growing less able to work for the support of herself and her grandchild. year on the high rocks near the cottage and facing the sea, and that is a good omen. I believe, too, that there I shall find rest and quiet for my old age. If the neighbourhood is so bad, perhaps I can help to make it better. I never had bad neighbours, and I do not believe that even on Beelzebub Beach anybody will molest a harmless old woman, and an innocent child like When one day a distant relative died, leaving the kind-hearted old lady a legacy of five hundred pounds, she looked upon the circumstance as a gift direct from heaven. This sum of money was thought by her poor neighbours to be a large one, and it was wonderful how suddenly she grew into impor- my Alice." tance, how many friends she now had, how many people wanted Willoughby's few and time-worn her to live with them, how many came to her to borrow money, and how many came to her for advice: But the old lady was not at all taken aback. She said, "With the money I shall buy a little home for my old age, where Alice and I shall quietly live and do what good we can." It was surprising then what a large number of houses, with bits of land that would come within her means, were offered for sale. So the purchase was made. Mrs. household goods were moved into the little house, a pretty gentle red and white cow was tied in the stable, and a clean white pig was lazily happy amid the dried seaweed in his pen. All this afforded to the good old lady's unambitious mind a pleasing sense of prosperity and comfort. By the time the spirals of soft grey smoke began to curl up from the low chimney and melt away against the blue sky that curved down to meet the bluer sea, the kingfishers from the adjacent cliff circled and circled around, as if they were trying to form an opinion of their new neighbours. "I am too old a bird to be caught with chaff," said Mrs. Willoughby. "I know of a place that I have long thought I should like to possess. I can afford to purchase it now, and After a while three or four of it will give me the lifelong desire of them alighted on the roof, and my heart-a home by the seaside- grandma said, "They have bidden the sea that years ago swallowed us welcome, and we will call our up my young husband, and upon little home Halcyon Cottage." whose broad bosom my only son is The two happy occupants made now somewhere sailing. My even- the cosy little house as clean and ing lamp shall shine out of the cot- fresh as soap and water and lime tage-windows, and perchance cheer and sand could make it. They the heart of some poor sailor, who may be far away from home and friends. The place of which I speak is the cottage on the cliff, at the end of Beelzebub Beach." garnished the rooms with fanciful shells and pebbles, curious mosses, bright berries, and sweet wild blossoms from the beach and neighbouring swamp. They planted flowers and vegetables in the garden that had been made fertile from soil brought from the marsh. Friends remonstrated. It was a cheerless place, they thought, and a bad neighbourhood-so bad in fact that the cliff cottage had Alice's willing feet, cheery voice, been for some time uninhabited. and sparkling eyes (that could "I know all about that," said sight a boat at a greater distance he old lady cheerily; "but the than any other person's on the halcyons make their nests each beach), and grandma's generous heart, good advice, and helping they became the staunch friends of hands, were always at the service the new comers. Their gratitude of their new neighbours, who had at first regarded the new comers with no little curiosity, tinged, perhaps, with aversion. was shown, too, by their frequent presents of fish and fuel to the old lady, and in gratuitously doing all the heavy work about the field and garden. Beelzebub Beach, as its name might suggest, bore an unsavoury Gradually a pleasing change reputation. Aside from the low dawned over the appearance of the state of morals, there was not a whole village. The women were Bible-reader nor a Bible in all neater, and more provident in their the neighbourhood. Grandma Wil- housekeeping. There was much less loughby was not long in finding profane and rough language used, out this fact, and hardly a week and the fights and broils were very had passed since she came among infrequent now. The flowering slips them before the old lady gave out from grandma's garden that were that on every Sunday afternoon taking root about the doorway of there would be Scripture-reading nearly every cottage of Beelzebub in Halcyon Cottage, and whoever should choose to come would be made most welcome. Grandma was herself surprised that so many came out the next bright Sunday, and showed themselves so ready to receive instruction. After her granddaughter had read a selection from the Bible, the old lady would make terse and apt remarks upon it. Then Alice sang a hymn or two in a voice that reminded one of birds and evening breezes and rippling waves, while grandma closed the simple, cheerful service with a short prayer. It was not long before many of the young men and women, who had grown up in utter ignorance of books, and who, in their strong self-assurance (for they were wise in all things concerning the sea), would have been ashamed to be taught by a grown-up person, now begged Alice to teach them to read. This welcome office she gladly performed, and evening after evening, after the day's work had been done, these ignorant and some of them heretofore evil-doing