The voices were drawing nearer. There was a glimmer of light through the solemn passages. It was only another party that had descended another way, now coming up to pay a pilgrimage to the tomb of the patron saint of song.

Our party here moved on, to the infinite delight of Mollie, and the relief of all. The countess sat in her carriage, leaning her face on her hand. She did not see the party until they came suddenly through the gate. She evidently had not expected them to return so soon. She lifted her face, half-frightened, and as she did so there were tears on her great sweeping lashes, and her face was still wet with weeping.

The artist took his seat in silence, and Mollie was, for the first time and for a wonder, thoughtful. They drove rapidly on, for the sun was setting.

In a few minutes they were before the little church of Saint Sebastian; and, without yet having spoken to the countess, and without speaking, the artist descended and entered, while she remained seated still in the carriage as before. A very small black monk was kneeling before an altar, and rising as our party entered, he lighted a taper on the staff, and, coming forward, pulled aside a red curtain, and showed the original footprints of our Saviour.

The stone is of a brown color, hard as marble, and eighteen inches square. The prints are side by side, as close as possible, are rather large, and set at least an inch deep in the stone.

The rim or edge of the stone seems to be cased in gold. It stands up against an altar to the right of the entrance to the church, or monastery as it is called here, and is kept under cover behind a double iron gate. Here we are also shown an arrow, said to be one of those by which the martyr fell, and also a portion of a stone pillar to which he was bound when slain.

he had seen the whole column at Milan.

"Very likely," answered the priest, gravely; "for there were three of these small columns set together, and to these three was Saint Sebastian bound."

Ah! the wealth and the levity of these places of worship!

"It looks bad to see so much extravagance in this way, when there is so much poverty and misery among the poor,” said the general to the monk.

"But," said the monk in answer, "when we reflect that it is the poor who chiefly use these sacred houses, and that they there, at least, are peers with the proudest of the land, it is not so bad, after all."

The general saw that the subject, like nearly all others in the world, had two sides to it, and was silent.

While they were here, an old woman came in with her weaving apparatus—a part of a loom it seemed on her shoulders, and setting it down in a corner, crossed herself, said a prayer, and then asked to see the sacred relics. Murietta remarked, with pleasure, that the priest lighted the taper and put the red curtain aside precisely the same for this old weaver-woman as he did for the party of sovereigns from America.

What had come between Murietta and the countess? Surely nothing had been said or done that day by either that they should now be standing wide apart as it

were.

The artist took his seat once more, and once more without a word. The lady did not look up. As the carriages whirled away that the party might see the sun go down from the tomb of Metella, the lady's little pink-and-pearl hands lay still on the flower-beds of rose and pink, and her pretty baby-face kept trying to hide back behind her companion.

Ruins! ruins! ruins! right and left. After passing the tomb of Metella, with its girdle of ox-skulls bound in wreaths —a tomb that has been a battlement, a palace, and a prison-they came to a tomb that has not even a name, and yet it is almost as colossal as a pyramid and twice as high.

"Marvelous, marvelous!" mused the general, as they turned their carriages, and rested here for a moment before returning to Rome.

On the top of this lofty and colossal structure, that even the most imaginative Italian falters before, there is growing a grove of olive-trees, and there is a little farm-house perched up there, and the man has really a little farm on the top of his tomb.

While our party rested here, a cock came to the edge of his little world, and strutting up and down, he flapped his wings and crowed above them, loud and clear and defiant.

Then Johnny rose, and, standing up in his seat, answered back the challenge. Then the cock again strutted along the edge of his little world, and, looking contemptuously down again, crowed and crowed and crowed as the party drove

across.

Here are ruins that will probably survive all other structures now in exist ence, save the pyramids, either old or

new.

The one thing that saddens a man in contemplating these great works is the reflection that the labor was all done by slaves-done by men chiefly brought captive from other lands and made to waste out their existence here in most ignoble toil for masters as cruel and as insolent as the Pharaohs.

Yonder is the sacred wood, and hard by the ruins of the temple of Bacchus. Here and there are mounds, and you can guess what lies beneath. Only now and

climbing grass and shrubs and trees. Sometimes, however, they loom up as if they would never stop, and stand hundreds of feet in the air. These will never fall. The earth may climb up around them; the grass will take root, and in time will smooth the rugged path; but they have melted together as it were in one solid mass, and stand like a spur of the Sierra.

Kind earth claims them for her own, and has pressed them so long and so close against her breast that they have sunk all together, brick and mortar, in one undistinguishable mass.

The sun had gone down on Rome, and round about Rome on the mighty mountain-tops was drawn a girdle of fire.

