[D] A single English order for Cumberland coal, to be shipped by a Baltimore dealer last December, was for three hundred thousand tons. [E] New York _Nation_, December 19, 1872. [F] Last year's grain-yield in the Mississippi Valley was one billion and thirty-six millions of bushels. In many parts of the West, for want of transportation, corn is now sold for as little as eighteen and twenty cents per bushel, and the husks are worth, for fuel, nearly as much as the grain. One of the great newspapers of the West, the Chicago _Inter-Ocean_ (January 8th) in discussing editorially "The Reason Farming does not Pay" in that country, forcibly says: "A charge of thirty cents per bushel for the carriage of corn, when the freight should be only fifteen cents, absorbs _one-half the value of the crop_; and this process, repeated from year to year during the whole period of a decade, exhausts what would otherwise become the surplus of the farmer, and finally impoverishes the entire agricultural community." A PRINCESS OF THULE. BY WILLIAM BLACK, AUTHOR OF "THE STRANGE ADVENTURES OF A PHAETON." CHAPTER I. "LOCHABER NO MORE." On a small headland of the distant island of Lewis an old man stood looking out on a desolate waste of rain-beaten sea. It was a wild and a wet day. From out of the louring south-west fierce gusts of wind were driving up volumes and flying rags of clouds, and sweeping onward at the same time the gathering waves that fell hissing and thundering on the shore. Far as the eye could reach the sea and the air and the sky seemed to be one indistinguishable mass of whirling and hurrying vapor, as if beyond this point there were no more land, but only wind and water, and the confused and awful voices of their strife. The short, thick-set, powerfully-built man who stood on this solitary point paid little attention to the rain that ran off the peak of his sailor's cap or to the gusts of wind that blew about his bushy gray beard. He was still following, with an eye accustomed to pick out objects far at sea, one speck of purple that was now fading into the gray mist of the rain; and the longer he looked the less it became, until the mingled sea and sky showed only the smoke that the great steamer left in its wake. As he stood there, motionless and regardless of everything around him, did he cling to the fancy that he could still trace out the path of the vanished ship? A little while before it had passed almost close to him. He had watched it steam out of Stornoway harbor. As the sound of the engines came nearer and the big boat went by, so that he could have almost called to it, there was no sign of emotion on the hard and stern face, except, perhaps, that the lips were held firm and a sort of frown appeared over the eyes. He saw a tiny white handkerchief being waved to him from the deck of the vessel; and he said, almost as though he were addressing some one there, "My good little girl!"