future? Hadn't he confidence ?"-"Yes, in your good intentions," replied the anxious father; "but I want to see my girl comfortably settled near me before I die." himself felt acutely; but he laughed at her fears, and, with many loving words, promised to see her again in a week. The toll-keeper was deeply affected as they exchanged "Good-byes." "Take my word for it, you will rue the day when you left us all to go on this wild-goose chase." Nelly's mother warmly approved of the project, for more than one reason, which she kept to herself. Her silly ambition for Nelly was already glancing toward "I do not think I shall," said George. George's patron; for she could not believe" Mother there, has often wished to see that the young man whom she had known Nelly made a lady; now I am going to from his birth could ever realize money try to accomplish that. Take care of her or station sufficient to be worthy of her for me. Guard her well, I entreat of daughter's hand. you." Nelly herself was divided in her senti "Stay and guard her for yourself," ments. When she listened to George, she shared bis sanguine views; and when she listened to her father, she fretted with him, and wished that he had never seen Mr. Ferris. As the day drew near when George was to leave Sandown, Nelly's fears got the better of her hopes. She neglected her dress, she kept close in the house, she was often weeping, and frequently she said, in her pettish way, that she knew very I well she would die of a broken heart when George had gone away and forgotten her. At last came the parting, which George gate as he passed on his way to the great metropolis. No public conveyance of any kind came near to that place, and he had some eighteen miles to walk to reach the new railway station. In the highest spirits, with every nerve full braced, George Fielding passed, one by one, early on a lovely summer morning, the scenes that had so often inspired his fancy. He stood some minutes by the lodge, or outer tower of the Grange. From this point of view the mansion appeared extremely picturesque, composed of many irregular parts, and flanked on three sides by a dry moat, now partly filled up, and planted over with flowers. At the back rose a grim old tower dedicated to St. Dunstan, half buried in dark trees. This was the south view; but there was no moat on the north side of the Grange, where the Holm Moss stream flowed past St. Dunstan's tower, which was the very oldest part of the mansion, elevated on a detached mound of earth. The main structure of the Grange was built chiefly in the ancient English style of the reigns of Edward IV. or Richard III., but incorporated with it were the relics of a much older mansion, of which the Dunstan tower had originally formed a part. violence, his house and lands; and, having met with determined resistance from his two high-spirited sons, threw them both from the battlements of the Dunstan tower. Their father perished slowly in a dungeon still pointed out under the tower. The legend says that he reached ninety years. old while immured in that fearful den. The spirits of the twin brothers haunted the French knight, standing on each side of his chair on the dais whenever he kept his revels with his armed retainers in the Saxon's hall. To escape the horror of their presence, Sanclere went to the Holy Land, and there he fell, sword in hand, fighting against the infidel for the rescue of the Holy Sepulchre. He had founded a chantry, where perpetual prayers might be offered for the souls of the brave Saxon and his two sons, so barbarously slain. But the perpetual prayers had ceased, the chantry had vanished, and only the two ancient towers remained, bearing the names of the unfortunate brothers—the one being known as the Egbert tower, the other as the Dunstan. For centuries after the date of this tradition the neighbourhood was a wilderness; the red deer roamed in wild freedom through the forest glades; the wolf was hunted over Sandown chase, as late as the George Fielding passed the Grange on fifteenth century, by the first Sir John the north, and at a quarter of a mile dis- Randal, who took up his residence here, tance turned and stood to look back. and built the Grange, properly so called. The gloomy old tower appeared shut in by The figure of a wolf was carved in difblack woods of most funereal aspect, grow-ferent places about the buildings; and ing close up to the mouldering loop-holes, another of the ghostly legends of Sandown, where he knew the screech-owls sat, as preserved by George, told of the breathing hard their immense satisfac-spectre of a wolf having been often seen, tion in the dim solitude, and whence they roamed nightly on short excursions to the neighbouring colony inhabiting the "Owlet's Corner." There, William Fielding's farm was built, near to the remains of a ponderous old ruin, exactly resembling that which was attached to the Grange, only in a more decayed condition. George had made much, in