up its grateful odour. "But you were thinking of tripe; my thoughts ran upon thrift. It can hardly be done," continued the clerk, again relapsing into his economic mood ;-" and if it could, it ought not. What! perpetrate that awful thing at fifty-two!-monstrous !"

The simple maiden could not conceive the affinity between a nice dish of tripe and these incoherent expressions, and bending on the abstracted clerk a pair of eyes that had not yet quite lost their of interrogation, she said playfully:

powers

"What's done can't be undone, Mr. Pringle. Now, your dinner is done to a turn, and—there, let me help you."

There was so much kindness in the tone of the maiden, so much sympathy, that while he mechanically bolted his food, he fixed a maudlin pair of eyes on her, and caught himself in the act of fondling with her white hand. A quiet smile of happiness indicated the pleasure of the spinster at this approach to his former self.

"So you think me in love, Miss Blossom," said the clerk, petulantly flinging down his knife and fork. "Of course you do."

"You don't like your dinner, Mr. Pringle," said the lady, getting very pale; "or, perhaps, you don't like m-m-me," she said, hysterically sobbing. "You've lost your appetite, and you're not so-sof-fo-fond as you used to be, and

so—so—

"There now, that'll do," whimpered the clerk, as he brushed away a tear with the corner of the table-cloth.

Pringle took two or three impatient turns round the room, wriggled his spare form into an attitude of determination, and approaching the maiden with a grave if not stern air, he said:

So-so, you don't think me fond, Miss Blossom,-and you're right. Pooh-stuff-nonsense! Fond at fifty-two!-'tis all gammon -don't believe it-don't believe a word of it. It is not in us at forty, much less at fifty-two, and I'm that. Don't believe me if I should say I am. A man of fifty is fond of nobody but his wretched self, loves nobody! Reverse the picture: make it twenty-five, and there is some chance. But, believe me, Miss Blossom, at twenty-five man may toy with beauty's chain without counting the links; but at fiftytwo every link should be made of fine gold, to enable him to wear it gracefully. That's what I say, Miss Blossom."

There was an earnestness mingled with banter in this sally, that fairly puzzled the maiden. She didn't know what to make of him. She had comforted herself for a long time with the belief that their union was merely a matter of time, but the idea that his parsimonious resolves would stop short of matrimony had never occurred to her.

That night the anxious clerk entered on his purpose of thrift by taking possession of a room "two pair up." It was cheaper than the one he occupied, and served as a fit prelude to his economical purpose. A corresponding change was observable in his outward man. "Plain and warm-plain and warm is good enough for a man of fiftytwo," he would say, while he wrapped his spare form in a penurious and primitive habiliment, and stalked to the office of one of the oldest houses in the city. By dint of the most close fisted parsimony, Pringle began to accumulate. The old leather trunk began to grow interesting. It was respectable in his eyes as the savings-bank of his future deposits. It was no longer used for the unworthy purposes to which all old friends are uniformly subject. It was regularly dusted

every day; and when it became the depository of one score pounds. as the kernel of, perhaps, a future plum, he carried it to his lodgings. Meantime, no useless expense was allowed to diminish his savings, Tipplings at his club, and the club itself, were fairly given up as inconsistent with the growth of the incipient plum. He would pass by a theatre, even at the alluring hour of half-price, with the most stoical indifference. All pleasures were put under the most rigorous ban. Pringle began to grow a perfect ascetic. The black leather trunk became in consequence more and more plethoric. When out of spirits, he would sit in a strangled beam of sunshine that would find its way into his solitary room, and, with half-shut eyes, ogle his trea

sure.

The inventive genius of woman frequently found opportunities of breaking in upon his musings. Miss Blossom was always a privileged intruder. She thought it was not good for man to be alone; and the bewitching hour of tea, with an infusion of small-talk, affairs of the house and affairs of the heart, occupied the evening. Not that Pringle, during these visits, ever allowed his thoughts to wander from his purpose, or lean to the "soft side of the heart." When, however, for Pringle was but a man-he felt a premonitory tug at his heart-strings, he would look sternly at the old leather trunk, and all his stoicism would revive. The soft intruder was bid good night, and the obdurate Pringle would sneak to his bed to dream till morning of the old leather trunk and its contents.

