hat with the black cock's feather nodding over | pleasure; and yet she had never been so brillits upturned brim. Her cheeks were as bright iant. Her cheeks glowed with a scarlet flush, her as her lips. Her eyes were sparkling, and her eyes were full of light, her lips seemed "doublewhole face was glowing with interest. I did dyed." She wore a white dress, with cardinal not wonder at the admiring gaze of Captain flowers, whose bright hue scarcely rivaled her Saltonstall. lips and cheeks on her breast and in her hair. She talked and danced and sang, and still I wondered whether her heart was not aching-whether all her gayety was not a mask. She seemed in no hurry to retire. She waited, indeed, until the parlor was half cleared, and then as she was about to go her feet were stayed. Captain Saltonstall was at the piano, and beginning to sing. He had a deep, rich voice, and it seemed full of tears, threading its pathway through the tender, tremulous minor chords, as he sang: It was hard after that for Charley or I to get many words out of her. The cool Captain maintained his post. Through the day he was constantly at her side. At night, when I had her to myself, she was always either too sleepy or too tired to talk. At least she said so. And yet I knew by her restless motions that she lay awake long after her head pressed the pillow. Sometimes, when she thought I was asleep, she would get up very softly, fold a shawl about her, and sit for a long time at the open window looking out toward the sea. I knew not what dreams came to her with the salt sea breath. My sister had shut me out of her confidence. I believed that she was growing deeply interested in Captain Saltonstall;, but I could not make up my mind whether he was in earnest or only trifling with her. I felt utterly at a loss what to do. I longed for the time to come for us to go away. Indeed, I suggested once to Charley Cahill that we had better go-I knew he could casily persuade his mother that we had best leave, and of course her decision would settle the matter for us all. He looked at me with kind, honest eyes. "I know what you mean, Ruth, and why you want to go; but believe me it would not be best. It is better to let her stay and see it out. Let her understand herself and him; and then, if he can make her happy, God bless them." I knew how keen a pang rent his honest heart at the thought of Marcia made happy by some one else; and I honored him for his unselfish wish, that she should have time and opportunity to choose her own fate. On the whole, I was convinced that he was right, and yet I waited very anxiously. One night I was sitting alone on a rock by the shore, looking at the sea. A cliff jutting up behind me just screened me from sight, and they paced along a narrow path just back of where I was sitting-my sister and Captain Saltonstall. I heard only a single sentence of their talk. It was the Captain who spoke. "I ought to have told you before, Marcia. I should, if I had dreamed of the possibility of our loving each other." It was just enough to set me thinking. What was this which he ought to have told her? Was it some secret which would interfere with their love? I don't know, but I hope so; and yet I could not have borne to see her suffer. I think I would almost have laid down my life for hers. That evening they were both in the parlor as usual. No one save myself, probably, noticed any change in the manner of either. I could see, my observation stimulated by the sentence I had heard, that he was ill at ease, and that Marcia was half wild with some strange excitePain, I felt sure it was, rather than ment. «All the dreaming is broken through; My dearest, dear little heart. "The time is weary, the year is old; 66 My dearest, dear little heart." "I When he was through he got up and came to me, where I was standing beside Marcia. Good-by, Miss Armstrong," he said. shall be gone when you come down stairs in the morning. I do not think you have ever liked me very well, and I fear when you know all you will like me less. But do me the justice to believe that I meant no wrong, and I would lay down my life any moment to save your sister one pang." He had spoken very low-so low that no one else heard him, unless possibly Marcia. There was a despairing gloom in his eyes that moved me to pity in spite of my prejudices. I could not refuse the hand he offered. As he turned away from me Marcia said something to him, almost in a whisper, which I did not hear. I just caught the words of his answer— "I believe it. God bless you, and forgive me." I did not say any thing to Marcia when we were at last alone in our own room. I thought I would wait for her confidence. But she did not seem inclined to bestow it. She undressedquietly and mechanically, folding up every article, and putting it away with unwonted care and precision, as if she wanted to prolong the occupation. When all was done she crept into bed, still silently. It was an hour, perhaps, that we lay there without speaking. At length I suppose she thought I was asleep, for she got up cautiously, and went and sat down at the window. There, presently, I heard her crying, very quietly, so as not to disturb me, but I could see how the sobs she strove to suppress shook her. I could bear it no longer. I got out of bed and knelt down on the floor by her side, and put my arms around her. "I love you," I cried. "Don't you know I love you, Marcia? Why do you