however, the royal mind altered; the wily savage feared if he allowed the poor victims of his injustice to depart, he should get no ransom.

Captain Cameron had an enemy at Court one Barbel, a Frenchman, formerly the Consul's secretary; and it is supposed that this man put into the King's mind the suspicion that the English Government were entering into an alliance with the Egyptians hostile to himself. Mr. Flad, the missionary, was desired to go to England to obtain the ransom, the prisoners being still retained as hostages, Theodore demanding that a number of artificers should be sent to him to teach his subjects the way to make guns, rifles, and ammunition. He required also a small steam-engine, proper tools and instruments, gunpowder, caps, doublebarrelled guns and pistols, and a quantity of carpets, silks, tumblers of glass, and goblets. The English Government acceded to these demands, requiring only that the captives should be released, on the ground that it was contrary to the custom of civilized nations to retain as a prisoner any person accredited as an ambassador, or any of his attendants. To this the King objected, writing many letters with specious excuses. The accusations he makes against his prisoners are, that Consul Cameron went to Rasala, to his enemies the Turks, and that he had given him a letter addressed to the Queen of England, to which no answer had been returned-against the missionaries and others, that they had abused him; and the rest, he says, he imprisoned, because they were in company with the others. The conduct of the King towards his prisoners seems to have resembled that of a cat towards the mice she catches. One day the captives were chained in the cruellest manner; the next day he would order their fetters to be removed, and every kindness lavished on them. Mr. Rassam has received from the King in money and presents the value of 25,000 German crowns; Consul Cameron about that of 3,000 ditto. The latter gentleman's view of the case is, that the King will never release them for mere presents, but regards them as valuable capital, and will work this new mine as far as possible. If our expedition meets with success, there is little doubt that King Theodore will find his deserts. A description of this singular monarch, published last year by a gentleman who was for some time Vice-Consul at Massowah, may not be amiss by way of conclusion.

"The man on whose head now rests the lot of Abyssinia is forty-six years of age: he is of average stature, of imposing carriage, and of an open and sympathetic physiognomy. His features, less regular than those of most Abyssinians, are expressive and changeable, and have none of that borrowed dignity which marks certain oriental faces with solemn insignificance. The look is lively and piercing; the distinct lines of the profile well express the firm will which has enthralled the freest and least docile people of the East. A soldier's coat, a pair of trousers, and a belt, from which hang

pistols and an English sword-over all, the chama or embroidered toga, is his habitual costume. A disdain of luxury governs all his acts. The furniture of his tent is of the simplest, while his residences at Magdala and DobraTabor are loaded with silks and stuffs from France and India. In the field he wears the coarse black infantry buckler, while by his side trots the page charged with his state-shield, covered with blue velvet scattered with imperial lilies. That which at first is most striking in Theodore, is a happy combination of suppleness vnd force, especially of force. Born proud, aiolent, and inclined to pleasure, he commands his passions so that they never make him overstep the limits he has marked out for himself, He has been accused of drunkenness, and on this subject the late French Consul has collected some information. He is very sober, eats little, drinks more, but never up to any marked overexcitement, far less to coarse drunkenness. Women have never had the least influence over his public life, excepting his first wife, the good and regretted Tzeobedje, for whom he had a sort of worship. She had been the faithful companion of his days of trial; and when he lost her, seven or eight years ago, he saw in this death a chastisement which heaven inflicted on him for having burnt a woman alive at Godjam. Tzeobedje had kept him in the simple life and pious practices of an Abyssinian of the olden time. A second marriage-one of ambition-has been the indirect cause of the irregularities he has since made public. To put an end to the pretensions of the family of Oubie, he married, six years ago, the daughter of that chief, the young and beautiful Teroneche, who throughout Abyssinia had the reputation of being an accomplished princess. Witty and charming, she had scarce any defect but the obstinate pride, which is a very general drawback with Abyssinians of high rank. For two or three years the most perfect union reigned in the royal household. The King had for his graceful partner a tenderness in which pride had no small part; and when she had given him a son, he assembled all the grandees at a theatrical fete, and showed them the newborn, saying, "Behold him who will reign over you!" It is, however, doubtful, whether the guests took seriously an observation against which the eldest sons of the king had a right to protest. One day, on the occasion of the Easter fétes, Teroneche asked her husband for the pardon of some Tignan chiefs, kept in irons for their attachment to Oubie. This legitimate demand excited in the highest degree the suspicions of the irrritable King, "What do you mean?' he asked. 'Do you prefer your father to me?' Perhaps I do!' answered the haughty Princess. She had scarcely spoken when a violent blow fell on her cheek. Bell, who wished to intervene, received another. Oubie, who since the marriage had been restored to favour, was placed in irons, and has not since recovered his liberty; moreover the King, to inflict a deadly blow on his wife, took

