Curate and Katie Stewart shall strut for the last time also. When the glasses were last levelled at the village and its inhabitants, a dreadful disease was raging in its streets, and the good Curate was about to try his best, with failing health, but unabated energy, to stem the tide of its advances. As each sun rose and set fresh victims were added to the long death-roll of the fever's victims, and a pall as of thick, dark despair was settling down upon the village. Too late the terror-stricken people saw their errors, and came to the Curate for comfort and consolation-for sympathy which they had before laughed at, for advice which in time of health they had laughed at. A death-like stillness seemed to reign in the village; hushed was the sound of rude laughter; and even the conclave of women quarrelling round the pump was deserted now, as the fiercest animals crouch together and become friendly when the prairiefire comes hissing upon them; so the presence of dread disease seemed to have tamed these fierce spirits, and they became humanized and sympathetic as they criticised in awed tones the progress of the disease. Women who, during their good man's lifetime, had led what is called the life of a dog, to whom a blow came often before a word, and a curse supplied the place of tender language-now, when the husband was down, hung over the wretched pallet whereon the dying man lay gasping out his life, under the clutches of the dread disease, ministering day and night without ever so much as a thought cast to themselves, moistening the lips that had so often cursed them, holding fast in the strength of despair to the hand that had so often struck them to the earth, as though their feeble efforts might retain the dying one who was fast groping his uncertain way down the valley of the shadow, though all in vain. Certainly it was a beautiful trait in these women, this softening influence of a great calamity. The chances are that, if the disease had seized them first, the misery and sorrow and wretchedness would have been tenfold; for, had the battling with the fell enemy been confined to the men, they would simply have yielded to its advances in sullen despair; but, as the case was, these poor pale women kept up good fronts through it all, and gallantly closed their eyes to the progress of the fever, in their intense selfish devotion, each to the man she had sworn to obey, never taking rest by night or day, worn almost to the bone by constant watching and privation, but never, never complaining of their hard lot, smoothing the fevered brow, bathing the poor passive hands with tears, and murmuring all they knew of a prayer, poor hearts! And ever in the midst of them, like the sem. blance of a good spirit, the Curate's pale, solemn face might be seen, praying, exhorting in the spirit of quietness, casting oil upon the troubled waters, and doing his best to combat the opposition which the dissenting ministers, in their hot, misguided zeal, offered; for these men, with the best intentions possible, fell, somehow, very short of the mark, and only terrified

where they intended to console. Like the fanatic Solomon Eagle during the Great Plague, they stormed and worked themselves into a frenzy-fit by their terrible denunciations of judgment to come, and fiery exhortations to repentance; but they busied themselves not a whit in remedying the disease, and the effect upon the people, already terrified beyond control by the steady advance of a foe against which they were powerless to fight, was, that they would have abandoned themselves to the grimness of despair had not the Curate, like a "herald from the immortals," brought his advice and comfort to bear upon the sufferers. Amongst the higher classes of people, the country gentlemen, and magistrates, an attempt was made to enact that most excruciatingly facetious farce called a sanitary inspection:" that is, they voted themselves into a committee, and held meetings where the Curate was the only man who advised anything resembling a reasonable measure, and displayed the "head and front of this offending." But as this involved in an awkward position very many of the red-faced sturdy pro. tectionists who sat upon the commission, the ecclesiastic was a great deal pooh-poohed"like his impudence, indeed, a raw college-boy to try to teach and advise old men who had lived all their life in the village, and begad, sir, knew a thing or two about the people and their | ways."

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Thus the obstinate old conservative gentlemen; but the Curate and the Doctor held steady against all attacks, open and covert, and pursued their own way steadily, the medical man advising, and the Curate seeing that his directions were carried out, till there came a day when, in mercy, the hand of the destroyer stayed a little from the slaughter; but not, alas! till he had smitten down a victim from nigh every house in the unhappy village-not till the white stones rose in the churchyard "thick as leaves in Vallambrosa," and not until the good Curate himself had fallen a victim to his attacks. If ever heartfelt prayer and earnest wishes amongst the people-if ever the dear presence of a loved one could have shielded the hard-working man, in this case he would have escaped scot-free. Even if he had ceased his labours ere it was too late he might have escaped; but he had laid his hand to the plough, and he might not look back. Shame to him would it be to render his presence and aid necessary to these afflicted people, and then to desert them in their darkest hour of need. He felt himself growing weaker day after day, and though the cheering feeling of his high emprise sustained him, still mental triumph was fain to submit to physical weakness, and he would often lay his burning throbbing brow on the dear heart that beat only for him, and confess that he felt the inward conviction that he was to be numbered among the plague-fiend's victims. And then how cool, how grateful was the loved touch of Kate's hands upon his fevered brow, and how musical the ripple of her voice in his ear as she tried to dispel his fancies and strained him