hand-her mother, whom the long piercing cold of that cruel snow was killing, whilst with daily sullen denial it forbade all aid to approach her. Day after day she sat so, holding the thin hand while weeks went on and December was half spent, gazing out at the imploring hills and the mourning trees, trying to pray with patient courage while her eyes searched the relentless sky in vain for mercy.

Downstairs a lamp burned constantly in the garnished parlour. Christmas decorations had been made, and white curtains were looped with the red and green of the holly. Bab kept the fire burning and the lamp trimmed, and Elsie stole down now and again to see that all was neat and bright, for the thaw might come any day, and Philip might arrive, and her mother re

cover.

And the pale lady who lay upstairs, knowing herself to be dying, spoke bright words to the child whom she feared to leave lonely, urging her to omit no preparation, to have all things brightly in readiness, so that when the thaw should come and Philip arrive, her own wasting life might yet have a little time to burn, even until she beheld that which her heart craved to sco accomplished.

'Christmas Day will be bright, love,' she would murmur, stroking the faithful little hand that held hers so strongly, as if it would not give up its grasp to death. I dreamed this morning that the day had come, and the sun was shining, and you and I were both dressed in white, and I was quite well again. I know it will be a bright day!'

And then the pale lady would turn her fast-changing face to where she could see the chimneys of her old home, and, thinking who knows what thoughts of the happy days passed under its roof-tree, she would gaze away above the white hills beyond with the eyes of one whose soul goes with them, trying to learn the track, trying to grow accustomed to the path by which it soon must go on its lonely journey to the unknown land.

And so the hearth was swept and

the walls were garnished, and the lamp and fire burned brightly downstairs; and above, Elsie's white dress lay in her room like a wreath from the pitiless snow outside, which had drifted in through the window and remained there undisturbed. And the wind moaned round the house, rattling at the locks of the doors as if to warn that one was coming to whom closed doors were nothing. And that one came in the dead of a dark night and summoned the pale lady from sleep. And opening her eyes, she recognized the call, and, riveting one last prayerful gaze upon the dear face beside her, she turned her own from the world and followed the messenger.

Oh, pulseless earth! oh, tearless sky! you had no pity for the longing life that would fain have lingered yet a little space, how then could you melt for the unpraying dead that lay there, meekly defying you in its shroud, with its patient hands folded, waiting so stilly till you vouchsafed it a grave; or for the stricken figure that sat at its feet with a brain dulled from studying hour by hour the changed features in their unsympathizing repose, where all the floodgates of warmth had been suddenly locked and set with the seal of that chill, unheeding smile?

So Elsie sat at her dead mother's feet, and old Bab came and went heartbroken, and could not coax her to weep nor to rest. And still the wedding gown lay in the next room, and the lamp burned downstairs, and the wind rattled at the locks, and still the earth and sky were a blank.

At last the thaw commenced slowly to work. Life began to appear, and passages were cleared here and there. And one or two of those kind Christians, the poor, with difficulty found Elsie's mother a grave. And after that was done, Elsie, shunning the garnished parlour and the lorn bedroom, crept into the kitchen and laid her head on Bab's knees.

Late in the evening she roused herself and asked if it was not Christmas Eve. Yes, it was the eve of her wedding-day.

'Then, Bab,' she said, 'we must

have everything ready. will be here to-night.'

Mr. North Bad shook her head. 'No, no, Miss Elsie. The thaw has done something, but not so much as that. It's dark already, and no human bein' could know his way from the moor beyond where the roads cross. He'd most likely take the one that goes out to the Black Crags, and if he did he'd go down headlong as sure as heaven and earth!'

Elsie sat up straight and stared at the old woman, and then put up her hand to her head as if to collect her poor shattered wits.

'Some one must go,' she said, ' and watch on the moor all night, to show him the way when he comes. He will be there as sure as God is above us. I feel it, Bab! I know it! Cannot some one go?'

