“If those were all you had to offer, you were right,” Lily answered, tremulously. “You yourself do not live that life for nothing. There is something that so far outweighs all those things that you count them as naught.”
“Oh, I love my people!” said Macpherson at once, and even as he uttered the word it told him what she meant. “My love was such a poor thing to offer,” he faltered humbly, “and I have nothing else.”
The tears brimmed over in Lily’s eyes. “And would you take anything else in exchange?” she said—“would money do instead, or rank, or any other thing?”
“Oh, no, no, no!” he exclaimed, impetuously; “only love, and only yours! Can love—such love as mine—outweigh all the rest?” His voice failed, and as he raised his earnest, searching eyes to her face, the last words came in a hoarse whisper, “Oh, is it enough for me to dare offer you that alone?”
Lily crossed the narrow pathway that divided them, letting all her flowers fall at their feet, and laid her hands in his.
“Would you really have let me go away without telling me?” she asked, bravely, while the rosy color deepened in her cheeks. “Less than love, for you and me, is nothing; and more than love there cannot be;” and then she was fain to hide her face and fast-falling tears upon his breast. “Oh, if only I were less unworthy!”
Macpherson trembled as he drew her to him. “God bless you, darling!” he murmured, brokenly; and again and again, thinking over the past, she heard him whisper, “Thank God! thank God!”—Leisure Hour.
WHEN SHALL WE LOSE OUR POLE-STAR?
This may be to some of our readers a startling question; for most of us have had that star pointed out to us many years; and perhaps those who directed our eyes to it little thought that there would ever be any other pole-star. It is well known that if the northern extremity of the axis of our earth were lengthened until it met the imaginary sphere of the heavens, it would come very near to our present pole-star, hence called Polaris; and if, for any cause, the direction of that axis were materially altered, that star would no longer be a true index of the north. We now propose to show that such a change of the direction of the earth’s axis is continually taking place; and that the terrestrial axis when thus lengthened describes a cone, the apex of which is the centre of the earth; and the circumference of the base of the cone is a circle described amongst the stars. When the axis has described one-half of its course, the angle between the two positions it occupies at the beginning and at the middle of the rotation is about forty-seven degrees. And thus the extremity of the axis will successively come near to other stars than our present pole-star; and in about twelve thousand years it will have as the Polaris the very conspicuous star Vega, or α in the constellation Lyra.