grieve alone, and shut me out of your heart?" I could not comfort her. There was nothing I could say, no hope, no promise for her future. None, except one that I cherished secretly-that some time, a long way off perhaps, but some time, she might learn how true and fond Charley Cahill's heart was, and find her happiness She turned and looked at me as she an- again with him. But I dared not whisper this swered: "But you do not like Captain Saltonstall, Ruth, and you will not judge him fairly. You did not like him from the first, and you wanted me to marry Charley Cahill." "I wanted you to be happy, Marcia; I only wanted you to be happy; not to marry Charley Cahill, or any one else, unless he could make you so." At these words she was crying again, but this time with her head on my bosom, her bright, bonny head. "That is past, Ruth. I shall never be happy again. I have had my dream, and it is over. My day is dead." Then I told her what I had heard Saltonstall say as they passed by me on the shore, and asked her if she was willing to tell me what it meant. She considered a moment, and then she answered me. "Yes, your care and tenderness for me give you a right to know all. I do not think Captain Saltonstall ever meant to tell me that he loved me. Perhaps he never realized that he did until to-night. He just thought we were friends, and forgot how dangerous such a friendship was. To-night he said something about going away, and the chance there was that he should never see me again; and somehow, I don't know how, he saw that I loved him. He did not kiss me, Ruth, or talk to me like a lover. He only told me once, in such words as I can never forget, what he felt for me; and then he told me that it was no use. He was married eight years ago." "And his wife lives yet ?" I cried. "Yes; in a lunatic asylum. There was insanity in the family, and they concealed it from him. He married her, liking her well enough; not specially in love. It just happened, as half the marriages in this world do. In a year she was insane. Of course he is bound to her for life." "And, of course, he is a villain to come among women with free hearts, and leave such a story untold." "Do not be unjust, Ruth. He could hardly be required to parade such a story every where; and he never expected to love me, or that I should love him. Like his marriage, it just happened. Do not blame him. I think he has enough to suffer. You may pity us both, if you will, for we shall never see each other's faces again." "And will it kill you, my poor, brokenhearted darling?" "No, I shall live;" and she sighed drearily, as if not to live were a blessing beyond her hopes. secret hope of mine to her. She would not let me blame Captain Saltonstall, and I could do nothing but hold her in my arms, and tell her how well I loved her. The next morning I went down stairs before her, and Charley Cahill met me. I thought he had a claim to know the truth. I was sure I could trust him, and I did not think Marcia would be unwilling he should know. So I told him. "Poor fellow!" he said, slowly, when I was through. It angered me. I had expected all his sympathy would be for Marcia, and his curses, deep if not loud, for the "Cool Captain." "Poor fellow!" I cried, irefully. "Don't you think he was a villain ?" "No; a villain would not have told her at all. You forget how easy that would have been. I can understand just how he could drift into love, and never dream of danger. I pity him as much as I do her. He will have to bear all the pain she bears, and a weary load of selfblame besides." Then I suggested my own trembling hope that this disappointment might some day be the means of turning her to him. He shook his head sadly as he said: "I shall never love her any less than I do now; but girls like Marcia do not change easily " Just then we saw her coming, and separated. I knew how the thought of a new love would shock her now, and what I had been saying to Charley made me feel like a conspirator. We staid nearly a week longer at "The Cliffs." I would have proposed to go at once, but Marcia preferred that we should stay our time out, and would hear of no change in our plans. How proud that girl was! The acutest observer could hardly have guessed at her pain I fancy most would have pronounced her gayer than ever. Who could tell how much those careful toilets, those merry jests, glad songs, and gay dances all cost her? They were the price she paid for secrecy-that no one might guess her heartache. In her own room only she put off all disguises, and night after night I held her shivering and moaning in my arms-my poor flower, broken by the blast all too soon! At last we went home. The change in her could not be concealed from the watchful eyes there; but she would not go, as I should have done, to my mother with her sorrow. For the first time in her life, I think, she missed the tie of blood. She told me I might tell them what I chose, if I would only keep them from talking to her or asking her any questions. I am sure that she had never been less dear to them than I, and I know her reserve pained them; but they did not force her confidence, and were ten- | her desk, and put it in my hand. It was the der and gentle to her beyond words. After a while she settled into a sort of calm. She spoke no more of the past, even to me. She tried to interest herself in her old pleasures and duties; but it was easy enough to see that the old