bought at a great cost. I could wish that I had remained delirious for a few more days, for the crisis of my life would have been then quite over. After all, it makes only a little bit of difference, though it will be tedious counting the hours going past, and I dare say I shall lie awake to hear the clock strike twelve on next Friday night. Afterwards it will be something to tell you, the tenderness and care I have met with here. At present I am weak, as you will see by my scrawl. I have some recollection of making an ass of myself by asking Miss Mourne to marry me (not the old lady) just before I fell into my fever. Of course I was not in my senses, and she pretends to forget it. Would to God I had been lucky enough to meet her first! But the other would have ont-dazzled her, I suppose, and it would have been just the same thing. I have been thinking that there are attorney friends of yours in Dublin who would take me into their office.

"She is getting some flowers for me in her garden at this moment. I know they are for me, for she brings them fresh every day. She seems to me like an angel, if angels could be so sympathetic and practical in their ways. There is something in her swift movements, and the flutter of her white dress, that suggests the idea of wings. It is the quaintest garden that you ever set your eyes upon. A place that Nathaniel Hawthorne would delight in, when the sun shines across it, stopping with an intense frown of shade at every obstacle in his way. The manner in which cloisters, and arches, and tombstones peep through all the holes in the bloom has an oddity and charm for any one who has time to think. I have plenty of time now. . .

Mrs. Lee uttered her customary long lamentation over this letter, and declared to her nurse and doctor that her boy must be still raving, or he could not think of gardens at such a time. While there was life there was hope, and, as he had returned to his senses, there were still five long days of life before his future need be buried out of sight of the prosperous world. Get her her shawls and her bonnet, for her pains were much better. The poor lady had been suffering from an attack of rheumatism, brought on by her eccentric flight to Dublin from Camlough. Her patience had suddenly expired one night, about midnight, and she had bribed one of the coachmen to take her away before dawn.

May did not feel at all like an angel,

whatever she may have looked, as she moved among her flower-beds. Angels ought at least to be quite happy, and at peace with all men- -including women. And May was not at peace with all men, nor all women. She was very angry with Katherine, whose vanity had led her into that unfortunate mistake which she had made. And it was hard to forgive Christopher-though so easy to be good to him-whose coming had driven Paul out of her sight. For Paul had not been heard of since that night, and May's maiden modesty must hinder her from asking about him or looking for him. Aunt Martha would keep saying: "I wonder what can have happened to that young man!" and " 'Upon my word he has treated us very badly!" But still he never came

His

back along the path across the moor. farm-house still smoked with its chimney thrust out of the hollow; but the people there knew nothing of him, except that he had paid them and gone away.

May was sorry for Christopher, yet while he was lying desperately ill, and she was creeping about all day with ice for his head and medicine from the doctor, she could not have denied herself to be unutterably happy all the time. She was glorying in her good fortune, and looking out through every loophole to see her lover coming back. And she triumphed over Katherine as an angel could not have done; but yet Paul did not appear. It grew to be not wonderful to see her, who had been so quick about her business, standing with Christopher's glass of wine or basin of custard in her hands, gazing, with eyes that were very strange, out of some window or open door. Any ordinary observer would have said that she rejoiced because Christopher was ill, and was in trouble because he got better. For Christopher was growing well again; was able to write a letter, and to follow her with admiring eyes while she picked blossoms from her rose-trees. Mr. Lee's state of health did not much affect her spirits; but she had rather he had died than that Paul should not come back.

