"Fring, I must have dropped my little gilt bag on the bowling-green before tea. It's the only place I stood about at; go and look for it, please."

The moon was just up, and there were long shadows; the grass looked white in the wan light. Fring found the bag, but was sure she had seen the black figure motionless under a broken cedar-tree.

That night she dreamt ; and in her dream she sat up in bed, sure that some one was in the room, and stared about to look for it. Out of the shadow of the door it came quietly, into the dying glow of the pleasant fire: a black-gowned figure holding my Lady's crozier, and pausing, and peering, as though searching for something; some little thing, for it stooped, and groped, as if the thing was too small to find easily.

"There's

"Oh, Ma'am ; Oh, my Lady-What is it? What are you looking for?" wailed poor Fring in her dream. nothing here but what belongs to me; I never took any of your things; nor anybody's things. You'll find naught here but what's mine."

"Yes, it's yours," said a voice, very old and weak and patient," and I am trying to find it. But it's grown so little -if I can't find it, and give it back to you, you'll lose it out and out. It'll be clean gone, and there'll be an end of it."

"Never mind it, Ma'am, my Lady," pleaded Fring, in the dream. "Don't you trouble; I shall never miss it-maybe I'll get another."

"No. That you never can. You've only one, and it's growing smaller and smaller and smaller, and being smothered." "Oh, my Lady, ma'am, what is it?"

And then Fring awoke, crying bitterly; and the pleasant, easy room, with a good fire blazing still, and thick curtains, and good furniture, had never looked homelier; but it was long before Fring could go to sleep again, she was in such dread of dreaming that horrible dream over again; yet it was worse lying awake, for that had only been a dream, and she was in a nervous terror of seeing something with her waking eyes.

Twice afterwards, a week later, and two weeks later, the dream came back, though never again did the nun with the crozier say anything. There was no need; Fring knew very well what the little thing was for which she was looking, peering, and stooping.

After the third time Fring made up her mind.

"

My Lady, if you please," she said to her mistress, "I'd like to leave."

"Fring!" cried Lady Fitzrupert, quite indignantly, as if Fring had said something disrespectful.

"I do beg your pardon, my Lady," wailed poor Fring. "You've been a kind mistress, and you've never known how truly fond of you I've been for many, many years-from the first, I think. But there's a little thing I have of my own, and, oh, I shall lose it if I stay here."

"Lose it?

Lose what?" demanded her Ladyship, staring with unfeigned astonishment.

Fring was very earnest not to tell, but her mistress was determined to be told, and she was a far more obstinate woman. Of course Fring told at last-had she said nothing about her dreams, I think Lady Fitzrupert would have laughed; but the whimpering old lady's maid did tell all about them, and her mistress was extremely superstitious. Any religion she had was a singular mixture picked up out of all sorts of books, a kind of bric-a-brac, not at all useful, and not worth very much. But she was ready for any superstition. She would not believe anything because God had revealed it, but she would believe any odd story told on the authority of somebody's aunt or somebody's cousin's gamekeeper. Also she was good-natured, and she saw very clearly that Fring was "all to pieces"; besides, she was no longer young herself, and a younger person about her would be more cheerful.

"Well," she declared at last, "if you do go I can give you an excellent character."

"Thank you, my Lady; but I wasn't thinking of taking another situation-not at present.'

What she did was to become a lay-sister in the very Order to which the Burnham nuns had belonged; and there she is still much respected and placidly happy.

'Dreams, and omens, and such-like fooleries,' "she sometimes says to herself. "No doubt they're fooleries, but God don't fish for fools with wise-folks' bait; and p'raps He condescends to teach a body that can't be taught wisdom any better way by means even of a foolery."

As to whether the moral of this story is good or bad, you must make up your mind for yourself. Personally I lean to Fring's opinion.

There at the sea's rim
Meet the two chieftains,
Foemen no longer.

Hand grasp meets hand grasp.
Clasp they as friends clasp;
Clear eye meets clear eye;

Anger is vanquished.

Now, at the well side,

Well of St. Colum,

Standeth a stone cross.

In letters seven,

Password of heaven,

Deep hath been graved there
The one word "Forgive."

ANNIE M. PIKE.

ΤΗ

ON WOODS

By ALICE FURLONG

"

HERE was once a boy in class, and he read out of his school-book: "There was a wood- At that, the master, who wished to train his scholars in observation, stopped the boy to ask: "What kind of a wood was it?" The boy made answer: "Please, sir, it was the usual kind of a wood." An American author, sufficiently great to have known better, commends this answer as comprehensive almost to the degree of an aphorism. We, on the other hand, contend that the boy must have been a city boy, with a starved imagination at that, and submit that his answer was stupid in the extreme.

There is no such thing as the usual kind of wood, for woods are of many kinds. Not only are they of many kinds with regard to their physical features-as woods of oak, broadgladed to the sun; pinewoods, where it is ever twilight; windy mountain coppices of birch and willow; or the "sally-gardens" of Irish song-but they vary still more as to their associations in the mind of man. There is, first of all, to the age of Innocence, the enchanted wood. Such was my own first idea of a wood: it meant mystery, expectation, wonder. Far, far away in the shadowy past, I can see a group of little children gathered about a great turf fire in a country kitchen. A white-haired, rosycheeked woman sits on her sugan chair in their midst. Grave of look, and slow-voiced, she tells her tale, made when the world was young, haply, or else fashioned in the Land o' Dreams. There is no light but the firelight in the comfortable, sleepy place, and sometimes the little children nod their dusky heads, mingling dream with dream. The old, deliberate voice recites the tale: "And towards evening they lost their way; and when night was falling they came to a wood." I remember that I used not think at all of a veritable wood that was without us there on the hillside, but would call up some vision of very leafy dusk; very ancient brown boles; some still, unpeopled place where the wind never wakened, where no bird sang, where it was always fall of night and never dawn, where we would presently "see a light from us," and, following, be led, mayhap, to the robbers' lone den where heaped-up jewels glistened under withered leaves, or, in better case again, to the enchanted castle