The roar of the steam-pipes ceased, the throb of the engines struck the water, and the great steamer steamed away from the quay and out of the plain of the harbor into a wide world of gray waves and wind and rain.  There stood Mackenzie as they passed, the dark figure clearly seen against the pallid colors of the dismal day; and Sheila waved a handkerchief to him until Stornoway and its lighthouse and all the promontories and bays of the great island had faded into the white mists that lay along the horizon.  And then her arm fell to her side, and for a moment she stood bewildered, with a strange look in her eyes of grief, and almost of despair.

“Sheila, my darling, you must go below now,” said her companion:  “you are almost dead with cold.”

She looked at him for a moment, as though she had scarcely heard what he said.  But his eyes were full of pity for her:  he drew her closer to him, and put his arms round her, and then she hid her head in his bosom and sobbed there like a child.

[TO BE CONTINUED.]

THE EMERALD.

Dutens and several others who have written upon gems and precious stones during the last two centuries have asserted that the ancients were unacquainted with the true emerald, and that Heliodorus, when speaking nearly two thousand years ago of “gems green as a meadow in the spring,” or Pliny, when describing stone of a “soft green lustre,” referred to the peridot, the plasma, the malachite, or the far rarer gem, the green sapphire.  But the antiquary has come to the rescue with the treasures of the despoiled mounds of Tuscany, the exposed ashes of Herculaneum and Pompeii, and now exhibits emeralds which were mounted in gold two thousand years before Columbus dreamed of the New World, or Pizarro and his remorseless band gathered the precious stones by the hundred-weight from the spoils of Peru.  Although these specimens of antique jewelry set with emeralds may be numbered by the score or more in the museums and “reliquaries” of Europe, but very few engraved emeralds have descended to us from ancient times:  This rarity is not due to the hardness of the stone, for the ancient lapidaries cut the difficult and still harder sapphire:  therefore we must believe the statement of the early gem-writers that the emerald was exempted from the glyptic art by common consent on account of its beauty and costliness.

The emerald is now one of the rarest of gems, and its scarcity gives rise to the inquiry as to what has become of the abundant shower of emeralds which fairly rained upon Spain during the early days of the conquest of Mexico and Peru, bringing down the value of fine stones to a trifling price.  As with all commercial articles, there is a waste and loss to be accounted for during the wear of three centuries, but this alone will not explain their present rarity in civilized countries.  Even in the times of Charles II., when the destitution of the country was