I have found it, Mr. Aird!' she cried, as he got within hailing distance; 'your locket is quite safe.'

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She held the trinket out to him, and fixing his eyes on it, without even glancing at her, he took it from her hand and pressed it to his lips. "Thank Heaven,' he exclaimed fervently, thank Heaven!' then, turning to her with a look of tender gratitude, strange to see on his lined and dusky face, he added, And thank you, Miss Josceline, who are Heaven's messenger.'

Extravagant as were his words, it was evident they were not spoken in the way of compliment; the tears were in the old man's eyes as he uttered them.

29

CHAPTER XX.

MR. AIRD'S LOVE STORY.

So intense was Mr. Aird's emotion that Ella, unwilling to be the witness of what he might afterwards feel to be a weakness, was about to turn back and leave him; but he stopped her with a gesture of his hand.

'Do not go, dear, good young lady; you must not go till I have thanked you. I cannot say how much sorrow you have saved me; my child told you what had happened, I conjecture, and having found the locket where I hoped, yet hardly dared to hope, I had left it, you came yourself to save him so long a walk.'

I wish I had, Mr. Aird,' she answered, smiling; but the fact is the locket was not in your room, and, as Davey seemed so distressed at the loss of it, I came back with him to look for it. I wish I could have spared him the

fatigue, but he was necessary as a guide, you see; and I have left him safe enough, though very tired, poor little fellow, beside a rock in the Creek yonder.'

'Then you have come all this way with him to look for this?'

'Well, it was not so very far; but my fear was that you had dropped it on the sands, as indeed you did.'

Then but for you,' said the old man with

a glance over the cliff, the tide would have covered it by this time. Did you open the locket, Miss Josceline?'

'I? Certainly not,' said Ella, with a little flush.

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Then, if you don't mind sitting here for a few minutes, you shall see it now; I owe it to you, or rather to myself, in explanation of the weakness I have shown, and the exhibition of which I know you would have spared me. This is the portrait of my darling wife, and the mother of my only child.'

He placed the open locket in her hand. The picture it contained was the portrait of a

young woman anything but beautiful; the face, indeed, was slightly pitted with the smallpox; the blue eyes were soft and gentle, but they conveyed the idea of one who has suffered much. The expression was one of serene content, as of one who, having known what it is to live and endure, has found, deservedly, her home in heaven.

'It is a sweet-looking face indeed,' said Ella.

'Yes; but not pretty. It is seldom, though I have seen it once,' said the old man, softly, 'that to those who have the gift of beauty, God also adds that of gentleness and goodness. When I first saw it, there was no attraction in that face for me. Her name was Edith Trenton; I went out to India with her, in the same ship, and also with her cousin, another Edith, and bearing the same surname; and that second Edith was my first love. I was a poor man then, and she was poor also; very literally her face was her fortune. The gossips on board said she had come out to India as being the best market for it. To me such talk was blas

phemy, but I had no right to resent it. I felt that a union between her and me was impossible. She had been brought up in luxury, and I had nothing to offer her except my love; I therefore strove to conceal it; if I did not do so it was no fault of mine, yet I believe she guessed it. We parted at Calcutta ; she and her cousin had a home there which had been offered them by her aunt, the widow of a rich civilian; and I went my way to my work, hundreds of miles up the country. I had at that time no prospects; but the chief English resident of the place where I was stationed and my immediate superior, in a few months died suddenly, and, to my astonishment and delight, I was offered his post. The delight was mainly caused by the conviction that I was now in a position to declare my love for Edith. I wrote to her immediately announcing the good fortune that had happened to me, assuring her how in secret I had always worshipped her, explaining the reasons that had hitherto kept me silent, and expressing a hope, from certain signs I had construed in my favour, that she was not altogether indifferent to