When this instant of utter forgetfulness was over, Pamela began to cry, and Jack's arm dropped from her waist. It was the next inevitable stage. They made two or three steps by each other's side, separate, despairing, miserable. Then it was the woman's turn to take the initiative. She was crying, but she could still speak-indeed, it is possible that her speech would have been less natural had it been without those breaks in the soft voice. "I am not angry," she said, "because it is the last time. I shall never, never forget you; but oh, it was all a mistake, all from the beginning. We never-meant -to grow fond of each other," said Pamela through her sobs; "it was all-all a mistake."

"I was fond of you the very first minute I saw you," said Jack; "I did not know then, but I know it now. It was no mistake;-that time when I carried you in out of the snow. I was fond of you then, just as I am now-as I shall be all my life."

"No," said Pamela, oh no. It is different-every day in your life you see better people than I am. Don't say anything else. It is far better for me to know. I have been a-a little-contented ever since I thought of that."

These words once more put Jack's self-denial all to flight. "Better people than you are?" he cried. "Oh, Pamela! I never saw anybody half as sweet, half as lovely, all my life."

"Hush! hush! hush!" said Pamela they were not so separate now, and she put her soft little hand up, as if to lay it on his lips. "You think so, but it is all-all a mistake!"

Then Jack looked into her sweet tearful eyes, nearer, far nearer than he had ever looked before-and they were eyes that could bear looking into, and the sweetness and the bitterness filled the young man's heart. "My little love!" he cried, "it is not you who are

a mistake." And he clasped her, almost crushed her waist with his arm in his vehemence. Everything else was a mistake-himself, his position, her position, all the circumstances; but not Pamela. This time she disengaged herself, but very softly, from his arm.

"I do not mind," she said, looking at him with an innocent, wistful tenderness, "because it is the last time. If you had not cared, I should have been vexed. One can't help being a little selfish. Last time, if you had said you were fond of me, I should have been frightened; but now I am glad, very glad you are fond of me. It will always be something to look back to. I shall remember every word you said, and how you looked. Mamma says life is so hard," said Pamela, faltering a little, and looking: far away beyond her lover, as if she could see into a long stretch of life. So she did; and it looked a desert, for he was not to be there.

"Don't speak like that," cried Jack; "life shall not be hard to you-not while I live to take care of you-not while I can work

"What has she been telling you?" said Jack. "She has been telling you that I would deceive you; that I was not to be trusted. It is because she does not know me, Pamela. You know me better. I never thought of anything either," he added, driven to simplicity by the force of his emotions, "except that I could not do without you, and that I was very happy. And, Pamela, whatever it may cost, I can't live without you now."

"But you must," said Pamela :

"if you could but hear what mamma says! She never said you would deceive me. What she said was, that we must not have our own way. It may break our hearts, but we must give up. It appears life is like that," said Pamela, with a deep sigh. "If you like anything very much, you must give it up."

"I am ready to give up everything else," said Jack, carried on by the tide, and forgetting all his reason; "but I will not give you up. My little darling, you are not to cry-I did not know I was so fond of you till that day. I didn't even know it till now," cried the young man. "You mustn't turn away from me, Pamela-give me your hand; and whatever happens to us, we two will stand by each other all our lives."

"Ah no," said Pamela, drawing away her hand; and then she laid the same hand which she had refused to give him on his shoulder and looked up into his face. "I like you to say it all," she went on,-"I do-it is no use making believe when we are just going to part. I shall remember every word you say. I shall always be able to think that when I was young I had some one to say these things to me. If your father were to come now, I should not be afraid of him; I should just tell him how it was. I am glad of every word that I can treasure up. Mamma said I was not to see you again; but I said if we were to meet we had a right to speak to each other. I never thought I should have seen you to-night. I shouldn't mind saying to your father himself that we had a right to speak. If we should both live long and grow old, and never meet for years and years, don't you think we shall still know each other in heaven?"

As for poor Jack he was driven wild by this, by the sadness of her sweet eyes, by the soft tenderness of her voice, by the virginal simplicity and sincerity which breathed

out of her. Pamela stood by him with the consciousness that it was the supreme moment of her existance. She might have been going to die; such was the feeling in her heart. She was going to die out of all the sweet hopes, all the dawning joys of her youth; she was going out into that black desert of life where the law was that if you liked anything very much you must give it up. But before she went she had a right to open her heart, to hear him disclose his. Had it been possible that their love should have come to anything, Pamela would have been shy and shamefaced; but that was not possible. But a minute was theirs, and the dark world gaped around to swallow them up from each other. Therefore the words flowed in a flood to Pamela's lips. She had so many things to say to him,

she wanted to tell him so much; and there was but this minute to include all. But her very composure-her tender solemnity-the pure little white martyr that she was, giving up what she most loved, gave to Jack a wilder thrill, a more headlong impulse. He grasped her two hands, he put his arm round her in a sudden passion. It seemed to him that he had no patience with her or anything,that he must seize upon her and carry her away.