So went over the sad, profitless, golden September days. Fruit was ripe, hay was made, and the last of the sweet rose-tribe blushed like rubies on their withering trees. The summer greens were waning in the Woods of Tobereevil, and richer glories were stealing into their place. Here and there the foliage of an over-wearied autumn bough had already fluttered with

little gold wings to the ground. The birds' notes were deeper and more rare than they had been a month ago, and between the glittering links of radiant days a heavy leaden one now and then intruded itself. The harvest moonlight was so bright at nights that you might have gleaned the meadows by it, or picked pebbles on a beach, and the creepers were all afire among the ivy over the ruins, and had licked a portion of the cottage into their flames. Miss Martha was fattening cows for the fair, and between this anxious business and her cares for a sick stranger, had little time to give more than a regretful thought to Paul. Her wonder had abated after three weeks of his absence, and she had made up her mind to be disappointed in him. She feared that he was not untainted by the oddities of his race. She dropped some tears in secret to the memory of her friend Elizabeth, and owned that her promise was very difficult in the fulfilment.

But the younger heart that was beating in the house could not so easily let him go: could not so easily be consoled by cows, and the best prices at the fair. It sickened at every word that was not news of Paul; and the only things that talked of him were the pigeons, which mourned over him incessantly every hour in the day. But they never had any news; nothing but unintelligible moans and warblings. The sad night breeze began to tell her from under the eaves that she had lived up to the highest point of her life, and must now travel backward and downward. And the worst of it was that there had been made such a great mistake; it being somebody else's will than that of the good and bountiful God which had thus thrust her back on the fair threshold of a beautiful fate, and had left her all forlorn in the very blush of her surprise. She began to pity Aunt Martha, with a pity which she had never thought her worthy of before; for she, too, had lost her love, and the bright promise of her youth. But then she had lived down her grief, and could fatten cows for the fair; could speak of Simon of Tobereevil, and laugh in the same breath; while there could be no pity great enough in the world to avail the loneliness of May Mourne, spinster, even when the twenty years of her age should come, in time, to be thrice told. The blooming, oval face was growing white and pointed, her step was slow and weary about the house. She read aloud to Christopher as he sat, six feet of patient convalescence in the great arm

chair at the parlour window, watching ebb away tediously the last remnant of time in which it was still actually possible for him to avert his worldly ruin. Her voice was monotonous, at times almost harsh, and jarred on her own ears and made her task irksome. The best thing about the effort was, that it was easier than talking, when it seemed that there was nothing she wanted to say except, "Why does not Paul come back?" Neither she nor Christopher took in the meaning of one word that she read, as the young voice went on telling forth the scenes of a play in a plaintive recitative, across which there swept from time to time some brusque and discordant note.

And all this time Aunt Martha was at rest about her, seeing her so quiet, and so willing to be useful. If her cheeks were white, the bloom had gone so gradually that the good lady did not miss it. She had feared some weeks ago that her pretty maid might too well like that Paul, who had since proved himself so fantastic, and so unstable, and so cold; but as the child did not talk of him, nor complain, nor seem to miss him, she concluded that this alarm had been but a fancy of her own. She did not stop to ask herself if she had talked or complained when the joy had been taken away out of her own bygone youth. It was well, thought Miss Martha, that there had been no promise to Elizabeth about giving her girl, as a wife, to the miser's heir. Tobereevil should never blight her as it had blighted her old aunt. She would pray that her niece might be blest with a better lot than that of a heart-broken wife, or a saddened old maid,

Miss Martha had never complained of her lot as an old maid; but she plainly avowed to herself now, when she was on the subject, that the life of a woman such as herself was apt to be sadder than many others. There is a trick of looking back which she finds it difficult to unlearn; and her glances over her shoulder hurt her more sharply than do other people's. A man inclined for retrospect will perhaps see efforts before success, which he would not be willing to cancel even to bring back his youth; a wife knows nothing better worth her mature contemplation than the early years of love which she has toiled through with her husband; a mother will see her children grown so tall that between their smiling faces the landscape of the past shines but