'Oh, no, no, Miss Elsie!' cried Bab, wringing her hands at her young mistress's white distraught face; no one could stay there the night through, he'd be foundered dead before mornin'.'

'You are sure of it? Ask some one; I must know.'

Bab went to inquire, and came back. It was as she had said; no one dared venture to pass a night on the moor. The snow might come on again at any moment.

Then God help me!' moaned Elsie, as she crept from the kitchen and felt her way up stairs in the dark. She went into her own room, where the wedding-gown still lay, and she could see from the window that line of moor where the roads met. There, with hands locked in her lap, and strained eyes fixed on the distance, and white cheek close to the pane, she sat. The sky had cleared a little, and the moon had ventured out, looking pale and meek, as if she, too, had had her troubles and wept away all her brightness.

Twelve o'clock struck; and Bab, who had vainly tried to move her mistress, had perforce laid her own weary old head on a bed in the room off Elsie's and fallen asleep. One o'clock, and the night had brightened, and the moon shone clear and brilliant on the white ridges and levels of mountains and valleys. Two, and still Elsie sat fixed, and

nothing had changed. Three, and the moon began to sink away among cloud-drifts low on the hills.

Four struck in the hall, and the sound roused Elsie from a state of numbness like stupor into which she had fallen. Was it the shock that made her start to her feet and, with bent brows and strained eyes, gaze towards the moor, whilst all her frame shook with the agony of suspense? Was it fate that pointed to her a black something moving in the dim distance like one riding on with difficulty? Another instant and the window is flung open and head and shoulders are thrust out. A low groan, My God!' bursts from her as the shadow seems to pause and then move away into that dim distance. Fleet as thought she has left the window, dashed from the room, and is gone.

Till her death poor old Bab remembered with remorse how heavily she slept that night, till she seemed to dream that Miss Elsie's figure flashed past her through the room in which she lay. The vision made her sleep uneasily, and she awoke troubled, and, rising to reassure herself, searched the house for her young mistress. In vain; one room was empty, and another was empty. Elsie was gone.

Who shall tell where? The moorfowls that screamed past her as she struggled on, fired to supernatural effort by the strength of her purpose, plunging through snow-wreaths, stumbling over fences and clogged marshes, with her eyes fixed on those Black Crags? Or the moon that pitied her as she fell and bled, and rose and fought on again, as she must have done terribly, piteously often, ere those fatal rocks were won?

Oh, those pitiless white wastes, how they must have frozen the blood in that brave battling young heart! How they must have stung that daring soul with bitter wounds ere it could acknowledge its defeat! How they must have torn the plodding feet with treacherous stones and rocks ere they carried her to her goal-death !

But the moon waned, and the grey Christmas dawn broke, and a

traveller, riding with difficulty along the partially-cleared road, paused suddenly, thinking he heard his own name called, a sharp, clear, bitter cry, fading suddenly into silencePhilip! Philip!'

He wheeled about and gazed seaward, just as the red sun bared his brow above the eastern mountains, and glared fiercely over the crimsonstained wastes of whiteness like a ruthless conqueror exulting after the carnage is done. And out, out far, just by the Black Crags, he thought he saw a slight dark figure standing in the red light against the snow But his eyes were dazed with the sun, and when he looked again the form was gone. He pressed on his horse eagerly and thought no more of his odd fancy.

'Philip! Philip!' Oh, that last woeful cry, falling unheeded into stillness just as the poor heart broke! And he, the watched and prayed for, entered at last that garnished home; but the hearth that had glowed so brightly for him all through the

long, long weeks was quenched for ever, and the heart whose love had fed its flame, and the fingers that had trimmed the lamp, and the lips that had kissed the little love-gifts lying about, where were they?

Ay, where? Who shall guess from what hollow gulf of snow, from the feet of what cruel rock, the tide carried the dead girl? The seagulls may scream her misereres, and the waves roll their muffled drums over her head, but no human mourner will ever kneel at her grave, for the body of Elsie Leonard was never found.

