"What do you think of my aristocratic relations now, my dear?" I inquire, playfully.

"Think?" exclaims my wife, "I would not have believed it. I do not wonder so much at her husband now.'

"Hem!" I reply, musingly, "I daresay he set her the example, my dear. I know he used to be able to do a good deal of the same thing years ago, and I have heard that his tastes have not grown more refined."

"What terrible people!"-thus my wife, in pious horror. I do not feel compelled, or impelled, to pursue the subject, and say, "I must just run down to the surgery, and see what Willie is about. You will ring the bell when tea is ready?"

My wife nods her head. Apparently she, too, is in no great humour for conversation; and I descend to my deu-mine exclusively no longer.

"Ha!"

The exclamation is wrung from me, involuntarily, by a sight that meets my view as I enter the surgery. My assistant is sitting at the desk reading, his head resting on his hand, and I have a full view of his side face. He is the perfect image of Mary Morrison, as I remember her four-and-twenty years ago-he must be her son. God of Heaven! who, then, is his father?"

The young man looks up, as I exclaim, and closes his book, smiling. "I was just reading up a case," he explains-and I search in vain for the resemblance I had thought so perfect just a moment before."

"That's right," is all I can answer; but continue, after a pause, "Nothing like reading, my boy, to keep a fellow's intellect from rusting."

"Pardon me, sir, intercourse with one's fellow-men is worth any amount of book-work, reading or writing."

"By-the-bye, Willie, you are a poet."

“I?”—blushing-" nonsense! I do scribble now and then, I admit; but a poet? oh, dear no!"

"I know better than that," I assert, confidently. Then the tea bell rings, and we adjourn to the dining-room, where the children are already occupying their places, and my cousin is sitting beside my wife at the head of the table.

I never remember assisting at a more silent, unsociable repast. It was concluded more speedily, too, than usual, and when all the children, accompanied by my assistant (to whom, by the way, it had never occurred to me to introduce my cousin), had retired, Clara, turning to me, remarks—

"What a splendid boy that eldest one of yours is, cousin." "Oh, pretty well," I reply, deprecatingly.

Ten," replies my wife.

"Not that urchin," returns my cousin; "I mean, the eldest one, that came in with you just now."

"Oh!" I replied, "that is my assistant, Cousin Clara." Indeed!" Well, he is a perfect Apollo Belvidere in minia.

ture."

Composed, while skating, during a winter's twilight.

WHEN the step is a musical motion,

A magical marvel of art,
Revealing the hidden emotion

Of lyrical love in the heart;
When the body and soul are united-
Co-mingled-as pleasure with pain,
Then the face with a lustre is lighted,
Too fitfully fleet to remain !

Oh methinks to some mortals is given,
The power, at moments, to wear
That look, which, hereafter, in Heaven,
Their souls shall eternally bear.

For when, in the twilight, I saw you -
When the hoar-frost had silvered your hair-
That fleeting, faint, flicker fell o'er you,

And I felt that an angel was there!

CECIL MAXWELL.LYTE.

RECOLLECTIONS OF AN INDIAN
MAGISTRATE.

THE FAITHFUL CLANSMAN.

It was a wild spot in the wildest part of Behar, and there was no habitation near it within a distance of one mile. The name of the place was Dhajabar, and it consisted of several patches of cultivation in the midst of dense jungle. One of these patches, which comprised an area of about a hundred heegahs, was held on lease by a Ragpoot named Roopnath Sing, a resident of Zeeseebarkhood, the village nearest to Dhajabar. He held many other leases, also, in other parts of the country, and they brought him large profits. But they also gave him a considerable amount of trouble, and he often complained that a leaseholder's life in Behar was somewhat akin to a constant purgatory on earth. A neighbour of his, named Brijalall, who was another influential leaseholder, and had feuds with him about the Dhajabar lands, gave him much annoyance in particular. The quarrels between them were, in fact, constant, though Roopnath was seldom to blame.

It was a sultry afternoon when Roopnath left home alone to make his rounds over the leases belonging to him. He went out grumbling, for he had received intimation that morning of cattletrespasses on his cultivated lands, and felt certain that Brijalall was at the bottom of the mischief. "One has to submit to many inconveniences in this world; but I would prefer," said he, "to have a dozen felons for my neighbours in the place of this respectable Brijalall." But he did not allow his vexation to master him, and humming an old song to exhibit his indifference, he threaded his way leisurely over the footpaths in the jungle. From that walk Roopnath never came back, for two hours after, Boodhun Rajwar, the watchman at Dhajabar, brought intelligence of his death to his son. The news fell as a thunder-clap on the family, for it told them that the poor man was murdered.