writing, of the dismal traditions told of these twin towers. A Norman French knight named Sanclere or Sanclerc, in the unhappy days of the Norman conquest of England, took brave Saxon, by treachery and from a hunted by a shadow resembling a gray horseman, mounted on a white horse. The story was: that the first Sir John came to reside here that he might avoid the Court of the Plantagenets, and all its associations, and live in close retirement; for he had nearly suffered decapitation as a traitor to the crown, for a few impru dent words, in which he had neither malice nor design. The greatness of his danger, so undeserved, had disgusted him with the world, and he lived ever after a solitary life. He strongly fortified the Grange, which, in the time of the civil wars of the First Charles, was stoutly defended by the royalist owner against a party of Cromwell's men. The modern wing of the Grange was all the present Lady Randal's work. It was well planned, well lighted, and covered with splendid creepers to the very gable top. In the centre of the stonework over the great projecting bow window, and over the arched doorway, was the traditional wolf of the Randals, finely carved. George had lost sight of the Grange, when an unaccountable feeling-did it originate in a doubt of the wisdom of the course he was adopting ?-led him to turn aside from the straight path, and return by a roundabout way to the vicinity of the new farm, now called the Holm Moss Farm, that a few weeks back he had pointed out to Nelly as her future home. It was nearly finished, and a most comfortable cheerful homestead it promised to be. The morning light rested lovingly upon it, and he found it difficult to withdraw his gaze from a spot that so recently had been consecrated in his best affections. What a change had his acquaintance with Mr. Ferris wrought in his mind! Previous to that, what inducement on earth could have led him away from Nelly? All his hopes had been centred in her. To win her was the summit of his ambition, and he had passed through a stormy sea of passionate emotions before he could gain her consent to share his lot in life. "Yet here am I now deliberately leaving her the times of our meeting in the future uncertain—and I know not how many of my rivals eager to distance me in her favour! Am I doing right? or is there some fatal spell cast over me? Should I lose her, where am I then ?" Sounds of laughter, of merry voices of men and boys, and bleating sheep, broke his uneasy reflections, and, moving towards William Adams's well-stocked farm, he presently came upon a lively scene. The stalwart farmer, on his best black horse, was overlooking the shearing of his sheep, performed by a group of labourers, assisted by boys and dogs, in the presence of numerous pigs, ducks, and fowls, who did their best to swell the noisy chorus of clamorous voices.. The farmer rode forward to give a parting greeting to the young adventurer. "So you are off now, I see, George ?" "Yes; it is a hazardous experiment, but I am determined to try it." "You are to get a famous salary, I hear ?" "A most liberal one, but that does not tempt me. It is the opportunity I covet, William, the opportunity, though I dare say you do not see its value." "Well, I don't know. You are bookish, and bookish men are not fit for this sort of work," waving his strong right arm, so as to indicate the farming operations going on within his view. "Father takes on sadly about it; but what's the good of pinning a man down to a life that don't suit his habits? None at all. Sooner or later he must try to break loose-perhaps when he's grown to be fit neither for one thing nor t'other. That's my way of looking at it, George; and I wish you all success up in Lunnon, where I never was, and never care to be." "Thank you," said George, in a husky voice, shaking him by the hand. 66 Nelly likes the town as well as you do," said the farmer; "she's none cut out for a farming life, not she, no more than thysel! So it may be all for the best that you give up the Holm Moss yonder. I hope it may be all for the best. I have done well here; and shall live and die, like my forefathers, on the old county soil, where I was born and bred. And your own brothers are pretty well of my mind. But you, George, always differed from us. You are the cleverest of us all, and you ought to turn out the most prosperous." I hope I shall," said George, smiling, but it was a very nervous smile; "and you must expect me to come down and fetch Nelly away in a carriage and four, with white favours." "Bravo! That will be the style!"