Of hidden regret disturbed the azure calm
  Of those clear eyes that still reflected heaven. 
  Then, when they all had drunk and been refreshed,
  And forth had ridden, Francesca sought her place,
  And pored again above the Psalter’s leaf: 
  “In voluntate tua deduxisti,”
  Conning it over with a tender joy,
  As if she verily felt her human hand
  Close claspt in God’s, and heard Him guiding her
  With audible counsel; when there fell a touch
  Upon her arm:  “The Sister Barbara
  Comes seeking wherewithal to dress some wounds
  Got in a brawl upon the Esquiline.”

And now athwart the western windows streamed Rainbows of shafted light, as thither again Francesca came to read her “Offices.”  A beam, that seemed a golden pencil held Within the fingers of the Christ that glowed In the great oriel, pointed to the words Where she had paused to do the Sister’s hest:  “Cum gloria suscepisti me.”  She kissed The blazoned leaf, thanks nestling at her heart, That now, at last, no duty disallowing, Her loosened soul out through the sunset bars Might float, and catch heaven’s crystal shimmer.  But scarce Had meditation smoothed the wing of thought Before the hangings of the door were parted With yet a further summoning.  From a Triton That spouted in the court her three-year boy, Who thither had climbed, had fallen, and naught would soothe The bruised brow save the sweet mother-kiss.

  “I come,” she said, her forehead half divine
  With saintly patience.  “For Thou wouldst teach me, Lord,
  That Thou art just as near me ministering
  At home as in these consecrated aisles;
  And ’tis true worship, pouring of the wine
  For him I love, or holding ’twixt my hands
  The little throbbing head; since where my duty
  Calls is the altar where I serve Thee best.”

  When under the Campagna’s purple rim
  The sun had sunken so long that all was gray,
  Softly across the dusky sacristy
  Francesca glided back.  The Psalter lay
  Scarcely discernible amid the gloom;
  But lo the marvel!  On the darken’d page
  The verse which thrice she had essayed to read
  Now shone illuminate, silver-clear, as though
  God’s hand had written it with the flash of stars.

MARGARET J. PRESTON.

OUR HOME IN THE TYROL.

CHAPTER V.

We had not gone many yards when we noticed a grand old mansion with gray slopes of roof and stone galleries on arched pillars, and, asking its history, learned that it was a deserted seat of the counts of Arlberg, inhabited now by our guide in quality of forester, and where he had his sister Nanni and brother Hansel to live with him.

We kept gradually ascending by the side of deep, turfy meadows, passing many a rich brown wooden chalet, with views ever and anon of our distant village and its stately Hof.  Soon we turned into a woody gorge and began climbing the steep saddle of the Scharst; and as we slowly toiled upward in the pleasant summer air, amongst the aromatic fir trees, some verses came into my head out of a little German book, Jakob Stainer, by Herr Reif, which we had given as a parting present to Schuster Alois: