We sprang again into our saddles, crossed again the plain and the bridge over the Jordan, and pushed over the hills toward Deir Mimas.  Our horses were used up even more completely than ourselves; and when the Kurd lost the way, and took us a long and unnecessary detour, we felt it so keenly that we said nothing.  It was long after nightfall when we dismounted at the door of a native Christian preacher’s house at Deir Mimas.  But the struggles of the day were not ended.  The Kurd stalked in, and, saying that here his duties ended, demanded a sum at least a third greater than that agreed upon.  We fought him with everything but weapons, and, when we separated, the Kurd’s pockets were heavier and his heart lighter than was consistent with the eternal fitness of things.  We had only to follow a well-made road the next day to Sidon; and there, as we sat at a table spread with a clean, white cloth, on which were plates, and knives and forks, and cups and saucers, and spoons, we concluded that our roughing it in Palestine had at least convinced us that civilized man makes himself want many convenient if not wholly necessary things.

CHARLES WOOD.

* * * * *

THE EYE OF A NEEDLE.

“I don’t know which way to turn to get the fall tailorin’ done, now Mirandy Daggett’s been and had money left to her,” said, in an aggrieved tone, the buxom mistress of the Wei by poor-farm, as she briskly hung festoons of pumpkins, garners of the yellowest of the summer sunshine, along the beams of the great wood-shed chamber.  “The widow Pingree, from over Sharon way, she’s so wasteful, I declare it makes my blood run cold to see her cuttin’ and slashin’ into good cloth; and Emerline Johnson she’s so scantin’, the menfolks all looks like scarecrows, with their legs and arms a-stickin’ out. Mirandy’s got faculty.”

“Seems if ‘twa’n’t no more’n yesterday that I was carryin’ victuals to keep that child from starvin’, and now she’s an heiress, and here I be.  Well, the Lord’s ways ain’t ourn.”

A little old woman, twisted all awry by a paralytic shock, who was feebly assisting the poor-mistress, uttered these reflections in a high-keyed, quavering voice.  She was called old lady Peaseley, and a halo of aristocracy encircled her, although she had been in the poor-house thirty years, for her grandfather had been the first minister of Welby.

“I declare, if there ain’t Mirandy a-comin’ up the lane this blessed minute!  Talk about angels, you know.  Seems if she looked kinder peaked and meachin’, though most gen’ally as pert’s a lizard.  If things was as they used to be, I should jest sing out to her to come right up here; but, bein’ she’s such an heiress, I s’pose I’d better go down and open the front door.”

But before the brisk poor-mistress could reach the front door her visitor had entered, the kitchen.