* laughed the jovial farmer. "I will give the wedding dinner.” your mother is too indulgent, and too | power," answered William; and, after vain of her." another shaking of hands, he rodeaway over one of his fields; and George, bracing up all his energies, and dismissing all regrets, turned his face toward London. "That's true," said the farmer, with serious emphasis; "that's too true." "And your sister is so very pretty that she requires especial care." "I will see to it, as far as lays in my POSSIBLE ATTAINMENTS. ONE of the chief difficulties which we have to encounter in every work of amendment, is, that we do not know where to begin. Unfortunately, hardly any person ever feels a wish to amend, till his case becomes desperate, and then the task appears so formidable that he shrinks from it in despair. If nothing (To be continued.) more were necessary than to break off one or two bad habits, or establish one or two good maxims in domestic practice, the change would be easy; but when everything is wrong, when every duty relating to family and self has been neglected for years, the work of amendment is verily no child's play. But this, though true, is surely no reason why the work should not be set about. If it is difficult it is all the more necessary. If a drowning man is just sinking for the third time, not a moment ought to be lost in plunging to his rescue. A person thrown accidentally into the middle of a vast bog, is at first puzzled to determine in what direction he shall strive to get out, the bank being equally distant on all sides; but who would hesitate to call him a fool if he determined, on that account, to remain in the bog. We know something of that large class of operatives whose personal and domestic condition has a strong moral resemblance to that of the man in the bog; we know, also, that many are dissatisfied with it, that they are inwardly vexed and sorry to think of their own ignorance, and the wretchedness of their homes. Often do they look round them with an aching heart; they are tormented by a desire to see things different, but they do not know where to begin. Sometimes the very desire of improvement aggravates the evil; it makes them peevish and angry; they scold pell-mell, make a "demonstration" at every fault, with the addition perhaps of a weekly "blowing-up" for the general good. The effect of such a course is very evident. The wife soon entrenches herself in a sense of injustice; the children, unable to understand what can possess their wellmeaning, but hasty parent, lose no time in ranging themselves by her side. Thus two parties are formed inside the houseone conservative, the other revolutionary, and, as it happens in politics, both destructive. One has no wish to amend, the other wishes to amend, but knows not how; and by his ill-timed measures on behalf of an improved domestic condition, renders its attainment impossible. "But," we hear at once from half a dozen voices, "What can we do?" We will tell you. In the first place, if you can only fume and fret and scold, do nothing. It is bad enough for a man to be smothered in a bog, but it is worse to disappear in a paroxysm of useless rageif the sad end can be avoided, let him labour to avoid it, but if not, let him wisely meet it with decency. "But is it possible to effect a change ?”—the question returns. Certainly it is. Can we think that God has put it out of the power of his rational creatures to rescue themselves from degradation? But if you wish to change your homes and families, you must first change yourselves. Bethink yourselves that your wives and children are not wholly to blame, As for the former, if you entertained these high notions of domestic comfort when you married them, you were either very blind or very imprudent to make choice of persons so ill able to carry them out; but if you have acquired these notions by reflection and intercourse with other men since your marriage, have you taken all likely means to instil them into the minds of your partners, whose opportunities for improvement are necessarily less then yours? Here is the starting post of improvement,-a mutual understanding between husband and wife, a sort of holy alliance, based on affection, guided by knowledge, and aiming to promote the welfare of themselves and their offspring both for this world and the next. We suppose this first step taken; not, perhaps, the full establishment of this conjugal compact, for so important a piece of diplomacy must be the fruit of time, but the first overtures made on the part of the husband; what will be the second step? Yes. What else can be done? Our pen here must be content to borrow facts, for the question is one which can only be answered by a woman. Here is a fireside-we see it while we write-so deeply are its happy images impressed upon our minds. The bell has rung for dinner, the factory "hands" are trooping out of the broad blue gatesthe cottage door opens, and happy children run to clasp the knees of their father. Here are no make-shift preparations going on; the steak does not lie there raw upon the table, a child is not being hastily despatched for a quartern loaf. The hearth does not resemble a Mount Vesuvius of ashes, with a crater of expiring cinders at the top; brooms and brushes, shawls and bonnets, dust-rags and platters, do not bestrew the apart |