ventures later-only, did you ever know that there are Waldrons in America, and that one of them's in Hillswick now?"

"Indeed? Yes, I know there was a Waldron-he was some sort of a great-uncle of our own, by the way-who went to America, and became some sort of a general, or a colonel, or a judge under Washington; everybody gets made a colonel or a judge out there, you know. But I never could make much head or tail of the family pedigree."

"Then, any Waldrons that there are would be our cousins?" "Well, I suppose they would be-in a sort of a tenth-removed sort of a way, I suppose. But we represent the Waldrons now, you know, through our grandmother. I know so much, any way. But what makes you all of a sudden so interested in the Waldrons?" "I'll tell you presently; and it really is interesting. I've been learning all sorts of things since I saw you. Who's Gideon Skull ?"

"Gideon Skull? What the deuce, Gideon Skull? Yes, I've heard of him.

Nell, do you know about
He's old Skull's nephew ;

and, from all I've heard, about as bad a lot as you could easily find. Old Skull never mentions him, and the people about here have pretty well forgotten him; but those that remember him say—"

"Everything that's bad, of course. That's Hillswick all over. Does papa know him? And what does he say?"

"My dear Nell, what a question ! Did you ever know the governor say a hard word of man, woman, or child?"

"Well-no. But, Alan

"Well, Nelly ?"

66

My adventures will keep; but yours won't, you know." "Mine?"

"Don't look up at the moon like that," said Helen, putting her arm lovingly through his. "She isn't there! that Bertha is to be my real, very own sister! better than anybody in the world but you and mamma."

Oh, Alan, do tell me You know I love her papa-and of course

He looked down at her face almost as tenderly as if it were Bertha's. "Yes, Nell," he said, "I do love Bertha-better than anybody in the world-better than you."

"Of course you do. And you have told her what you have told me ?"

"She knows it, anyhow. No, I haven't told her in words, not yet; but she does know it, and I'm not afraid of what she will say when I tell her a great deal more than I have told you."

"Alan!

Do you mean to tell me you have walked all the way home with Bertha from Hillswick to Copleston, and have said no more to her than if you were a milk-maid and her young man arm-in-arm on Sunday? Oh, Alan! for what else did I save you from Miss Bolt's clutches ?"

"You're so awfully quick, Nell. I wish it had been my luck to see Bertha home. I've not been home at all."

"You've not even seen her home?"

"No. We'd all of us clean forgotten that confounded annual lunch at the Skulls'. You know what that means. And, as luck would have it, we hadn't got clear of the churchyard before we were in the clutches of Mrs. Skull, and Miss Skull, and Miss Sarah Skull. There was no help for it, Nell. They carried off Bertha, and I— well, I lost my temper, I suppose, and said I'd promised to meet the governor at three."

"That was stupid," said Helen.

"You should have said that we all of us had to be home by three. You should never tell fibs, Alan; you don't tell good ones."

66

They said they would send to the church for you. Didn't they?"

"If they did, they didn't find me. Perhaps they thought I had gone home. Oh, dear! I will never plan anything again. And where have you been?"

"I did what I could to make my excuse a true one, and went up the brook; but I didn't find father. However, I walked off my temper, and that's something. I was going to the Vicarage, when I met young Walters, who told me that he'd just met Bolt and Miss Meyrick on the road. I suppose the doctor was at the Skulls' too, and was driving her home."

"Alan, tell me one thing; do you love Bertha Meyrick with all your heart and soul?"

"God knows I do, Nell-with all my heart and soul."

"And you will tell her so?"

"To-morrow can't pass without my trying to tell her how much I love her."

"I am so glad, dear! And-but never tell her I told you-I saw a 'yes' in her eyes to-day as plainly as I see that star." For the first stars were in the sky as they reached home.

What need had the butler to unchain and unbolt the door before he let them in? Why did he let them in so slowly? What strange look was in his face as he led the young master aside? and what

was he half whispering? and what made his voice break at every other word?

Alan turned round to her with a face that had suddenly become as pale and as hard as a stone.

"What has happened, Alan? For God's sake, tell me; what you can bear, I can. Is it Bertha, Alan?"

"Our father is dead!" said he.

So Helen knew why there were to be no flowers that Easter-tide, and why the dead-bell had tolled.

ANIMAL DEVELOPMENT AND

A

WHAT IT TEACHES.

MONG the many features which mark the varied universe of life, none are more universally recognised, or more typical of the living world, than those which herald the production of a new being, and which usher a new form upon the stage of existence. From the shapeless mass of protoplasm that crawls over the waterweed as a microscopic speck, upwards to man himself, the varied processes of development are laid down in orderly sequence and along lines of special kind. Every living being, animal or plant— animalcule and whale, the humble lichen and the giant sequoia alike -passes through a definite series of changes before attaining the form and likeness of the parent which gave it birth. In virtue of such changes it assumes that parental form. These changes, occurring in orderly array, mark its pathway from shapelessness and physiological nonentity to the characteristic form of its race. It is development which moulds

The baby figure of the giant mass,

and from the minute beginnings of life evolves the highest of earth's denizens, or directs the production of the teeming swarms of animalcules that people the stagnant drop, and pass an existence none the less interesting or important because often all unknown to the larger and higher world without. It is this same process of development which, as one phase of living action, draws the sharpest and clearest of boundary-lines between the world of life and that of non-living matter. Growth and increase are truly represented in the inorganic world; but these processes are different in kind from the actions which stamp the development of the animal or plant. The birth of a crystal, albeit it is regulated by definite laws, is, after all, a matter of outside regulation alone, and one in which the crystal itself is but a passive agent. New particles are added to the outside surfaces of the old and already-formed particles; and crystal and stalactite thus grow mechanically and by accretion, but without

active participation in the work destined to mould and form their substance. Very different are the forces and laws which regulate the production of the living form. Here the changes of form and the building of the frame are marked out in plain and definite pathways by laws essentially independent of external conditions. True, the development of the living form may be retarded by cold or favoured by warmth, but these conditions leave unaffected the course and direction in which it is destined to pass towards the form and belongings of the parent which gave it birth. Stamped ineffaceably on the pages of its life-history, the way of the animal or plant towards maturity is written for it, not by it. Internal forces and hidden but all-powerful laws of life direct its progress, and ultimately evolve the perfect being from the shapeless germ, in which its past as derived from its parents, and its future as depend ing in some degree at least upon itself, meet in strange and incomprehensible union. And the development of a living being may be further shown to be merely a part of the wondrous cycle in which life appears to direct its possessors. From the egg or germ, development leads us to the perfect being. Next in order we consider its adult or perfected history; and in due time we may discover the adult existence to merge into that of the immature state in the production of germs, in the development of which its own life-history will be duly repeated. The period of adult life in this view merely intervenes betwixt one development and another, and serves to connect those ever-recurring stages in the life-history of the race which it is the province of development to chronicle and record.

As a necessary item in the perfect understanding of animal and plant history, it may readily be understood how important a place development occupies in modern biology. Nor is the interest of the study excelled by its importance. The mystery of life itself might well be thought by the older physiologists to resolve itself into an understanding of the fashion in which nature moulded and formed her varied offspring. The manner of development might be thought thus to explain the mystery of being; but the problem of life is left as insoluble as before, after the course of development in even the lowest grades of existence has been traced. The history of development but environs the puzzles connected with life and its nature. It leads us to the beginnings of life, it is true, but it leaves these beginnings unaccounted for, and as mysterious as before. explains how this tissue or that, this organ or that, is fashioned and formed; and as we watch the formless substance giving birth to the formed, the indefinite evolving the defined, we might well be tempted

It