Four-and-thirty years ago, Bob Ainslie and I were coming up Infirmary Street from the Edinburgh High School, our heads together, and our arms intertwisted, as only lovers and boys know how, or why.

Six years have passed,a long time for a boy and a dog: Bob Ainslie is off to the wars; I am a medical student, and clerk at Minto House Hospital.

'Are there rocks over there?' 'Yes, there's the Ainslie Crag just there; it's a nasty place thata very nasty place.

'She's close on Ainslie CragI thought so!'

She had struck on Ainslie Crag, and her stern was under water, and the waves were beating wildly on her deck.

And then came a noise, loud as a terrible thunder-clap, as the mighty wave dashed against Ainslie Crag.

When at last we reached that terrible Ainslie Crag, we were too late to save a single life; we could not find one of those on board.

But every now and then, as I was playing with her, I looked across the sea to Ainslie Crag.

"Ere yet Cheops built the Pyramids, or Joshua commanded the sun to stand still, yea, before the first sensation tingled in the first nerve made out of the dust, the beginnings were laid of these events of this day and hour, and, in particular, of that one which may well astonish you and grieve youviz., that the locket is intended for and inscribed to Agnes Ainslie.

" "Agnes Ainslie!"

repeated Rachel, with parched lips and trembling voice, "the daughter of Mr. John Ainslie, my father's agent, to whom I am even now going, by Mr. Grierson's command, to request him to call to morrow for the purpose of preparing the settlement!"

nay, might not I myself have been one of the happiest of beings, if, with the fortune which is to be left to me, that locket had been engraved with the name of Rachel Grierson in place of Agnes Ainslie?"

Still under these impressions, she came to the door of Mr. Ainslie's house.

Next day Mr. Ainslie called, and was for a long time closeted with Mr. Grierson; but so careless was she now of the fortune about being left to her, and which she was satisfied would not now be a means of showing her affection for Walter, that she felt little interest in an affair which otherwise might have appeared of so much importance to her.

Nor could she account for this interview on any other supposition than that Mr. Ainslie knew of the intentions of Walter towards his daughter, and that he took this early opportunity of intimating that a disinherited young man, of the grade of a merchant's clerk, would not, as a son-in-law, suit the expectations of an ambitious writer.

That other, too, had a better right to the object than she herself, in so far that Agnes Ainslie's love had been returned, while hers had not.

"And upon which," said he, still smiling, "there is engraven the inscription, 'From Walter Grierson to Agnes Ainslie.'

Entirely ignorant of what had taken place between the nephew and the uncle, by means of which she might have been able to analyze his conduct, she had only the closeting of Mr. Ainslie and Walter to suggest to her that the young man's sudden declaration was the result of his knowledge that she was to be sole heiress.

AINSLIE, Douglas.

THE POETRY OF DANTE, by Benedetto Croce, translated by Douglas Ainslie.

R56665, 4Jan50, Douglas Ainslie (A) POLARIS, the story of an Eskimo dog, by Ernest Harold Baynes.

THE POETRY OF DANTE, by Benedetto Croce, translated by Douglas Ainslie.

R56665, 4Jan50, Douglas Ainslie (A) POLARIS, the story of an Eskimo dog, by Ernest Harold Baynes.

23 Ainslie Place, Feb. 3, 1865

23 Ainslie Place, Edinburgh, March 14, 1865.