Of late inquisitiveness had grown upon me. I had much difficulty in refraining from pampering the habit. I pushed the door a little wider and peeped in. I looked into a darkened room; I saw in the gloaming a tumbled bed. A still sick man eyed me with glassy eyes. I felt that one more wrinkle was scrawled upon my face.

The sun was ripe for setting as the maid and I set out upon the white road between the hedges. The doors of the cottages were shut. The flowers in the gardens were in rank disorder and choked with rank weeds. Only one man we saw. He sat outside his cottage door with his grindstone in front of him—a very old shrunken man, busily grinding his scythe. But his fingers were so weak that the steel scarcely grated upon the stone, and made only a low humming sound, soft as the hum of bees in a distant hive.

""Tis Simon, the mower," said the maid; "he be forever grinding his scythe, but, la, he'st too weak to snap a twig," she smiled compassionately.

The grinder never turned his bent head nor stayed his profitless labor.

"All day long," said the maid, "all day long sings the drone of his scythe; and the childer used to sit quiet at the window watching wi' their eyes of mice for the sparks to skip fro' the stone. Their yellow hair was just golden in the green. But the childer a' gone back fro' the window, and all the white summer day the buzz shakes i' the air. Ay, and ' winter. Oh, sir, the sun climbs up sick and sulky, and crawls lik' a fat snail i' the blue, and goes down by the Black Mill, and the darkness eats him up. I do feel that my heart is o' glass and be nigh to breaken' when the chill night sneaks in at the keyhole. I do miss the cluck'n' hens in the sunny dust and the douce-smell'n hay."

I spied furtively at the glazed windows, but no children looked out upon us thence, and the forsaken nests of birds in the thatch were draggled and in wisps like a widow's weeds. Not long after the maid and I came to the village well. The hoary stones were green in patches. The brown shreds of a broken pitcher lay in the dust at our

feet. There I was fain to sit and muse, looking into the still black waters, which seemed to have in hiding the silence of the dead. But my friend called me, and we journeyed on together hand in hand. With each step upon our way I seemed to draw nearer to the thoughts of the antiquated maid at my side. Myself was not left behind, for the pleasure and lustiness of youth took a new (color. Feeble knees and waning courage were carrying me out of the ken of the world. Yet my mind's calm was rather the calm of a child's awakening to the morn than the lazy ease of falling to sleep at the slow coming of night. We climbed a steep and rocky way, full of ruts and holes, and upon our eyes, when we turned an angle of the road and came out from under the gloomy cedars, suddenly shone the red windows of a house standing gaunt and solitary and watchful upon a crest of the hill.

"There be the Grey House," said the maid, kneeling down amidst the long green grass.

The evening was glorious.

Here was left behind the toil and fret of men's business. And while I was looking under my hand towards the brightness, a strange company of men defiled between the iron gates of the house, carrying a burden upon their shoulders. I sat down with the maid by the roadside, and waited until the procession should come up with us. When they were come near I shouted, "Is Mr. Basil Gray at home?"

The weedy men paused. They put down their burden in the dust. They shot furtive glances the one to the other.

"Ay, sir, 'at home' that he be," shrilly laughed a wizened little man who led the way with a lighted lantern and a mattock.

The maid turned to the west. I bent over the box, and read my friend's name upon the lid. Death took me by the hand. Presently the little band proceeded on their way. The maid and I followed afar off. When darkness was come I tottered to my musty snowy chamber in the little inn. The wan child led the way, carrying a candle. I sat at the open window. For a long

time I watched the sexton laboring by the stilly light of his lantern and the yellow crescent moon in the graveyard of the "Village of Old Age."

WALTER RAMAL.

From Temple Bar.

A DAY IN GOA.

If one talks of Bombay to people who have been there too, they invariably clasp their hands, raise their eyes to heaven in ecstasies, and exclaim, "The dear, dear place; the finest city of all India; so thoroughly English! and did you see their railway station, quite the grandest thing out?"

Yes, I did see "quite the grandest thing out," and came away from it out of countenance and in a pet.