buoyancy of spirit, the old power to hope and enjoy, were all gone. Only twenty, and she said she was growing old. Charley Cahill was most kind while those slow months passed on. Marcia was very gentle to him, perhaps because she knew his heart was suffering the gangs of a sorrow akin to her own-so gentle that I almost thought she would care for him in time, though I am sure I had far more hope for him than he had for himself. I thought such simple, sincere, unselfish devotion could not fail, after a time, to win its reward. My hopes received a shock now and then when she came upon the name of Guy Saltonstall in a paper, and I saw how it had power to move her. She read of his brave deeds and his promotions, for he was Colonel Saltonstall before spring. But from him directly she never heard one word. Silence and severance as complete as death had fallen between them. account of a desperate charge in which Colonel Saltonstall had been dangerously wounded while leading on his men. There was very little probability, so the item said, of his ever recovering. "How long ago was this?" I asked, turning to her. "Six weeks." "And you never told me?" "Why should I?"-in those slow, dreary, inexpressibly mournful tones-"you never liked him. It was my sorrow." While she was speaking the door opened, and I saw a figure standing in it—a wan, strange figure, with pallid, ghastly face—and yet, through all the change wrought by sickness and anguish, I knew Captain Saltonstall. With a low cry Marcia rose and stretched out her arms. came toward her. He "Your wife!" I cried, meaning to stop him. He turned toward me for an instant, and answered me, ago. "She is dead--died in the asylum, two months Do you not see that I am dying too? I come here only to die with Marcia beside In Heaven's name let us alone." I did not wait to see their meeting. shut the door upon them and went into the hall I saw Charley Cahill coming in. I went up to him, and said, without considering enough, per She never talked of him now even to me. But there were not wanting indications how closely she held him in her memory. She would never sing the songs she had sung to him; nev-haps, the pain I was giving, er wear such flowers as he had given her, or even the dresses he had praised. The little scarlet cloak she had worn in her rambles by his side was folded carefully away, and she never put on the Tudor hat with its long, drooping feather. Still, when the spring came she grew more cheerful. She had changed a good deal. The violet eyes were sad with an unspoken longing. The cheeks were paler, and even the bright lips had grown a little dim. The perfect figure was a thought too thin. And yet to me, and I believe to Charley Cahill also, she looked lovelier than before. Sorrow had imparted to her a more subtle charm. If she had dazzled you once she won you now-found her way to your heart like plaintive music. I thought it could not be so always-that time, which makes roses grow even out of grave mould, would have power at last to soothe a sad woman's heart. There came, at length, an afternoon in June. How well I remember its brightness! Through open doors and windows came the wind freighted with the fragrance of summer blossoms. The sky was blue-that deep, lustrous blue which seems only to arch over the perfect days of June. Hills and fields slept green and bright in the lavish sunshine. I tried to persuade Marcia to go out and enjoy it. She made a few excuses, and at last, when I urged the point, she turned to me with a look I can never forget, and said, in a low, strange tone, "Do you know what a mockery it seems to me to talk of enjoyment? People enjoy with their hearts, don't they? My heart is dead." She got up and took a scrap of paper from As I "Guy Saltonstall has come back. He is in there with Marcia. His wife is dead, and I think he will soon follow her; but he and death are stronger than you and life." A patient smile, cold and pale as moonlight, crossed his lips, and he took my hand. "You have been more hopeful for me, all along, than I have for myself. It is best as it is." But I did not believe it could be best. I was not satisfied. After Charley went away I sat alone in the hall, and thought about it with feelings not altogether right, I am afraid. After a while, an hour perhaps, Marcia came out to me. Her face was kindled with a glorious light. If her heart were dead before, I could see its resurrection in her eyes. "Ruth," she said, "we must be married tonight. The circumstances will make such haste pardonable. I know that nothing but the closest care can save his life. I must be able to nurse him as only his wife can. I would not willingly be away from him a moment." "Is he selfish enough," I asked, a little bitterly, "to want you to marry him now?" "Will you always be unjust to him, Ruth? He does not want me to marry him; but I will. It is my proposal. He loves me, and he needs me; and there is no shame in making him let me devote myself to him. Will you, for my sake, undertake to convince father and mother that it is best and necessary? I want to have their approval; but whatever they may say, I am resolved." She went back to her lover. I went to my parents and told them all. They were sorry, the entire establishment. My friends visit me but they recognized the uselessness of opposition; with fear and trembling. They are never cerand since they could not help the matter, re-tain that the bell-pull