moment endangers our safety."

"If such be your command," replied La Mole coldly, "rather than
sacrifice a little of your honour, I will fly."

"They will be here shortly," continued Alencon hurriedly. "Here, take
this cloak--this jewelled hat. They are well known to be mine. Wrap
the cloak about you. Disguise your height--your gait. They will take
you for me. The corridors are obscure--you may cross the outer court
undiscovered--and once in safety, you will join our friends.
Away--away!"

La Mole obeyed his master's bidding, but without the least appearance
of haste or fear.

"And I would have made that man a king!" he murmured to himself, as,
dressed in the Duke's cloak and hat, he plunged into the tortuous and
gloomy corridors of the Louvre. "That man a king! Ambition made me
mad. Ay! worse than mad--a fool!"

The Duke of Alencon watched anxiously from his window, which dominated
the outer court of the Louvre, for the appearance of that form,
enveloped in his cloak; and when he saw La Mole pass unchallenged the
gate leading without, he turned away from the window with an
exclamation of satisfaction.

A minute afterwards the agents of the Queen-mother entered his
apartment.

THE SCOTTISH HARVEST.

The approach of winter is always a serious time. When the fields are
cleared, and the produce of our harvest has been gathered into the
yard and the barn, we begin to hold a general count and reckoning with
the earth, and to calculate what amount of augmented riches we have
drawn from the bosom of the soil. When the investigation proves
satisfactory, the result is but slightly recorded. Our ancestors, with
just piety and gratitude, were accustomed to set apart whole days for
thanksgiving to the Almighty Being who had blessed the labours of the
year; we--to our shame be it said--have departed from the reverent
usage. We take a good season as if it were no more than our appointed
due--a bad one comes upon us with all the terrors of a panic.

But there are seasons frequently occurring which vary between the one
and the other extreme; and these are they which give rise to the most
discussion. It is unfortunately the tactics, if not the interest, of
one great party in the nation, to magnify every season of scarcity
into a famine for the purpose of promoting their own cherished
theories. A bad August and an indifferent September are subjects of
intense interest to your thorough-paced corn-law repealer; not tha