in

very faint gleams, she is no longer

deed, the medieval spirit was hostile to its very existence. People were supposed to live upon their incomes, not to save them. Whatever surplus remained, it was thought that a good man would give to the poor, or to a convent in want of repairs, or to a church that needed a fresh chancel or a peal of bells. A very thrifty person might bury a crock of coin here and there, but the practice was not commendable. As for the money market, it was anathema. There were usury laws, the principle of which was founded on the Mosaic prohibition to exact interest for a loan, and strong discredit attached to those who availed themselves of the legislator's reluctant toleration. The first lenders of money in medieval Christendom were, of course, Jews, and they were mainly a sort of pawnbrokers, taking in pledge the crown jewels of the monarch, the ruby carcanet of the countess, or the silver hanaps and gilt apostle spoons of his worship the knight. The adventurous capitalist who embarked his means in this traffic was hooted by the street boys, envied by the poor, and despised by the rich. Life for him was full of perils. On any hot August evening, or when the cold and hunger of a medieval winter had made the half-starved mob wolfish and irritable, a sudden cry might be set up to "rabble the Jews," and then came sack and plunder, a burning house and a scramble for booty, and well for the trembling owner if he and his family escaped with whole bones out of the turmoil. Nor was poor Reuben quite secure from his noblest customers. If a king like John chose to take out his teeth, one by one, until he ransomed his wretched jaw by revealing a secret hoard, or if a baron roasted him into giving a receipt for a debt unpaid, nobody seemed to be very sympathetic with the sufferer. It was thought a sharp way of doing business, a practical joke carried rather far, but that was all.

Presently in Western Europe there appeared rivals for the profits which, in spite of riots and confiscation, the Jews had previously monopolised. The substantial burghers of Ypres and Bruges, the rich traders of Venice and Genoa, began not merely to put out their hard cash at interest, but to lend it with the confidence of men who were not ashamed of the transaction. Indeed, the citizens of the mighty commercial republics of middle-aged Italy, to whom banking was a familiar science, when in London and Paris it was un

known, were strictly following in the steps of their remote forefathers. From a very early date in Roman history the patrician houses of the city had discovered that money might be dealt in as easily, and with perhaps more lucrative results, than any other commodity. The yeoman whose farm could not be tilled without a yoke of oxen to replace those dead of the cattle pest, or driven off by the Samnite raiders, went to Fabius or Claudius for a loan. The petty stall-keeper waited, cap in hand, in the vestibule, while some friendly freedman or humble hanger-on of the great family went in to arrange for an advance from my lord the senator's money chest. It was a matter of course that yeoman and stall-keeper should pay in person as well as in coin for the accommodation. Henceforth they would be numbered among the clients of their illustrious creditor, "boys of the belt," henchmen and retainers, to shout and fight on the Fabian or the Claudian side; to be a body-guard to their patron at stormy election times, and to be ready to back his cause with tongue and cudgel against all Rome. If they were unpunctual with their interest, there were ready means of foreclosure, and a debtor who was hopelessly in arrear went shuddering down, he and his, into the damp dungeons below my lord's mansion, there to suffer from cold and low diet, and perhaps the rack, since the creditor enforced his own jail discipline, and laid down his own rules for the treatment of defaulters. It is not wonderful that under the pressure of such a system as this, combined with the unequal distribution of conquered lands, the Roman nobility became so strong and wealthy, as almost to defy the combination against them of people and emperor.

It is obvious that, in medieval times, the wheels of the triumphal chariot of Progress were sorely clogged and hampered by the awkward traditions of the time. It was possible to be very rich in kind, and to be at the same moment ludicrously ill provided || with coin: The healthy and quick flow of the circulating medium in these latter years is apt to make us oblivious or impatient of the troubles of our ancestors. Silver and gold did not then, as now, go like life-blood through the land, answering every beat of the financial pulse. A “yeoman of Kent, with his yearly rent," has a wealthy sound as we hear his station trolled out in the song; but though fifty hams swung in the wood-smoke of his capacions

chimney, though the sheep on his leas were to be reckoned by hundreds, and fat red oxen lowed in the wet meadows where the brook ran prattling down, even the enviable Kentish yeoman had very little money stowed away in the blue worsted stocking fast locked in the oaken box. He could feed, and did feed, fifty men and women, and could store up grain and wood and oak timber, but his dealings partook more of the nature of barter, than of genuine buying and selling.

