and undermined the very foundation of the fabric, till, piece by piece, hour by hour, it had slipped from his grasp, never to be recalled! He recounted all he had lost-home-parents-sister-liberty, and in questioning, doubting, vainly seeking cause-still losing as he thought.

The day was gone out; the pitying night was come, and they left him alone with it and his Grief.

END OF THE FIRST PART.

PART SECOND. SEEKING.

CHAPTER EIGHTEENTH.

A DOUBT.-A HAPPY RELEASE.

Oh, had I faith, as in the days gone by,
That knew no doubt, and feared no mystery!

And yet perhaps 'twere best

That she should die, with all the sunshine on her,

And all the benedictions of the mourning,

Before this affluence of golden light

Shall fade into a cold and clouded grey,

Then into darkness.

FIVE years have passed.

LONGFELLOW.

A bold assertion it seems. By a few pen-strokes claiming your credence, O patient reader, to the fact that in these four words we dismiss the time of seed, blossom, harvest and slumber; the hopes, births and joys; the deaths, marriages, and sorrows, of twenty recurring seasons.

Such a tax on your imagination as when honest Tom Noddy-whom you have known as an exemplary tallow chandler, an immaculate cotton spinner, or waste dealer-rising from his genuflexion to royalty, you are requested henceforth to behold in him the loyal, trusty, No. 15.

Q

and well-beloved knight, whom, as such, you are bound to respect and honour. All by virtue of the stroke of no less mild a weapon than has brought you and I acquaint.

Five years not long-"It seems but yesterday, this day five years." The well-saved furniture is little worse, the thrifty housewife eyes complacently her yet fresh tapestries, her curtains and coverlids, still unsullied. "Who'd think they'd been in wear these five years ?" and shakes, and smooths, and triumphantly prognosticates for them another five years' career, as free from speck or tarnish.

A brief, swift time to some.

Five years of taking in pussy's meat, and pouring out her milk, of toasting the muffin, and dozing over the weekly paper in the chimney corner, or the seventh day's sermon in the cozy pew.

Five years of gentle flowing, quiet little stream. Five years of dash and unrest, ne'er spent, headlong

torrent.

Five years of the stone cell, the grated loophole, the painfully scratched register. Five years! there are three times that to come. 'Tis but a small part, yet oh, it seems a lifetime! The babe that was just born, when he came here first a prisoner, must be a man by now. Only five years! The iron has worn away the skin upon the poor ankle, the manacle hangs loose upon the wrist. Three times five !-will it have worn to the bone by then? Ah, it will not last; he shall die, long before another five! Up and down, pace the cell, bow the head, count the shadow of the grated bars-still the same-eight each way. Five years.

Three times that-sixty seasons yet!

TWENTY SEASONS.

227

Friend of the minute, across this page, what may not the five years have brought you? To your hearth and home little faces and pattering feet, in which your own childhood is renewed, and for whom new words are added to your daily prayer; or haply for whose misery your tears fall more bitterly than for the pinch iron want has fixed upon yourself? Looking back across those twenty seasons, see you the summer or the winter plainest ? Call you to mind the improved opportunity, the good resolve acted out, the evil impulse crushed; dear friendships formed, new ties drawn close-hope your household guest?

These five years, have they brought you good fortune, in the marring of your dearest aspirations, or misery, mayhap, in the granting of your heart's desire? In them you have-favoured of Heavenfound its best gift, the one of all, to walk with you through life unto death. Or you have perhaps awoke, to find the temple you had raised a baseless ruin, to count the shadow of your prison bars, and mark the wearing of the iron, day by day.

It is a fine May morning, the daisies will be glistening on the grass-grown graves of "Piert's Rest;' but we have not now to do with them. We are far from the old scene, though the same sunshine lights up a huge formal-looking building, standing alone in a wide extent of open country.

Upon the slip of grass, on the side which receives the morning sun, two gentlemen are pacing to and fro; one, by his dress, we know is a clergyman, the other the superintendent of the reformatory.

66 "Yes," continues the latter, in answer to a remark from his companion; "a singular lad, an exception to