloomy ice-prisoner. But when we have all been in good spirits, cutting our way through some immense pack and laughing over it; when I have been overpowered with the majesty of a berg three hundred feet high, I have felt less inclined to laugh at the poetry of your idea. But, Adelaide, here is the school for Reverence. The awful silence has a voice: "the Earth with her bars about us ; and sometimes it appears "for ever." But" Whither shall I flee from Thy Presence?" is a question, I believe, present on every one's conscious

ness.

'I am thankful to be able at last to send a letter to you. Do not be uneasy if it is long again before you hear, for we shall winter here, and then in the spring proceed North again. If I am not a braver man for this expedition, I hope to be a better one; and what could I tell you that would please you more than that?'

'What, indeed?' thought Adelaide; and she did thank God for this good brother, who cleansed his way 'by taking heed thereto' according to God's Word; while so many girls she knew had brothers who thought it manly to forswear the old ways of thinking; but few indeed possessed the true courage and manliness that characterized her brother Fred.