a flower-bordered river that goes sweetly singing on its way to the distant ocean. A tiny sailboat lies in a sheltering cove, rocked gently to and fro by the swaying current. On a hill beyond the stream we mark a large white-belfried building, relieved against a dark background of wide-stretching timber-land. And turning our delighted footsteps down an avenue of lofty cedar and linden trees, there rises at length before our vision a splendid mansion, built after a most beautiful style of architecture, with deep, bay windows, long corridors and vine-covered terraces. Magnificent gardens, displaying the perfection of taste, lay sloping to the southward. On the east the silvery river was seen glancing through the shrubbery that adorned its banks. To the west lay a beautiful park and pleasure ground, while far away to the northward stretched the deep, dense forest, tall, dark and sombre. 

 And over all this lovely scene the stars shed their mild, ethereal light. O, Wimbledon! art thou not beautiful 'neath their soft, silver gleams? And doth not shadowy-vested romance roam thy grassy paths and flower-strewn ways to-night, and with her wild, mysterious eyes gloating on thy entrancing scenery, doth she not resolve to dwell awhile, 'mid thy embowering vines, thy dewy-petalled flowers, mournfully-musical cedar-groves, and web a fiction from the thousand tangled threads which complicate and ramify thy social life? 

 We shall see what we shall see in Wimbledon; for gray dawn is already breaking in the dappled east, and a man, closely buttoned to the chin in a gray overcoat, emerges from a large brick mansion on the outskirts of the village, and directs his steps toward an old, black, rickety-looking house, which stands just on the bank of the river, surrounded by a tangled growth of brush-wood. 

 Here the gairish day at length disclosed what the modest night had obscured with her diamond veil of stars. Squalid poverty glared through the broken window-panes, and want seemed clattering her doleful song on the flying clapboards and crazy casements. A feeble, struggling light from within showed the inmates were stirring as the man in the overcoat gave a loud, careless thump on the trembling door, which was opened by a pale, gaunt-looking urchin, clad in garments bearing patches of divers hues. 

 "Is your mother at home, Bill?" inquired the man, gruffly. 

 "Yes, sir," answered the boy in a meek tone; "will you please to walk in, Mr. Pimble?" 

 "No; tell her I want her to come 

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