ters have
fruitlessly essayed to convey to canvass, but the glorious, full,
round orb itself. This he had never seen before, and he wondered why
it should be. Almost as though in answer to his thought, a faint
zephyr breathed across the surface of the waters, and beginning near
the shores, the ripples rolled towards him, and with them brought the
shimmering moonlight until all in a moment, the reflected orb had
disappeared, and the usual silvery line of light replaced it. Thus he
saw, that only water in motion will show the moonbeams, whilst a
mirror, whether it be of glass, or the still bosom of the lake,
reflects but the moon itself.

Again he returned to the bitterness of his night's experience, and
now, no longer attracted by the moon, and not caring how fast or
whither he drifted, he lay back in his boat, pillowing his head upon
a cushion on the seat in the stern, and gazed up into the sky thus
oblivious of the landscape and so without an indication of his
progress.

His mind reverted to the house, and the dead woman. She was not his
mother. Then who was she? Or rather who was he? She was, or had been,
Margaret Grath, and he had thought that he was entitled to the name
Leon Grath. But if she was not, or had not been, his mother, then
plainly he had no right to her name. On considering this, he concluded
that it was his privilege to call himself Leon, but the last name
Grath, being obtainable legally only by inheritance, he must abandon.
When the word "inheritance" crossed his thoughts, involuntarily a loud
mocking laugh escaped him. And when the sonorous echoes laughed with
him, he laughed again, and again. The drollery which aroused his
mirth, was that, if a name might be inherited, why might not Margaret
Grath have bequeathed hers to him? Perhaps she might have mentioned it
in her will? But no! A name is a heritage acquired at birth, whilst
only chattels are included in an inheritance which follows a death.
Evidently he was nameless, except that he might be called Leon, just
as his collie answered to the name Lossy. This made him laugh again.
For now he thought that his dog had fared better than himself, for he
was called "The Marquis of Lossy," after MacDonald's Malcolm. Thus the
collie was of noble blood, whilst he was----only Leon, the child of
nobody. As he reached this point, the moon dipped down below the
western hill, the upper edge shedding its last rays across the boy and
his boat, after which he was