at once four favourites from the lowest ranks. The first explosion over, he dismissed them all except one woman, who has neither the physical or moral charms of the Queen, but who skilfully retains her capricious lover by a number of cares and attentions which the proud Teroneche disdains to exercise. What most shows the abasement of the national character is, that those who surround the King have taken his part in the scandal. The church alone protests, by the voice of some venturesome priests.

"At Easter, Theodore, being obliged by decorum to communicate, obtained absolution only on the condition of promising to change his conduct. He then goes to see the Queen, who still exercises a certain ascendancy over him, for he is proud, notwithstanding his infidelities, to be the husband of a woman so admired. He passes an hour listening to the most biting and hardest truths; and if he occasionally rages and threatens, the Queen reminds him coldly that no Abyssinian monarch has ever yet killed his wife, and she knows well he will not dare to begin. Theodore then returns, somewhat ashamed, to his little Court, makes a public confession, declares that he is really the most scandalous sinner in Ethiopia-that he is so in spite of himself that it is a victory of the devil, a victory which should make us feel our weakness and nothingness. Finally he promises to try and do better, and dismisses the favourite; Easter over, he takes her back again, and sometimes adds a second. In these freaks, all with King Theodore is arranged for effect. He is a theatrical fakeerer, as the Abyssinians say. When he gives audience to strangers, or to chiefs who come to make submission, he leans negligently on two magnificent tame lions, while two others gape, stretch, or roll at his feet; and he enjoys, like a child, the emotions which these formidable decorations inspire in the terrified beholders."

In concluding this extract, the thought will occur, What a lion Theodore himself would make if he were to visit London, like the Sultan or the Egyptian Viceroy! Finally, the "Terrible" has left Spithead, and she will proceed to Alexandria, where she will be the headquarters of the naval brigade,which, co-operating with the land-forces, will, it is to be hoped, bring the King of Abyssinia somewhat to his senses, or annihilate his pretensions to sovereignty altogether.

Due she was, and over-due,
Galleon, merchandise, and crew;
Creeping along through rain and shine,
Through the tropics, under the Line.
The cars were waiting outside the walls,
The wives of sailors thronged the town,
The traders sat by their empty stalls,
And the viceroy himself came down.
The bells in town were all a-trip,
Te Deums were on each father's lip;
The limes were ripening in the sun
For the crew of the coming galleon.

All in vain. Weeks passed away,
And yet no galleon saw the bay.
Indian goods advanced in price,
The governor missed his favourite spice,
The Senoritas mourned for sandal,
And the famous cottons of Coromandel.
And some for an absent lover lost,
And one for a husband-Donna Julia,
Wife of the captain-tempest-tossed,
In circumstances so peculiar.
Even the fathers, unawares,
Grumbled a little at their prayers,
And all along the coast that year,
Votive candles were scarce and dear.

Never a tear bedims the eye
That time and patience will not dry;
Never a lip is curved with pain
That can't be kissed into smiles again.
And these same truths, as far as I know,
Obtained on the coast of Mexico.
More than two hundred years ago,
In sixteen hundred and fifty-one-
Ten years after the deed was done,
And folks had forgotten the galleon.
The divers plunged in the Gulf for pearls,
White as the teeth of the Indian girls,
The traders sat by their full bazaars,
The mules with many a weary load,
And oxen dragging their creaking cars,
Came and went on the mountain-road.

Where was the galleon all this while?
Wrecked on some lonely coral isle ?
Burnt by the roving sea-marauders,
Or sailing north under secret orders?
Had she found the Aman passage famed,
By lying Moldanado claimed,

And sailed through the sixty-fifth degree,
Direct to the North Atlantic Sea ?
Or had she found the "River of Kings,"
Of which De Fonte told such strange things
In sixteen-forty? Never a sign,
East or West or under the Line,
They saw of the missing galleon.
Never a sail, a plank, or chip,

They found of the long-lost treasure-ship,
Or enough to build a tale upon.

