"People are full of mistakes, seemingly."

"They are."

"The other day they said you were trifling with him, and you almost proved that you were not; lately they have said that you are not, and you straightway begin to show"

"That I am, I suppose you mean."

"Well I hope they speak the truth."

66

They do, but wrongly applied. I don't trifle with him, but then, I have nothing to do with him."

Oak was unfortunately led on to speak of Boldwood's rival in a wrong tone to her after all. "I wish you had never met that young Sergeant Troy, Miss," he sighed.

Bathsheba's steps became faintly spasmodic. "Why?" she asked. "He is not good enough for you."

"Did any one tell you to speak to me like this?"

"Nobody at all."

"Then it appears to me that Sergeant Troy does not concern us here," she said, intractably. "Yet I must say that Sergeant Troy is an educated man and quite worthy of any woman. He is well born."

"His being higher in learning and birth than the ruck of soldiers is anything but a proof of his worth. It shows his course to be downward.”

"I cannot see what this has to do with our conversation. Mr. Troy's course is not by any means downward; and his superiority is a proof of his worth."

"I believe him to have no conscience at all. And I cannot help begging you, Miss, to have nothing to do with him. Listen to me this onceonly this once! I don't say he's such a bad man as I have fancied-I pray to God he is not. But since we don't exactly know what he is, why not behave as if he might be bad, simply for your own safety? Don't trust him, mistress; I ask you not to trust him so."

"Why, pray?"

"I like soldiers, but this one I do not like," he said, sturdily. "The nature of his calling may have tempted him astray, and what is mirth to the neighbours is ruin to the woman. When he tries to talk to you again, why not turn away with a short 'Good day;' and when you see him coming one way, turn the other. When he says anything laughable, fail to see the point and don't smile, and speak of him before those who will report your talk as 'that fantastical man,' or 'that Sergeant What's-hisname.' 'That man of a family that has come to the dogs.' Don't be unmannerly towards him, but harmless-uncivil, and so get rid of the man."

No Christmas robin detained by a window-pane ever pulsed as did Bathsheba now.

"I say I say again—that it doesn't become you to talk about him. Why he should be mentioned passes me quite!" she exclaimed desperately. "I know this, th-th-that he is a thoroughly conscientious man

blunt some times even to rudeness-but always speaking his mind about you plain to your face!"

"Oh."

"He is as good as anybody in this parish! He is very particular too, about going to church-yes, he is!"

"I am afeard nobody ever saw him there. I never did certainly." "The reason of that is," she said eagerly, "that he goes in privately by the old tower door, just when the service commences, and sits at the back of the gallery. He told me so.”

This supreme instance of Troy's goodness fell upon Gabriel's ears like the thirteenth stroke of a crazy clock. It was not only received with utter incredulity as regarded itself, but threw a doubt on all the assurances that had preceded it.

Oak was grieved to find how entirely she trusted him. He brimmed with deep feeling as he replied in a steady voice, the steadiness of which was spoilt by the palpableness of his great effort to keep it so:

"You know, mistress, that I love you, and shall love you always. I only mention this to bring to your mind that at any rate I would wish to do you no harm: beyond that I put it aside. I have lost in the race for money and good things, and I am not such a fool as to pretend to you now I am poor, and you have got altogether above me. But Bathsheba, dear mistress, this I beg you to consider-that both to keep yourself well honoured among the workfolk, and in common generosity to an honourable man who loves you as well as I, you should be more discreet in your bearing towards this soldier."

"Don't, don't, don't!" she exclaimed, in a choking voice.

"Are you not more to me than my own affairs, and even life?" he went on. "Come, listen to me! I am six years older than you, and Mr. Boldwood is ten years older than I, and consider-I do beg you to consider before it is too late-how safe you would be in his hands! "

Oak's allusion to his own love for her lessened, to some extent, her anger at his interference; but she could not really forgive him for letting his wish to marry her be eclipsed by his wish to do her good, any more than for his slighting treatment of Troy.

"I wish you to go elsewhere," she said, a paleness of face invisible to the eye being suggested by the trembling words. "Do not remain on this farm any longer. I don't want you-I beg you to go!"

"That's nonsense," said Oak, calmly. "This is the second time you have pretended to dismiss me, and what's the use of it?"

"Pretended! You shall go, sir-your lecturing I will not hear! I am mistress here."

"Go, indeed-what folly will you say next? Treating me like Dick Tom and Harry when you know that a short time ago my position was as good as yours! Upon my life, Bathsheba, it is too barefaced. You know too that I can't go without putting things in such a strait as you wouldn't get out of I can't tell when. Unless, indeed, you'll promise to have an

understanding man as bailiff, or manager, or something. I'll go at once if you'll promise that."

"I shall have no bailiff; I shall continue to be my own manager," she said decisively.

“Very well, then; you should be thankful to me for staying. How would the farm go on with nobody to mind it but a woman? But mind this, I don't wish you to feel you owe me anything. Not I. What I do, I do. Sometimes I say I should be as glad as a bird to leave the place -for don't suppose I'm content to be a nobody. I was made for better things. However, I don't like to see your concerns going to ruin, as they must if you keep in this mind. . . . I hate taking my own measure so plainly, but upon my life your provoking ways make a man say what he wouldn't dream of other times! I own to being rather interfering. But you know well enough how it is, and who she is that I like too well, and feel too much like a fool about to be civil to her."

