may have felt for his devoted mother was so alloyed with rank selfishness as to be utterly valueless. As the years rolled on, thoughts travelled apace, and with them he saw the child-Duchess growing to womanhood--to beautiful womanhood. Then began to creep upon him a thirst to see her, and to be with her--a thirst which increased in intensity the more he dwelt upon his wish. The circumstance that kept them apart was to his sense monstrous. She was his--by what right, or if by any, mattered not; she was his, and he was hers; they belonged to each other. But by this time fortune seemed to have entirely deserted him, and he had settled into a from-hand-to-mouth vagabond condition of life which was destructive of every chance of crossing the seas with a shilling in his pocket. At this point of his career chance brought him into communication with Arthur Temple. He had taken service, under an assumed name, as a shepherd, an occupation which gave full scope to his indolent habits, and he was lying on the hills on a summer day, while through an adjacent forest of iron and silver bark trees, Arthur Temple was cantering, in high spirits. The subtle invisible links which draw lives into fatal connection with one another are too strange and mysterious for human comprehension. Between these two men, unconscious of each other's existence, stretched the link which was to bind them in one mesh thousands of miles across the seas, wherefrom other links were stretching to draw them homewards. Ned Chester, lying on the hill, in gloomy abstraction hitched from his pocket a common tin whistle, and began to play his sorrows through the keys. This one accomplishment had never deserted him; the cheap and common instrument became in his hands a divine medium for sweetest melody. The music reached the ears of Arthur Temple as he rode through the silent woods, and he reined in his horse, and listened. He was alone, making his way to the home station of the rich squatter who employed Ned Chester, and the music stirred his poetic mind. He wove from it romantic fancies; it peopled the woods with beautiful images; it made the stillness eloquent. He rode on to meet it, prepared for any surprise, in the shape of delicate nymph or sprite, and came upon a shabbily-dressed man, with a fortnight's beard on him, playing with dirty coarse fingers upon the keys of a common tin whistle. Ned Chester ceased, and gazed at the newcomer. He saw that he was a gentleman, and he ground his teeth with envy; but he gave no expression to the sentiment. Arthur Temple opened the ball. "It _is_ you who were playing?" "Yes." "On that?" eyeing the tin whistle with intense interest. "Yes; on this." "Will you play again for me?" "I don't mind." Ned placed the whistle to his lips, and played a simple Scotch air, improvising on the theme with rare skill; his organ of love of approbation was very large. "Beautiful!" said Arthur Temple. "You have been taught in a good school."