in every direction, calling aloud on Annette; and the night was passed in vain searches for the luckless maiden.

Morning, that morning which was to have crowned his happiness for ever, by making Annette his own, saw Jules, pale and haggard, distraction gleaming in his eyes, and drops of cold perspiration bursting from his forehead, approach with his friends the bank of the river, which they proposed to draw with nets, as being the only place as yet unexplored.

While we leave them employed in this melancholy office, we must return to the female friend who had left Annette at the church. She sought an interview with the servant of the priest, whom she closely questioned, as she maintained that the unhappy girl had decided on returning by a certain route, and had she done so, she could not have failed to meet Jules, and consequently suspicions of foul play were excited in her mind.

The servant stated that Le Père Laungard had given her a commission to execute at the

village the evening before, and had told her she might remain there until twelve o'clock. This unsolicited permission struck her as something extraordinary, and she did not avail herself of it to the full extent. She returned about nine o'clock, and having let herself in, was eating her supper, when she heard a violent struggle in the room above that where she was sitting, and a sound of stifled groans. She ran up stairs, and finding her master's door fastened, she demanded if he was ill, as she had been alarmed by hearing a noise. He answered that he had merely fallen over a chair; but there was a trepidation in his voice which announced that he was agitated.

This was all that the servant could state; but it was enough to point the suspicions already excited, still more strongly to the priest.

The river was drawn, and close to its bank was found the corse of the beautiful and illfated Annette. Her dishevelled hair, and torn garments, bore evidence to the personal violence

she had sustained, ere she had been consigned to a watery grave, and the livid mark of fingers on her throat, induced a belief that her death had been caused by strangulation, ere she had been plunged into the river. Fragments of her dress, found attached to the briers, and locks of her beautiful hair caught in them, gave indications of the route by which her corse had been evidently dragged along, and were traced even to the door of the priest's house; but when the servant came forth, with a fragment of the kerchief Annette had worn, and which she had found in the ashes where the rest had been consumed, there was no longer a doubt left in the minds of the spectators, of who was the perpetrator of the horrible deed.

The murderer fled, pursued by the villagers; but having rushed into the river, he gained the opposite side in safety ere they arrived to see him again resume his flight. He passed the frontier, entered Piedmont, and there overcome with the sense of his guilt, and nearly dead

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with fatigue, he gave himself up to the civil authorities.

He was soon after claimed by the French, tried, and condemned to the gallies for life; where he still drags on a miserable existence, not daring to lift his eyes from the ground, lest he should meet the glance of horror his presence never fails to excite in all who see him, and know his crime.

Jules no longer able to remain in a spot now rendered insupportable to him, gave up his little fortune to the mother of his Annette, enlisted at Grenoble, and soon after met his death, gallantly fighting at Algiers.

The house of Le Père Laungard has been razed to the ground by the inhabitants of the village; and a monument has been erected to the memory of the lovely, but unfortunate Annette.

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THE YOUNG MOTHER.

"I HAVE ordered the curricle to be at the door at four; and I hope you will not disappoint me again Emily, as you have so frequently done of late, for I have set my heart on driving you to-day."

"You know, dear Algernon, what pleasure I always have in being with you."

"Why, so you say; but really, Emily, I begin to doubt your assertion on this point; you have always some excuse for not riding or driving with me, when I ask you."

for

"Now this reproach is unkind, Algernon." Yet, nevertheless, it is true."

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