It is more than probable that she privately and unconsciously respected him a little for this grim fidelity, which had been shown in his tone even more than in his words. At any rate she murmured something to the effect that he might stay if he wished. She said more distinctly, “Will you leave me alone now? I don't order it as a mistress-I ask it as a woman, and I expect you not to be so uncourteous as to refuse."

"Certainly I will, Miss Everdene," said Gabriel, gently. He wondered that the request should have come at this moment, for the strife was over, and they were on a most desolate hill far from every human habitation, and the hour was getting late. He stood still and allowed her to get far ahead of him till he could only see her form upon the sky.

A distressing explanation of this anxiety to be rid of him at that point now ensued. A figure apparently rose from the earth beside her. The shape beyond all doubt was Troy's. Oak would not be even a possible listener, and at once turned back till a good two hundred yards were between the lovers and himself.

Gabriel went home by way of the churchyard. In passing the tower he thought of what she had said about the Sergeant's virtuous habit of entering the church unperceived at the beginning of service. Believing that the little gallery door alluded to was quite disused, he ascended the external flight of steps at the top of which it stood, and examined it. The pale lustre yet hanging in the north-western heaven was sufficient to show that a sprig of ivy had grown from the wall across the door to a length of more than a foot, delicately tying the panel to the stone jamb. It was a decisive proof that the door had not been opened at least since Troy came back to Weatherbury.

662

King Fritz.

(FOUND AMONG THE PAPERS OF THE LATE W. M. THACKERAY.)

KING FRITZ at his palace of Berlin

I saw at a royal carouse,

In a periwig powdered and curling

He sat with his hat on his brows.
The handsome young princes were present,
Uncovered they stood in the hall;
And oh it was wholesome and pleasant
To see how he treated them all!

Reclined on the softest of cushions
His Majesty sits to his meats,
The princes, like loyal young Prussians,
Have never a back to their seats.
Off salmon and venison and pheasants
He dines like a monarch august;
His sons, if they cat in his presence,
Put up with a bone or a crust.

He quaffs his bold bumpers of Rhenish,
It can't be too good or too dear;
The princes are made to replenish
Their cups with the smallest of beer.
And if ever, by words or grimaces,

Their highnesses dare to complain,
The King flings a dish in their faces,
Or batters their bones with his cane.

'Tis thus that the chief of our nation

The minds of his children improves;

And teaches polite education

By boxing the cars that he loves.
I warrant they vex him but seldom,
And so if we dealt with our sons,

If we up with our cudgels and felled 'em,
We'd teach 'em good manners at once.

Homer's Troy, and Schliemann's.

AMIDST the startling survivals of antiquity, the dusty revivals of the mythic man, not one has come with such a theatrical (would that we could say dramatic!) éclat upon us as the recent excavations in the Troad. Priam and his kingdom have so long been consigned to the same Hades as Minerva and Theseus, Jason and Hercules, the Dioscuri and Deucalion, that it was a sensation not unlike that from suddenly seeing a megatherium in the paddock beyond your garden wall, to hear the announcement of the recovery of King Priam's treasure, lying in the square place where its oaken casket had crumbled to dust, with the key beside it which the unhappy guardian had brought at the dreadful final moment to rescue something for his consolation in exile; the ashes, calcined rocks, the pell-mell of weapons, bronze and stone-then the owl-headed Minerva, the heaps of gold vases and gold ornaments, Hecuba's head-dress and necklace, rings in countless store, helmets and battle-axes, with all the aids of the most curiously coincident items of stage business. Grave men who regard archæology as a science, and successful exploration as the highest prize of long-continued and well-directed study of history and mythology, of geography and geology, of cabinets and museums, might well be pardoned if they took this exploit of a raw student-amateur archæologue in the green stage of Homeric enthusiasm for a plant rather than a find, and conjectured that Schliemann only discovered what he had concealed.

There are many people who find the easiest thing to believe just that which is the least credible without being impossible, and the world in general rather prefers to believe than the contrary; and Max Müller and these terrible myth-analysts have so frightfully invaded our poetic properties, and distilled so much of our heroic history into mere statement of first principles-not history, but the primal elements of it crystallized anthropomorphically-that many of us would have been glad to see the last royal successor of Dardanus come to the foot-lights and disclaim them. What a triumph for poetry, what a milestone for history, was suggested by Schliemann's cry of exultation! But closer examination shows that, while his enthusiasm and happy credulity have not been rewarded by finding what he went to find, Homer's Troy, he has unearthed a riddle which is likely to give work to archæology for some time to come. Schliemann's early life was one of hard work and enthusiasm; as an errand boy in a commercial house in Amsterdam he contrived to lay the foundations of a linguistic education, which gave him such commercial advantages that in 1868 he retired from business with wealth enough to enable him to take up the study of archeology, drawn thereto by classical