A doctor ashore had told me it took but sixteen hours to reach Goa by rail, yet, when ready to start, with all my wraps around me, I found it took fortyeight hours each way. To one a little pressed for time, that seemed rather much of a good thing; so I bent my steps in the direction of Hadji Cassim's steamers.

in

Getting a native, who had half-adozen words of pigeon English on his tongue, to come to my aid, I understood that one of these steamers, the Rajahpuri, was to leave for Goa at noon next day, and to make the run, wind and weather permitting, twenty-eight hours. After bargaining for passage, I hunted up the butler, and gave him a couple of rupees to spend on a chicken in the bazaar, with curry and cheese, and a pinch of coffee for chota hazri. Those little matters of necessity seen to, I took my tiffin very reasonably at the Apollo Bunder, and thereafter went a-shopping, and bought Surat ware, and Kashmir silverwork, and chutney. As for that chutney, it is as well, perhaps, that those who shall have its eating did not see, as I did, its making!

Next morning I took one of our boats and pulled in to the quay alongside which the Rajahpuri lay moored. Aboard her was a mighty throng, but

never a white among them; no, nor yet a soul that had a white man's speech. Our captain, who had come to see the start, stared to see me mix with such a gang, and set me down as mad. Had there been coin to be raked in by the job, well and good; but to thrust oneself on blacks, be shorn of meat and sleep, and run a certain risk of discomposure, and all for a fad! Faugh! "I go on Haj, to the shrine of a great saint," said I, with humility befitting the occasion. But that only made matters sillier still, and we changed the subject of our talk.

In the course of the afternoon a sad mortification overtook me. The Moslem master of the Rajahpuri, and nis "Malam Sahib," or mate, came up, with slate in hand and a book on navigation. On the page of the book held open for inspection lay a problem and six examples. To the five which stood first our master pointed in quick succession, and between each point tapped himself with the tip of his finger, smiled affably, and nodded. At the sixth he frowned, and sighed, and shook his head, Malam Sahib meanwhile politely pressing his slate and pencil on my attention. The problem was quite beyond my power of solution, and our conference broke up with mutual salaams and a dumb show of civil adieux.

My lamplight dinner was eaten at a bench on deck. Later on that which had been my board became my bed also, so that, in this case at least, he who pays for his board pays for his bed likewise.

Fathers and mothers led their offspring-lovely bronze angels-by the hand to see me eat, and between my several mouthfuls I smiled on the company, with motions of gentle salutation. Poor little toddling dears! they were as glad to see a Christian at his food as Christian infants are to see a beast of prey crunch his bone in the Zoo. And if the beast of prey crunches his bone in the same happy spirit of affording instruction and innocent delight as that in which I ate my curry before the multitude, he is a worthy and amiable beast of prey.

After touching at several other native settlements-last and prettiest of which was Angria-with precious islets set like emeralds on a sapphire sea, we skirted a coast of beetling crags and plains of palm, and came to Panjim, and anchored there. Panjim is, indeed, neither more nor less than Nova Goa, and the nearest place to where all the great churches lie. Thus, though our steamer was bound for Marmugao, a little farther on, I came out of her at Panjim, with my bag, and my pillow, and all that was mine. The douaniers, though twirling their moustachios with an air of high authority, were magnificently kind, laying hand on heart with bows of obeisance, and letting my bag pass in unsearched. Now that bag contained a bottle of improper spirits, which had kept me in a little simmer of fidget all along.

Our Scotch steward, told to empty three parts out and then fill up with water, had emptied only about one part out, so that, for purpose of temperate draught, his mixture was useless. Nevertheless, the bottle itself had come in handy. For, as the saint of old made his pillow of stone, so made I the bygone night, my pillow of that whiskey bottle. Well corked, and wrapped in trousers, it had raised my head and given me rest.

The inn at Panjim is the most wretched place of entertainment on the face of this habitable globe: a cowhouse and goat-shed below, a den of thieves and vermin above. So black was the look of all about that, tired as I was, I concluded at once there must be no sleep. All bolts and locks had been cut adrift from both pair of the folding-doors which gave access to my crib, while in the roof above was a trap door, with chinks of light, and "mean whites" affecting to snore. Oppressed by fear that I might, peradventure, be lulled to rest, and drop off unawares,

bly to my succor, in generous emulation, and the night before approaching the shrine of St. Francis Xavier was one of as strict vigil as any poor penitent need wish to keep. The heat was stifling-not a breath of air, no punkah, and right pleasant the Angelus sounded in my ear, heralding the break of day.

