continued, going to the window, "Look, Norah Creina, how the sunshine and shadows are chasing each other down the mountains, and the big fish in the sea are roaring for a naughty child. Oh, there is Johnny Beg coming in the white heath, and I wished so for it.

wicket with a great root of

Come out, come out!"

For the next half hour she and Johnny Beg were deep in the mysteries of planting. Nora toddled about, poking her chubby fingers into the flower-beds.

"Oh, Eth, here's a lubly fower, I pulled it fos you.

'Mell

it," and she held out an unfolding crocus she had pulled up from the roots.

"Will you leave the flowers alone, you little mischief?" said Ethna, "I will not bring you to the school-house by and by, if you touch another. Did I not tell you not to pull them ?"

"I won't do it any more," said Nora with ready penitence. "I'd like to go to the school-house, Eth."

grow.

Very well; try and be good, then, and let the poor flowers

In the afternoon she and Nora went up the hilly road that led to the long thatched abode where knowledge was disseminated, and from whence a buzz of learning issued as they approached. There was silence when they entered, broken only by eager whispers The master of the Academy advanced with the air of one acting before an audience, and, with many profound bows, welcomed the visitors.

"You are welcome, Miss Moore, very welcome to this humble seat of learning; and Miss Norah too, a young scion of the old stock. I trust the Madam is in the enjoyment of good health. An excellent lady-long may she reign.'

"She is quite well, thank you, Mr. Lynch," answered Ethna. "I came to ask you to let off a few of my gardeners early tomorrow. My flowers are in a bad way."

"Certainly, Miss Moore, certainly; we are all your slaves. You honour us by requiring anything at our hands. It will be a treat for them, a great treat to serve you, and act the part of our first father, Adam. The culture of flowers is humanizing, my dear young lady, and you set us a fine example up here amongst the hills -a fine example.'

"There is no place like our hills, Mr. Lynch," said Ethna smiling.

"Very true, Miss. There is no place like our hills-no place. We breathe a salubrious atmosphere. We have peace and contentment; blessings well qualified to adorn an humble lot. The poet truly says, 'There is no place like home.' Home is home, be it

ever so homely."

Norah slipped away and found out several acquaintances who were high in her favour, and who immediately resigned their pencils into her keeping with which she drew imaginary cats and dogs upon their slates; there were many whispers of "Miss Norah, oh! Look at this, the lovely thing I have for you; come here, Miss Norah, until I show you."

Ethna continued her conversation with Mr. Lynch. who was a rare specimen of the rural pedagogue, which the march of progress has now rendered almost extinct. He used the most ponderous English; his flowers of rhetoric made an abundant desplay, and his gestures were quite in keeping with his florid style of utterance. He was a good man, ruling his pupils with a rod of iron, and fostering their belief that there was not a man under the sun so learned or so powerful as "The Master."

The next day about three o'clock, Ethna's meehul assembledhalf a dozen of the elder boys, who gladly answered the summons; for, after a few hours' pleasant labour, weeding, digging, clipping, there was a feast of bread, butter, tea, fruit, and perhaps a slice of home-made cake-the prospect of which had an exhilarating effect on the spirits of youth. Ethna was working away with a handkerchief tied over an old hat to keep it on. Norah was seated on the back of a small boy who was on all fours weeding, calling loudly on her pony to go on and "gee up," when the sudden appearance of a gentleman caused a dead silence. Ethna turned round and beheld Philip Moore leaning with folded arms on the sunk fence. Her first impulse was to pull the handkerchief off her hat.

"Do not pull it off," he said, "I have taken note of it: it looks picturesque. I have been crossing the hills, and came to see what the uproar here meant. A floral meeting, I see. Are you going to ask me in ?"

"Yes, certainly; mother will be glad to see you. There is a stile in the corner."

"I despise stiles as yet," he said springing up beside her. "You will not shake hands with me, will you not? You are

carrying some of your landed property on them?”

"I will get rid of it directly," she said laughing. "Come in to mother." Ethna preceded him, and, having left him with the Madam, went to her room where she improved her toilet, and again joined them.

"Are they making you comfortable at the Lodge ?" asked the Madam.

"Oh! Well, yes. I came unexpectedly this morning: the housekeeper seemed flurried; but I am sure I'll be well taken care of when she recovers her peace of mind."

"You had better dine with us to-day," said the Madam, who was instinctively hospitable," and Mrs. Carty will be better prepared to-morrow."

"Thank you, if it do not put you out," said Moore.

"Put us out-how could it ?" said Ethna, quickly.

"Then I will stay with pleasure; it is so kind of you to take pity on a fellow thrown on his own resources."

"And having no resources of his own," said Ethna, laugingly.

