Down in the bottom of the hollow, the turf had been cut up and carried off, and there lay the bones of an old horse bleaching in the sun.  There was only a little stump left of the acorn tree, with a few withered branches.  ‘Isn’t it a sin, and a shame!’ said Alfred, indignantly.  ‘I never want to come here again,’ murmured Charlie; and I sat down on the stump and cried.  If all the world had been looking at me I couldn’t have helped it.

“Then I thought how strangely everything was changing around me.  Nothing appeared the same to me, save the sun and stars and the broad blue sea.  Father and mother, brothers and sisters, and the great world itself, were all changing.  I too was changed.  Time and study, with daily trial, were making me an altogether different being from what I had been, and I knew that the finger of the Almighty was writing lessons upon my heart, which I could never forget; no, not through all eternity.  I wept; and then a truth—­a great and a good one—­rose in my heart, like the morning star, for I knew, at that moment, that all these changes were but the lessons which the angel teachers are giving us, to fit us for higher duties in the world to come.  The memory of that beautiful spot is as fresh and fair in my heart as ever, and the lesson which I learned there has had a blessed influence upon my life; for now, when I feel sad and disheartened, I strive to keep my eye fixed on the great point to which we all tend, forgetting the little sorrows that lie between.  And I hear the calm sweet voice of him who died on Calvary, saying, ’fear not; I am thy friend and brother.  I too have dwelt in the flesh and know its conflicts and trials; trust in me, for I am the same, yesterday, to-day, and forever.’

“Hark! don’t I hear the clock strike?—­eight, nine, ten.  O, naughty children! when I only came in here to stop ten minutes; and now you have kept me here till ten o’clock!  Only think how dark it is, and what a long way over to the green.  I guess you will be sorry, if you should hear, in the morning, that I had walked off the bridge into the mill-brook, or fallen into the cistern on the Green.”

“Oh aunt Lissa! as if there wasn’t any fence to the bridge, and a cover on the cistern, with a stone on it.  You needn’t try to frighten us in that way.”

“Well then, let me go, lest grandmother should feel frightened; but first you must pay me for telling you a story.”

“Well, how much do you ask?”

“Oh, not much; only a kiss from each of you.”

“That you may have and welcome, and as many as you please.”

“Good night.”

INDUSTRY AND IDLENESS.

The necessity of cultivating industrious habits in early youth was never more fully exemplified than in the case of two girls, daughters of the same mother, who were born in a village about forty miles from the city of Boston.

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