between hope and fear that people in love make, if it is not made for them, and put all in a position where they have the accessories of sunlight and moonlight, a shady garden, a noble river, the scent of flowers, the goodness of fine fruit, the pleasures of the tea-table, and if these young people do not advance in the sweet study their hearts set them, they must be either coldly indifferent, or stupidly selfish.

This company of lovers was however neither stupid nor selfish. In the midst of war's alarms, while fleets and armies were gathering for battle, they were attending very faithfully to their own little drama. Quentin Macpherson had one advantage over both his rivals: he went to the Semple house every Sunday evening, and then he had Maria wholly under his influence. He walked in the garden with her, she made his tea for him, he sat by her side during the evening exercise, sung the psalm from the same Bible, and then, rising with the family, stood, as one of them, while the Elder offered his anxious yet trustful prayer. It was Madame who had thought of connecting this service with the young soldier. "It is little good he can get from thae Episcopals," she said, "and it's your duty, Alexander, to gie him a word in season," and though Macpherson was mainly occupied in watching Maria, and listening to her voice, he had been too well grounded in his faith not to be sensible of the sacredness of those few minutes, and to be insensibly influenced by their spirit.

Neil was never present. When the tea-table was cleared, he went quietly out, and those who cared to follow him would have been led to the little Wesleyan Chapel on John Street. He always took the same seat in a pew near the door, and there he worshipped for an hour or two the beautiful daughter of John Bradley. He was present to watch them enter. Sometimes the father went to the pulpit, sometimes he went with Agnes to the singing-pew. And to hear these two translating into triumphant song the holy aspirations and longings of Watts and Wesley, was reason enough for any one who loved music to be in Wesley Chapel when they were singing together.

All who have ever loved, all who yet dream of love, can tell the further story of those summer days for themselves. They have only to keep in mind that it had a constant obligato of trumpets and drums and marching men, and a constant refrain, made up of all the rumors of war, victory, and defeat; good news and bad news, fear, and hope, and sighing despair. At length the warm weather gave place to the dreamy hours of the Indian summer. A heavenly veil of silvery haze lay over the river and the city; a veil which 

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