‘There you are, Nora!’ Tom Dupuy cried out to her triumphantly. ‘You see what sort of person your fine English friend has turned out to be.’ ‘Tom Dupuy,’ Nora cried in her wrath—but in her own heart she knew it wasn’t true—‘if you tell me this, trying to set me against Mr Noel, you’ve failed in your purpose, sir: what you say has no effect upon me. I do not care for him; you are quite mistaken about that; but if I did, I don’t mind telling you, your wicked scheming would only make me like him all the better. Tom Dupuy, no real gentleman would ever try so to undermine another man’s position.’ At that moment, Harry Noel, just descending to the drawing-room, strolled out to meet them on the lawn, quite unconscious of this little family altercation. Nora glanced hastily from Tom Dupuy, in his planter coat and high riding-boots, to Harry Noel, looking so tall and handsome in his evening dress, and couldn’t help noticing in her own mind which of the two was the truest gentleman. ‘Mr Noel,’ she said, accepting his half-proffered arm with a natural and instinctively gracious movement, ‘will you take me in to dinner? I see it’s ready.’ Tom Dupuy, crest-fallen and astonished, followed after, and muttered to himself with deeper conviction than ever that he always knew that girl Nora would end in the longrun by marrying a confounded woolly-headed mulatto. (_To be continued._) THE ASCENT OF CLOUDY MOUNTAIN, NEW GUINEA. BY CAPTAIN CYPRIAN BRIDGE, R.N. The Rev. James Chalmers—known all along the southern coast of New Guinea, throughout the original British protectorate in fact, as ‘Ta-ma-té’—will always be held responsible for the first ascent of Cloudy Mountain. Taking advantage of the presence of Commodore Erskine’s squadron at South Cape, he instilled into the minds of some of the officers a desire to get to the summit. With the persuasive eloquence of which his many friends know him to be a master, he expatiated on the honourable nature of the enterprise, dwelling on the fact that no white man had as yet attempted it. It is not wonderful that he excited considerable enthusiasm; nor is it, perhaps, wonderful that, as the climate is a moist one and as the warm tropical season was well advanced, some of the enthusiasm had greatly decreased when the day for starting arrived. It was interesting to observe how many pressing engagements happened to prevent some of the more eager aspirants for alpine honours from attempting Cloudy Mountain, when the expedition was definitely determined on. One had arrears of correspondence to make up; another had promised to join a friend in a shooting excursion; whilst a third wisely took into consideration the fact of his being no longer young. It would have been well for at least one of the party that afterwards made the ascent if he also had remembered that the middle age is not the best time of life at which to try climbing almost precipitous elevations through trackless forests in the atmosphere of a hothouse.