* * * * *

It was thirty-three years after the interview just related that an American army was once more arrayed against the troops of England; but the scene was transferred from the banks of the Hudson to those of the Niagara.

The body of Washington had long lain mouldering in the tomb, but his name was hourly receiving new lustre as his worth and integrity became more visible.

The sound of cannon and musketry was heard above the roar of the cataract.  On both sides repeated and bloody charges had been made.  While the action was raging an old man wandering near was seen to throw down suddenly a bundle he was carrying and to seize a musket from a fallen soldier.  He plunged headlong into the thick of the fight, and bore himself as valiantly as the best of the American soldiers.  When, in the evening, the order was given to the shattered troops to return to camp, Captain Wharton Dunwoodie found that his lieutenant was missing, and taking a lighted fusee, he went himself in quest of the body.  The lieutenant was found on the side of the hill seated with great composure, but unable to walk from a fractured leg.

“Ah, dear Tom,” exclaimed Dunwoodie, “I knew I should find you the nearest man to the enemy!”

“No,” said the lieutenant.  “There is a brave fellow nearer than myself.  He rushed out of our smoke to make a prisoner, and he never came back.  He lies just over the hillock.”

Dunwoodie went to the spot and found an aged stranger.  He lay on his back, his eyes closed as if in slumber, and his hands pressed on his breast contained something that glittered like silver.

The subject of his care was a tin box, through which the bullet had pierced to find a way to his heart, and the dying moments of the old man must have been passed in drawing it from his bosom.

Dunwoodie opened it, and found a paper on which he read: 

“Circumstances of political importance, which involve the lives and fortunes of many, have hitherto kept secret what this paper reveals.  Harvey Birch has for years been a faithful and unrequited servant of his country.  Though man does not, may God reward him for his conduct!  GEO. WASHINGTON.”

It was the spy of the neutral ground, who died as he had lived, devoted to his country.

* * * * *

MRS. CRAIK

John Halifax, Gentleman

      Dinah Maria Mulock, whose fame as a novelist rests entirely
     on “John Halifax, Gentleman,” was born at Stoke-upon-Trent,
     England, on April 20, 1826.  She was thirty-one when “John
     Halifax” came out, and immediately found herself one of the
     most popular novelists, her story having a great vogue
     throughout the English-speaking world, and being translated
     into half a dozen languages, including Greek and Russian.  In