But when she was lost, and where and how, Is the point we're coming at just now.

Take, if you please, the chart of that day
Published at Madrid, por el Rey-
Look for a spot in the old South Sea-
The hundred and eightieth degree
Longitude west of Madrid: There,
Under the equatorial glare,

Just where the East and West are one,

You'll find the missing galleon,
You'll find the San Gregorio, yet
Riding the seas, with sails all set,
Fresh as upon the very day
She sailed from Acapulco Bay.

How did she get there? What strange spell
Kept her two hundred years so well,
Free from decay and mortal taint ?
What--but the prayers of a patron saint!

A hundred leagues from Manila town,
The San Gregorio's helm came down.
Round she went on her heel, and not
A cable's length from a galliot

That rocked on the waters, just abreast

Of the galleon's course, which was west-sou'-west.

Then said the galleon's Commandante,
General Pedro Sobriente

(That was his rank on land and main,
A regular custom of old Spain),

My pilot is dead of scurvy. May
I ask the longitude, time, and day ?"
The first two given and compared,
The third-the Commandante stared!
"The first of June! I make it second."

Said the stranger, "Then you've wrongly reckoned.
I make it first: as you came this way,
You should have lost-d'y'ee see ?—a day-
Lost a day, as you plainly see,

On the hundred and eightieth degree."
"Lost a day?" "Yes; if not rude,
When did you make East Longitude ?"
"On the ninth of May-our patron's day."
On the ninth!-there was no ninth of May!
Eighth and tenth was there-but stay"—
Too late for the galleon bore away.

Lost was the day they should have kept,
Lost unheeded and lost unwept;
Lost in a way that made search vain-
Lost in the trackless and boundless main ;
Lost like the day of Job's awful curse,
In his third chapter, third and fourth verse;
Wrecked was their patron's only day-
What would the holy fathers say?

Said the Fray Antonio Estavan-
The galleon's chaplain-a learned man—
"Nothing is lost that you can regain :
And the way to look for a thing is plain-
To go where you lost it back again.
Back with your galleon till you see
The hundred and eightieth degree.
Wait till the rolling year goes round,
And there will the missing day be found.
For you'll find-if computation's true-
Not only one ninth of May, but two-
One for the good saint's present cheer,
And one for the day we lost last year."

Back to the spot sailed the galleon-
Where, for a twelve-month, off and on
The hundred and eightieth degree,
She rose and fell on a tropic sea.

But lo! when it came the ninth of May,
All of a sudden becalmed she lay

One degree from that fatal spot,
Without the power to move a knot,

And of course the moment she lost her way,
Gone was her chance to save that day.

To cut a lengthening story short,
She never saved it. Made the sport
Of evil spirits, and baffling wind,
She was always before or just behind.
One day too soon or one day too late,
And the sun, meanwhile, would never wait.
She had two Eighths, as she idly lay,
Two Tenths-but never a Ninth of May.
And there she rides through two hundred years
Of dreary penance and anxious fears;
Yet through the grace of the saint she served,
Captain and crew are still preserved.

By a computation that still holds good,
Made by the Holy Brotherhood,
The San Gregorio will cross that line,
In nineteen hundred and thirty-nine-
Just three hundred years to a day
From the time she lost the ninth of May.
And the folks in Acapulco town,
Over the waters, looking down,
Will see in the glow of the setting sun,
The sale of the missing galleon,
And the royal standard of Philip Rey;
The gleaming mast and glistening spar,
As she nears the surf of the outer bar.
A Te Deum sung on her crowded deck,
An odour of spice along the shore,
A crash-a cry from a scattered wreck-
And the yearly galleon sails no more
In or out of the olden bay,

For the blessed patron has found his day.
Such is the legend. Hear this truth:
Over the trackless past, somewhere,
Lie the lost days of our tropic youth,
Only regained by faith and prayer,
Only recalled by prayer and plaint:
Each lost day has its patron saint!

STEPHEN

SECOND PART.

