men were successful; and in a few minutes Basil was brought safely to Lilian's side; at least, his insensible form was placed there, and so deathlike was the trance in which he lay that all those who surrounded him feared greatly that life was extinct.

He was carried to the gatehouse; and after a while there were symptoms of restored animation; and then Lilian begged to be allowed to make use of a carriage, that was accidentally waiting at the head of the lake, for a party who had gone on by another conveyance.

It was late in the evening before she reached Bryndyffryn, and there she found Dr. and Miss Williams and Bridget a prey to the most miserable suspense. Mr. Hughes had kindly accompanied her; indeed, it would have been heartless to allow her to take the miserable journey without assistance; for Basil, although he breathed and occasionally uttered a low moan of pain, lay in a kind of stupor, without motion, speech, or consciousness.

How far he was injured she could not tell; although she had stopped at Bethesda, in order to seek medical aid, none was forthcoming; the Esculapius of the place having departed early in the morning to visit a patient at Llandegai. Dr. Williams, however, had foreseen the possible urgency of the case, and Lilian's regular attendant was ready to obey Bridget's hasty

summons.

He shook his head gravely when he had examined his patient, and stated his conviction that he had fallen with so great a violence as to render his continued existence little short of a miracle; besides which, he conjectured that he had laid in the hollow for many hours, and been consequently exposed to the nightdews in a spot that was chilly in the most sultry weather. Mr. Owen seemed greatly alarmed, and ho

immediately proposed sending to Bangor for further advice, adding, that in so serious a case, he hesitated to take upon himself the entire responsibility.

For more than a fortnight Basil lay between life and death; fever supervened, delirium naturally ensued, and mournful were the revelations poor Lilian was doomed to receive from the lips of the man she loved so well-from lips, too, that seemed about to close in death-lips that would soon tremble and grow pale beneath the icy hand of the great Spoiler!

Even

Oh! the hours of agony, the anguished prayers that were poured forth till wearied nature could sustain no more!-the watchings, the hopings against hope, the sickening fears, the cold nerveless despair that weighed down poor Lilian to the very dust! The children were all sent to the vicarage; how they fared their mother could not guess, for Bridget was too valuable to be spared from the stricken household; but in her one awful trial, her one great agony and dread, all minor difficulties were thrust aside. her children occupied her thoughts but little whilst she stood by the bed of their father-of her own husband, to whom she had given her maiden heart and her maiden vows, and who had ever, through all things, been the first object of her strong, true woman's love. She seemed nerved with a supernatural strength; she was never tired, never weary with days of anguish and nights of watchings. Miss Williams and Bridget were always at hand to proffer their assistance; and, indeed, without their continual aid, Lilian must have given way from her inability to preserve herself from sinking into a state of utter prostration; but still she was, from the first to the last, the guiding spirit of the sick-room-always prompt, always foreseeing, always alive to the minutest change, and ready for any emergency that might occur. Calm, too, even when

her sorrow was greatest, and patient under every pang of disappointment, Miss Williams wondered greatly at the young wife's composure and devotion. She had long since learned to appreciate Lilian; but till this season of dark and bitter affliction she never fully comprehended

On the third day of Basil's illness, Lilian wrote to her father-in-law, telling him of the mournful state to which his son was reduced, and begging him to come to Bryndyffryn without any delay. The letter remained unanswered, and Lilian felt that she and Basil were deserted. She did not know that Mr. and Mrs. Hope, with their daughter Olivia (Harriet and Mary had followed Theresa's example, and married, the one a fashionable baronet, and the other a country gentleman of large fortune and ancient family), she did not know that they were at Baden-Baden, whither their letters were irregularly forwarded. Day by day the clouds gathered blackness. Lilian thought the extremity of human sorrow was to be her portion; but the darkest hours precede the dawn. "When need is highest, help is nighest ;" and the time of man's extremity is frequently the appointed time when God will bid his helpless children stand still and see the salvation of the Lord.

CHAPTER XXIX.

THE GREATEST TRIAL.

"But o'er the abyss, there streams a glorious light;
Its depths are spanned by ONE availing path;
Nor dark the way! A radiance ever bright,

Shows mercy's golden bridge, and waves of wrath,
That thunder far beneath, no child need dread
That simple pathway o'er the gulf to tread.

"An unseen Hand is there to guide him on,
From strength to strength along the narrow road,
Till, the long journey and its toils all done,
He rests within his heavenly abode,

And sees the wounded hands, the pierced side,
Of Him who on the Cross was crucified."

"SACRED YEAR." E. J. W.

TuE fever abated at length, the delirium ceased, and Basil lay on his bed, weak and feeble, like one whose thread of life is worn to the last degree of fragility. It seemed indeed to his anxious wife, and to all who watched in his sick-chamber, that, for him, earthly life was fading rapidly away. Every setting sun, as it went down on the wide expanse of heaving waters, and left its red gleam on the mountaintops, seem to find him more feeble, more wasted, more like one upon whom the shadow of the tomb has already fallen.

The medical attendants believed that the natural vigour of his constitution might have triumphed over the strength of the fever, but he had sustained many injuries; and though, almost miraculously, no bone was broken, he was covered with serious bruises and contusions. His ankle was frightfully sprained, both his arms severely lacerated, and his back strained to a degree that suggested the idea of danger to the spine.

So that when the burning fever passed away, and he lay battling for life against utter prostration, and such weariness as he had never even faintly conceived, he had to contend with extreme and constant pain, that banished sleep from his restless pillow.

One evening Lilian was alone. Bridget was downstairs with the children; for Miss Williams being suddenly and even seriously indisposed, their mother had insisted on their return; and accordingly they came back, and were established in two distant rooms, under the charge of a young woman in the neighbourhood who could be fully trusted.

Lilian stood by the window, looking pensively over the nestling valley, and the glittering sea beyond. The sun was going down in all his glory, and she thought not many times would it touch with its rich colouring the yellow sand on the shore, and the dark pines that fringed the coast-line, before Basil her Basil, her own erring, but dearly loved husband, would be gone from a world where so much beauty yet lingered.

Gone! and whither? She did not dare to think. She knew that her husband's heart was unchanged; that all his life he had loved the world, and the things of the world, and that the poor failing heart, that beat so faintly now, had always throbbed only to the tones and voices of earth. They were going to part-the two grand aims of her life would be unfulfilled-that which she had covenanted with herself to perform that to which she had pledged herself in the royal glades of Windsor, and again in her own dismantled house in town, might never be performed.

The happiness of married life, for which she had so long and patiently striven, was not to be hersthe reconciliation between Basil and his offended father might not be; all was over; the hopes she had