God is the changeless amid the ever-changing. If the eye of our soul is fixed on Him, all else adjusts itself. We have “an anchor sure and steadfast.” The conies, says the wise man in the book of Proverbs, “are but a feeble folk, yet make they their houses in the rocks.” The conies belong to the same family as do our rabbits, but they have not paws suitable for burrowing, and their homes are in the clefts of the immovable rocks. Thither they flee to hide themselves when the enemy is in pursuit, or when the elements are adverse. They find tiny fastnesses, where, protected from all stress of weather, they can sleep in safety, and into which the great birds of prey cannot penetrate. For some situations our powers of adaptability are all inadequate. The combat is too great for our forces, and the best course, the wisest, nay, often the only possible course lies in flight and in seeking a haven of refuge, until, as the Psalmist says, “the tyranny is overpast.” “I will flee to the Rock to hide me.” And as “that feeble folk, the conies” make their houses in the rocks, so we, like the wise man in the parable, build our house on the Rock, not on the shifting foundations of sand. (_To be continued._) THE COURTSHIP OF CATHERINE WEST. CHAPTER I. A hot August day, hot with the heat cherished through a sunny fortnight of rainless days; in which the earth radiated back to the atmosphere the warmth bestowed upon her by the cloudless skies, so that a light haze overhung the broad plains, and lay like a belt around the dark-foliaged trees and whitewashed villages of the surrounding country. It was a monotonous and little-varied scene, yet the girl who was watching it from a railway compartment, as the train sped past it, found it full of interest and delight. It was all so distinctly un-English, and poorly as it might compare with the woody slopes and fruitful orchards of the land she had left behind her, these severe, hedgeless fields and austere lines of tall poplars had to her a special beauty of their own. She took little heed of her travelling companions, so absorbed was she in the novelty of her surroundings. And she was conscious, too, that this was only the beginning, that better things were in store for her. One short night and day, and then—the snowy mountains, hitherto visible only in dreams, the green pastures and tinkling cattle-bells, the climbing woods and glowing flowers. Truly, for the realisation of such a vision all past toil and patient expectation were well worth endurance.