A year or two afterwards, (for I am not writing of a fictitious character,) this man's frauds were discovered. They were larger and more uniformly successful than any that had ever been perpetrated in the States, but there was about them a subtle, dogged daring that did not belong to Yarrow's character, and shrewd people who had known them began to talk of this shadow of a woman who went about with him-a quadroon, they said-and hinted strongly that it was she who had been the vital power of the partnership, and Yarrow but the well-chosen tool. There are no means of knowing the truth of the conjecture, for Yarrow escaped; she followed him, but is dead, so their secret is safe. Fraud, however, was but one half of his story. Soulé gave like a prince, secretly, with a woman-like, anxious helpfulness, a passionate eagerness, as if the pain or want of a human being were insufferable to him. In this he was alone: the woman had no share in it. She was as cold, impervious to the suffering of others as nothing but a snake or a selfish woman can be whatever muddy human feeling did ooze from her brain was for this man only. And yet, when we think of it, she was, as they guessed, a quadroon: maybe, under the low, waxy-skinned forehead that Yarrow's fingers were patting that night there might have been a revengeful consciousness of the wrongs of her race that justified to her the harm she did. It is likely the coarsest negroes argue in that way. God help them! At any rate, we shall come closest to Christ's rule of justice in trying to find a sore heart behind the vicious fingers of the woman.

While the two stood in the pleasant light of the warm room waiting for him, Stephen Yarrow came towards the house across the fields. It was his shadow that his wife and Jem saw crossing Shag's Hill. He was a free man now, by virtue of his nickname, "Quiet Stevy," in part. It startled him as much as the jailer, when his release was sent in a year before the time, "in consideration of his uniform good conduct." The truth was, that M. Soulé took an interest in the poor wretch, and had said a few words in his favour to the Governor at a dinner-party the other evening, so the release was signed the next day. Soulé had called to see the man when he came to Pittsburg, and spent an hour or two in his cell. The next morning he was free to go; but he had stayed a week longer, making a pair of red morocco shoes for the jailer's little girl, idling over them When they were done, tying them on, himself, with a wonderful bow-knot, and looking anxiously in her clean Dutch face to see if she were pleased.

66

"Kiss the gentleman, Meg," growled. Ben. Where's yer manners ?"

:

YARROW.

Stephen drew back sharply. The innocent baby! who lived out-of-doors! Ben must have forgotten who he was: a thief belonging to this cell. They were going to let him out; but what difference did that make? His thin face grew wet with perspiration, as he walked away. Why, his very fingers had felt too impure to him, as he tied on her shoes. He went away an hour after, only nodding good-bye to Ben, looking down with an odd grin at the clothes he had asked the jailer to buy for him. Ben had chosen a greenish coat and trousers and yellow waistcoat. He did not shake hands with him. Ben had been mixing hog-food, and the marks were on his fingers. This was yesterday: he was going now to meet his brother, as he requested. Well, what else was there for him to do?

He did not look up often, as he plodded over the fields: when he did, it hurt him somehow, this terrible wastefulness, this boundless unused air, and stretch of room. It even pained his weakened eyes: so long the oblong slip of clay running from the cell to the wall had been his share, and the yellow patch of sky and brick chimney-top beyond. For so many thousands, too, no more. But they were thieves, foul, like him. Pure men this was for. Stephen looked like an old man now, in spite of Ben's partycoloured rigging: stooped and lean, his step slouched his head almost bald under the old fur cap. Something in the sharpened face, too, looked as if more than eyesight had been palsied in these years of utter solitude: the brain was dulled with sluggishly gnawing over and over the few animal ideas they leave for prisoners' souls, or, as probably, thoroughly imbruted by them. Soulé thought the latter.

:

When the convict had finished his dull walk, he sat down on the wooden staircase that led to his brother's rooms for half an hour, slowly rubbing his legs, conscious of nothing but some flesh-pain, apparently, and when he did enter the chamber, bowed as indifferently to Soulé and his wife as though they had parted carelessly yesterday. His brother glanced at the woman: one look would certainly be enough for her. Poor Stephen's power? If it ever had been, its essence was long since exhaled: there was nothing in his whole nature now but the stalest dregs, surely? Perhaps she thought differently: she looked at the man keenly, and then gave a quick, warning glance to her husband, as she sat down to her sewing. Soulé did not heed it as he usually did he was choked and sick to see what a wreck his brother really was. God help us! to think of the time when Stephen and he were boys together, and this was the end of it!

"Come to the fire, old fellow!" he said, huskily. "You're blue with cold. We used to have snows like this at home, eh?"

The man passed the lady with the quaint, shy