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LARGE and happy family of rabbits were one day greatly disturbed by some sounds that set their hearts beating wildly, and caused them to open their eyes very wide in terror and perplexity. Sounds which, whenever heard, never failed to put them in a great flutter, and to cause them to take the liveliest advantage of their legs in flight-the barking of a dog!

This barking appeared to them as though the dog was outside their back-door, or rather where their back-door should be if they had one, which they had not, the only way to their home being by a very winding and narrow path in quite a contrary direction.

But so certain were the rabbits that the terrible dog was near them-very near themsomewhere behind, that they felt obliged to fly, and away they rushed, helter-skelter, towards the opening of their burrow, and without being wise enough to wonder whether or no one or

two of their enemies, who did not happen to be barking, might be waiting to catch them, they all rushed right outside.

No, there was no savage dog lying in wait, but just below there was a strange sight,-the tail and three parts of a doggie, whose head and shoulders were inside an old drain-pipe, and the sound of whose voice appeared to come from their back-door.

So, that was what it all meant; the old pipe ran along under the ground past the end of their burrow, and caused the dog's voice to sound so dangerously near to our poor bunnies.

And the silly creatures! Had they stolen quietly back to their house, all would have been well, but instead they fidgeted and worried about outside till the doggie pulled his head out, sniffed, looked up, spied them, and gave chase, and, I am sorry to say, caught and killed the poor mother bunnie.

one more reasonable than his mother's, at any

rate.

I am grieved to tell you though, that Joe was not always obedient, and while not disobeying his mother's commands and wishes for the sake of disobedience, often did things the very reverse of what she wished, and flatly disobeyed her instructions, from sheer carelessness. Mother's nervous,' Joe would tell himself in the middle of some scrape; I know how to take care of myself."

One day it was half-past four in the afternoon, a grey wintry sky overhead, a cold gusty wind rattling the loose slates and sending the smoke from the chimneys all ways at once; the sea, sullen and gloomy like the sky, and broken and fretted here and there with the spiteful, crooked wind,-Joe stood on the quay, having just left school, and wondered how he could get put on board his father's ship, the Osprey, then lying opposite him in the stream, about a quarter of a mile off.

'I should just be in time for one of those jolly suppers with the men in the forec's'le,' Joe reflected; 'those delicious fried potatoes, and sailors' beef, to say nothing of ship-biscuit, and some to bring ashore. Boat ahoy! do you mind putting me on board the Osprey, there, please?'

Joe was putting his question to two sailors just then rowing past in a boat, on their way most likely to their own vessel lying somewhere beyond.

'What's the Osprey to do with you?' shouted back one of the men. They had ceased rowing to ask the question, and their boat was beginning to drift back with the strong tide.

'Cap'en's son,' replied Joe, having no doubt the fact was certain to gain him a passage, and making his way down the steps as he spoke.

A short muttered conversation between the two men, which, of course, Joe did not hear, succeeded to the boy's words, and as he reached the foot of the steps a sharp motion of the bow oar brought the boat's head around towards him, and presently he had jumped in and was being rowed out into the now fast-gathering twilight.

The Captain of the Osprey came home this evening-as usual, when his ship was in portabout six o'clock; and he had sat down to supper-late on his account-and cast his eye

over the assembled group several times before he asked the question, Why, where's young Joe, then, that he don't come to his supper?'

Everybody spoke at once, and a number of questions and replies followed; but in the end it had to be confessed that no one could tell where Joe was.

'He never came in from school,' said his elder sister.

I saw him going to school,' said a younger one. 'He had been rolling his trousers up again to keep them clean, and they were all in creases, and dripping wet. He'd just come from the beach then, and was a nice pickle to go to school!'

'A good-for-nothing young dog!' said his father, his voice sounding from his drinking-cup..

'I saw him after school,' said Nelly, who was nearly of Joe's own age, and went to school herself; just a minute; he was with Robbie Rayburne then, and they went away together.'

