giving happiness where she was now inflicting pain. She had indeed much to say, and she felt there was urgent need for it to be said. So she would remain at home that evening, whatever her aunt might urge to the contrary.

It so happened, when the evening came, that Miss Clifton was more anxious for her niece to accompany her than Catherine had expected; and, uncomfortable as people mostly are, when they have a double motive, only one of which they venture to avow, Catherine managed her refusal in a manner so awkward, and even embarrassed, as to strike the attention of her aunt, who, however, only fixed an inquiring look upon her face, without betraying in words-perhaps without even feeling in her own mind the slightest suspicion that the whole

truth had not been told her.

Catherine was the most blundering of all deceivers. If she had ever so much as a secret upon her hands, however innocent it might be in itself, she made it so evidently the object of her care, and altogether created so great a bustle about it, that like children who hide themselves and will not be quiet, she always betrayed by her look and manner that she had something else to tell; and, to confess the truth, almost always did tell it, and that pretty soon. Now, however, the secret was not her own; it was so very trifling too-it really was no secret after all. But still Catherine spoke only of the letter she wanted to write to her sister as her reason for remaining at home, and she made so much of the letter, and of the necessity there was for writing it that very day, that at last her aunt departed without her, not quite satisfied in her own mind that all was clear and straightforward, though she had no idea what there could be to conceal. Perhaps some lover's quarrel, the good lady concluded, as she thought the matter over alone; and yet why they should not tell her she was at a loss to conjecture, for hitherto she had been the confidant of all Helen's feelings, even to those hopes and anxieties which naturally belong to a first attachment, as well as to the near prospect of marriage.

Miss Clifton returned from her visit that evening at an hour somewhat later than usual for her; for such was the primitive nature of her habits, that her times of visiting and of returning home scarcely

Miss

kept pace with those of any other person, and hence her objection to visiting in general, because she did not like to be singular, and yet could not easily deviate from her accustomed habits. Late as the hour was for her to return, it struck her as very late indeed to find a gentleman seated beside her niece in the parlour. Catherine, too, did not spring up to meet her as usual, but busied herself with desk, and writingpaper-putting away,the good lady thought, the all-important letter. It was a pity, she said to herself, that the young inan should have chosen to come on that evening: he must have hindered Catherine very much in what she had to do. In fact, her niecc had better have been with her than trifling her time away, as it seemed to her that Catherine sometimes did, with this young man. Here she checked herself, for was the young man not Helen's lover? Clifton was afraid she was growing irritable: perhaps she discovered the change on this occasion almost as much as she ever did in her life, for, to tell the truth, she did feel a little ruffled-first, by the refusal of her niece to accompany her, though she knew there were young people invited purposely to meet Catherine, and then at the symptoms of mystery which attended the affair altogether; lastly, she did not like that any gentleman, however nearly he might be about to be connected-she did not like that any gentleman should be sitting in her house, alone with her niece, at that late hour. Servants, she said to herself, often made remarks; and she was so strict with hers, that she felt the more bound to extend her discipline to those departments of her household in which her own honour was more nearly concerned.

Altogether, aunt Ann was not quite pleased. Catherine felt this, though not a single word of anger or reproof was allowed to pass her lips. Perhaps Henry felt it, too, for as soon as civility allowed of his doing so, he took up his hat, and bid the ladies good night.

"I am afraid," said aunt Ann to her niece, "you have been hindered in your letter. I am afraid you have not been able to write it."

"Not entirely," Catherine replied.

"Did he come early?" asked Miss Clifton, not deigning to give the gentleman a name.

"Not very early," Catherine replied.
"Had he forgotten something?
"I think he had."

"Something he wished you to say in the letter?"

"The letter was about him; and-" "He knew you were writing it?" "It was written on his behalf; at least I intended to serve him by writing it."

"I am not curious, Catherine-at least, I hope I am not guilty of idle curiosity; but I have been so long accustomed to the most undisguised intercourse with my nieces-in my own house, too-I do confess, Catherine, I should like to see this letter. You will remember, I am in the habit of seeing all Helen's to you, and hitherto all yours to her. It is hard to me to ask to see this, others having been shown to me without asking for."

"Not to-night, dear aunt," said Catherine, with averted face, and agitated voice. "Only trust me for this once. I promise to show you the letter before it is sent away, but not to-night."

"Well, well," said the aunt, a good deal appeased by this promise; "I hope I don't intrude upon your privacy too much. Old women, you know, Catherine, are proverbially curious, and often very troublesome. Good night, my love; you will forgive me if I have been too encroaching. I live in a very quiet way. I like everything open and clear. I have not been accustomed to mysteries in my simple household."

