she should be suffocated. At length the jaguar leaped on to the
lid, and his weight pressing down the lid, fractured these fingers.
Still she could not move. He smelt round again, he pulled, he leaped on
and off, till at last getting tired of his vain efforts, he went away.
The poor woman lay there till daybreak, and then only feeling safe from
her enemy, she went as fast as her strength would let her to her nearest
neighbour's, a distance of two miles, where she procured help for her
wounded fingers, which were long in getting well. On his return, her
husband found a male and female jaguar in the forest close by, with
their cubs, and all were destroyed.

Human hair has been known to turn white in a single night, and is often
said to do so in the pages of fiction. Whether it did so or not in the
present case is not recorded, but certainly if it did not, it lost an
exceptional opportunity.

AUNT GRIEVES' SILVER.

BY LUCIE E. JACKSON.

When Kate Hamilton's father had been dead six months, and Kate had had
time to realise that the extensive sheep station belonged to her and to
her alone--that she, in fact, was what the shearers called "the
boss"--then did she sit down and pen a few lines to her aunt in
England--her father's only sister. She did not exactly know what
possessed her to do it. She had never at any time during her nineteen
years corresponded with her aunt; it was her father who had kept up the
tie between his sister and himself. But notwithstanding that she was now
"boss," perhaps a craving for a little of the sympathy and the great
affection with which her father had always surrounded her, had something
to do with her wishing to get up a correspondence with his sister.
Whatever the reason the impulse was there, and the letter was despatched
to the England that Kate had never seen except through her father's
eyes.

A few weeks later she received an answer that filled her with surprise.

After a few preliminary remarks relating to the grief she felt at the
news of her brother's death, Mrs. Grieves wrote as follows:

"Your cousin Cicely and I cannot bear to think of your
being alone--young girl that you are--without a single
relative near for comfort or advice. I have made up my mind
to start for Australia as soon as I can arrange my affairs
satisfactorily. There is nothing to keep us in England
since Cicely's father died last year, and I long to see my
brother'