“A good man?  Oh yes, good enough!” and with that she flung herself down on the floor, and, putting her head on Peter’s knee, cried as if her heart would break.  For Kitty was never in the habit of carrying her pain off into solitary places:  when she cried it must be with her head on somebody’s knee.

* * * * *

This chapter of Catharine’s history every wide-awake young woman among our readers has doubtless finished for herself:  she knows the closing-in process by which society, expediency, propinquity, even moral obligations, hedge many a man and woman and drive them into marriage.

In the weeks that followed she saw but one path open to her:  in it lay her work for Christ and her woman’s birthright to be a wife and mother (for Kitty, ever since she was a baby nursing dolls, had meant to be both).

She spent most of her time shut up with her Bible and hymn-book, sometimes praying over them, sometimes sticking in her forefinger and opening at chance verses to try her fortune about this affair.  During this time she was usually unnaturally humble and meek, but there were days when her temper was intolerable.

“Don’t come complaining to me,” said Peter testily to her mother.  “The child’s a good child enough.  But when you force her to stretch her heart over three hundred vicious little imps, no wonder it breaks.”

“Kitty’s a free agent,” she replied calmly.

Kitty was a free agent, and at the end of two weeks she accepted Mr. Muller.

REBECCA HARDING DAVIS.

[TO BE CONTINUED.]

THE GLACIERS OF PARADISE.

Spring is waking, and the Yokul lifts on high his glittering shield,
Far and wide in sunny splendor gleams the ice-engirded field,
And the swelling freshet murmurs gay spring-ditties as it flows,
Till its noisy life it mingles in the ocean’s grand repose;
And in silence,
Dream-fraught silence,
O’er its course the billows close.

On the strand they gayly played, where the trembling birch trees grow,
Children both with golden ringlets and with cheeks like maiden snow,
Wherein blushed fresh spring-like roses—­blushed and hid, and blushed again,
While they plucked the shining pebbles, smooth-worn by the stormy main;
And in silence,
Rippling silence,
Chants the sea its old refrain.

She, the fair and gladsome maiden, raised her head and called his name: 
He was deep-eyed, light and slender, shy of mien and slight of frame. 
Like a laughing brook she skipped to and fro along the strand;
He was grave, like nodding fern-leaf, gently by the breezes fanned,
Which in silence,
Pensive silence,
Grows upon the brooklet’s sand,

“Ragnas,” said she, “when God’s angels visit will this world of ours,
They descend, so mother told me, on the Yokul’s shining towers. 
Now, if I should die, then promise thou wilt climb the peaks of ice,
And my hand I’ll reach to help thee up to God’s bright paradise.” 
But in silence,
Wondering silence,
Gazed he in her innocent eyes.