The chowkeydar's story was brief. On arriving at Dhajabar, Roopnath saw some cattle grazing on his crops, and at once proceeded to seize them. This brought forth Brijalall's grazier, one Hurkoo Gwalla, to the spot, and an attempt being made to release the cattle, a quarrel ensued, upon which Hurkoo beat Roopnath with a switch, picked up from the field, which killed him.

"I don't believe your story, Boodhun," said Roopnath's son. "There is no gwalla in existence that would dare to raise his hands

against a Rajpoot in Behar; and, besides that, one to one, my father was a match for any man; or, if Hurkoo Gwalla was stronger than him, there was no reason why you, who witnessed the act, should not have interfered to prevent the murder."

But Boodhun adhered to his story, which was corroborated by Hurkoo Gwalla on his being apprehended; and all that Roop. nath's son could do was to accompany the chowkeydar to the spot for a local investigation, taking several of his friends with him to help him. When they arrived there, however, the body of Roopnath was not to be found; and it was not discovered till two days after, in a dense jungle among the hills, nearly three miles distant from the place where the quarrel and death were said to have occurred.

"How do you account for this, Boodhun? Who removed the body a distance of three miles if none but Hurkoo and you were present on the spot?" But to this question Boodhun did not condescend to give a reply.

"There is no doubt," continued Roopnath's son, "that my father has been murdered by Brijalall, that the cattle-trespasses on his lands were all intentional, and that they were resorted to for the express purpose of drawing him out from home, and way. laying him. He must have been attacked by more than one person, and they must have been lying in wait for him, and having killed him, they must have removed the body to the jungle among the hills where it was not likely to be sought for."

All this, however, was mere suspicion; or, as Brijalall's parti sans characterised it, a groundless slander against Brijalall. Brijalall is a man of honour," they said, "and would never take part in any murderous plot even against his bitterest enemy;" and they had, apparently, the best of the argument on their side, as there was no proof whatever againft Brijalall.

Brave Hurkoo was faithful to his master to the last. He had no other story to tell, he said, besides the one he had told already. "I alone did it: you may burn me at the stake, but I cannot criminate others."

There was, therefore, nothing to do but to convict Hurkoo as an accomplice to murder, and to sentence him to transportation for life-and Hurkoo received the sentence with an untroubled eye.

THE STOLEN CHILD.

PARBUTEAH was a girl about seven years old, and was a very bold child for her years. Her father, Sew Churn, was a sovar, or goldsmith, and worked in the village of Nagoda, in Sewan. They had a neighbour named Nursing Das, a man of about five-andtwenty, to whom the child was much attached.

One day, in the afternoon, when Sew Churn was at home, Nursing Das came to the sovar's house, and was seen speaking to the child. What he told her was not heard; but the mother of the child, and also some of the neighbours, saw him afterwards pass out of the house dragging the child after him playfully, without the use of any violence. They were neighbours, and the child betrayed no alarm at being thus siezed and carried off-being, in fact, used to such fondling by him; and the mother had no suspicion against him.

"Where is Parbuteah ?" asked the father, of his wife, on his return home in the evening.

"Romping with Nursing Das," was the reply. "She went out with him in the afternoon, and will be back shortly, I fancy."

But it grew later and later, and the child did not return; till the parents grew anxious, and Sew Churn started to look out for her. Nor did Sew Churn go alone in search of her. The child was a general favourite with the neighbours, and some seven or eight men went out in in as many directions to look for her. The house of Nursing Das was, of course, first visited; but he was not at home, and no one could say whither he had gone. All that the other inmates of the house certified was, that Parbuteah had not come thither that day.

The child was reported at the thannah on the third day; but the search of the police was not more successful than that of the villagers. All that the police succeeded in finding were the saree, or cloth, worn by the child, and a plaything she had with her; and the police were careful to point out that there were no marks of violence on the cloth, and therefore nothing to justify the impression of the parents that their child had been murdered. Nor were any traces of Nursing Das discovered; and a vigilant police, that kept account of the ins and outs of every man in the village, was obliged to confess that they could make out nothing of the affair.

The distress of the parents was very great the mother was nearly heart-broken, and all observed a stoop in the gait of old Sew Churn which they had never remarked before.

Sew Churn and his wife spoke of leaving the village to hide their sorrows elsewhere; but they were dissuaded from this by their neighbours. "Stay here with us," was the persuasion and entreaty of all of them. "Our Parbuteah, we feel certain, is ton dead. She has been carried off; but will come back when we least expect her. Nursing Das is not so desperately wicked that he will keep her away from her parents for ever." This anticipation found no answer in the heart of the sufferers; but they stayed on where they were.

Two years had now elapsed since the child was carried off;