The great door was flung open.  He entered,—­the same tall warrior, slim, and beautiful, blazing in shining steel.  He approached the Prince’s throne, supported on each side by a friend likewise in armor.  He knelt gracefully on one knee.

“I come,” said he in a voice trembling with emotion, “to claim, as per advertisement, the hand of the lovely Lady Helen.”  And he held out a copy of the Allgemeine Zeitung as he spoke.

“Art thou noble, Sir Knight?” asked the Prince of Cleves.

“As noble as yourself,” answered the kneeling steel.

“Who answers for thee?”

“I, Karl, Margrave of Godesberg, his father!” said the knight on the right hand, lifting up his visor.

“And I—­Ludwig, Count of Hombourg, his godfather!” said the knight on the left, doing likewise.

The kneeling knight lifted up his visor now, and looked on Helen.

“I knew it was,” said she, and fainted as she saw Otto the Archer.

But she was soon brought to, gentles, as I have small need to tell ye.  In a very few days after, a great marriage took place at Cleves under the patronage of Saint Bugo, Saint Buffo, and Saint Bendigo.  After the marriage ceremony, the happiest and handsomest pair in the world drove off in a chaise-and-four, to pass the honeymoon at Kissingen.  The Lady Theodora, whom we left locked up in her convent a long while since, was prevailed upon to come back to Godesberg, where she was reconciled to her husband.  Jealous of her daughter-in-law, she idolized her son, and spoiled all her little grandchildren.  And so all are happy, and my simple tale is done.

I read it in an old, old book, in a mouldy old circulating library.  ’Twas written in the French tongue, by the noble Alexandre Dumas; but ’tis probable that he stole it from some other, and that the other had filched it from a former tale-teller.  For nothing is new under the sun.  Things die and are reproduced only.  And so it is that the forgotten tale of the great Dumas reappears under the signature of

Theresa MACWHIRTER.

Whistlebinkie, N.B., December 1.

REBECCA AND ROWENA.

A romance upon romance.

By Mr. Michael Angelo TITMARSH.

CHAPTER I.

The overture.—­Commencement of the business.

Well-beloved novel-readers and gentle patronesses of romance, assuredly it has often occurred to every one of you, that the books we delight in have very unsatisfactory conclusions, and end quite prematurely with page 320 of the third volume.  At that epoch of the history it is well known that the hero is seldom more than thirty years old, and the heroine by consequence some seven or eight years younger; and I would ask