Through some misunderstanding, we failed to dine in the refectory, as the monks desired, and their hospitable regret on this account was the only shade on our enjoyment of the visit.  Alexis remained, in order to complete his devotions by partaking the Communion on the following Sabbath; but as the anniversary solemnities closed at noon, the crowd of pilgrims prepared to return home.  The Valamo, too, sounded her warning bell, so we left the monastery as friends where we had arrived as strangers, and went on board.  Boat after boat, gunwale-deep with the gay Carelians, rowed down the inlet, and in the space of half an hour but a few stragglers were left of all the multitude.  Some of the monks came down to say another good-bye, and the under-abbot, blessing R., made the sign of the cross upon his brow and breast.

When we reached the golden dome of St. Nicholas, at the outlet of the harbor, the boats had set their sails, and the lake was no longer lonely.  Scores of white wings gleamed in the sun, as they scattered away in radii from the central and sacred point, some north, some east, and some veering south around Holy Island.  Sergius and Herrmann gave them smooth seas, and light, favorable airs; for the least roughness would have carried them, overladen as they were, to the bottom.  Once more the bells of Valaam chimed farewell, and we turned the point to the westward, steering back to Kexholm.

Late that night we reached our old moorage at Konewitz, and on Saturday, at the appointed hour, landed in St. Petersburg.  We carried the white cross at the fore as we descended the Neva, and the bells of the churches along the banks welcomed our return.  And now, as I recall those five days among the islands of the Northern Lake, I see that it is good to go on a pilgrimage, even if one is not a pilgrim.

* * * * *

WET-WEATHER WORK.

BY A FARMER.

VI.

I begin my day with a canny Scot, who was born in Edinburgh in 1726, near which city his father conducted a large market-garden.  As a youth, aged nineteen, John Abercrombie (for it is of him I make companion this wet morning) saw the Battle of Preston Pans, at which the Highlanders pushed the King’s-men in defeat to the very foot of his father’s garden-wall.  Whether he shouldered a matchlock for the Castle-people and Sir John Hope, or merely looked over from the kale-beds at the victorious fighters for Prince Charley, I cannot learn; it is certain only that before Culloden, and the final discomfiture of the Pretender, he avowed himself a good King’s-man, and in many an after-year, over his pipe and his ale, told the story of the battle which surged wrathfully around his father’s kale-garden by Preston Pans.