as she herself felt it natural to make, may not a little pity mingle with the blame her fault deserved? The passion of motherhood does not bear so high a place among human passions as it once was supposed to do, being set down now as a sort of animal instinct merely, we are told. But high or low, it is a very great and strong and overwhelming sentiment, and now and then works harm enough as well as good. She had three children, all dark and handsome like herself. The eldest boy, Abel, was a young Hercules, stronger and taller for his age than any boy in the neighbourhood; and his little sister Lily, almost as soon as she reached her teens, had been talked of far and near as the beauty of Waterdale. Abel had other qualities besides. When he was about twelve years old his mother deprived herself of his services, then just becoming valuable, in order to send him to school. He went through storms and sunshine, never missing a day, whatever might be the weather, and in a year had driven the parish schoolmaster to despair, who had no more to teach him. He was as clever as he was handsome, and he was more ambitious than either, and full of that intellectual curiosity which is the making of a scholar. It was a fatal day for Elizabeth when she sent the boy to school, as all who knew them said. He could read and write very well before he went there at all, and what does a country boy want more? But after he had begun there was no getting him to care for anything else but learning. He borrowed all the schoolmaster's store of books, which was not great, and devoured them; then interested the clergyman and got admission to his library; then, best and worst of all, so caught the attention of a visitor that his whole lot in life was changed. This stranger took the boy and sent him to a school where he could learn more than was possible in Waterdale; then finding him worth the trouble, sent him to the university and made "a gentleman" of him. Thus, instead of labouring upon the tiny miserable farm, cultivating the late little patch of corn and working among the "beasts," and taking his share in the labours which his mother had carried on since he was a child, the boy carried his handsome face and keen intellect into the world, and throve, as was supposed, though the little house at Overbeck heard little of him. In one point of view, it was hard that he should thus deprive his mother of his legitimate assistance and leave her to toil alone; but then she, of all others, was the one most anxious that he should improve his position and rise into a higher place than that in which he was born. If she felt a pang at his complete desertion of her, she never put it into words, but rejoiced that he had made his way to better things, and exulted with the whole force of her being in the consciousness that her boy was "a gentleman." She bore the additional labour without grudging, and toiled on with a high heart, never fearing work.