my tenderly loved Mary, whose loss I must ever deplore in bitterness of soul; my indiguation is roused to the utmost against the producer of all this distress and misery, I cannot but feel that it is my hated personal foe, that I am its sworn and determined enemy in whatever form it may present itself; that I can hold no parley, attempt no terms with it; but that I must use all my power and influence to aid in counteracting its deadly work, and in banishing it from the hearths and homes of my country.

Oh, my sisters! ye who are the mothers and daughters of our land, will ye not share my indignation? Nay, do ye not feel that this monstrous evil is no less your enemy than mine? How many of you can look round on the circle of your beloved ones and say, "There are no traces of this destroyer here, we are free from the sorrows that sometimes follow in its train, nor do we fear that any of our kin, near or distant, will ever be the victims of such a vice?"

Few indeed and far between are the families wholly unscathed by the poison-breath of alcohol, where it is in any form, tolerated and used.

Tell me not that the fault lies not in the drinks but only in those who take them to excess. Is it not a well-known fact, that in whatever locality these drinks are found, there the vice of drunkenness will surely make its abode, attended by crime, disease, and death? And who shall say what circle of friends or relations

shall escape its snares, or remain wholly untouched by its plagues!

We may not be all called upon to join the associations that exist for the advancement of temperance. Perhaps they have in some respects almost fulfilled their mission. They have roused the people to a sense of the evil, and have caused searching inquiry into the nature of the drinks against which they are arrayed. But there is a silent practice, a private influence, which all may wield, and by a universal determination on your part, my countrywomen, to count this thing your enemy, and to discountenance its use in every possible way, a mighty power may be brought to bear against the evil, and for the good.

Oh, shall it be asked of you in vain ?

CHAPTER XXIII.

SUPPLEMENTARY.

My heart, though widow'd, may not rest
Quite in the love of what is gone,
But seeks to beat in time with one

That warms another living breast.

TENNYSON.

HEN I laid down my pen at the close of the

W last chapter, I had no intention of resuming it

for the purpose of adding anything to the foregoing pages. That is just a year ago; but the year has brought events so unexpected, and so joyful, in connection with my own life, that I think it due to those of my readers who felt any interest in the few reminiscences of my history that are given in the introductory portion of my story, to record, as briefly as may be, the unhoped for changes that have occurred in my lot during this period.

A few weeks after I had, as I thought, finished my manuscript, all Newburn was astir with the bustle and, excitement occasioned by the opening of a new Temperance Hall. Of course the Listers, Franky, and I, were as busy about the preparations, and as deeply interested

in the great event as it was possible to be. "Uncle William" was in Franky's eyes, a great man indeed on this occasion, and was chosen by the committee as chief director of the whole affair. And Franky, always delighted to help his uncle, actually attended committee meetings with him to assist in the arrangements.

One evening he came home in high glee, bringing a large bill, fresh from the printer's, containing a programme of the proceedings; announcements of the various meetings, names of speakers, and all the rest of it. He mounted a chair, and unfolding the bill, held it up at full length against the wall.

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Look, aunt Fanny," he said exultingly, he had transferred the title of aunt from dear Mary to me,→ "Look, aunt Fanny, what a splendid bill; and only see the list of names! We shall have some first-rate speeches I know, for uncle William says they are all clever men."

I did look, and the first name I read, printed in larger letters than any other, was "W. Percy, Esq., President of the B-Temperance Society." The name I have here left blank was that of my native town! And the speaker's name-could I at first sight connect any other image with it than that of my long-lost lover? 'Aunty! What are you looking at so long? I declare your eyes have never moved from the middle of the bill, and I want you to give me your opinion of it as a whole."

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Franky's exclamation broke the spell; for my gaze had been riveted, by a kind of fascination, on that long unspoken, but never-forgotten name. I did not answer the boy's question, but expressed my admiration of his "splendid bill," and tried with all my might to be interested in the particulars of the coming festival. If he could have seen my thoughts, could have known how often and how long they dwelt upon that one sentence, after he had folded up the sheet, and I could no longer feast my eyes, he would have wondered still more.

It was not till I had lain some hours upon a restless pillow that night, that I could bring myself to reason on the matter. There might have been, to my certain knowledge, but one W. Percy in the world, so strong was my conviction that this must be he. But at length I tried to persuade myself of the possibility, nay, the probability that I was wrong; that the name of Percy was a common one in that part of England, and that W. was quite as likely to stand for William, or some other name, as for Walter.

At all events my secret was safe in my own breast. To none but Mary had I ever disclosed the events that preceded my coming to Yorkshire; to none but her had I breathed the name of Walter. 1t was when she was bravely withstanding the evil that threatened to destroy her lover, that I told her of the sudden, and, as it sometimes seemed to me, the wild resolve through which I had lost mine. How deeply we sympathised