she went on undisturbed till she came to her favourite spot where she had first met Mr. Armstrong.  She paced about for a little while, and then sat down and once more watched the dawn.  It was not a clear sky, but barred towards the east with cloud, the rain-cloud of the night.  She watched and watched, and thought after her fashion, mostly with incoherence, but with rapidity and intensity.  At last came the first flash of scarlet upon the bars, and the dead storm contributed its own share to the growing beauty.  The rooks were now astir, and flew, one after the other, in an irregular line eastwards black against the sky.  Still the colour spread, until at last it began to rise into pure light, and in a moment more the first glowing point of the disc was above the horizon.  Miriam fell on her knees against the little seat and sobbed, and the dog, wondering, came and sat by her and licked her face with tender pity.  Presently she recovered, rose, went home, let herself in softly before her husband was downstairs, and prepared the breakfast.  He soon appeared, was in the best of spirits, and laughed at her being able to leave the room without waking him.  She looked happy, but was rather quiet at their meal; and after he had caressed the cat for a little while, he pitched her, as he had done before, on Miriam’s lap.  She was about to get up to cut some bread and butter, and she went behind him and kissed the top of his head.  He turned round, his eyes sparkling, and tried to lay hold of her, but she stepped backward and eluded him.  He mused a little, and when she sat down he said in a tone which for him was strangely serious—­

“Thank you, my dear; that was very, very sweet.”

MICHAEL TREVANION.

Michael Trevanion was a well-to-do stonemason in the town of Perran in Cornwall.  He was both working-man and master, and he sat at one end of the heavy stone-saw, with David Trevenna, his servant, at the other, each under his little canopy to protect them a trifle from the sun and rain, slowly and in full view of the purple Cornish sea, sawing the stone for hours together:  the water dripped slowly on the saw from a little can above to keep the steel cool, and occasionally they interchanged a word or two—­always on terms of perfect equality, although David took wages weekly and Michael paid them.  Michael was now a man of about five and forty.  He had married young and had two children, of whom the eldest was a youth just one and twenty.  Michael was called by his enemies Antinomian.  He was fervently religious, upright, temperate, but given somewhat to moodiness and passion.  He was singularly shy of talking about his own troubles, of which he had more than his share at home, but often strange clouds cast shadows upon him, and the reasons he gave for the change observable in him were curiously incompetent to explain such results.  David, who had watched him from the