Ah, by Jove, you've hit it off; I do not pretend to be independent of my fellow-creatures; I have the gregarious instinct Well, this is pleasant," he continued, as the Madam left the room, her brain intent on culinary thoughts. "Your innocent mother fell into the trap prepared for her. I intended she should ask me to dinner; she imagines I had nothing to eat over there, but I am too old a campaigner not to think of the cuisine, but it would be beastly slow all the evening at the Lodge; first evenings are an abomination. Were you expecting I should turn up ?"

"No indeed, I was not thinking about it at all,” replied Ethna with frank untruthfulness.

"You expect me to believe that, but I do not, strange to say; you have been planning in your own head all you will show me: and how sometimes you will be agreeable, and sometimes indifferent, to take the conceit out of me, etcetera, and so on, as is the wont of wily women."

"Oh, we are behind the ways of the great world," said Ethna, "we are too unsophisticated in the country, to be so wily."

"Quite a mistake, that," answered Moore. "The country is not at all so green as is supposed. I do not fancy the little maids are so artless, or the mammas so unworldly as is poetically said;

and commend me to it, as productive of self-conceit; county families exaggerate their importance, so many poor beggars look up to them with their mouths open."

"I don't believe it at all," said Ethna warmly, "there is a far better feeling than that between them."

"Which finds expression in occasionally well and occasionally ill directed shots, my fair coz."

"Some people deserve to be shot," said Ethna. " "Tis only the effect of a cause. The man that is shot is often a greater murderer than he who shoots him. I do not want to excuse crime, but I do not see why one crime entails hanging and another does not."

"If you will not admit nice distinctions, my Irish Corday, you will have the greater part of your fellow-creatures dangling in mid air," said Moore with an amused smile. "I would tremble for my neck."

"Oh, I am not cynical; I do not believe in such universal wickedness," answered the girl.

"Some people are found out, and some are not," said Moore; "that accounts for the difference you see in people. When I look at a strange face, I always say to myself, I wonder what is concealed beneath it-what is it he would not like me to know. What is hidden behind her smiles ? "

"I think that is simply horrible," exclaimed the girl impetuously, "and it is false. I have done nothing in my life that I need conceal, and of course, 1 am not better than other people. But Mr. Moore, how did you leave the Taylors? I suppose you saw them often?"

"Yes, I used to turn up in the evening; but-'twas rather stupid after you went away.'

"Is that a delicate way of administering flattery?" asked Ethna lightly, pleased nevertheless.

"I never flatter any one but a fool, and you do not come under that head, I should think. I usually try to bring myself on a level with my listeners; but don't ask me to climb too high, please. I expect you will listen to me often while I am among the hills, and I shall repay you in kind and be a most intelligent audience. Is it a bargain ? "

"And the knowledge that you have no other place to go to will prevent us from exaggerating the honour of your visits," said Ethna.

While the young people chatted and strolled amongst the flower-beds, the Madam saw that the dinner was properly served; and at five o'clock they were seated in the cosy dining room, where a splendid fire was burning in the large old-fashioned grate. The evening passed pleasantly away. Philip Moore had been an observant traveller, and his tales and descriptions of foreign lands excited Ethna's imagination into rebellion against her circumscribed existence; those wings of which Plato speaks quivered in their bonds with the divine instinct, after illimitable liberty, and waked a restlessness in the strong, young heart that longed for action, emotion, fuller and more vivid days.

Looking as we do on the outside of other people's lives, what a different appearance we find presented to us-some pale and cold, some warm with radiant colour; some seemingly barren; some beautiful with fruit and flower. What lies behind? What kind is the real life inside the appearances? Will the fruit and flower turn to ashes, the corruptible luxuriance of a corruptible soil? Is there no tender undergrowth, no green oasis in the barren lands that angels visit? Is the dazzling colour no artificial emanation ? And into the pallid realm streams there no ray from the all-holy heavens that fills it with celestial brightness? There is no one so happy or so miserable as an onlooker supposes. One man has every thing that, in a human sense, is thought to be productive of pleasant sensations, but he is not particularly happy, because his is a nonreceptive temperament, and not easily pleased. Another has unfortunate surroundings, but is gifted with a nature that responds to every agreeable influence. And so happiness is rather evenly equalised than otherwise.

CHAPTER V.

YOUTH AND AGE.

Every day of the thrilling spring brought forth new beauty in the mountains. The heath assumed a more perfect green; the rush unfolded its white blossoms in the bog, where cheerful voices called to each other, as the barefooted peasant cut the turf; the snipe and plovers uttered their peculiar cries; and high above all, the skylark's ecstatic song fell down from among the soft tumbled clouds in a sweet rain of joyous music.