"After a while I was tired and knew it was time to think myself home again! This time I came around the path by the chapel, and through the pasture where the bad cow feeds. She couldn't chase me!

"There I was again on my bedwhat do you think? I fell asleep and never waked until Bob and Janet came tip-toeing in at the door.

"If only you had been there,' said Janet.

"I was,' said I.

"The children stared at me, but I only laughed. One can never explain such things to people who have feet! "Dear Colonel Colonel Fairmont, Fairmont, I am frightened to have written you such. a long letter, but-your feet must have shown you the way to so many more places than mine!

"Your little friend,

"ALICE ROMAINE.

"I could never tell you how I love your letter. Only to think that you should care to write so long and beautifully to a little stranger-girl like me! And that you should say I had taught you something!

"And your plan is such a lovely one that 'we should take each other along when we go out thinking.' Only you know so many wonderful places, and I so few and quiet ones.

"But I do believe you would like me to take you to the 'Old Garden' to-day. One must choose a morning like this, bright and cool, because it is a long way down the beach.

"We are going over the hill now. On our left is the bay, with the bare sands blue as steel, and fringed with thousands of gulls at their breakfast. Hark! do you hear the little sandpeep cheeping to her roly-poly chick

ens?

"Over on the other side of the point, you see the sparkle of the open sea, with nothing, as father says, 'between us and Spain.'

"Now we are coming to the surf beach. Hear the bathers laughing and shrieking as the waves break over them!

"Out there are the 'Seal Rocks.' A boy I know caught a young seal there and brought it home in his boat. He petted and fed it for a few days, and then carried it back again. But it wouldn't stay. It swam ashore and then pulled itself by its awkward little flippers all the way to the boy's house, because it loved him!

"Now we are on the hard sand, with the great rollers racing in and breaking with a splendid boom. Let us fly-faster-faster!

"The path to the garden leads us from the shore and runs along between willows-nobody knows how old— bent, and twisted as if by wicked elves of the storm. But under the willows it is all cool and sweet, with the loveliest wild flowers, daisies and columbine, and blue and yellow violets, and ferns curling like soft, green feathers.

"Hark! do you hear the water tinkling? The garden is planted in an oval-shaped ground with a tiny moat all around it, where a little stream of clear, cold water runs, and turns a baby water-wheel. I don't know what the moat is for, unless to keep the fairies inside. No fairy can. cross running water you remember. Poor little green-coated people! One wonders if they look wistfully over into the big world. For a prison is a prison, even when it is a garden!

"Here we are among the poppies, all yellow and white, and splendid scarlet, pulling at their stems like tiedup butterflies. There are none but old-fashioned flowers in the garden. Here are the pansies-little faces of princesses in velvet hoods and ruffs, no two alike. The 'black-eyed Susans' make us laugh,-they are so pert and saucy. Where does this spicy smell come from as if it were the poor shutin fairies' bake-day? The clove-pinks, to be sure, all rosy and fringy, like little country women dressed for Sunday! Here are the petunias-silly things that wear their furs in summer, and 'sweet williams,' and stiff, blue spikes of monks-hood, portulaca carpeting the ground in a little star-pat

tern, forget-me-nots blue as skysweepings, honeysuckles with humming-birds' bills at their hearts, climbing morning-glories, and roses, roses -big and little-blush roses and mossbuds, and yellow and white buttons, and climbing ramblers, lovely but not sweet! And the hollyhocks, surely you love them, dear Colonel, for they are soldiers, marching, row on row, tall and stately and solemn, with bumble-bees for drummers. I used to catch bees in the blossoms and hold the petals fast to hear them buzz and fume. But I would never do it now. What are wings for if not for the air and the sky?"

"I am so glad of the photograph. Before, when we went thinking together, I could not see your face. Now I seem always to have known it. Do you know-but you can't-how can't-how kind your eyes are?

"It is Sunday afternoon, dear Colonel-brother, and we are going to church in the 'Cathedral' wood. The path leads between tall brakes and ferns, and see!-there is a Jack-in-thepulpit, so big that you can almost hear him preaching!

"Now we are among the spruces. They are tall and straight like pillars. The branches begin high up, arching into a green roof, where the wind makes a lovely breathing noise like a great organ playing softly in the dark. That high, square rock is the pulpit. and these are the low, moss-cushioned seats. The birds are the choir. Hear what the song-sparrow sings:

""Praise, praise, praise

The Lord, joyfully, joyfully!'

Another answers him, and a robin and a vireo flute together, and, behind it all, sounds the lap, lap of the sea.

"Dear Colonel-brother, it is such a place to pray in!

"There was a dreadful storm last night, and a a great schooner went ashore on the Sargent rocks and broke in pieces. They say it was her first. voyage, and she had never made any

What a strange, sad

port at all. thing to happen!

