o allow his estates to
be charged with his debts; but this he persistently refused to do.

There was at that time a law in France permitting debtors who had
suffered twenty-five years' imprisonment to be allowed to go free, with
all their liabilities discharged, and this extraordinary young man
actually decided to do this, and to settle his debts by undergoing a
quarter of a century of prison life!

Beyond the inability to leave the prison, Lord Massereene seems to have
suffered at first but few privations, for cheerful society was not
denied him, and he managed to woo and wed the daughter of one of the
principal officials of the place.

A plan of escape was at length made, and as the young lady's father was
able and willing to help in the matter, it was very nearly successful.
But not quite! For, just as Lord Massereene was leaving the door of the
prison to enter the carriage which was in waiting for him, he was
arrested, and taken back to the prison. It appears that the Governor's
suspicions had been aroused by seeing a carriage and pair loitering
about the gate. As soon as he had caught the escaping prisoner, he
ordered him to be lodged in the dungeon, a gloomy cell, below the Seine,
on which Le Chatelet was built.

Lord Massereene now knew all the rigours of a French prison. He was left
to languish in damp and darkness, with no companions but the rats, and
only the coarsest food.

When at last the twenty-five years were ended, and his release came, he
was indeed a pitiful object: gaunt, yellow, with a long unkempt beard
reaching below his knees.

But his wife had remained constant to him, and together they set out for
England. On landing at Dover, Lord Massereene was the first to step on
shore, and falling on his knees, he exclaimed fervently,--

'God bless this land of freedom!'

* * * * *

He lived nearly twenty years in the enjoyment of the estate for which he
had suffered imprisonment for so long, and died in 1805.

THE SAGO-TREE.

Sago is made from the pith of a tree-trunk. This tree--the sago-tree--is
a kind of palm, like the date-tree and the cocoanut-tree. It is found in
the East Indian Islands, where it gives food to many thousands of
people, particularly in the large island of New Guinea, where a great
part of the population is almost entirely dependent upon it.

The sago-tree grows in swampy places, either by the sea or in little
hollows by the hill-si