[Illustration: THE GIRL’S OWN PAPER] VOL. XX.—NO. 1030.] SEPTEMBER 23, 1899. [PRICE ONE PENNY. [Illustration: SOLITUDE. [_From photo: By Photographic Union, Munich._] _All rights reserved._] SOLITUDE. BY W. T. SAWARD. The wind is singing a lonely song, Down in the forest deep! And I watch and watch the whole day long, Till the evening shadows creep. O flowers of the dying autumn day, How can you bloom when my love’s away! The golden grain of the harvest falls Under the sickle’s breath; And along the wood a spirit calls, Telling there is no death! For be it autumn, or be it spring, Some flowers will bloom, and some birds will sing! The night falls dark o’er the Fatherland, Down to the stretching sea! O Star of Hope! with your silver wand, Guide him to home and me! That the morning may find us hand in hand In the light of the well-loved Fatherland. THE HOUSE WITH THE VERANDAH. BY ISABELLA FYVIE MAYO, Author of “Other People’s Stairs,” “Her Object in Life,” etc. CHAPTER XXVI. DESIRE FULFILLED. The great joy grew more credible when all its story was told. The glad tidings had been brought in by an Atlantic liner. It appeared that when the _Slains Castle_ had got well over half of her Pacific voyage, she had encountered a great storm, and had foundered upon the reefs among a small group of islands, all her boats being lost or destroyed. The captain, disabled, with his crew and the solitary passenger, had however managed to land on one of the larger islands, whose simple natives received them kindly, and put them into the way of subsisting after their own fashion. There they had lived, roughly and hardly indeed, and cut off from all communication with home, or with civilisation, upheld only by the hope that some ship, in some way diverted from its course, might eventually discover them and take them off. Instead of such a ship, however, their party was reinforced by a solitary white man, who made his way to them from his own refuge on one of the smaller islands. How had he got there? they asked eagerly. He told them the truth: he was “a bad character”—a man who had done desperate deeds of many sorts, and he was there because he was “a castaway” from an American ship—he could scarcely tell whether by accident or design. He seemed to think the latter the most likely and the most natural alternative in his case. Hunger and solitude on a bare rock in the wide ocean, had somewhat tamed him, and the consciousness of a common fate soon absorbed him into the little brotherhood of the _Slains Castle_.