Twenty miles away to the west, as they returned, flashed the sea in the dying sun of Italy like a hemisphere of flame.

Behind them, in the middle of the great Campagna, with its far-off wall of eternal and snowy mountains, huddled together the white houses of Rome like a flock of goats gathered to rest for the night, and mighty Saint Peter's towered above them all like a tall shepherd keeping watch and ward.

"Now I can see that it was no chance or accident that built the Eternal City in the centre of this mighty amphitheatre," said Murietta. "Nature ordered it. She pointed to the little group of hills lifting out of the plain by the Tiber, and said, 'Build your city on the Palatine.'"

The countess did not answer; but the man seemed inspired with the scene. and went on as if speaking to himself:

"Yonder mighty crescent of snowy mountains seems to me, as the sun is fading from the forked summits, to be but another, a more magnificent Coliseum. Yonder are the gladiators now, battling to the death-Papist and Protestant, Turk and Jew. O! this was a

land to live and to die for, where cities stood upon every hill and rose if by enchantment from the valleys. It is even holier now. I would be content to live here, to die here, and let the world go by the other way."

The others of the party left the carriage to climb the summit of a little mound of ruins to get the full glory of the Italian sunset on the tomb of the Cæsars, and the countess and Murietta were left alone. She was first to speak. "And you love this land of mine, this spot, this scene?"

The artist thought of the wild battle of the world before him; the defeats, the heart-hunger after fame, the long delay of success, the jealousy of men, the cold criticism of women, the face that was far away waiting for his triumphal return from the capital of art. Would he triumph? Could he win the fight, and finally bear the palm in the day of peace? It was doubtful. Here were love, rest, fame, and plenty. His heart beat as if there was a battle within his breast. He bowed his head in the hard struggle. It was over now. He lifted up his face and put out his hands to take her to his heart. He had

in that brief battle surrendered his devotion to art, denied his master, renounced his love, and betrayed his loyalty to one who was waiting over the sea.

"Stop!" said the countess. "You bear her picture in your bosom?" "Yes."

"Give it to the winds."

He drew forth the tiny picture whence it had rested ever since her own hand had placed it above his heart. Once more he hesitated.

"Do you falter?"

He tore it to pieces and threw it away on the wind, and it blew away and fell among the tombs.

"And now you have renounced her entirely and forever?"

"I have."

"And you love me, and me only, and will remain in my land, and will worship me to the end?"

"I do, I will! I promise you all that you ask."

Again he reached out his arms.

She looked in his face with a look that was terrible.

"Murietta," she slowly began, “I loved you yesterday, I hated you last night, I despise you now."

ALL

LL readers are travelers! Moreover, they are voyageurs by the easiest locomotion in the world, for the pen of the writer bears them without exertion from land to land, from sea to

sea.

We two, my reader and I, are now in northern France, in lovely "sea-coast, 100k-full Normandy!" (Forgive me, > best great poet, Robert Browning, or borrowing your happy words.) We vill loiter for awhile, and sketch the cene. The fair deep orchard-land of

The presses

St. Lo lies still, so still and picturesque, under the rain of streaming sunshine! Little children with brown bare legs, and keen-eyed men and women in white cotton caps, are picking up the fruitage of rich apples, shaken from the branching boughs overhead. groan all day long, and the cider, clear like the sunshine, drips, drips, drips! The driver of the patient shaggy horse, drawing round and round, swears at times lustily, or drowsily chants the refrain of some old Norman love-ditty.

When was long ago, in truth? Here we are in a room with a curtained balcony, overlooking the estates pertaining to an old chateau with a Norman tower. Two persons, besides ourselves, are loitering here: a lady and her attendant cavalier. The lady is French, but the gentleman is English. They are playing at the world-old game of "Hearts," and they both have youth, and beauty, and wealth, together with gay temper and proud will, to back them in the audacity with which they "make their play."

Lieutenant Bertram had to-day, in his visit, appeared ill at ease; this disturbance at length grew so apparent in his distraite manner and wandering speech, that it drew upon him a glance of reproof from the sweetest violet eyes that ever charmed a lover.

He colored. "Pardon my brusquerie," he said; "but the truth is, I am unexpectedly bade to return to England to-night. I am trying to find the courage to say 'Adieu!' but on my soul it is hard!"

"What!" cried Madamoiselle Ninon; "you are going to England, to-night?" She felt that a treacherous quivering of her mouth was betraying her. She caught up a cluster of fresh-gathered violets and held them to her lips. "One does not like saying adieu to a friend." She smiled with her dark-purple eyes over the violets, so like them below.

