Several years passed, and I had forgotten all about the packet which the captain on his death-bed had placed in my hand, till one day, in looking for something else, which, of course, I could not find--(no one ever finds what he wants)--I accidentally stumbled upon the packet. Curiosity induced me to open it. A lock of black hair, tied with a piece of light-blue ribbon, and a letter, were its contents. Part of the letter ran thus:--"Enclosed is some of my hair--I don't expect you to keep it, for I have heard you say you did not like to have any such thing in your possession. I will not _ask_ you, lest I might be refused; but if you give me some, I'll get it put into one of my rings, and shall never, never part with it." This letter bore the signature of Clara Douglas! Here, then, was a solution of all the mystery. The captain was the lover of Clara, and this had been the cause of Mary's intimacy with him. Of the fate of the brother I afterwards heard. He was killed in a street brawl one night in Paris, and Mary never knew that he was the assassin of the captain. BON GUALTIER'S TALES. BY THEODORE MARTIN. COUNTRY QUARTERS. A pleasanter little town than Potterwell does not exist in that part of her Majesty's dominions called Scotland. On one side, the hand of cultivation has covered a genial soil with richness and fertility. The stately mansion, "bosomed high in tufted trees," occasionally invites the eye, as it wanders over the landscape; while here and there the river Wimpledown may be seen peeping out amid the luxuriant verdure of wood and plain, and seeming to concentrate on itself all the radiance of any little sunshine that may be going. On the other side, again, are nothing but impracticable mountains--fine bluff old fellows--that evidently have an extensive and invincible contempt for Time, and, like other great ones of the earth, never carry any change about them. Look beyond these, and the prospect is indeed a fine one--a little monotonous, perhaps, but still a fine one--peak receding behind peak in endless series, a multitudinous sea of mountain tops, with noses as blue as a disappointed man's face, or Miss Harriet Martineau's stockings.