said, 'My doggie is very sorry to have frightened you. He is waiting to shake hands.'

I was afraid of Bogy, but I was not afraid of ordinary dogs, and I opened my eyes, and put out my hand. The Great Bear hung his tongue out sideways, and trampled with his fore-feet, pawing the air like a lion. It looked fierce, but it was really only politeness. I shook hands with him, and still I went on living and being safe. Then I looked round for the others, and found that Paul had never run away at all, but was standing in the middle of the Haw, with his hands behind his back, looking calmly at Bogy. When Bobby saw it, of course he was vexed with himself, and came back to protect me. Then Patricia came backwards out of the gap, with her bonnet more torn than before; and then Annis crawled out of the garden, because, as Bobby says, she will have her oar in everything, whether it is nice or nasty.

Bogy had no bag with him, to be sure, but that might only have been because it was not dark.

'But why did you knock?' he said.

We looked at each other with very red faces.

'We were only playing. We hope you will not be angry,' said Patricia, quite humbly.

'But did you want me?'

'Oh, no,' said Bobby, hastily, 'we didn't at all want you! Only we said Nell daren't knock, and she said she dare, andthat's all.'

'But what was there to be afraid of?' asked Bogy; and he smiled.

There was a long silence.

'There was you. We are afraid of you, Bogy, please.'

On

It was Annis who said it. I suppose she thought that as no one answered, she must; but even then Patricia and I wished she had not done it. Bogy stood quite still for a whole minute, and never spoke. He had a great black shade over his eyes, and it covered most of his face, but we could see his lips. one side Bogy had an empty coat-sleeve, and on the other an arm like anybody else's, and it hung down without moving, until the Great Bear sniffed at his hand, and then Bogy smiled at us again.

He said, 'But we are not very dreadful bogies, Ursa Major and I. We are very fond of little girls and boys.'

'Is that your dog's name?' said Paul, very slowly and disVOL. 85 (V.-NEW SERIES). NO. 504.

ΙΟ

tinctly, for he had not seemed at all disturbed from the beginning.

'Yes, his name is Ursa Major. And what is yours, my little man?'

'It is Paul,' he answered, solemnly. 'Bogy,' he said, and he laughed. neighbours, are you?'

What is yours?'

'So you are my little

Scrope, this is Patricia,
There are no more.'

'Yes,' said Bobby. I am Bobby this is Helen, this is Annis, this is Paul. 'This is I,' said Bogy,. ' and this is Ursa Major. And there are no more. Ursa, shake hands with these young ladies and gentlemen.'

The Great Bear shook hands with us all, and trampled and pawed with friendliness.

'What sort of a dog is he?' asked Bobby.

'I am afraid he is no sort in particular,' said Bogy. He is only a very faithful old friend. He nosed you under the door before you knocked.'

'Were you waiting behind it?' asked Annis.

'Waiting for what?'

'For us. To grab us, you know,' explained Annis. And Patricia said afterwards that she could have beaten her for it. 'Not at all,' said Bogy. 'I came out to look at my big

thorn.'

'We never saw such a big one anywhere else,' said Patricia, frowning fearfully at Annis, and then turning to Bogy with a polite smile, and trying to put the torn flap of her bonnet-front aside in an easy and graceful manner.

'I have some more inside,' said Bogy, looking at the hawthorn —and when he looked, he had to hold his head quite backward to be able to see it. They are all in bloom now. Will you come and look at them?'

We drew back a little. We might be obliged to speak to Bogy, but we certainly might not want to be enticed into his Castle. He did not look or speak quite as we had fancied, but that might have been only his artfulness. So Patricia began to say, 'No, thank you,' and I think I should have said the same thing.

But Paul is a very funny boy, and he sometimes does the oddest and most unexpected things. He looked calmly up in Bogy's face till he was satisfied, and then very deliberately crossed over the ruts, and slipped his hand into Bogy's.

