the first to recover, Ohlsen the last, his mind constantly running upon the search for his comrades in the tent, which he thought himself the only person able to discover. Of those whom the party had gone to assist, good "Irish Tom" soon recovered; but two died in the course of a few days, and the rest suffered very severely.

The rest of Dr. Kane's adventures cannot here be told; suffice it to say, that his ship remained immovable, and, after a second winter of terrible suffering from the diseases induced by the want of fresh meat and vegetables, the place of which was ill-supplied by rats, puppies, and scurvy-grass, — it was decided to take to the boats; and, between these and sledges, the ship's company of the Advance, at last, found their way to Greenland, after so long a seclusion from all European news, that, when first they heard of the Crimean war, they thought an alliance between England and France a mere hallucination of their ignorant informant. Dr. Kane, always an unhealthy man,- did not live long after his return; but he survived long enough to put on record one of the most striking and beautiful histories of patience and unselfishness that form part of the best treasury this world has to show.

THE CHILDREN IN THE WOOD OF THE FAR

SOUTH.

1864.

UR roll of Golden Deeds is nearly at an end; not indeed that acts of self-devotion are exhausted, but that full and authentic particulars have not reached us of more than we have related. We have not ventured to tell the stories of the gentlemen, who, in the Indian mutiny, rode for miles through an enemy's country, under a burning sun, with the young child of a friend in their arms. One of these little creatures, still under three years old, whose protector had had to fight his way through the natives with her on his horse's neck, was too young to know what she owed to him, and only remembered the horrors of her ride, so that when he was at length able to restore her to her mother, she shrank from him, and would not even look at him. The other little girl, a little Miss Christian, not four years old, was only rescued for the time to fall with her protector into the possession of a native prince, who retained them in his power while besieging Lucknow. The child pined and died before the time of release came, but her illness was the occasion of an unlooked-for comfort to her companions in captivity. A native doctor, who was allowed to prescribe for her, sent some powders for her wrapped in a chance bit of printed paper. It proved to be

the leaf of a torn Bible, and these were the words that it bore: "I, even I, am He that comforteth you who art thou, that thou shouldest be afraid of a man that shall die, and of the son of man that shall be made as grass; and forgettest the LORD thy Maker, that hath stretched forth the heavens, and laid the foundations of the earth; and hast feared continually every day because of the fury of the oppressor, - and where is the fury of the oppressor? The captive exile hasteneth that he may be loosed, and that he should not die in the pit, nor that his bread should fail. But I am the LORD thy God, that divided the sea, whose waves roared. The LORD of hosts is His Name." (Is. li. 12-15.)

The few survivors of that band of "captive exiles" have declared that these words were to them a message of exceeding joy and hope of deliverance from the fury of the oppressor, and that they were thus greatly strengthened to endure unto the end. Neither the child nor her rescuer were among them. They had both been set free by sickness from captivity and all other ills of this mortal life.

Neither can we here pause upon the story of Arthur Cheek, the young ensign of only sixteen years old, who at Allahabad, sorely wounded and dying of thirst, not only was steadfast in confessing his own faith, but by his exclamation, "O, my friend, come what may, do not deny the LORD JESUS," prevented the apostasy of a convert from Mahometanism, whom the Sepoys were cruelly torturing. A sudden attack of the Madras fusileers saved the convert, but it was too late to save the martyr boy, who had sunk to rest ere his countrymen had made their way into the city.

We must turn from these, and speak of those little elder sisters, almost mothers in their love and devotion. We see such little heroines oftener than we think dragging about babies as big as them

selves, to whom they often give the last morsel when they are hungry enough themselves, or rushing almost under horses' hoofs, or carriage-wheels, to snatch some unlucky brother from the destruction into which he is just big enough to toddle._Perhaps the most notable of all these sisters was Françoise Marie, of Rochebeaucour, who, at eleven years old, was left an orphan with a little brother of four, to whom she fully did a mother's part for three years, maintaining him entirely by her knitting and spinning, until, in a severe winter, a wolf with five whelps burst into the cottage, attracted by the smell of the hot loaves that Françoise had been baking.

She had almost driven the she-wolf off with a heavy stick, when, seeing one of the cubs about to attack her brother, she seized the boy, thrust him into a cupboard, and buttoned the door. That mo

ment gave the wolf time to fly on her throat, and the next moment she was the prey of the wild beasts. Her brother remained safe, though unable to get out of the cupboard till released by the neighbors. He was an old man in 1796, still cherishing the memory of the mother-like sister who had died to save him.

Nor may we forget the little Scottish sister, who, when lost with her little brother on the mountain side, was saved by the good collie dog, who sped home to call help, and guided the father to the spot where, buried far under a snow-drift, lay the two children, the younger wrapped in all the warmer garments of the elder. Both survived, thanks to the good dog's timely sagacity. Indeed, we believe that a chapter of canine deeds almost deserving the name of golden, might be brought together in honor of our faithful comrades. There was Delta, the dog whose skeleton was disinterred at Herculaneum, stretched over that of a boy of twelve years old, with an in

scription on his collar, telling that he had three times saved the life of his master, - from the sea, from robbers, and from wolves; there was Phileros, the dog of Athens, who broke his leg by leaping after his young master when he had fallen out at the window, and finally died of grief on his grave; there was the dog who is commemorated in Vandyke's picture of the Duke of Richmond, whom his sagacity and courage had saved from assassins; there was the dog who awoke his master, Lord Forbes, at Castle Forbes, in Ireland, and dragged him, half suffocated and helpless, from his burning bedroom; there was the well-known dog who daily carried bannocks to the shepherd's child lost in the cave behind the waterfall; there was the Newfoundland dog who won a silver collar by saving first the postman, and then his letter-bag from the water of a swelled ford. Gellert must be given up, since his story proves to be only a western version of an Indian legend of a serpent and mungoose, instead of a wolf and a hound, but there is no passing by the dog of Montargis, who, under Charles VI. of France, vainly defended his master, Aubri de Montdidier, when set upon by his mortal foe, Macaire; then lay day and night on the forest grave where Macaire hoped his crime was hidden, only going to the house of his master's chief friend in Paris, for his daily meal, until at length he was followed, the ground searched, the murder discovered, and the corpse freshly buried. Afterwards, the dog's furious attacks upon Macaire were deemed an accusation, and the matter was put to the proof by the ordeal of combat in the Isle de Notre Dame. The dog had a tub into which he might retire, the man a club and a shield. The combat was so lengthy that Macaire, no doubt from the force of conscience, was so worn out that he fainted away, and on coming to himself owned the deed. Dogs of St. Bernard and Newfoundland dogs