"Pamela," he cried, hoarsely, "it is of no use talking,-you and I are not going to part like this. I don't know anything about heaven, and I don't want to know-not just now. We are not going to part, I tell you. Your mother may say what she likes, but she can't be so cruel as to take you from a man who loves you and can take care of you-and I will take care of you, by heaven! Nobody shall ever come between us. A fellow may think and think when he doesn't know his own mind: and it's easy for a girl like you to talk of the last time. I tell you it is not the last time-it is the first time. I

don't care a straw for anything else in the world-not in comparison with you. Pamela, don't cry; we are going to be together all our life."

"You say so because you have not thought about it," said Pamela, with an ineffable smile; "and I have been thinking of it ever so long-ever so much. No; but I don't say you are to go away, not yet. I want to have you as long as I can; I want to tell you so many things-everything I have in my heart."

"And I will hear nothing," said Jack," nothing except that you and I belong to each other. That's what you have got to say. Hush, child! do you think I am a child like you? Pamela, look here-I don't know when it is to be, nor how it is to be, but you are going to be my wife."

"Oh no, no," said Pamela, shrinking from him, growing red and growing pale in the shock of this new suggestion. If this was how it was to be, her frankness, her sad openness, became a kind of crime. She had suffered his embrace before, prayed him to speak to her, thought it right to take full advantage of the last indulgence accorded to them; and now the tables were turned upon her. She shrank away from him, and stood apart in the obscure twilight. There had not been a blush on her cheek while she opened her innocent young heart to him in the solemnity of the supposed farewell, but now she was overwhelmed with sudden shame.

"I say yes, yes, yes," said Jack, vehemently, and he seized upon the hands that she had clasped together by way of safeguard. He seized upon them with a kind of violence appropriating what was his own. His mind had been made up and his fate decided in that half-hour. He had been full of doubts up to this moment; but now he had found out that without Pamela it was not worth while to live -that Pamela was slipping through

his fingers, ready to escape out of his reach; and after that there was no longer any possibility of a compromise. He had become utterly indifferent to what was going on around as he came to this point. He had turned his back on the road, and could not tell who was coming or going. And thus it was that the sudden intrusion which occurred to them was entirely unexpected, and took them both by surprise. All of a sudden, while neither was looking, a substantial figure was suddenly thrust in between them. It was Mrs Swayne, who had been at Dewsbury and was going home. She did not put them aside with her hands, but she pushed her large person completely between the lovers, thrusting one to one side and the other to the other. With one of her arms she caught Pamela's dress, holding her fast, and with the other she pushed Jack away. She was flushed with walking and haste, for she had seen the two figures a long way off, and had divined what sort of meeting it was; and the sight of her fiery countenance between them startled the two so completely that they fell back on either side and gazed at her aghast, without saying a word. Pamela, startled and overcome, hid her face in her hands, while Jack made a sudden step back, and got very hot and furious, but for the moment found himself incapable of speech.

"For shame of yourself!" said Mrs Swayne, panting for breath; "I've a'most killed myself running, but I've come in time. What are you a persuadin' of her to do, Mr John? Oh for shame of yourself! Don't tell me! I know what young gentlemen like you is. A-enticin' her, and persuadin' her, and leading her away, to bring her poor mother's grey hairs with sorrow to the grave. Oh for shame of yourself! And her mother just as simple and innocent, as would believe anything you liked to tell her; and nobody as can keep this poor

thing straight and keep her out o' trouble but me!"

While she panted out this address, and thrust him away with her extended hand, Jack stood by in consternation, furious but speechless. What could he do? He might order her away, but she would not obey him. He might make his declaration over again in her presence, but she would not believe him, and he did not much relish the idea; he could not struggle with this woman for the possession of his love, and at the same time his blood boiled at her suggestions. If she had been a man he might have knocked her down quietly, and been free of the obstruction, but women take a shabby advantage of the fact that they cannot be knocked down. As he stood thus with all his eloquence stopped on his lips, Pamela, from across the bulky person of her champion, stretched out her little hand to him and interposed.

