as if some stray ray from heaven had crept into the old keep, lighting it up with a brightness not of earth. Angélique was to go with them in charge of little Franceline, their only child. It was on a mild autumn morning, early in October, that the travellers set out on their journey toward the Pyramids. The birds were singing, though the sun was hiding behind the clouds; but as Raymond de la Bourbonais looked back from the gate to catch a last glimpse of the home that was no longer his, the clouds suddenly parted, and the sun burst out in a stream of golden light, painting the old keep with shadows of pathetic beauty, and investing it with a charm he had never seen there before. Sacrifice, like passion, has its hour of rapture, its crisis of mysterious pain, when the soul vibrates between agony and ecstasy. A sunbeam lighted upon Raymond’s head, encircling it like a halo. “My Raymond, you look like an angel; see, there is a glory round your head!” cried Armengarde. “It is because I am so happy!” replied her husband, with a radiant smile. “We are going to the land of the sun, where my pale rose will grow red again.” The sacrifice was not quite in vain. She was spared to him four years; then she died, and he laid her to rest under the shade of the great Pyramid, where they told him that Abraham and Sara were sleeping. When M. de la Bourbonais set foot on his native soil again, he was a beggar. The money he had received for the castle and the small bit of land belonging to it had just sufficed to keep up the happy delusion with Armengarde to the last, and bring him and Franceline and Angélique home; the three landed at Marseilles with sufficient money to keep them for one month, using it economically. Meantime the count must look for employment, trusting to Providence rather than to man. Providence did not fail him. Help was at hand in the shape of one of those kind dispensations that we call lucky chances, and which are oftener found in the track of chivalrous souls than misanthropes like to own. About three days after his arrival in the busy mercantile port, M. de la Bourbonais was walking along the quay, indulging in sad reveries with the vacant air and listless gait now habitual to him, when a hand was laid brusquely on his shoulder. “As I live, here is the man,” cried Sir Simon Harness. “My dear fellow, you’ve turned up in the very nick of time; but where in heaven’s name have you turned up from?” The question was soon answered. Sir Simon gave his heartiest sympathy, and then told his friend the meaning of the joyous exclamation which had greeted him.