My vigil done, I rose with the sun, slew beasts of darkness, now in hot retreat to crannies of the scantling, had chota hazri, and scrambling into a prehistoric vehicle, started for the famous chapel two leagues out. Old Goa, where this chapel with the cathedral and the convents and churches all are, was decimated by fever and cholera in (I think) 1695. After that visitation the survivors shifted their quarters, and built this city of Nova Goa, which its very self looks old to-day, and shows signs of collapse.

The six-mile drive out to old Goa is the prettiest far I have ever taken in the lowlands of India. Deep arms of bluest sea, church-crowned islets, frontage of palm and mango, plumes of waving cane, with many a wayside cross and station. These are the things which catch the eye, as you move along the way.

And they are all backed by most noble views of the Great Western Ghat of Hindoostan.

Crossing a bridge of quaint device, the traveller comes on a causeway nine thousand feet long, bordering the sluggish Mandovi. A broad lagoon and paddy fields lie to his right, with waterbuffaloes wallowing in the foetid mud. These things (with divers stenches) safely passed, comes a gentle ascent into the village of Ribandar: a village of which a pretty account may be had in Dryden's life of our Saint. From Ribandar onward to Goa, the "Rome of the East," our traveller's way is cast in twilight groves, with glorious peeps to seaward. Very pleasant birds cheer him with song, as he wends his pious way. Hard by the woods which fringe that road, stands a pillar of stone, black with age. In cruel days of savagedom gone by, they amputated the hands of such as wrote false news,

and laid them on this pillar. Blest are the penny-a-liners of this nineteenth century, that the days of that bloody pillar are past.

I don't quite see my way to write lucidly of Goa, and be perspicuous; it is none so easy to describe a city which is houseless. I find a shrewd forecast of its present estate, in an old author: "Wild beasts of the desert shall lie there; and their houses shall be full of doleful creatures; and owls shall dwell there, and satyrs shall dance there. . And the wild beasts of the islands shall cry in their desolate houses, and dragons in their pleasant palaces: and her time is near to come, and her days shall not be prolonged." A fair account of Goa, as far as it goes: I wish it had gone further, and saved me pains. But, take York; you, who know York. Thrust yourselves back into the sixteenth century. Conceive "bluff King Hal" (as you love to call that impious monster of lust) to have razed, not convents and abbeys, but the city wall, and every house of lay habitation. So best, perhaps, may you catch some faint glimpse of old Goa. For, of that ancient metropolis, there is nothing now left but its grand cathedral, with a remnant of churches, chapels, convents and monasteries. Of the two which stand last in my list, most are fast falling into roofless disrepair; and the remainder are all but untenanted. I went over one-a building grander than Magdalen or New-a magnificent solitude, with tapestries frayed and tattered, and the very saints looking sorrowful, and nodding to their fall. The sight of them filled me with profound pity. I suppose the Age of Faith really is gone forever. I suppose the goddess of reason (with her twin of trade) reigns supreme to-day.

At the great western gate of Bom Jesus, alighting from my bone-shaker, I stepped quickly into the dim religious light within doors. What I there saw it is not in me to say. I trusted all to photographs, and the photographs are not forthcoming. Besides, the man who goes on an errand of pilgrimage, is not so wide awake to outward

and visible signs as your curious globetrotter or Cook-conducted tourist. Suffice it to say, the splendid propriety of all around was far in excess of what I had been led to look for. The priest, to whose guidance I committed myself, had neither French nor English. Hence, Latin (not quite sterling) was the currency of our exchange. He was a gracious father, and seeing me come so far, had the miraculous relic exposed for my veneration and homage. In their treasure-house (which is itself a church), they brought forth, from carved chests of camphor wood and coffers of dressed cedar, the priceless vessels and vestments with which the piety of Catholic kings and queens has enriched this famous shrine.

After that which had brought me there was accomplished, I came away out of this church and explored: going first to a convent, in front of which stands the finest frangipani tree, I ever saw. The ground beneath was white as driven snow with fallen flowers, and the air, for roods, luscious. That vast conventual pile seemed full of echoes of the past and present emptiness. Cells had their doors broken off, or swinging loose and ant-eaten on a broken hinge. The chapel, though rich in altars and ancient treasures, was disheartening for want of care. The refectory had fallen tiles and rubbish crumbling on its inlaid floor. Just three spiritless black nuns giggled faintly through a grille at the simplicity of a white, who had come all that way to buy a rosary.