people sat at the feet of this flower-like child, whose natural aptness to teach as well as to learn was now brought into timely requisition. When the sympathies of the rough beach folk were once enlisted, Beach were the presage of a refinement, the happy effects of which were soon to tell upon the morals of the inhabitants. The good works and kindly offices of the dear old lady and her sweet little granddaughter gave them a wide popularity. There was one good hotel in the neighbourhood, not far from "Port," that had a good run of transient custom, and all through the long summer many of its guests as well as sea-captains, sailors, fishermen, ship-builders, sportsmen, and all sorts of people bent on business or pleasure, would walk or drive up across the long, hard beach to hear Grandma Willoughby in her quaint, yet impressive way, as she sat in her old-fashioned, cosy chair under the large buttonwood-tree near her cottage, teach the ever old, ever new gospel, and to listen to Alice's wonderfully sweet and sympathetic voice as she sang the simple and touching hymns. Many of the strangers regarded Alice as a musical prodigy, and Mrs. Willoughby was more than once told that her grandchild held a fortune in her voice. But the old lady would say, "The dear child is fulfilling her mission in that humble walk in life in which God has placed her, and her head must not be filled with ideas learned here. He heard him tell, of going away to some city, and too, about Grandma Willoughby's then to be made a lady of." meetings, and started for home Early in September a wealthy right away. He landed here a merchant, who was always ready month ago to gladden the heart of to aid in any good work, became his old mother, whom he had interested in Grandma Willoughby's neglected all these years." "mission." Chiefly through his The weather growing rough, the efforts, before the end of the month yacht remained at the port over men were at work, and in a short Sunday. Mr. Le Noir could see time a neat little chapel was built the little white chapel perched on on the cliff, above the colony of the cliff at the upper end of the halcyon's nests, and just back of long beach, and more than once the old buttonwood-tree that had sheltered the little assemblies from the rays of the summer sun. "Grandma Willoughby's chapel looms up like a beacon through the mist, and is no bad guide by which to steer into port," said the hardy captain of the yacht Sea-Bird, one drizzly afternoon in the late autumn, to a distinguished-looking gentleman, a guest of the owner of the elegant little craft, as he came from below and stood near the wheel. 66 Why is it called Grandma Willoughby's chapel?" asked the gentleman, whose name was Le Noir. As the yacht was running into the harbour outside the little village, Captain "Tom" gave the stranger a history of the new mission. "They have done a wonderful work," said the old man; "and it has all been just through that motherly old lady's simple talking, and that child's sweet singing. You know, sir, the worst of men remember their mothers sometimes; and a good many of the sailors and fishermen, great, rough fellows as they are, but warm at heart, have children of their own at home, and that little girl's birdlike warbling seems somehow to reach out and get hold of folks. "The strangest thing of all is that the old lady's only child, Ben Willoughby, the little one's father, who had been gone ever since she was a baby, heard a sailor in Liverpool sing one of the hymns he had came thought he would visit the spot. So when Captain Tom ashore on Sunday morning, neatly dressed, and asked the gentleman, half bashfully, if he had a mind to go up to Grandma Willoughby's chapel and hear the lass sing, he assented cordially, and leaving his gay companions at the hotel, started off with the old sea-captain. It was a rough, breezy walk along the hard beach, the angry sea white with the snowy foam that the last night's winds had made on one hand, and the grey cliffs where were situated the scattered houses of the fishermen on the other. Mr. Le Noir was surprised to see so large an audience, and when a pleasant-faced young man, who was teacher of the evening-school just started as well as the new pastor, rose to conduct the services, Captain Tom looked disappointed, and Mr. Le Noir felt as if he had been cheated out of something that was greatly his due. After the sermon, a short and quite instructive one, a jaunty young sailor rose and begged a word from Grandma Willoughby, and a hymn from Alice. In response a voice went up sweet and clear and pure as a bird-call. Mr. Le Noir listened a moment, then rose to his feet and looked anxiously across the room at the little singer. Soon, leaving his place by Captain Tom's side, near the door, he went forward slowly, as if drawn by an invisible chord. There stood Alice, in all her flower-like simplicity and freshness, a fair, slight child, in a crimson dress and white ruffled apron, her pale golden hair hanging in tendrillike curls on her shoulders, her white round throat swelling like a bird's, and her full blue eyes luminous with feeling. Mr. Le Noir dropped into a seat that had been proffered him near the platform, and with the emotions of wonder, incredulity, and pleasure, chasing each other over his pale face, he did not remove his gaze from the child until she had finished the hymn and slipped back with with unconscious grace into her place by her grandmother's side. At the close of the services, Mr. Le