Duty took me elsewhere, but I returned in a few hours. As I stole up to the bedside the patient was awake and looked brighter and better than before. It was the blazing of the wick before the candle expires. "He has had a lucid interval," whispered the brother, "and was so meek and patient that it made me weep. But he is delirious again--still yearning for that relief." At that instant the sunset flame shooting through a window burnished the sufferer's face until it looked like that of some waxen image with a halo; by a powerful effort he propped the upper portion of his body on his left elbow, raised his right arm in salute, and cried-- "Hurrah! I saw the sunlight on yer bay'nets, boys. Andy wouldn't lave his post. But whisper, sargent, ye were much-a-wanted, much-a-wanted!" And with a glad laugh the boy-soldier fell back. There was a thin crimson streak upon the pillow. The relief had, indeed, come at last. JOHN AUGUSTUS O'SHEA, in _Merry England_. Mixed Marriages. Marriage is so intimate a union between man and wife that the hearts of both should ever beat in full and unalloyed sympathy and accord. Above all, the religious convictions of both ought to be in perfect harmony. If there is not in the family a common faith and a common form of divine worship, the consequences are disastrous to home comfort, to religious training, and to faith itself. Show me a family that forms an exception, and you either show a strengthening of the rule, or you show a family that is happy only in appearance. For, even then you will find that the Catholic party has to do a thousand things unknown to the other, and to beg of the children to keep matters secret. There is woe following the telling of the secret. Suffice it to know that the wisdom of the Catholic Church is opposed to these unions; that if the Catholic party die, the children, as a rule, are lost; and that even in the best cases religious indifference is the ordinary consequence. How often do we meet such an instance as this, nor shall I overdraw it. A young Catholic lady tells her confessor that she intends to marry a Protestant young man. The confessor remonstrates. It is useless. Her mind is made up on the matter. He is a good young man, with no prejudice against her faith, and is satisfied to be married by the priest. Very well; they get married; and six months afterward the bell is rung at the priest's door. A thickly veiled female comes in, and she has a sad story to tell. She has been abused, called names in which her religion was not complimented; and, oh, worst of all, this very day he has thrust her out of doors. Yes; called Papist and thrown down the stoop by the "splendid young man" on whose arm she hung so proudly in the heyday of her foolish fascination!