"But this shall not be adieu, Mademoiselle Ninon!" He caught her hand, flowers and all, and held them in his. "I shall return to Normandy. Why, what a beautiful ring you wear, Mademoiselle!" he cried suddenly, in a changed voice. "And what a singular motto: 'Hatred.' Your ring ought to have a history, Mademoiselle Ninon."

"It is an heir-loom, and was given me by my cousin Gaston, when he went away with his regiment into Algeria,"

There was a pause; a bell in the old Norman tower struck the hour in fine great loud metallic strokes.

"I have often," pursued the maiden reflectively, "thought, what if my cousin Gaston should unexpectedly come back some day. Then I should not be Madame la Marquise any more among my people. You know his body was found after that dreadful expedition of Mac Mahon's into the mountains; and—and if—"

With pretty malice she left her sentence suggestively unfinished. She knew very well that her speculations regarding her cousin's possible return were utterly wild. She knew that if Gaston d'Etoile's body was never seen by his comrades who accompanied him on that terrible march into Algeria, it was because the brave young French soldier had, in the hands of the Kabyles, under that scorching sky where his monument was now glittering, suffered a fate too terrible for words to tell, but one written in many of the annals of bloody barbarian warfare. Mademoiselle knew all this very well; but Lientenant Bertram had announced his intention of a speedy return to England too suddenly not to hurt her vanity, and she meant to make that evening's jour ney uncomfortable for him, if she could.

"Ah! if he should return," she sighed. Then she smiled coquettishly. The young Englishman dropped her hand. He did not even ask her for one of the violets. She began to fasten them in her dress.

"Your cousin Gaston could not be otherwise than generous when he looked in your face," said the lieutenant sharply. "He could not do less than share his riches with you."

"Do you have violets in England,

Monsieur Henri?" asked the young girl. She brushed back her brown hair and looked up at him. She was smiling, and her face was like one of the roses in her garden, softly flushed and fair, with a little tremble through it; some quick emotion was flashing past with its bird-like wings.

Lieutenant Bertram stalked to the window, looked out, and then returned to her.

"Pardon, Mademoiselle," he said gravely, "but the steamer leaves the dock at six o'clock, and I find by my watch that I have just half an hour left Will you sing me one song before

me.

I go?"

"O! with pleasure, Monsieur Henri. Only you must tell me what it shall be."

Mademoiselle Ninon took up her guitar and drew the broad band of scarlet ribbon about her neck. Henri assisted her, and as he did so he noticed with his keen hungry lover - eyes, what a pale pink reflection-just the ghost of a lover's lovely blush-the crimson satin threw upon the brunette cheek. The one deep dainty dimple there seemed to fill and overflow with happy color.

"What shall it be?" asked Ninon, bending her cheek down and thrumming the strings with white fingers. "My last song for you must be a choice one, you know."

But Henri, gazing at the rosy dimple, lost his head for once.

"It is just the spot where a lover would place a kiss," he murmured. "Deep down, to get the sweetness."

"Monsieur!" exclaimed the girl, as

tonished.

"I beg your pardon," faltered the young man, his face all aflame with confusion. "I was thinking of something else."

"Then I will put away my music," said Ninon, with an air of offended dignity. "It will simply annoy you, since more important matter fills your mind."

"No, Ninon! surely you will not punish me thus severely for a moment's thoughtless folly? You will give me the song-one only? I implore you."

He put back the ribbon which she had thrown off displeased; she did not resist the touch of his hand; she sung, with downcast face, a simple Provençal air. Then she put the guitar away.

"I can not sing to-day," she said; "I am not in the mood-and at such times music comes hard to me."

Yet what she did sing was beautiful, both in words and execution. The young marquise possessed a wonderfully sweet and sympathetic voice. Henri paid her the stereotyped compliments of society to beauty; then he added a word of his own in sincere thanks.

"You have the true musician's art of putting yourself en rapport with your hearers," he said. "If you were obliged, by stress of fortune, to make song your profession, you would soon win all the laurels fame has stored up in her treasury for future aspirants."

"I'll try some day," cried Ninon joyously. "Then, Monsieur Henri, be on your guard. I shall speedily ascertain then how many of these fine society compliments are sincere, if the number paid to the marquise in her salon falls off when wasted on the professional singing-girl in the concert-room."

"Will you come to England and test us?" retorted the young officer gravely.

He took up his hat and stepped toward her, as if to say adieu. She involuntailry made a little quick impulsive gesture of regret.

"Ah! is it time?" she murmured. The violets in her belt fell to the floor. He gathered them carefully up and restored them to her.

"Will you give me a flower, Ninon?" he asked softly.

"Ninon held a violet out to him, without speaking. But her lips quivered. Her fingers touched his, and she