that he didn’t care for all the Crimmages in the world, nor the Crummages either, whatever he meant by that, for there was no such name in the neighbourhood.  “Basil,” said Miss Halbert, “you had better take care.  I shall not allow you any toddy, remember, but shall subscribe for the Montreal Weekly Witness”.  Mr. Perrowne put a little out of the decanter into his tumbler, with a practised air very unlike that of a Band of Hope patron, saying:  “Drowned the miller, Fanny!  Must take time by the forelock, if you are going to carry out your threats.  But I think I’ll drop you, and ask Mrs. Carmichael to have compassion on me.  She wouldn’t deprive a poor man of his toddy, would you now, Mrs. Carmichael?”

“Mrs. Carmichael,” said Mr. Errol, answering for that lady, “would hae mair sense,” which shut the parson effectually out of conversation in that quarter.

Miss Carmichael listened to the conversation, and beheld the minister renewing his youth.  She heard Mr. Bangs entertain her uncle with stories about a certain Charley Varley, and Mr. Terry say to Mrs Du Plessis, “Whin I was in Sout Ameriky wid the cornel, God save him.”  She saw her friend Fanny exciting the lighter vein in the affianced Perrowne, and knew that Cecile was upstairs, the light of the dominie’s eyes.  There was a blank in the company, so she retired to the room in which she had found the burglar, and looked at the knapsacks there.  She knew his; would it be wrong to look inside?  She would not touch Mr. Wilkinson’s for wealth untold.  If he had not wanted his knapsack opened, he should not have left it behind him.  But it was open; not a strap was buckled over it.  The strap press was there, and a little prayer-book, and a pocket volume of Browning, some cartridges and tobacco, and an empty flask, and a pair of socks and some collars.  What was that?  A sheet of paper that must have fallen out of Browning.  It had fluttered to the floor, whence she picked it up, and it was poetry; perhaps the much-talked-of poem on the Grinstun man.  No, it was another, and this was how it ran, as she read it, and hot and cold shivers ran alternately down her neck:—­

     The while my lonely watch I keep,
     Dear heart that wak’st though senses sleep
       To thee my heart turns gratefully. 
     All it can give to thee is given. 
     From all besides, its heartstrings riven. 
       Could ne’er be reft more fatefully.

     For thou art all in all to me,
     My life, my love, my Marjorie,
       Dow’ring each day increasingly
     With wealth of thy dear self.  I swear
     I’ll love thee false, I’ll love thee fair. 
       World without end, unceasingly.