Catherine made no remark. She was afraid, if she trusted herself to speak, that she might say too much. Seeing that her aunt looked weary and dispirited, she lighted her candle as usual, held out her arm to support her in going upstairs, asked if she had enjoyed her visit, and then, having reached the door of her apartment, pressed a kiss upon her cheek, bid her good night, and returned to the parlour for her writing materials.

Catherine Clifton, again we say, you are a bad deceiver. In bidding your aunt good night, you pressed her beloved form as closely to your heart as if it had been breaking; and in kissing her as you did, with more fondness than usual, you left a tear upon her cheek.

"Well, well," said the kind lady, after she had wiped off the tear with her handkerchief, and stood musing for a minute

or two, "well, well, I suppose I shall know all in due time. These matters don't concern me. Perhaps it is scarcely wise, or scarcely delicate, in me to meddle as I have done. I regret that I betrayed so much curiosity about the letter. It is all right, no doubt. My nieces are good girls. Perhaps it would be better for me to trust them more, and busy myself less about their matters."

The good lady, having arrived at this conclusion, and feeling rather more weary than usual, sat down in her accustomed chair, opened her Bible, read attentively for a longer time than was her wont, and then, abundantly refreshed, strengthened, and comforted, retired to rest.

Catherine meanwhile, with flushed cheek and trembling hand, was, as already said, busily gathering up the fragments of paper which lay upon her desk. She would have felt no objection in the world to show her aunt every word of that letter to her sister, had such been in existence; but of this luckless document not one single word had yet been written.

Like many other persons, Catherine had no idea, when first practising a little deception upon her aunt-quite a harmless deception, too-she had no idea that this single act, with a good motive for its foundation, at all events a kind motive, would lead her on to first one and then another little act of trickery, if not actually of deception, until she scarcely knew where to lay hold of the tangled thread, nor how it could be drawn out without making matters worse.

In all the confusion of Catherine's feelings, there seemed to be no one distinct idea. How that evening had passed she could not for her life have told. It seemed to her scarcely more than five minutes after her aunt had left the house before she re-entered the door. "Poor Henry!" she kept continually repeating to herself these words. They were dangerous words to her, but she felt no danger.

On that strange evening Catherine had seen a new phase of her brother's character. He was unhappy! she had never seen nor even imagined him so before. He was tender, kind, affectionate; in their earliest acquaintance she had sometimes found him so; or perhaps she had fancied that

he was so, but now she knew it; and Helen was so cold! How could she be so cold! she must be made of marble, instead of ice, not to melt under the intense pity which Catherine had been made to feel that night. Finally, Henry had shed tears! Oh, talk of woman's tears, and tell us they once lost a world; but if man could know what woman feels when big drops of agony roll down his proud cheeks, he would not wonder that the consequences should sometimes involve far more than an empire to her.

Henry Linden had wept that night tears of sorrow as sincere as they were bitter. He was no deceiver, no pretender either. All was real with him for the moment. The disappointment occasioned by that letter had been real; the view it opened to him of his future life was real, too. Vexation and annoyance had been the effect of many former letters of a similar description; the silken cord of his affection had been sorely stretched before. It had been knotted, twisted, dealt with very hardly, he thought; but now, from some cause or other, it seemed to have suddenly snapped asunder. All such cords may be tried too much; all may be broken either by the slow operation of some painful process, or the rude jerk of a careless and unfeeling hand. And what is left when the silken cord is broken?

What had Henry Linden left? He had his mansion, his castle of safety, his bower of bliss. But what was mansion, castle, or bower, without his love? Nothing but the cage without the bird-the empty cage without the song, the flutter, and the life, which alone could give it either beauty or charm.

In one wild, impulsive, and terrible outburst of passion, Henry Linden had that evening given vent to all, and to much more, than he really felt. He had shocked his poor, frightened auditor with the force and the extravagance of his expressions. She had been angry as well as frightened: but then he had wept. She had pleaded for her sister, and promised to plead with her; but then he had wept. She had reasoned, remonstrated, reproached, upbraided, but then he had wept. What could she do more but pity? She had pitied him with the warmth of her whole heart.

