“Did you?” persisted Fina with childish obstinacy.

“Now go,” said Leam, putting her off her lap and rising from her chair in strange disorder.  “You are troublesome and ask too many questions.”

Fina began to cry loudly, and Mr. Dundas, from his library below, heard her.  He came up stairs with his fussy, restless kindness, and opened the door of the room where his two daughters, of nature and by adoption, were.

“Heyday! what’s all this about?” he cried.  “What’s the matter, my little Fina? what are you crying for?  Tut, tut! you should not cry like this, darling; and, Leam,” severely, “you should really keep the child better amused and happy.  She is as good as gold with me:  with you there is always something wrong.”

Fina ran into his arms sobbing.  “Leam is cross,” she said.  “She will not tell me who killed mamma.”

The man’s ruddy face, reddened and roughened with travel, grew white and pitiful.  “God took her away, my darling,” he said with a sob.  “She was too good for me, and He took her to live with the angels in heaven,”

“And Leam’s mamma?  Is she in heaven too with the angels?” asked Fina, opening her eyes wide through their tears,

“I hope so,” Sebastian answered in an altered voice.

Leam covered her face in her hands; then lifting it up, she said imploringly, “Papa, do not talk to her of mamma.  It is sacrilege.”

“I agree with you, Leam,” said Mr, Dundas in a steady voice.  “We meet at the same point, but perhaps by different methods.”

[TO BE CONTINUED.]

LETTERS FROM SOUTH AFRICA

BY LADY BARKER.

    CAPE TOWN, October 16, 1875.

Safe, safe at last, after twenty-four days of nothing but sea and sky, of white-crested waves—­which made no secret of their intention of coming on board whenever they could or of tossing the good ship Edinburgh Castle hither and thither like a child’s plaything—­and of more deceitful sluggish rolling billows, looking tolerably calm to the unseafaring eye, but containing a vast amount of heaving power beneath their slow, undulating water-hills and valleys.  Sometimes sky and sea have been steeped in dazzling haze of golden glare, sometimes brightened to blue of a sapphire depth.  Again, a sudden change of wind has driven up serried clouds from the south and east, and all has been gray and cold and restful to eyes wearied with radiance and glitter of sun and sparkling water.

Never has there been such exceptional weather, although the weather of my acquaintance invariably is exceptional.  No sooner had the outlines of Madeira melted and blended into the soft darkness of a summer night than we appeared to sail straight into tropic heat and a sluggish vapor, brooding on the water like steam from a giant geyser.  This simmering, oily, exhausting temperature carried us close to the line.  “What