A man can find more reasons for doing as he wishes than for doing as he ought.-John Ruskin.

THE girls met at breakfast the next morning rather gravely. Olive, as her custom was, eagerly scanned The Times before she came to the table. She gave an exclamation of dismay. "The Boers have sent us an ultimatum," she said to Cora. "If we don't remove our troops by the eleventh, war will be declared. It has come at last: I am afraid you will be very anxious so far away."

"Yes," she assented quietly; "suspense is always most wearing. I try not to think of it."

Olive did not refer to the subject again; but after their meal was over she took Cora over the house and through the grounds. She found her very silent, apparently absorbed in her own thoughts, and uninterested in what Olive tried to tell her.

They were pacing a little winding walk through the shrubberies, and Olive had been pointing out an old oak which had been a favourite tree of the Croftons as boys, and on whose trunk was carved, with many devices, M. C. and M. E. C., when Cora suddenly said with a little laugh:

"You seem on very familiar ground here. known the Croftons long?"

Have you

"I never can remember not knowing them," said Olive. "We grew up together as girls and boys.”

"And which was your favourite?"

"I don't think any of us cared for Mark," Olive said hesitatingly. "I used to think he was like some malignant changeling. He was never happy unless he was with the grooms and stable boys, trying to smoke and use bad words. I have often wondered why some boys seem to make a wrong start so early in life.”

"He never struck me as being such a ruffian," said Cora a little hotly; "and he is decidedly the best-looking of the two."

Olive's dry tone provoked Cora.

"Marmaduke mentioned your name to me," she said, with a little careless laugh. "Were you and he smitten with each other's charms in the old days?

"That question you had better put to your husband," Olive said with great dignity, though her heart throbbed painfully at the careless words; and making an excuse, she left her in the garden and went back to the house.

She was glad when those first days were over, for something told her that Cora and she would never be friends. And in a day or two young Mrs. Crofton much astonished her by the easy way she took the reins of the household into her hands. She got on capitally with Sir Marmaduke; would sit and talk to him for long about his favourite son. She opened his letters and read them to him, just as his wife used to do; and the lonely old man soon began to lean upon her and consult her in every matter. With the feeling of new-born power Cora's tone

changed to Olive; she no longer appealed to her, but adopted a pleasant little patronising manner, which though highly satisfactory to herself, was very much the reverse to Olive. Within a week Cora had become mistress, and Olive was bidding good-bye to Crofton Court. Old Sir Marmaduke cried when she bid him farewell.

"You are such a good girl-come and see me again— my dear wife always hoped to welcome you here as daughter. I am a lonely old man, every one is going away from me."

"Cora will be here," said Olive brightly. "She is your daughter now."

He cheered up at once.

"Yes, a nice, clever girl, quite fitted for her position. Good-bye, my dear, good-bye!

Olive went back to Osmond, feeling that the last link with a happy past had been broken; a chapter in her life closed for ever. Yet she bravely took up her daily life, and her voice and laugh rang as clearly as ever it had done. She drew her comfort from an unseen source, and her inner life adjusted rightly gave her time and opportunity for serving others.

She needed all her cheerfulness, for the horrors of war soon crept into every one's thoughts and minds.

It had been long since the dread realities of it had touched so many English hearts and homes, and Duke's safety was in her thoughts night and day.

Andrew and his wife took the war calmly and philosophically; Bess waxed hysterically sentimental

over it.

"There be somethin' very wrong in going to war wi'

farmers," said Andrew, shaking his head, as Osmond tried to explain to him the characteristics of the Boer, and the reason for such warfare.

"A can't rightly come at it, why we should leave our own country at all, and fight amongst haythen nations. But there, 'tis nothin' to us, for the wife and me have been too respectibble folks to have belongin's a-soldiering, not but what Bess-foolish craytur'—would have us take note of ev'ry Jack Harry in the lot, if so be they're on the paper. And I don't rightly believe the papers. They're generally writ I hears by chaps who lounge round an' gossips at every corner!

Bess would seize the morning paper every day after Olive and Osmond had done with it, and her anxiety almost equalled theirs. She followed the first engagement at Glencoe with breathless interest, and sobbed as if her heart would break over the first sad list of casualties.

"I always did have a leanin' towards the redcoats! she confided to Olive. "It seems so heroic of them to fight for us, and die for their country. I could never do it, that I'm morally certain!"

About a week after Olive's return from Crofton Court, she received a letter from Eddie:

DEAR OLD OLLY,

Don't swear at me, but I'm down in my luck again! I've been a good boy for two months, and thought I was a reformed character, but it's no go. Can you give, lend, or borrow for me £25. It isn't a large sum, but I'm cleared out. I'm an unfortunate beggar, but 'tis my fate. You're such a standby, that I don't think you'll fail me, and I promise it shall be the last time I bother you. Now don't stamp up and down the room and say "I won't!" Because if I don't get an answer to this, I shall turn up at the farm and bully you into

it! I'm longing to have a sight of you, and that's the fact. Old Holmes is a tartar. Keep a soft spot in your heart for

Your incorrigible brother,

ED.

P. S.-If I have to come, I shall take French leave. How I wish we could be sent to the front! Duke is a lucky dog to be right in the thick of it.

Olive took this letter out into the orchard with her, and her heart sank as once again she viewed the future. "He will never be any different. I have hoped against hope; if he can come to me to supply him with money now, knowing how we are situated, he will come for the rest of our lives. I shall never be free from it, and if I earn anything, all my earnings will find their way into his pocket. He will be a millstone round our necks, and oh, he ought to be different! Our only brother! He will not have mother now to help him so continually; and with all the will in the world it is absolutely impossible for me to keep on sending him £10 notes. What shall I do? If I don't make a stand now, I never shall; and yet if I don't send him it, he will simply borrow from some moneylender, and when once he gets into their clutches it will mean his ruin!”

She sat on a low branch of an apple tree, and pursued such musings with the deepest perplexity. A little voice soon disturbed her.

"Beautiful and me would like to say good-morning, please."

Olive looked up and smiled at the little white sunbonnetted creature in front of her.

"What are you doing here at this time of the morning?" she said, drawing the child to her and giving her a kiss.