the sea. There we reached the Maiden's Tower, and talked over its wild legends.

Such a course was frequent in the summertide, and often did the simple music, or the shout of boyish joy, call forth from the goodnatured people who lived or laboured there, a blessing on the "pleasant children of the Big House."

CHAPTER VII.

I was awoke very early one morning by a strange woman who leaned over my bed, and said

"Miss St. Pierre, you have got a little sister." I opened my eyes and looked into the wise woman's face. I was in my fourteenth year, yet a fairy gift, or a fairy tale, was all I thought of.

"Where is it? What is it?" I asked, looking round the room.

"Come to your mama and you will see," was the reply. And I went and saw a babe, an infant, such as I had seen elsewhere; but how or why it was there in our mother's room, I

neither asked nor thought.

That it was, or

could, by any possibility, be our mother's child,

They laid it in my arms, and the sweet sorrowful voice of my mother said

"It must be yours, Magdalene—your own." There was no gladness in the tone; no gladness in the languid eye; but the meek pale face looked up to mine in love.

never cared for dolls.

It was a strange unknown sentiment. I had My manner of life had been fully as much that of a boy as a girl. Yet when I held that infant in my arms, my heart was surely that of a woman, filled with all the innocent wonderment of a child.

That babe was not to me my sister; it never could, in my mind, stand in the same relationship to our mother as her twins did. It was my own fairy favour.

Perhaps if I had been allowed a little longer experience of what such fairy favours really are, and of the care and trouble they impose, imagination would have sobered down.

But its extreme delicacy, and the fact, not

understood by me at the time, of its advent into this troublesome life being rather a cause of grief than of joy to our mother-induced her to adopt a practice more common then than it is now, and send the babe to be nursed by a farmer's wife, at some distance.

Before its departure the christening took place.

A large party assembled in the great drawingroom on that occasion. It was an evening party, and the christening was to take place in full assembly. Almost all the ladies wore white; our mother, with cheeks just like the heart of the blush rose, sat on a sofa in a robe of the same. Our old, stout rector, all smiles, laughter, and jest, came to share the entertainment, and perform the ceremony. He told me my nose was out of joint; and the room shook with his laugh, when such a great girl, ignorant of the meaning of the old adage, touched that rather delicately-formed organ, doubtfully, with her fingers.

A fine old china bowl had been known in our family as the christening bowl. It had served two generations, I believe, for that purpose.

This stood on the centre table, with a vase of flowers at each side.

I made some remarks about this to an old lady, who nodded her head and replied,

"Yes, your little sister is now to be made a Christian, my dear."

"To be made a Christian!"-I looked roundI listened to the chat, the laughter, and I repeated to myself" to be made a Christian!" The door was thrown open by a servant man, and the little heroine of the evening was carried in by her

nurse.

The old rector in black coat and black silk stockings, and orthodox white cravat, rose and went to the table. Had the baptism been in church he would have worn his surplice; but at that time few persons brought their children to church, and home christenings were more the fashion.

I was appointed to act as the proxy of the more distinguished, but distant lady, who had undertaken the office of godmother: I was told I must curtsey at the responses, as I saw the other godmother do.