Precisely twenty-one months after the date of his intention to become a small capitalist on his own account, the vision of a real hundred pound note rose upon his sight. There was no mistaking the crisp sterling feel of the paper. He looked intently at the words "One Hundred Pounds," in large capitals. A quiet self-approving smile stole over his haggard features. The corrugated brow, the crows' feet, the limp and languid hair-what were they to him? He had within his clutch the golden vision that so often formed the subject of his day dreams, and distracted his slumbers at night.

But did Pringle limit his ambition to a "cool hundred?". For the honour of human nature, we are bound to admit that he did. And now that he had it, he didn't know what to do with it. He was miserable without it, he was unhappy with it. But still the consciousness that he could call that sum his own-own, gave an animation to his features, a buoyancy and an elasticity to his form, that was quite wonderful.

Yet daily the question presented itself to him,-what could he do with the hundred pound note, now that he had acquired it? And through sheer dint of not knowing what to do with it, he became. unusually pensive.

"I made it single-handed," said the bewildered clerk, in a fit of monetary abstraction, while he wistfully eyed the water-mark on the note, and in desperation thrust both his hands to the uttermost depths of his breeches' pockets. What the sequel to these uneasy thoughts was, and what Pringle did when he didn't know what to do with his hundred pound note, may be inferred from the announcement shortly after made by the parish clerk of -, marvellously resembling the banns of marriage between Thomas Pringle, bachelor, and Priscilla Blossom, spinster.

S. Y.

THE HEIRESS OF BUDOWA.

A TALE OF THE THIRTY YEARS' WAR.

Those well read in German history will readily recognise the story of Otto of Wartenberg and Slabata. The catastrophe is historically interesting, as it seriously influenced the fate of Frederic King of Bohemia and his English wife Elizabeth.

THERE was high festival in the baron's halls, and the voice of music and revelry rose above the howl of the winter's blast, and the rushing torrents without. It was at Christmas time that the proudest and loveliest of Bohemia met within the castle of Budowa, to celebrate the birthday festival of the baron's heiress, his beautiful daughter, Theresa. She was not his only child; a younger daughter, bearing the name of Maria, shared in her father's love, and in her sister's beauty, but it was well known that the vast possessions belonging to the ancient house of Budowa were not to be divided,-that they were to confer power and dignity on the fortunate husband of Theresa. Nevertheless, the younger sister was so rich in personal beauty, and a thousand soft and winning graces, that she could almost compete with the elder in the number and devotion of her admirers. He who now sat beside her, breathing into her willing ear enraptured praises of her radiant beauty, had been long a suitor for her smiles, without seeking to obtain possession of her hand; and there were some who whispered that he only paid his court to the younger sister as a means of obtaining easy access to the presence of the heiress.

66 a face that The dark, earnest eye of the Count Slabata, and the soft accents of his practised tongue had seldom pleaded in vain. His was limners love to paint, and ladies to look upon," and his proud, yet courteous bearing, was distinguished alike by dignity and grace. By birth he held a high rank amongst the nobles of Bohemia ; and, though rumours were abroad that his large family possessions were seriously encroached upon by youthful extravagance, these had never reached the ear of Maria; she believed him to have both the will and the power to place her in the same high position that birth had conferred Still there were times when even the on her more fortunate sister. vain and unobservant Maria had doubted the completeness of her conquest. Not now, however,-not now; on this happy evening she deemed there was no longer cause for fear, and she listened with beating heart and glowing cheek for the expected words that would interpret into final certainty the language of Slabata's eloquent look. Yet Maria was even now deceived, for it was not upon her the most earnest gaze of those dark eyes was anxiously and enquiringly fixed.

In a distant, windowed niche of the lofty and spacious hall stood two figures, so remote from the glare of light, and the central tables where the feast was spread, that they were almost hidden in the gloom, and their conversation could easily be carried on, undisturbed by the faint and distant sounds of music and revelry. Count Slabata's eye alone, keen, quick, and piercing, had recognized the graceful form of the baron's niece, but the knight who stood beside her, who was he? There might be many in that crowded hall never even seen before by Slabata, whose youth had been passed in foreign and distant lands; but any one who might boast sufficient rank and power to entitle him