I was spending the winter in the family, and going to school, and between my uncle and me there had grown up an intimate and confidential friendship such as is rare between a man of sixty and a girl of fifteen.

The poor girl ran on and on alone, and presently saw a tiny hamlet hidden among some trees.

From an upper window the master of the house answered them, while the girl and her kindly hostess listened anxiously downstairs.

With protruding scarlet tongue and fixed staring eyes, the girl stood immovable and breathless, silently invoking all her family gods to come to her aid in her bold design.

Long after the dacoits had gone the girl stood there.

When the family returned next morning, the neighbours abused them soundly for leaving the girl and her babe behind.

The girl herself was so hurt by the neglect that she had scarcely strength enough to relate the strange happenings of the night.

There were several ladies and children in the family and the mother-in-law had thought the girl was with some of them.

The girl's parents were anxious and distressed.

He remembered that singular sensation in the roots of the hair, when he came on the traces of the girl's presence, reminding him of a line in a certain poem which he had read lately with a new and peculiar interest.

I suppose it is all natural enough that this girl should like a young man's attention, even if he were a grave schoolmaster; but the eloquence of this young thing's look is unmistakable,and yet she does not know the language it is talking,they none of them do; and there is where a good many poor creatures of our good-for-nothing sex are mistaken.

"And the immediate cause of all this sort of thing, my dear Madam," he continued, as he rode alongside, "why, it seems to be just that girl Lily, that we had all the trouble about last year.

"Yes, it is all about that girl Lily," said Josephine slowly, restraining in her own soul the impulse to cry out the truth to him, to tell him why this girl was almost white, why she had features like his own.

"The girl is first mounted and rides off at full speed.

But it sometimes happens that the woman does not wish to marry the person by whom she is pursued, in which case she will not suffer him to overtake her; and we were assured that no instance occurs of a Calmuck girl being caught, unless she has a partiality for her pursuer.

A baby girl's inheritance was not likely, as may be imagined, to be regarded at that date as particularly sacred.

Once more, if a girl rises at sunrise, goes out into the street, and asks the first passer-by his Christian name, that will be her husband's name.

At Aglu, in the province of Sus, the fire is lighted at three different points by an unmarried girl, and when it has died down the young men leap over the glowing embers, saying, "We shook on you, O Lady Ashur, fleas, and lice, and the illnesses of the heart, as also those of the bones; we shall pass through you again next year and the following years with safety and health."

On looking back over her left shoulder the girl would see the figure of her future mate behind her in the darkness.

For a girl the answer of the oracle was analogous; she would marry a bachelor, a widower, or nobody according to the plate into which she chanced to dip her finger.

Again, if a girl, walking backwards, would place a knife among the leeks on Hallowe'en, she would see her future husband come and pick up the knife and throw it into the middle of the garden.

Girls went out into the garden blindfold and pulled up cabbages: if the cabbage was well grown, the girl would have a handsome husband, but if it had a crooked stalk, the future spouse would be a stingy old man.

Again, if a girl found a branch of a briar-thorn which had bent over and grown into the ground so as to form a loop, she would creep through the loop thrice late in the evening in the devil's name, then cut the briar and put it under her pillow, all without speaking a word.

Again, a girl would take a clue of worsted, go to a lime kiln in the gloaming, and throw the clew into the kiln in the devil's name, while she held fast the other end of the thread.

Just before the sun rises a girl goes and draws water at the village spring or at the brook.