when the missing husband reappeared and tormented them both.  The girl he treated shockingly, and it was in a fit of rage at his abuse of her that Lester killed him; but appearances were all against the deed, and he was convicted of murder in the second degree and sentenced for life.  Edward is kind and discriminating, and he pitied him.  Lester told his story freely, and my husband gained his lasting gratitude by taking care of the wretched girl and paying her passage in a vessel bound for her native town in Mexico.  The only favor we could show him here was to separate him from the wretches in the common prison by making him a ‘trusty’ or prison-servant.  He understood our motive in doing so, and was very thankful and most reliable.  What we owe him to-day you know:  he makes light of it, protesting that he only picked up Nell from the gulch where the escaped convicts had dropped her on their way to the hills; but he cannot lessen the debt:  it is too great to be calculated even.”

The subsequent report proved that twenty-eight prisoners had conspired to effect the break, and by secreting the tools they wrought with in their sleeves passed in on Saturday from the wall-building to cut an entrance through the ceiling of their own corridor into the loft above Mr. Foster’s room, through which they dropped while the family were at dinner, choosing that hour so as to produce a surprise and secure the child, who always went below with Lester to help carry up the coffee.  Of the whole number, five were killed outright and six wounded:  twelve escaped uninjured, but were nearly all afterward retaken; and five repented their share in the movement or lacked courage to carry it out, and so remained in the prison.  The most interesting item of the whole came to me at San Francisco in my friend’s letter.  It said:  “We are looking forward with great delight to your visit, and planning every pleasure our sterile life can yield to make it enjoyable.  But you will not see Lester:  he is gone.  His pardon, full and entire in view of his courage and fidelity, and the manly stand he took against the murderous plotters, came on Monday last, and at nightfall he left the prison to go by the stage to meet the midnight train.  ‘To Mexico!’ were his last words to us.  Heaven bless him, and grant him wisdom and courage to retrieve the past and open a fair bright future!”

MARGARET HOSMER.

FAREWELL.

    [From Friederich Bodenstedt’s Aus dem Nachlasse
    Mirza-Schaffys.]

  Aloft the moon in heaven’s dome. 
    Sultry the night, tempests foretelling: 
  For the last time before I roam
    I see the surf in splendor swelling.

  A ship glides by, a shadowy form,
    Faint roseate lights around me sparkle,
  A gathering mist precedes the storm,
    And far-off forest tree-tops darkle.

  The silver-crested waves are lashing
    The pebbly shore tumultuously: 
  Absorbed I watch their ceaseless dashing,
    Myself as still as bush or tree.