his countrymen, to smoke and play chess.
But always, some time during the evening, he would say, 'Gentlemen, a
Pole is never ungrateful. I call on you to drink this toast: _To the
white chalk-line beyond the sea_!'" And then she added, quickly, "If I
were English, how proud I should be of England!"

"But why?" he said.

"Because she has kept liberty alive in Europe," said the girl, proudly;
"because she offers an exile to the oppressed, no matter from whence
they come; because she says to the tyrant, 'No, you cannot follow.' Why,
when even your beer-men your dray-men know how to treat a Haynau, what
must the spirit of the country be? If only those fine fellows could have
caught Windischgratz too!"

Her father laughed at her vehemence; Brand did not. That strange
vibration in the girl's voice penetrated him to the heart.

"But then," said he, after a second or two, "I have been amusing myself
for some days back by reading a good deal of political writing, mostly
by foreigners; and if I were to believe what they say, I should take it
that England was the most superstitious, corrupt, enslaved nation on the
face of the earth! What with its reverence for rank, its worship of the
priesthood--oh, I cannot tell you what a frightful country it is!"

"Who were the writers?" Mr. Lind asked.

Brand named two or three, and instantly the attention of the others
seemed arrested.

"Oh, that is the sort of literature you have been reading?" he said,
with a quick glance.

"I have had some days' idleness."

"Excuse me," said the other, with a smile; "but I think you might have
spent it better. That kind of literature only leads to disorder and
anarchy. It may have been useful at one time; it is useful no longer.
Enough of ploughing has been done: we want sowing done now--we want
writers who will build up instead of pulling down. Those Nihilists," he
added, almost with a sigh, "are becoming more and more impracticable.
They aim at scarcely anything beyond destruction."

Here Natalie changed the conversation. This was too bright and
beautiful a day to admit of despondency.

"I suppose you love the sea, Mr. Brand?" she said. "All Englishmen do.
And yachting--I suppose you go yachting?"

"I have tried it; but it is too tedious for me," said Brand. "The sort
of yachting I like is in a vessel of five thousand tons, going three
hundred and eighty miles a day. With half a gale of wind in your teeth
in the 'rolling Forties,' then t