Then run down to Mrs. Rayburne's, my dear,' said Joe's mother, and see if Robbie's home.' Ah! run now, and don't be a month gone,' added the Captain, calling the missing Joe at the same time, aventur'some young Turk,' a 'mischievous rascal,' and the more usual and familiar 'good-for-nothing young dog,' till Nellie was out of hearing.

Nellie gained little by her errand. Robbie Rayburne was not only at home, but had come straight home from school.

Joe only came down the road with me,' explained Robbie: 'he went off down to the quay. He was going aboard the Osprey, he said, if he could get some one to take him in their boat.' That was all Robbie could tell, and that was the news Nellie carried home.

'What time did you leave the vessel, Father?' asked the Captain's wife of her husband.

About a quarter to six,' he replied; the boy had never been there up to that time, I know; and he certainly was nowhere about the town quay when I landed—a good-for-nothing young dog! I wish I could catch hold of him at this moment; if I didn't give him a rope's end, I'd be flogged myself!'

Joe's mother also wished she could catch hold of Joe at that moment, but for a very different though perhaps not so wise a reason. Joe never came home that night. (To be continued.)

T

HOUGH your sins be as scarlet, they shall be as wool.' Slowly, but distinctly and reverently, the blind man read the words from his Bible with the raised letters, and a young man, standing near, leaning his head thoughtfully upon his hand, heard them with a strange unusual feeling at his heart.

As he listened his thoughts flew back to days gone by when he had been a happy, careless boy, living with his widowed mother in a far-off country town. Now he was an outcast- -a felon, the companion of thieves like himself; and his home a wretched lodging, out of the way of the police, in a narrow court off Rateliff Highway.

How those early days haunted him now! How the sun used to shine upon those pleasant, far-away, green meadows, or through the leafy branches of the trees in the cool, scented lanes; upon the old home with its honeysuckle porch; on the old church, with the hoarse rooks sailing over the tower and cawing dreamily to each other as they went; upon the school-house, and the merry, shouting throng bursting through the open doorway, and tossing their caps in the air in the very abundance of their innocent happi

ness! Oh, what days of sin and shame were these later days in comparison!

The blind man read on; but the thief heard him not, but turned his face to the sullen river flowing beneath the bridge, and the tears ran down his cheeks like rain as he thought of his wasted life.

'It's been every bit wrong from the beginning,'

he said to himself, 'since I left the dear old home "to see life" as I said, and broke my mother's heart by my misconduct not long after. London, bad company, and drink, have done it all with me, and now

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Now, Though your sins be as scarlet, they shall be as wool.' Oh, this merciful, loving message could not be meant to include him? Ah, yes; but it did. His mother's prayers, his early training at the Sunday school, his remembrance of all the Bible said about the freedom of Salvation for the guiltiest repentant sinners, told him he might take the sweet message to himself.

And he took it to heart, and, forsaking his old sins and companions, became in the end a useful member of society, at peace with his God and in harmony with his fellow-men. H. G.

OR many days and weeks Bryda lay on her sick bed, made as comfortable as possible for her by a native rezai, or quilted rug, which her kind nurses carefully wrapped round her whenever a shivering fit came on. It was evening, and the hot sun was sinking to rest. A light breeze had sprung up; it came into the hut, for the curtain was drawn back, and the door set wide open. It fanned Bryda's forehead, and she woke and looked round her. Her eyes met those of the old Jain, who sat cross-legged and motionless on a mat, watching her.

She had many times already looked at him, but until this evening her mind had been wandering, and she had not known him, but had talked on in English, fancying herself

somewhere else. No doctor had come to see her kind watching and tender care had been her only medicines; buffalo milk her chief food.

Her old friend held a little saucer of this to her lips now, and she gratefully took a long draught. A smile came upon the old man's grave face as he sat down again, still without speaking. Bryda looked at him for a long time also without a word, trying to remember who he was, and how she came to be in this strange place.

She looked round the hut. Its walls were all of whitish mud, the floor being of the same substance. There were two little square windows of very poor glass, with clumsy wooden shutters to close if required. A stout framework of bamboo supported the walls and the thatched roof.

For furniture, the charpoy on which Bryda