Luke started, and looked at Margie anxiously. "What have you heard, child? I see by your face there is something which has been kept from me. Speak out; it won't hurt me. I think I could bear anything, if only I knew she were alive."

Then Margie told him all.

He listened with breathless attention to every word of her tale, and when she had ended, murmured a deep, "Thank God." The big drops were standing in his eyes as he spoke. Margie got up from her kneeling posture at his side and kissed him fondly.

"You must go and fetch her, child," was all he Isaid in his broken voice. "Go and fetch her quickly, for I shall never understand it all-never believe it can be true-till I have seen her with my own eyes."

Margie flew to take the good news to her aunt, and in a few minutes Rachel Connor was following her niece into the little parlour of the carpenter's house.

She looked very pale, and in her black dress and altered appearance almost feared Luke would not know her again. But she had scarcely entered the room before Margie heard an half-uttered exclamation from her father's lips.

"Rachel," he said, "is it you?"

"Brother-my own brother!" was Mrs. Connor's

cry; and, closing the door upon them, Margie slipped out and left the two by themselves.

The brother and sister, long parted by a cruel fate, were together again, and they needed nothing

more.

CHAPTER XXVI.

"The passionate tumult of a clinging hope."-SHELLEY.

HE news that the solitary widow who lived at Ivy Cottage had turned out to be Luke Chaplin's sister, took every one in King's Marden by surprise.

People's minds had scarcely yet recovered from the shock of Miss Fairbairn's decease, and the curiosity which had been excited by her will; and now there was this fresh discovery, which made. every one wonder, and afforded endless matter for discussion.

Of course, there were different ways of telling the story, and still more different ways of explaining it. Some people blamed Luke; others thought his sister could not be at all a nice woman, and really it was a doubt if her conduct in coming to King's Marden, under the circumstances, had been altogether respectable; while most persons agreed that there