Philip North still lives, but wherever he goes the vision of that figure out on the snow in the red dawn will haunt him till death, and the echo of that last bitter cry, 'Philip! Philip!' ring in his ears.

This is the story of the Snowy Christmas. It is told over the logs in the cabins at night; and children will turn pale if, in the wintry gloaming, a plover sobs from seaward or a curlew cries over the Black Crags.

R. M.

Picturesque London, does this new sketcher say? We have had it all before, and are not going to have it all over again.'

In all meekness and humility I cry you mercy, and beseech you to think no such hard things. I have read the authors, and the books you quote, and am thoroughly aware of my inability to cope with them; therefore I make no such pretence. While they, purple-clad and palfrey-riding, caracole down the grand streets, we shall slip by back ways, and tread devious lanes; while they float in golden galleys in mid Thames, we shall take oars at Hungerford, and dodge in and out, floating with the tide, and seeing all sorts of quaint out-o'-the-way bits that in their grand voyage they pass by: the noise of the band on board their worships' barge is so great as to drown half the human cries which shall reach us, floating in our little boat: the awning to keep the sun from my lord and his friends hides numerous little nooks into which we shall penetrate, and prevents many glimpses of odd bits of light and shade, of glow here and reflection there, which in our little skiff we catch the accommodation is of the homeliest, and you may chance to sit on an ill-swabbed seat; but I believe the craft is safe; and at all events we will keep a sharp look-out ahead, and take care not to run foul of any one else.

Again, I purpose to write of Picturesque London; and forthwith I am assailed by a yelping chorus of curs, all protesting against the analogy of the two words. 'Picturesque! do you know what the word means?' they ask; 'do you know how Webster defines it?' 6.66 Expressing

that peculiar kind of beauty which is agreeable in a picture, natural or artificial; striking the mind with great power or pleasure in representing objects of vision, and in pointing to the imagination any circumstance or event as clearly as if delineated in a picture." Are you going to fulfil all this with your pen? Spare me, gentlemen! Spare me for one minute, and hear what I purpose doing. Dr. Syntax made a tour in search of the picturesque, a course

And

which has since been extensively followed by many who have been by no means so successful; and in my own experience I have seen many men who left for Switzerland, Norway, Italy, the Nile, all with the same view, who have returned with equally small results. Now, I make no tour at all; my steed is Shanks's mare; my saddle- bags dwindle down into a cigar-case; my hotel expenses resolve themselves into fourpence for a glass of beer and a sandwich at an Alton alehouse; my letters of credit are a few shillings in my portemonnaie; and I have no passport. I leave my home when I list-when my usual work is done, if I list, or in early mornings or pleasant afternoons; and I find myself snugly ensconced in the club in time for the second joint, or cheerfully slippered and shooting-coated at the domestic dinner-table. as for the picturesque, ah! friend and brother, not merely in Alpine mountains or Italian plains lies the picturesque; not merely in trellised vines or purple hill-side, or stormbeaten ruin, not merely in unkempt lazzaroni, or long-haired Burschen, or snowy-chemiseted jödling mädchens; not merely in jack-booted postilions, or tight corporals of the line, or Arab pipe-bearers, or turbaned Turks. I have seen fine bits of the picturesque from Southwark Bridge, and have marked them in the lanes of Wapping; I have seen the picturesque on the Royal Exchange and in the Stone Yard of Newgate Gaol; I have noted it in the alderman's purple, and in the beggar's rags; in the moonlight on the Pool, and in the trembling reflection of the gas on the wet pavement; in windy railway cuttings, and at dreary stations; in lamp-lit streets, and solemn squares; in Quakers' meeting-houses and public gatherings, I have seen it; but keep your eyes open and watch for it, and only have the soul to appreciate it when it comes, and you will not be long in looking for the picturesque even in London.

It is a bad thing, I thought to myself when I had decided on carrying out this idea, to start with a determination. If you say 'I will do’