Near this convent is the palace of the Inquisition: once of surpassing splendor, now a tree-grown labyrinth of ruins. All about are other religious houses, now suppressed and dismantled. The good people of Bombay will tell you that, in the autos-da-fé of Goa, one hundred and twenty-one persons were burned alive between the years 1600 and 1773. As a matter of fact, out of those one hundred and twenty-one persons, sixty-four were burned in effigy; while, of the rest, most were mercifully strangled before coming to the fire. James the First, during his not long reign, burned more hapless wretches

for impossible witchcrafts and sorceries, than ever the Holy Office burned for apostasy. But then, our British Solomon was a popular Protestant, while the grand Inquisitors were unpopular papists. However, two blacks don't make a white: nor have I one single wish to whitewash the Spanish Inquisition. I merely wish to remark (in a spirit of utter meekness) that what is sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander also.

It was well to high noon ere I got back from my round of church-going. All the citizens of Nova Goa were asleep when I re-entered their silent city. Protected by daylight, I, too, fell on my bed, and slept. The previous night, when sitting in the garden of King Domingo, a youth of Quillimane had accosted me; and his acquaintance enhanced the great joy of this, my too brief, stay in Goa. He had been sent, by his father on the Zambesi, for a year's schooling to St. Joseph's College at Bangalore, and had got a smattering of English there. Not unnaturally, he was glad of a chance to air his accomplishment; and most naturally, I was glad of a body to speak my mother tongue with.

In the cool of this Friday evening, my gentle guide led me to the statue of that famous lord and conqueror, Don Alfonso Albuquerque, and to whatever else seemed best worth the showing.

He would gladly have been my cicerone throughout the day but had had his lessons to mind in the Lycée. He spoke highly and gratefully of his masters there; and, on my addressing him in my best Frenchified Latin (where English failed), informed me that, with every scholar both at the Lycée and in the church seminaries, Latin is compulsory; a piece of information which made the unscientific heart within me to leap for joy. He was a devout youth and a pure, this young man of Quillimane; receiving as truths (for he was of a generous mind and no coward) the sweet tales and legends he had learned at his mother's knee. Moreover, perhaps consequently, he was of singular refinement and a dainty intelligence; speaking lovingly of Camoens and his

"Lusiad," and extolling the fancy of his countrymen.

Strolling leisurely at eventide on the sea wall of Goa, and thus discoursing of poetry, pictures, and the blessed saints, the great Angelus bell, once the warning bell of their Pharos, boomed solemnly through the twilight. All who were sitting, rose; all who were walking, stood still: and, for the space of an Ave, perfect hush reigned around. Then we resumed our walk, saluting the first we met with a Buona Notte and raised cap. Such is invariably their civil mode and the strict etiquette of the hour.

Nova Goa might at all times stand for Irving's "Sleepy Hollow." It has neither gas nor ice, nor telegraph nor train; nor yet any disturbing element of trade whatsoever. During the monsoon no steamer comes nigh hand it: the rage of waters sets full upon its bar, and dams communication back. The amusements of the place are few. A military band plays on Sundays and Thursdays, and the people dance excessively; but you will search in vain for café, theatre, or restaurant. Pilgrimages and splendid pomps of Catholic ritual make the sum total of Goa's mild dissipation. To-day, indeed, weddings and balls are superadded, with a great show of masks; for the carnival is close at hand, and Lent looms dark behind.

My Mozambique guide conveyed me to a balustrade giving on the lagoon; and there we sat, smoking cigarettes in the starlight, and watching the merry revels within doors. A ball at Goa lasts two nights: the first is for dancing, the last for supper. A dinner to beggars is its prelude; for fear the beggars should turn saucy, and throw stones. Food lubricates their insides, and mollifies their manners. Every lower window of Goa is, without exception, of laminated shells; an extraordinary fact, and one which it demands implicit faith in the narrator to credit. Each pane is about three inches square, set in stout framework of native wood, the windows themselves being bigger than ordinary house doors. All within, of course, is