Let us express our admiration of so well-appointed an abode with cautious terms, and let us say that we might wonder if any one could help longing for such a home.  Let us be careful that we do not betray ourselves by asking after modern improvements, as you, O Mask, might do, but you are not house-hunting to-day.

“Yes, this is comfortable and delightful, but it has one drawback.  There is no spring in the whole enclosure; but we try to make up for it by wells, or rather fountains.  But along this wonderful shore you have only to dig a little and there oozes out at once—­I cannot call it water, a humor rather, which is unsophisticated brine, on account of the sea so near by, I suppose.  Those forests supply us with wood:  Ostia supplies us with everything else that cannot be got in yonder village.  You see how I live and enjoy myself, and you must be a very ingrained cit indeed if you do not instantly decide to settle down amongst us.  There is a little farm not far off:  let me negotiate it for you.”

It is time for us to vanish, for he will next propose to buy the Hortensian villa from the improvident prodigal who holds it, and will make you settle down here in spite of yourself, and so make a respectable heathen out of you; for of course you have not the courage to whisper in his ear that you are a Christian:  his oven is not yet cooled down.

But now own, as we are back in the nineteenth century without a single hair singed, does not C.P.C.  Secundus live well as a man who is upright, just, loving his family, honoring and serving the emperor, attending to his own business and enjoying his vacations in a gentlemanly way, though he will become a heathen persecutor before he dies?

A.A.B.

A PRINCESS OF THULE.

BY WILLIAM BLACK, AUTHOR OF “THE STRANGE ADVENTURES OF A PHAETON.”

CHAPTER XVI.

EXCHANGES.

Just as Frank Lavender went down stairs to meet Ingram, a letter which had been forwarded from London was brought to Sheila.  It bore the Lewis postmark, and she guessed it was from Duncan, for she had told Mairi to ask the tall keeper to write, and she knew he would hasten to obey her request at any sacrifice of comfort to himself.  Sheila sat down to read the letter in a happy frame of mind.  She had every confidence that all her troubles were about to be removed now that her good friend Ingram had come to her husband; and here was a message to her from her home that seemed, even before she read it, to beg of her to come thither light-hearted and joyous.  This was what she read: 

  “BORVABOST, THE ISLAND OF LEWS,
  “the third Aug., 18——.