To lend money on mortgage under the feudal system was an absurdity. There were no true freeholders left, no horse udallers, no English holders, to declare that they held their lands "under God and the sun," and sturdily to reject the dominion of all over-lords. The great mainspring of the feudal plan was that nothing belonged to anybody, and nobody to himself. There was the king, no Oriental despot, but the chief of a haughty aristocracy, the keystone of the great oligarchical arch, bigger, no doubt, than the biggest of the barons, but regarded more as a doge than as a monarch, the first noble of the ruling nobles of the country. This strange system, which cramped even royalty, and linked all mankind together, had no place for loans on the security of land. How could Issachar or Mordecai, how could Hans the Fleming from Ghent, perform grand sergeanty for the lands of Rushbottom and the broad acres of Cloverley? Oldacre and Kedriggs were held in military tenure, and would King Edward or King Henry deign to receive in the royal leaguer some Genoese trafficker, armed cap-à-pie, to ride to French or Scottish wars, instead of the knight and his stout sons? Could the king's grace accept the green geese, and the new cut rushes, and the horse provender, and gauntlets sewn with silk, from Joseph, son of Solomon, of the Jewry of London, in his yellow cap and dingy gaberdine, as per act of parliament ? To lend money on the tangible security of terra firma was a device of a late date.

It is remarkable that the Jewish laws, and those of Mahomet's Koran, have forbidden usury, and yet that the principal money-lenders and money-dealers of five centuries ago were Moors and Jews, the faithful of the synagogue and the believers who left their slippers in the porch of the mosque. Spanish Moslems and scattered Israelites furnished funds for the wars and pageants of South Europe, as Milan and

Florence replenished the purse of our own magnificent and expensive Edward the Third. Pedro the Cruel owes much of his bad name to the scrupulosity which made him force his aristocracy to pay their debts. Fratricide and stabber as the Spanish king was, he was beloved by the Spanish populace and middle classes, and, had he been less strict in exacting fair play between his own hidalgoes and their infidel creditors, he might have died in his purple bed at Toledo or Seville, unopposed monarch of all between the mountains and the sea. Nero, too, was a popular sovereign. He, like Robin Hood, did not harm the lowly in station, and to this hour the peasant of Italy has on his tongue the one name of Nero, as the Portuguese vine-dresser can tell you of Don Sebastian, the good king, captive among the miscreant Moors of Africa.

Borrowed money was a costly luxury in the Middle Ages. True, there were statutes which limited the interest, but then, when one man wants money, and another has got it, it is surely easy to elude the letter of the law. To be nailed to the pillory, to have one's ears clipped, and be branded by the hangman, were disagreeable consequences of an advantageous bargain, but then how seldom could these formidable penalties have been enforced? It was for everybody's benefit that things should go on smoothly. High profits were made, in the days of old, by lending money in pledge, but to the present hour the trade has continued to be coldly regarded by the outside world. Pawnbrokers are not popular. A money-lender of the true stamp comes into courts of justice with somewhat of Shylock's ill repute, and when, as sometimes occurs, a young scamp proves too clever even for the trained cunning of the man of cent-per-cent, the world laughs indulgently, as when some astute wizard of the Dark Ages cheated the foul fiend. The man who borrows is sure of more sympathy than he who lends. To foreclose is harsh. Distraint is a process disagreeable to the lookers-on. Still more was this the case a few centuries back. The "great 'oneyers," the gold-compelling exchangers in whose respectable company Sir John Falstaff vowed in future to quaff his decorous flagons of sack, were thought to earn their gains after a fashion that was intrinsically wicked, and men shook their heads as the usurer's sumptuous funeral went by, let the grey friars chant their loudest, and the tapers flare in endless line.