"Hush," she said; "we were saying good-bye to each other, Mrs Swayne. I told mamma we should say good-bye. Hush, oh hush, she doesn't understand; but what does that matter? we must say goodbye all the same.'

"I shall never say good-bye," said Jack; "you ought to know me better than that. If you must go home with this woman, go-I am not going to fight with her. It matters nothing about her understanding; but, Pamela, remember it is not good-bye. It shall never be good-bye

"Understand!" said Mrs Swayne, whose indignation was furious, "and why shouldn't I understand Thank providence I'm one as knows what temptation is. Go

along with you home, Mr John; and she'll just go with this woman, she shall. Woman, indeed! And I don't deny as I'm a woman—and so was your own mother for all so fine as you are. Don't you think as you'll lay your clutches on this poor lamb, as long as Swayne and me's to the fore. I mayn't understand, and I may be a woman, but- Miss Pamela, you'll just come along home."

"Yes, yes," said Pamela; and then she held up her hand to him entreatingly. "Don't mind what she says-don't be angry with me; and I will never, never forget what you have said-and-good-bye," said the girl, steadily, holding out her hand to him with a wonderful glistening smile that shone through two big tears.

As for Jack, he took her hand and gave it an angry loving grasp which hurt it, and then threw it away. "I am going to see your mother," he said, deigning no other reply. And then he turned his back on her without another word, and left her standing in the twilight in the middle of the dusty road, and went away. He left the two women standing amazed, and went off with quick determined steps that far outstripped their capabilities. It was the road to the cottage-the road to Brownlows-the road anywhere or everywhere. "He's a-going home, and a blessed riddance," said Mrs Swayne, though her spirit quaked within her. But Pamela said nothing; he was not going home. The girl stood and watched his quick firm steps and worshipped him in her heart. To her mother! And was there anything but one thing that her mother could say?

"WHAT a mean, contemptible, little, one-horse country England is," said a Western orator in the height of the American Civil War. "It took her nigh upon two hundred years to run up a debt of 800 millions sterling, and she is always groaning and sweating under the load, as if it were more than enough to break her back. But our great country has run up nearly as big a debt in three years, and thinks nothing of it-ay, and will run up twice as big a debt, if necessary, to restore our glorious Union. We are a great people, that's a fact; and the stupid old monarchies of Europe shall one day feel it." "A debt of 2500 millions of dollars," said another American, a very distinguished citizen of the State of New York, "will be a great calamity. It will depress our energies, tax our resources, superabundant as they are, produce among us the pauperism that is the curse of the Old World, raise up a banking and moneyed aristocracy, the worst possible kind of aristocracy that can afflict any country, and produce evils worse than the disruption of the Union which it is incurred to prevent. And it is because I think we shall pay a debt of 2500 millions, or the annual interest of it—which is the same thing-that I consider the debt so enormous an evil. If we could but double it, and make the debt 5000 millions, I should not care for, finding the weight intolerable, we should simply get a big sponge and rub it off the slate. When the multitude feels the pressure severely, good-bye to our liabilities. Repudiation will come to our relief. We shall all be ruined on Monday, and start fair again on Tuesday. I am for the 5000 millions' debt for this reason. "" On another occasion an eminent judge was asked to "run" for the Presidency in opposition to Mr Lincoln,

and presented with a platform of "war" principles. "I don't want to be President," said the judge, "and don't approve of your war platform; but if I did want to be President, I should wait for four years after the conclusion of peace." "Well, and what then?" inquired the spokesman of the deputation. "Well, we shall all be ready for repudiation by that time; and I should run on the repudiation ticket, and carry all before me."

It was in a style similar to this that, during the climax of the great struggle between North and South, when men's passions were inflamed, the subject of the debt was treated in America. The Government was printing paper-money as fast as thirty steam - presses, in full blast at Washington, could throw off the daily millions of dollars required to feed the army and the navy, and keep the war machine going by sea and land. The tax-gatherer, though constantly spoken of as the man of the future, was never seen in the present, so that nobody was much afraid of him; or if the idea of such an uncomfortable person came into the mind of any one, it was relegated to that unseen to-morrow which never comes, or consigned to oblivion with the poco - curante apophthegm-"Sufficient for the day is the evil thereof."

A great war always creates more scoundrels than it kills; and it must be said of the American Civil War that the best people connected with it were the native-born soldiers and sailors on both sides. Of the mercenary Irish and Germans who fought for the bounty money, and did not care a straw for the principles at issue, we shall speak hereafter. Such a terrific debt was never rolled up with such reckless rapidity and such shameless robbery since the world began. As soon as it was found that no money could