They had talked together of many things never mentioned between them before, such as the requisites for mutual happiness in married life; they had gone deeper than ever before-perhaps deeper than it was wise to go-into their individual capabilities for enduring misery. They had each said what they could bear; but they had also said what they could not bear, and live. It was a dangerous kind of intercourse that which they held together; it always is dangerous to hold intercourse with those whose feelings have burst open the floodgates of reason; but Catherine continually said to herself, "He is my brother;" and in that fact she found safety and protection. After all, it was the pity, the intense pity, which wrung her heart to its centre, that led her on to listen rather than to speak; for she herself said little, only just so much as sympathy forced from her, but that little was very tender, and it was very true. "Is he not my brother?" she continually repeated to herself; " and if I should turn a deaf ear to his distress, where else could he go? yond this, is it not just possible that I may console, strengthen, and do him good, as well as feel for him? Blessed thought! In this way I may be to him a true sistera sister of charity indeed."

Be

But before Catherine retired to rest that night the painful sense of that concealment which she imagined had been laid upon her, without any choice or agency of her own, grew into something very much like sin-dark, painful, and bitter. Yet how to throw it off? There was the difficulty.

On ascending the stairs to her own room, she stopped on tip-toe at the door of her aunt's chamber. A strong impulse took possession of her to go in, and tell all to this tenderest and best of friends. She applied her ear to the door, and listened. Had any sound of movement or wakefulness been there, it is more than probable she would have entered, and unburdened her mind of its great load; but all was still. Her aunt was weary, she said, when she retired to rest. It would be cruel to awake and agitate her now. The morning would do just as well for her purpose. She would take a night to think what it was best to do, and on the morrow she would

act.

OUTLINES OF POPULAR

SCIENCE

FOR CHILDREN OF ALL AGES.

(A SKETCH OF PROFESSOR FARADAY'S LECTURES TO CHILDREN-FOURTH ARTICLE.)

ever;

an

"WE have now examined several combustible bodies, and we have seen each in succession present different qualities to our notice; but, during all our investigations, we have not yet met with a combustible gas. There are many such, howbut the one to which I shall first draw your attention is hydrogen, expression which signifies the waterformer; because, when this gas burns, the result of its combustion is neither a solid, nor a permanent gas, but steam, the vapour of water. Accordingly, water, thought by the ancients to have been an element, is really a compound of hydrogen and something else; and this something, you are now prepared to understand, is hydrogen. It should follow, therefore, that hydrogen should be capable of extraction from water; and it is in this way we do extract it for the purpose of experiment. There are various processes for obtaining hydrogen, all of them depending on its extraction by methods more or less direct from the liquid water."

The lecturer now proceeded to extract hydrogen gas by the most direct means known to chemists; namely, by subjecting water, in a convenient apparatus, to the action of voltaic or galvanic electricity. The reader will scarcely have the means of performing the experiment, but we shall describe it nevertheless. It is one of those experiments which can be understood on paper, without performance; and which, being understood, facilitate the comprehension of the subject to which they refer. The apparatus necessary for separating water into its two component gases is as follows:-P and N represent respectively two glass tubes, placed standing upright, as we have frequently described, in a dish, D, of glass, or porce

Fig. 28.

lain. N' P', are platinum wires communicating each with its own glass tube, at one end, and with the poles of a galvanic battery at the points N' P'. Now, immediately the voltaic influence is communicated to the platinum wires, the two upright tubes, already filled with water, become pervaded with bubbles of gas, and these bubbles gradually rising through the column of water ultimately unite and form gaseous spaces in the upper or closed part of the tubes. Let us here remark, that in the above diagram, P and P', stand for positive; N and N', for negative; finally O and H for hydrogen and oxygen respectively. Hence, from an examination of the diagram, it will be observed that in the decomposition of water, hydrogen goes to the negative and oxygen to the positive tube. It will be observed, moreover, that if the operation be stopped at any given period, the total amount of hydrogen developed, will be double, by measure, the amount of oxygen. Hence, it necessarily follows, that water must be a compound of two parts, by measure,-of hydrogen, combined with one part, by measure, of oxygen. This latter statement will be plainly evident; and scarcely less evident will it be that the composition of water by volume may be represented in a diagram, thus,

H

where the amount of hydrogen contained is indicated by a square, and the corresponding amount of oxygen by half a square.

"We have now obtained hydroFig. 29. gen," continued Professor Faraday,

appealing to the result of the previously described experiment; "but we have also obtained oxygen. The water has been rent into its two elements, hydrogen and oxygen, each developed in a separate form. As regards oxygen, our old friend, we can easily recognise it by the well-known quality of increasing the combustion of an incandescent piece of wood. Let us, therefore, try,-yes, you observe there can be no doubt about its nature; this gas is oxygen. Now for the other gas, hydrogen, I must tell you beforehand that it is considerably lighter than atmospheric air; for which reason, in conducting any experiments on this gas, contained in jars or tubes, we must hold them upside down, mouth downwards.

E