I rushed wildly along the embankment. How plain it all is to me now, even to the bits of pottery gleaming in the sand, and the distant echo of an Arab's song as it floated over the hills! I saw the white dress of my darling far ahead, and stumbled on—how, I hardly knew. The train was coming! I could hear it plunging on; I could see the fearful light. Oh, if I might reach her!
But who is that? Can it be Fatima? It is Fatima, waving her arms wildly as she speeds onward. She is on the bank! She is there! She grasps the child! And the train plunges past me with a wild glare; and there, before me, is my baby, my golden-haired baby, safe and unharmed, but Fatima lay dying on the iron rail. I clasped her to my heart, and called her name amid my sobs. She lifted the long, dark eyelashes, and smiled. "Allah be praised!" she murmured. Then in her weak, broken English she said:
"Me do something wid dis poor arm; me die for you baby!" She fell back in my arms; and so we carried her to my home, white and insensible.
But she did not die. The deformed arm had to be severed from the shoulder, but her life was saved; and to-day, surrounded by all that grateful hearts can give, she is one of the happiest little creatures on the banks of the Nile.
A ST. ULRIC DOLL.
BY THE AUTHOR OF "THE CATSKILL FAIRIES."
The steam-ship Columbine was crossing the ocean from Liverpool to New York. On the deck the passengers walked about, looking at the sea and sky. Occasionally they saw a flock of gulls circling about overhead, or a shoal of dolphins leaping up in the blue waves. Among these passengers was the shy gentleman. Now the shy gentleman was tall and large, with a full brown beard, which should have made him quite bold, but he was not. If a stranger spoke to him, he blushed, and if he tried to say something really wise, he merely stammered, so that his meaning was lost. As for tea-cups and wine-glasses, he always broke them with his elbow, or by allowing them to slip through his big fingers, while chairs and little tables seemed placed in his way for the sole purpose of his tumbling over them.
In his cabin was his portmanteau, filled with all sorts of treasures. A Paris doll and her wardrobe were given the place of honor. The beautiful blonde hair of this fashionable lady must not be disarranged, and the boxes containing her dresses and gloves, her boots, mantles, and parasols, required much space. She was a very important person. In a corner was wedged the case of one of those mechanical bears covered with black fur, and wound up by means of a key in his side. In the opposite corner were the Venetian lion of St. Mark, made of brass, trinkets of straw and glass, and a little Neapolitan boy in mosaic on the lid of a box. The St. Ulric doll, folded in a bit of tissue-paper, had been allowed to fall down anywhere. She was made of a single stick of wood, with a head carved on top, but without arms or legs, like the Italian babies, who are wound about with cloths until they resemble little mummies.
She remained quietly where she had been placed, between a flannel waistcoat and a pair of stockings, with her head resting on a meerschaum pipe. She thought of her home, and sighed. Yes, she was homesick, because she loved her own land as only the Tyrolese and the Swiss love their native mountains.