may not be the pole of an solved to make the best of it. electro-magnetic battery, and when they seat Marcia's strong will conquered all obstacles. themselves in a chair seem to expect some unJust at sunset of the glad June day she stood by wonted phenomenon to exhibit itself. You will Guy Saltonstall's side while her brief marriage at once perceive, therefore, that I am an enthuVows were spoken. With what tender pride siast. People when they pass me in the street she looked on her wan, ghostly bridegroom! In point me out to their friends, and whisper, "Very his glory of manly strength and lofty courage he clever man, but so eccentric!" I have gotten could never have seemed to her nobler or more an immense reputation for ability, yet I don't worthy. She had never been more beautiful. believe that my best friend would trust me with Her violet eyes full of light and love, pink flushes the management of the most trivial business. on her cheeks, rays of sunset in her rippling matter. Nor am I so much surprised at this. I chestnut hair, and on her simple white muslin will confess that I am continually suffering losses dress, she looked a bride for any man's worship. on my own little property, and it would seem But it seemed pitiful to see such youth and grace, my fate to form relations with all the bankrupts such beauty and such tender truth given to the and swindlers in the United States. These clasp of death. How soon would the earth, and drains on my estate I always hoped to make not that bright head, lie on his bosom? I know good by an invention. I am a very worldly felI wasted pity. If ever woman spoke her mar-low at bottom, let me tell you, notwithstanding riage vows with full and joyful surrender, Marcia | all my scientific pranks. I keep an eye out for so spoke them. the main chance; and I always held the hope that even when my affairs were going most to That was June, and now it is October. The ruin I would eventually light upon some lucky "Cool Captain" is not dead, thanks to Marcia's discovery which would make every thing right nursing. He will never have his old strength again. There's Professor Morse. He lit upon back-never again lead on his men where mus- an invention, and see what's the result. Why, kets rattled and bugles call; but he is well he's asked over to Moscow by the Emperor of enough to enjoy the pomp of the autumn days, Russia to be present at his coronation, and is and reflect back in his smile the deep content-given a palace to live in, with a whole Ukraine ment of Marcia's eyes. And when I see her so of horses and Cossacks at his disposal! happy, I think she understood her own needs best after all. For a long time I had turned my attention to solving the problem of aerial locomotion. I fancy even now that I hit the white when I HOW I OVERCAME MY GRAV. enunciated my grand principle of progression by I ITY. means of atmospheric inclined planes; and at the time I made a model of a machine which il and so great was the prejudice against all kinds of ballooning among moneyed men that I could not find the means to exploit what is incontestably a great physical truth. HAVE all my life been dallying with sci-lustrated my theory very fairly, but I had not ence. I have coquetted with electricity, capital enough for experiments on a large scale; and had a serious flirtation with pneumatics. I have never discovered any thing, nevertheless I am continually experimentalizing. My chambers are like the Hall of Physics in a University. Air-pumps, pendulums, prisms, galvanic batter- One day as I was walking down Mercer Street, ies, horse-shoe magnets with big weights contin- in the neighborhood of Bleecker, I came oppoually suspended to them: in short, all the para- site to the establishment of Chilton, the chemphernalia of a modern man of science are strewn ist, which stood on the corner. Revolving a here and there, or stowed away on shelves, much thousand formless projects in my brain, my eyes, to the disgust of the maid-servant, who on clean- wandering like my mind, happened to light on ing-day longs to enter the sanctuary, yet dare the open door of the chemist's store. There, on not trust her broom amidst such brittle furni- a table placed a little way inside the entrance, ture. To survey my rooms, you would infalli- I beheld a number of brass instruments lying, bly set me down as a cross between Faraday and the shape and construction of which I was unProfessor Morse. I dabble in all branches of familiar with. Idly and half-mechanically I Natural Philosophy. I am continually decom- crossed over and entered the store for the purposing water with electricity, and combining pose of examining them. The young man in gases until they emit the most horrible odors. attendance advanced to meet me-for I am I have had four serious explosions in my labor-known as a sort of amateur savant-and asked atory, and have received various warnings from how he could serve me. the Fire Marshal. The last was occasioned by the obstinacy of an Irish maid-servant, who, happening to behold a large mass of phosphorus in the dark, would insist on "putting it out" with a pail of water. The consequence was, of course, a conflagration that was near destroying "What is this?" I asked, taking one of the instruments that had attracted my attention from the table. "It seems to me to be some novelty." "It is truly a novelty," said my friend, the budding chemist. "It is a trifle-an