soul to an obvious devil. If we cannot see the real Ancient, let us see no more Moors. The two characters depend upon each other; and if both are not rightly played neither is true. But by all means let us see the play again if we can get rid of this impostor. Let us drive out the "creeping cat" never to return, and bring in

the Spartan dog

More fell than hunger, anguish, or the sea;

and let the Spartan dog in the presence of his victim wear the seeming of a blunt soldier, and above all a fellow of "exceeding honesty."

J. R. S.

The Atonement of Leam Dundas.

BOOK II.

CHAPTER I.

CHANGES.

OUR years had come and gone since Mr. Dundas had laid his second wife in the grave beside his first, and the county had discussed the immorality of taking cherry-water as a calmant. For it was to an overdose of this that the verdict at the coroner's inquest had assigned the cause of poor Madame's awful and sudden death; though why the medicine should have been found SO loaded with prussic acid

as to have caused instant death on this special night, when it had been

taken so often before with impunity, was a mystery to which there was no solution. Not a trace of poison was to be found anywhere in the house, and no evidence was forthcoming to show how it might have been bought or where procured. Alick Corfield, who understood it all, was not called as a witness; and he told no one what he knew. On the contrary, he burdened his soul with the, to him, unpardonable crime of falsehood that he might shield Leam from detection; for when his father, missing the sixty minim bottle of hydrocyanic acid, asked him what had become of it, Alick answered with that wonderful coolness of virtue descending to sin for the protection of the beloved, which is sometimes seen in the ingenuous; "I broke it by accident, father, and forgot to tell you."

As the boy had never been known to tell a falsehood in his life he reaped the reward of good repute, and his father, saying quietly; "That

was a bad job, my boy;" laid the matter aside as a caput mortuum of no value.

To be sure, he thought more than once that it was an odd coincidence; but he could see no connection between the two circumstances of Madame's sudden death and Alick's fracture of that bottle of hydrocyanic acid; and even if there should be any, he preferred not to trace it. So the inquest was a mere show so far as getting at the truth was concerned; and Madame died and was buried in the mystery in which she had lived. Meantime Leam had been sent to school, whence she was expected to return a little more like other English girls than she had been hitherto, and Mr. Dundas shut up Ford House-he went back to the original name after Madame's death--and left England to shake off in travel the deadly despair that had fallen like a sickness on him, and taken all the flavour out of his life. He had never cared to search out the real history of that fair beloved woman. Enough had come to his knowledge in the bills which had poured in from the Sherrington tradesmen, on the announcement of her marriage and then of her death, to convince him that he had been duped in facts if not in feeling. For among these bills was one from the local geologist for "a beginner's cabinet of specimens" delivered just about the time when he, Sebastian, had spent so many pleasant hours in arranging the fragments which Madame said represented both her knowledge and her lost happiness; also one from the Fancy Repository, which sold everything, for sundry water-colour drawings, illuminated texts, a Table of the Ten Commandments, illustrated, and the like, which sufficiently explained all on this side, and settled for ever the dead woman's claims to the artistic and scientific merit with which Mr. Dundas and the rector had credited her.

Also, certain ugly letters from a person of the name of Lowes, in London, put him on the track, had he cared to follow it up, of a deception even worse than that of pretended art or mock science. These letters, written in the same handwriting as that wherein Julius de Montfort, her brother-in-law, the present Marquis, had told her of the defalcations of the family solicitor and trustee, called Virginie, Madame la Marquise de Montfort, plain Susan bluntly, and reminded her of the screw that would be turned if the writer was not satisfied; and were letters that demanded money, always money, as the price of continued silence.

But Sebastian had loved his second wife too well to seek to know the truth, if that truth would be to her discredit. He preferred to be deceived; and he had what he preferred. He stifled all doubts, darkened all chinks by which the obtrusive light might penetrate, kept his love if not his faith unshaken, caring only to remember her as beautiful, seductive, soothing; and mourning her as deeply, doubtful as she had proved herself to be, as he had loved her fondly when he believed her honest. It was a curious mental condition for a man to cherish; but it satisfied him, and his regret was not robbed of its pathos by knowledge.

Now that the four years were completed the widower had to return to