caresses to soothe her. "Dinna a few spoonfuls of the wine," he greet, Meg, dinna greet," he said; said; "it will be better than anyand then "Maybe he wunna dee.' thing else." But she could not at once stop her tears, and when Kirsty came in she turned to her and they wept together, as she told the doctor's opinion. "I maun gang to him," said Meg, suddenly springing up. "Oh, wait a wee, mem," cried the old woman, holding her. "He cudna hae a better body wi' him than the doctor,-he's jist, as kind and conseederate a man as there is. I maskit a cup o' tea for ye as sune's they gaed awa', but I didna like to come ben, it was sae quaite,-I thocht maybe he was sleepin'." "Sae he is," said Meg, drying her tears, and accepting the proffered tea; but she could not eat, the bread seemed to choke her. Kirsty promised to make supper for the doctor, and have a bed ready; and with a kindly "ye maun bear up for a' our sakes, mem, " from the sympathetic old servant, she went back to her long night watch. The doctor came back from his supper, and sat with her for a time, but there was no visible change. Hour after hour passed by. The old man's breathing was quiet and regular, and they hoped he slept; but he always seemed conscious of any movement of Meg's hand clasping his. At last she begged the doctor to go and rest. "I wad ca' up the stair gin he needs ye; an' ye maun be weary, sir," she urged. He had been up almost all the previous night, and was very tired, so he said he would go. "If he wakens, get him to take Meg promised, and he left the room. She heard his footsteps going softly up the little stair, and then the door overhead closed, and all was silent. The fire had burnt very low, and she could hardly see her father's face. She knelt by the sofa, and laid her cheek softly against his wrinkled hand as it lay above the blankets, clasping the other in both of hers. There was rest and quiet now, after the distraction and grief of the day. He slept peacefully, and his peace comforted her heart. "This is what deith will be tae him," she reflected-"a peacefu' sleep efter the burden an' heat o' a lang, lang day." She remained kneeling by him for a long time. The candle burnt down, flickered, and went out; the fire was out too, but the growing light from the window which faced the east revealed more and more plainly the face she loved. she knelt, at length her father's eyes opened, and looked at her with quiet recognition. He smiled a little, and, raising his hand, stroked her hair tenderly. As 'I'm gaun awa' to yer mither, Meg," he said; and after a pause, laying his hand again on her head, he added dreamily, "Ye'll min' an' say tae them 'at they munna be hard on Wullie." Then he slept, and Meg knew it was now no passing slumber, but the rest so long and quiet, undisturbed by earth's many voices the sleep which only death can give to the weary children of men. J. M. SCOTT-MONCRIEFF. THE LAST STRING. FROM THE GERMAN OF GUSTAV HARTWIG. "OFF with it, old fellow, before you start! "Good night! Out from the revel-swarm, His trusty fiddle tucked under his arm, Just as his bow he had stoutly plied, "Great God, what cold! It chills me so ! Of night that self-same road have sped." Lit by the moon, the pine-trees throw The fiddler, a merry man is he, For he hears in his pocket clink the fee, Like countless arms the trees they throw Weird-like and blanched in moonlight wan. "Hark! What stirs there in the thicket deep? A hare, belike, I have scared from sleep?" The fiddler thinks, and on he hies: "A dog! and starving too-that he Be off! What's this? One, two, three,-how! "A pack of wolves, and far and nigh No help! All, all alone am I!" THE UNIVERSITY LIBRARY Through the forest his cries of horror ring, "Is there no one, no one, that help will bring?" His hair stands on end, his eyes they swim, He quakes, he totters in every limb, A lofty oak's majestic trunk He pulls himself up; in his trembling hand The bow across the strings is spanned, And they moan, and they groan, and they wail and sing, "Is there no one, no one, that help will bring ?" The wolves with eyes half blinking gaze At the strange, strange man in a blank amaze; 1 What an eldritch din, what a hell-like strain ! Never beggar poor drew such bow as he; Then a grating, groaning, agonised thing, A stream as of fire runs through every limb; Like a beast that down to death hunted lies, And died with its dying tones away The spell that had kept the wolves at bay; 1 The Csardas is a Hungarian national dance. It is danced at every opportunity, and what adds to its fascination is, that the text of some popular Volkslied is associated with every favourite Csardas-tune. All's up! Like the cry Of a soul in its death-throe agony Is the sound from the one poor string he wrung: With the sounds that away into silence went "Great God, in Thy hands my soul I lay!" A shot! a second! The hand that drew And down in their blood two wolves were rolled. The rest fly off. Like a spheric-song At the fiddler's door hangs an image fair Will see his good fiddle enshrined there too. THE OLD SALOON. WE bring a cheerful procession with us when we enter the Old Saloon in the beginning of another year, bidding the gentle reader to a New-Year collation in the best of company. Our predecessors, were they in bodily presence here, would rise with all the cordiality of old friends to meet the fine old gentlemen who come marching in, hale and ruddy, in all the wellpreserved force of a comely old age, to haunts not unfamiliar, where they might have shared the talk in 'Maga's' most heroic age. The Queen's Remembrancer needs no introduction among so many of his own class and profession. And Mr Trollope, on many accounts, as the son of his mother and the brother of our excellent Anthony, and for the sake of Widow Barnaby' as well as his own, will be ever welcome to the warmest corner; while even Mr Frith, though we doubt if he is equal to the strain of such fine company, will not be out of place. What odd turn of fashion it is that has set all these venerable fathers a-recollecting, and has impelled them to pour forth the contents of their cheerful memories upon the public, we do not attempt to divine. The impulse, it is evident, has been a very general one, and it comes at a propitious moment, when, the time and the season being conducive to reflection, we are all very glad to hear what the old gentlemen, who have seen so many people, and assisted at so many changes, and gone through so large a share of the experiences of life, have to say to us. They have a great deal to say a little too much, perhaps, if we might hint a fault the big volumes under which our table groans being, on the whole, too weighty in body for the amount of wit and wisdom which is contained in them; but this is perhaps the less a drawback that large print and clean margins are a luxury in their way. We remember, however, regretfully, the days when such a flood of good stories would have been the stock-in-trade for at least one season of those lucky persons who were near the centre of literary affairs, and got them in their bloom. No one nowadays can thus hope to set the table in a roar at second hand. In the very farthest depths of the country, the diner-out who counts upon making a point in this way will see himself regarded with a stare of contempt, even by the little girls in the nursery, which is a step lower than Macaulay's schoolboy. The newspapers, these restless busybodies, forestall everything. They make the best of jokes everybody's property-indeed by dint of reading it over and over again in every paper, the best of jokes becomes stale as the oldest of Joe Millers in the course of two or three days. We will not weary the reader by repetition of these pleasantries: but yet it may not be unworthy of his time to cast a glance at those veterans of the age of Victoria, as shown, each by his own lantern, for the edification of the world. Before, however, we approach that group of old gentlemen eloquent (or garrulous), all as lively as crickets, and full of the pleasure of living-there is a graver figure which presents itself, the record of a man whose whole existence, and not only a part of it, |