ingenious trifle, certainly-discovered by a Connecticut genius, and its operations have as yet been entirely unaccounted for." "Ah!" I cried, becoming suddenly interested, "let us look." to thus marvelously poise itself in air? I was bewildered, and though my brain, from habit of dealing with problems, instantly groped for a reason, it could find none satisfactory. "Has no explanation been offered of this wonder?" I asked the chemist. "None, Sir," was the reply; "at least none that were in the least logical or conclusive. Several people have sent us elaborate explanations, but when all have been divested of their The machine which I held in my hand may be thus briefly described. Imagine a brass globe, some three inches in diameter, having its axis playing in a narrow but tolerably thick rim of brass, just as a terrestrial globe revolves in its horizon. The only difference being that the globe was not central in the rim, or hori-scientific phraseology, they amount but to one zon; one of its poles being nearer to the end of its axis than the other. This peculiarity, I afterward discovered, was not essential to its working, being merely a matter of convenience. The remainder of the apparatus consisted of an upright steel. rod, fixed in a heavy wooden platform, candlestick fashion, and pointed like an electrical conductor. "How does it work," I asked, after examining it attentively, "and what principle does it illustrate ?" "It overthrows an established principle," answered my young friend, "and I am not clear as to what one it gives in place of it." "Let us see it." "Willingly." arbitrary assertion of the fact that it revolves The more I pondered the more the marvel grew upon me. I spun the toy for hours, and was never weary of beholding it move in its appointed circle, self-sustaining and mysterious. After all, I considered it as only wonderful to me, because I have been so long in the habit of accepting the theory of gravitation as an estab supports this toy in air, is not a whit more mysterious than the assumed force which is said to draw all things toward the centre of the earth, and keep the planets in their places. Ask what it is, and people tell you "the attraction of gravitation." Ask them what "the attraction of gravitation" is, and they will tell you "the force which draws matter to the centre of the earth," and so the game of science runs. Arbitrary names are forced on you as facts. From battledore to battledore the shuttlecock is sent flying. The result becomes the definition and the explanation. So saying the young man took the globe, which revolved with little friction in its brass horizon, and winding a string round that por-lished fact. This new force, whatever it is that tion of the axis which occupied the greatest space between the globe and ring, held the latter against his breast, and pulling the string violently, as boys pull the string of a hummingtop, caused the globe to revolve with marvelous swiftness on its axis. The globe being thus in a rapid state of revolution in its horizon, he now showed me on the under surface of the last, and in a right line with the poles of the axis, a small cavity drilled, which admitted of the machine being placed on the upright pointed steel rod, without any chance of slipping. This cavity was not a hole, only an indentation in which the point of the upright rod fitted, just It was in one of those moods of mind in which as the axle of a watch wheel is received into the a man sometimes finds himself, groping for day jewel. When this pivot, so to speak, was placed through a horrible and oppressive darkness, yet by the young chemist on the steel-pointed rod, certain that the chink through which it will the globe and its horizon, to my utter astonish-flow lies somewhere within reach, that I sudment, proceeded to revolve in a plane at right denly lit upon the conviction that in this new angles to the revolution of the globe! There discovery I held the secret of aerial locomowas a weight of some six pounds supporting it-tion! self in the air, and revolving with a regular motion! If my reader will take a long wedge of iron, heavier at one end than the other, and place the light end on the point of a rod stuck into the earth, and at right angles with it, and then conceive that wedge of iron revolving around the point where it touches the upright rod, he will have a pretty clear idea of the mar-globe supporting a heavy brass horizon, and if I vel which I witnessed at Mr. Chilton's. The attraction of gravitation then was overcome! In the same position in which I saw it maintaining itself, if the revolution of the brass globe was checked the whole apparatus would instantly tumble to the earth. Why, then, did the simple centrifugal force of the globe enable it I argued in this way: If a violent rotary motion is sufficient to overcome the gravitating tendency of brass, it surely is that of human flesh. Neither is it at all necessary that the body of the person wishing to soar aloft should itself revolve. That would be fatal to life. But here, in this toy, I see the revolution of a brass were to put another weight, say a cent, on that brass horizon, it would still be supported; there fore if a machine on the same principle, and proportionately large, be constructed, it will support a man as this supports a cent. I had lit upon the truth that "a body revolving on its own axis with sufficient velocity becomes self |