'I will,' he said. That is one of the odd things about Paul, that he always knows at first, in spite of being quite a little boy, whether he likes a person or not. And I suppose he must have a feeling that we have not got, for I never knew him to be mistaken; the people he likes always turn out to be the nice ones and the good ones. I have thought since that it was the way he behaved on that first day that made Bogy always so fond of him afterwards.

'Yes, let us go and look at the thorns,' he said, and they went through the doorway hand in hand, and the Great Bear followed them quite properly. Then, of course, we were ashamed, and Went too.

The doors opened into a long, wide walk, quite straight, and leading up to an old house at the end; there was grass on each side, and growing in the grass were hawthorn-trees, one after another, all the way up to the door of the house. The trees were all in bloom, and every time the wind tossed the branches, down came a shower of little round leaves, till the grass was almost covered. The old white one was the biggest, but they were all big, and there were white, and pale pink, and deep pink, and dark red, and single and double; and the branches were covered with the flowers as thickly as with snow, and they hung down to the daisies in the grass. Bogy and Paul walked up to the end, and we walked after them, with the Great Bear, talking to him until we felt quite friendly.

'And when you go over the grass to those big trees, where does it go to?' asked Paul.

'That goes to my garden,' said Bogy. 'Will you come and see my garden some day?'

'I will,' said Paul, decidedly. I will come to-morrow.'

'You mean, we will ask mother,' said Patricia, severely. So then we walked back between the hawthorns until we came to the doors, and stopped to look at the big old white one again, and Bogy stood talking to us about the thorns. He told us about the Glastonbury thorn that only flowered at Christmas, and then about the miraculous walnut-tree that was at Glastonbury too, and only budded on Saint Barnabas' Day; and so it was time for us to go in to tea long before we could have thought it.

'And I have been thinking,' said Patricia, as we crawled back through our hedge, and I believe we have been rather foolish,

and perhaps he is not Bogy at all, but just a gentleman like anybody else-only an ugly one.'

'I don't know whether he is Bogy or not,' said Bobby, 'but I think he is a very interesting person, and his Castle is interestinger still.'

Patricia behaved very well then; I shall always think so, for it was not pleasant to her feelings. She stood up as we came to the edge of the shrubbery, and threw her head back, and said, 'Paul, you weren't telling stories on the day I said you were. I was wrong, and I beg your pardon.'

I cannot say that Paul quite understood it, but Patricia had done it all the same. For that is just like Patricia. She loves to have her own way, and is often very ordering to us; but if she is left to herself to consider things, she does what she thinks she ought, whether she likes it or not, and comes all right in the end.

(To be continued.)

FIVE ENGLISH POETS.

II.-DRAMATIC POEMS.

I GAVE due warning in my last paper that the headings of those to come were not going to be scientifically accurate. To define what you mean by dramatic' is not easy at the best of times; perhaps what I mean by a dramatic poem just now is more than anything else a poem which aims at expressing a character or characters; whereas the captious may remark that I ought to mean one which expresses an action. And forthwith there is opened out an interminable vista of arguments as to what constitutes an action,' which might be entertaining to the arguers, but would be distinctly irritating to every one else. So we will take the argument for granted, and proceed on Humpty Dumpty's principles, when he explained that by 'glory' he meant a nice knock-down argument.'

Now what we commonly mean by a drama is a poem which takes the form of dialogue; which would limit us unduly—apart from the fact that you can have the dialogue form without the poem being really dramatic in the sense intended. Browning's 'A Forgiveness,' for instance, would be shut out; and Empedocles on Etna, which is really a poem of meditation, would be included. As usual, you cannot really draw a scientific line, any more than you can say how many grains of sand make a heap. The accuracy of the application of the term 'dramatic' may be questioned, but its present convenience is more important.

Periodically an old discussion crops up as to whether a play can possibly be a good play unless it is good to put on the stage. It would seem to be merely a question of words. If a play is intended for the footlights, but is not adapted to them, it obviously fails in its purpose. But supposing it was not written for the footlights, that is, not written under conditions which