She said, "Pray you, do not wake them. An they sleep till the morrow, all will be well." Suddenly her wits came back upon her with a rush, as doth a wind that hath seemed to be gone for aye. And she snapt the girdle on her wrists like as it had been a thread o' silk, and ran and laid hold on him with her hands, and dragged him forth upon the grass. And she saith, "Ernle! Ernle! Ernle! What! wilt thou not answer me, now that thou art free? See! thou mayest ride to war. It is not yet too late. What there, nurse! My lord's charger! Run! run!" Then leaped she to her feet with one cry that methought would 'a' cracked the welkin in twain above our heads. "Dead! Oh God in heaven!" So for an instant she stood, with her arms reached high above her head, and her eyes upon him as he lay at her feet, even as a flame doth poise for a breath ere sinking again upon the coals. But anon she dropped down beside him, and beat her forehead with the lower palms o' her hands, and she saith, "Well didst thou sign me with thy blood! well didst thou sign me with thy blood!" Then all at once did she peep up at me over her shoulder with one o' her winsome ways, and fell a-laughing softly. "Nurse," saith she, "hath he not found a pretty way to punish me? He feigns it well--by'r lay'kin--doth he not, nurse?" And she rocked to and fro, as she knelt beside him, laughing softly to herself, and ever and again she would reach forth one little hand, all scarred in her struggle with Mistress Marian, and would touch a stray lock into place, and once she bent over and kissed him, laughing softly, and nodding to herself very wisely. And she would sit that way, and rock herself to and fro, and smile upon the ground, and laugh softly, until the very day that she did die. And the last words that she did ever say were, "Just once, Ernle--just once." * * * * * (Nurse Crumpet rises and stirs the fire, amid a heavy silence, broken only by the little Lady Dorothy's sobs and the rushing of the wind outside the great hall.) THE END. TONY, THE MAID. A Novelette. BY BLANCHE WILLIS HOWARD. Illustrated by CHARLES S. REINHART. 16mo, Cloth, $1 00. "'Tony, the Maid,' is not only one of the best pieces of work Miss Howard has yet done, but it is one of the very best short stories of the year. Tony herself is an original creation. There is no maid like Tony in all fiction; and she is, moreover, the only good thing, which is neither superlatively beautiful nor emphatically a bore, or both, that has come out of the Canton of Lucerne since the days of William Tell. Even the insatiate archer, when he is not mythical, is a trifle wearing to the average mind, but Tony is never tiresome and always grand.