Before the meal was half finished, however (it was exceedingly well cooked and toothsome), I received a shock.
Monsieur de Brienne suddenly and without a warning gave a little cry and fell back in his arm-chair (a home-made affair, cut from a barrel of some sort), and I, frightened, ran to his side.
But the old servant appeared quite used to this, and together we got my uncle into his bed, where we rubbed and chafed his limbs until I grew so tired I could hardly move. The next day I thought he was like to die. He would not let me leave him, and talked so incoherently that I could make no sense out of his maunderings at all.
Now begins such a strange existence that if it were told to me by any one who claimed to have led it I should be most doubtful. It would make a volume in itself, maybe, but I intend to hasten over this period, and to get quickly into that from which has developed the present, and which is leading up to whatever future there is before me.
To this end I shall do my best to resist any temptation to dwell at too great length on the life I led at the lonely farm-house on Mountain Brook.
[to be continued.]
[HARNESSING NIAGARA.]
BY ELIZABETH FLINT WADE.
Two men were once boasting of their wonderful physical powers, and a story told by one would be immediately capped by the other by the relation of a capability far more marvellous. Suddenly one of them pointed to a church spire which could be seen across the valley, and said,