Noir approached Mrs. Willoughby and spoke to her. Earnest conversation followed. The old lady looked white and startled, and beckoned her son to come to her. The people, nearly all of whom had noticed the singular demeanour of the stranger, went down the beach in little chatting groups, leaving Ben Willoughby and Mr. Le Noir in the chapel, so engaged in their talk as to be obvious to all surrounders. An hour later, Captain Tom walked back to the port by himself, and before sundown every family in the neighbourhood knew that the fine-looking stranger had gone to Halcyon Cottage to supper. He came to the evening meeting, leading Alice by the hand. After the simple services were over, the stranger stepped forward, and, with a slightly foreign accent, said 66 My name is Philip Le Noir. Eleven years ago this autumn I started with my wife and baby from my home in the south of France to come to America. When we were off the coast of Newfoundland our ship was wrecked in a gale, and nearly all of the passengers and crew perished. "I was separated from my dear ones while in the sea by a falling spar, and was dragged insensible into a boat. I never had a doubt as to the fate of my wife and only child, until I heard little Alice sing to-day. Her face so strikingly resembled her poor dead mother's, and her voice was so much like hers, that I was compelled to make inquiries of her supposed grandmother. "I found that Ben Willoughby, her son, was a sailor on board our ill-fated vessel. He saved little Alice from the wreck, and, believing her parents to have been drowned, he represented to the sympathising strangers on shore that she was his own daughter. "Arriving home, he foolishly, and, as he now says himself, very wickedly, gave out that he had been married, but his wife was drowned at the time our vessel was wrecked, leaving this little babe that he managed to save. He gave the child to Mrs. Willoughby, who, being a lone woman, was delighted with it and gave it a mother's care, as you all know. "To do away with any doubt that might arise as to the identity of the little girl, I will say that Mrs. Willoughby has in her possession a gold clasp-pin which fastened the child's bib, and engraved upon it is the name, 'Alice Le Noir,' which Ben told his mother was his dead wife's name. "So, in presence of you all who have been the devoted friends of the little one, I now claim my lost darling.' Mr. Le Noir held out his arms, and Alice in her winsome innocence flitted into their fatherly shelter, while the eyes of all, both old and young, of that little company were suffused with tears. Alice Le Noir was not asked to leave Grandma Willoughby. Her father enlarged Halcyon Cottage, and beautified the grounds about it so that they might spend their summers there; while in the winter grandma lived with them in their city home. Grandma Willoughby's mission went on prospering. The little village has now become quite a noted summer resort, and the name of the famous new drive and bathing-place is called Halcyon Beach. Alice, now a woman, walks with her children along those sands on the pleasant summer mornings, and when Sunday comes raises her still wonderful voice in song in the mission chapel-always with a prayer of thankfulness in her heart that the echoes of those hymns went out and drew her father to to her, and with a prayer of blessing to rest on kind-hearted Grandmother Willoughby, who taught her to do the duty that lay nearest her hand. DEATH AND AFTERWARDS. BY G. B. FOSTER. "To die; but after this-" Heb. iv. 27. The DEATH is certain. "It is appointed unto men once to die." sentence of "death has passed upon all." Of man it is written : "His days are as grass; as a flower of the field so he flourisheth. For the wind passeth over it, and it is gone; and the place thereof shall know it no more." Our position in life; our success or failure; our being poor or rich; widely known and esteemed, or unimportant and uncared for; all the events of our lives are, humanly speaking, only possibilities and probabilities; but one thing is certain-we must die! But death is uncertain: as to when, or how, or to whom first it may come. 'Tis a solemn thought that the first man who died was a young man; not the father, but the son; that he did not die of old age, or disease, or in any expected way. Death may come to the child who has only just begun the journey of life, as it came to the little daughter of Jairus, only twelve years old; it may come to the youth just entering upon life, with a fair prospect before him, with bright anticipations, and hopeful plans, eager to enter upon the battle of life; or it may come to the old man, with his long race run, as it came to the patriarchs. It may come to the old man, quietly, looked for; to the old man with his family gathered round him, waiting to bid him good-bye, to receive his parting blessing, and to soothe his dying hour, as it came to Jacob; a quiet ending that, to a long life, the days of which he once described, as "few and evil." Death may come to the old man with terrible suddenness, as it came to Eli; poor old easy-going Eli! a sad and sorrowful ending was his! His heart trembled for the safety of the ark of God; so anxious was he that he could not remain in his home, but sat by the wayside to learn the first tidings of how the battle had gone, and the ark and his sons had fared; and when the terrible news arrived, that Israel had fled before the Philistines, that there had been a great slaughter, that Hophni |
