but invisible, mallet was wielded.  Nothing could exceed the kindness with which I was treated.  No words can do justice to the thoughtful and delicate hospitality which I received.  But I declare to you this mysterious visitation was too much for me.  It was impossible to listen to it at night without depression.  Perhaps my nerves were unstrung.  The tone of my system might be enfeebled.  The fault, I dare say, was in myself.  But to lie awake, as I often did, during long hours from pain, and to hear this muffled, hollow, droning, mysterious noise passing from room to room about the house—­to listen to it now above me, now below me, now quite close to my chamber door, and in a couple of seconds rising up from the very center of the hall, and to be all the while utterly unable to account for it, fevered me.  I curtailed my visit; but the nursing and kindness I received are graven in my memory.  Bearing all these matters in remembrance,” said the major firmly; “recollecting my own strange experience, how can I discredit Mr. Ancelot’s narrative? I firmly believe it.  We are surrounded by mysteries.  The invisible world enshrouds us.  Spirits have their regards intently fixed on us, and a very slight vail divides us.  Spurn the vulgar error,” said the old veteran stoutly, “that a soldier must be a scoffer.  I remember the holy record, and its thrilling declaration; ’We are a spectacle unto angels and unto men.’” A pause ensued, which neither of the listeners cared to terminate.  At length he spoke again.  “The dews are falling.  The last pleasure-boat has landed its fair freight upon the Denne.  The breeze from the sea blows keenly, and warns us elderlies to think of our night-possets and our pillows.  Trevor, give me your arm.  Happy dog!  You have no bullet in your back!  May you never know the agony of existence when even to move some dozen yards is torture!”

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We should do our utmost to encourage the Beautiful, for the Useful encourages itself.—­Goethe.

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[From the Ladies’ Companion.]

THE LADY LUCY’S SECRET.

BY MRS. NEWTON CROSLAND.

  “With clamourous demands of debt, broken bonds,
   And the detention of long due debts,
   Against my honor.”—­TIMON OF ATHENS

  “How in the turmoil of life can love stand,
   Where there is not one heart, and one mouth, and one hand?”
   LONGFELLOW

In a charming morning-room of a charming London house, neighboring Hyde-Park, there lounged over the breakfast-table a wedded pair,—­the rich merchant Farrars, and his young wife, the Lady Lucy.  Five years of married life had, in most respects, more than realized the brightest hopes which had been born and cherished in the dreaming days of courtship.  Till the age of forty, the active mind of Walter Ferrars had been chiefly occupied by business,—­not in mean shuffling, speculative dealings, but on the broad basis of large transactions and an almost chivalrous system of integrity.