"Your Majesty," bowed Gilbert, "has made one little error in your astronomical calculations from the Royal Observatory; there is no longer a Mistress Neville; this is Mistress Hartsfoot, the wife of this gentleman, Master Hartsfoot."

"I thank you, my young friend, for setting me right," and after shaking hands with the newly married pair and congratulating them, he turned to Mrs. Hartsfoot and said

"Mistress Dorothy is much beholden to you, madam; for one good example is worth a hundred good precepts."

"Ah! poor man," said Rochester, aside to Killigrew, "how fortunate that he is the spokesman; for had anyone else uttered such a piece of satirical high treason in the presence, he would not have been long before he had seen the inside of the Tower."

While the bipeds were saying their say, the dogs also had their parley. Penderel and Beauty took the initiative, as it was only fit that royal dogs should do. Penderel running with great alacrity to meet Diamond, till within ten yards of each other, when prudence, like "the Queen's Proctor," intervening in the modern Divorce Court, each gentleman stood still, raising his right front paw, which each held in abeyance, pricking up their ears and wagging their tails tremendously; while the two young ladies, Mesdemoi

selles Beauty and Finette, true to the one privilege of their sex, announced their advent by their tongues, and barked most shrilly. At last, Penderel having approached, and had a most satisfactory conversation with Diamond, suddenly perceived Dorothy, and remembering the evening he had passed so comfortably in her lap, he immediately ran, with bounding fore-paws, and paid his respects to her.

"I declare," said she, pulling his beautiful long ears and kissing his head, "that darling dog remembers me."

"Do you suppose, Mistress Dorothy," said the King, "that any lucky dog in England, who had once seen you, could ever forget you?"

"More especially," said Rochester, "when it is a case of like master like man-whew! whew! whew!" added he, whistling the dog. "Penderel, my man, come here."

If Dorothy had been like a blush rose on her arrival, she was now much more like a damask rose, and felt exceedingly uncomfortable, which Gilbert perceiving, he raised his hat, and bowing low to the King, said—

"I fear we have detained your Majesty too long under these damp trees."

"Never mind," said the King, as he, with a very graceful sort of circular bow, returned all their parting salutations at once;

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on the four

teenth, my fine fellow, we shall be double and quits, for I shall detain you for life."

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"My gratitude, at all events, sire," rejoined Gilbert, again bowing low, as they turned away, and retraced their steps homeward.

CONCLUSION.

ND what conclusion can we come to, when four persons, who loved each other so very dearly, and respected

one another equally, were about to pass the remainder of their lives together, but that they had entered upon a term of happiness, which only death could change for a still more blissful eternity? As for Hartsfoot, without putting it into words, he every day in thought anticipated Merivale's verdict, and asked his full contented soul, "What is a home without a wife? She is the lamp that destroys darkness, the angel putting loneliness to flight, and is, or may be, the dispenser of every blessing that the mind of man can conceive or the soul sigh for. Home without a wife is a strange land,' a head without a brain, a heart without conscience, a ship without sails, an ocean without waves, a world without religion, a heaven without God!"

He said all this, or something tantamount to it, to Dorothy, on the eventful morning of the fourteenth of March, just before the carriage was announced to take them to the Chapel Royal,

when she, in her snowy bridal attire, and her almost equally white pure face, looked really very like what he always called her, his "guardian angel."

"Then," said she, after this outbreak, "what a heathen you must have been all your life, and what a mercy you did not die in your sins."

"A mercy indeed! and but for you, my guardian angel, I should."

"Ah! well, then, mind," said she, looking fondly at her mother, " that now I am for a short time going to give up my garrison, you act as if I were always at my post."

"Being now in heaven, I can't go wrong," said he.

"Have you no flowers, darling?" asked her mother.

"As no one has sent me any I shall not wear any; but I am not without a posey, for all that, though some fastidious mortals want their flowers to be like news, always fresh, I'm not so nice," said she, looking at Hartsfoot and taking a little gold heart locket out of her bosom, she opened it and showed them, with its colours still wonderfully preserved, being pressed flat between two pieces of tissue paper, a faded pansey. "Here is my withered heartsease,” she added, showing it to Hartsfoot.

"Yes," said he, the tears in his eyes, while he