"We are wading through the long meadow-grass, and there are acres and acres of daisies and buttercups, and, down there in the salt marshes, the red samphire is creeping like a flame. I do not like the first golden-rod, because it means that fall is coming, and winter. But, if there were no winter, where would be the sweetness of spring? Just as one never knows what comfort is without pain.

"The sun is going down behind a fog, and there is a silver sunset,—not one bit of color in the sky, or on the water or the sands, but a wonderful white shining that seems to come from everywhere and nowhere.

"I am showing you the 'Log'-a great timber on the shore thrust under tons and tons of rock. It has been there for a hundred and fifty years, and maybe longer. Perhaps it was the mast of some wrecked ship. And the drowned people, and those who loved them, and watched and waited at home, have all been dead so long-so long!

"There was such a thick fog this morning that I could not see a yard beyond my window. Then-all at once--the sun came out and a wind rose out of the sea, and lifted the fog and tore it all in pieces and sent them scudding like ragged ghosts back over the meadows. And there was the slope, the spruces, and, far off, the blue sparkle of the sea! Perhaps lovely things are covered up sometimes so that they sha'n't seem too common. And maybe we shall find out that Heaven is just natural and what we best love here.

"There is a little, old, family buryingground here at the top of the knoll. They say that the first who was buried here, was an old man who chose the place because, he said, 'he should want to get up of nights and look around.' One of the stones is marked for a little girl, 'Alice'-my name-and she has been sleeping there a hundred years.

"If one must always be quiet, one

has so much time to think of other people who have trouble, and to be sorry for them.

"Skipper Wiggins is eighty years old. He has rheumatism so that he must sit in his chair all day long, and he cannot work any more. He has only a little bit of money, but he says he is rich. 'Haven't I got a book of the Lord's coupon-bonds?' he says. 'When I need anything I just cut off a promise.'

"We are on the beach and the moon makes a broad path across the water. A little boat is rocking among the sparkles, and the people in it are singing. Listen!

""But, if the zephyr die,

If the bird brood apart,
Or waves in slumber lie,-
O listen with thy heart!'

"Dear Colonel-brother, I have your lovely present. In all my life I never saw so beautiful a picture. The deep wood and the light between the treetrunks, the wonderful green pool, so still that the silence folds me like soft arms, the ferns and flowers that nod and beckon, and the deer-the pretty, graceful creature-drinking at the edge of the water! I will tell you why the picture makes me so very, very glad, though the reason is a secret from all but you.

"I am sometimes so tired lately that I can hardly go out thinking even with

you, dear Colonel-brother. And when these tired times come, I can just creep into the picture and lie on the moss, and feel the sunshine trickle through the leaves, and be so very still that the deer will not be afraid of me. Do you understand? But you always understand, dear Colonel-brother.

"I keep all your letters under my pillow. What wonderful places you have shown me! Don't you believe that Heaven will be something like this-that thinking will mean going?

"I have something to tell you, but you must not let it make you sorry, because I am not. I sha'n't be here much longer!

"I can't write much because the pencil shakes so.

"I have asked mother to cut off a lock of my hair for you. It will be a little bit of me to keep.

"Dear Colonel-brother, we are sitting in the picture-by the pool-you and I. From somewhere not from the sun-there is light. Perhaps it is what the verse means: "The nations of them that are saved, shall walk'-think of that!'shall walk in the light of it.'"

When the old negro appeared next day, Mrs. Vavasour was waiting for him.

"I do not think your Marse Tom would wish us to burn the letters, Joe," said she, laying her hand gently on his arm.

"Will you trust me to keep them?" A look of grateful relief smoothed the tense wrinkles of the black face.

"T'ank yo' kin'ly, Miss Julie. I says to myself as you'd know de bes'." He turned to go, hesitated, and came back.

"Miss Julie," he said, in a trembling voice, "don't yo' fink as mabbe de li'l' gal was a-waitin' for Marse Tom on de oder side of de door?"

tains dividing the two valleys, and joining the larger river at Balmuccia, five miles above Varallo. The upper part of this second valley separates into two smaller defiles, called the Val d'Egua and the Val Piccola. Still nearer Varallo, across another moun

tain chain parallel to the Val Sermenza, is the Val Mastalone, again with its river rushing through the rocky gorge and joining the Sesia just without the town and beside the Sacro Monte. All these valleys, large and small, are dotted with many a little village and tiny hamlet of but a dozen houses, perched high on the mountain side, or lying on the grassy meadows beside the stream. Some of these communities are the German colonies, previously alluded to, notably Rima and Rimella in the Val Piccola and the Val Mastalone, where the German tongue is still spoken, though somewhat corrupt from intercourse with the neighboring hamlets, and where the orderly and thrifty habits of the Fatherland are still pre

ley of the Sesia winds close to the river which flows down from the great mountain itself. Parallel with it for some distance runs the Val Sermenza, named from its river fed by the melting snows and rains of the chain of moun