ed; "and perhaps-- Well, we shall
see. Good-by, and my best wishes go with you!"

Walter grasped the hand which his master extended, and kissed it
fervently. "God bless and preserve you!" said he, with tears in his
eyes. "If prayers, earnest prayers for you, can be of any help, you will
be saved."

"Farewell, Walter. You have been a faithful servant," exclaimed Mr.
Lafond, with painful emotion. "God be with you!--perhaps we shall never
meet each other again."

So they parted. Walter went by the first conveyance to Rouen to the
house of General De Bougy; and his former master sunk into profound
grief as he dwelt upon the affection and solicitude which the young
Switzer had shown toward him. "Only a year sooner," he mused, with
torturing anguish, "and I might have been a saved man! Now, alas! thou
hast come too late, noble and generous heart!"

[TO BE CONTINUED.]

THE BEAUTIFUL CHRISTMAS GREEN.

One of the pleasantest pastimes of the whole year for country children
is gathering Christmas green. This is done before the very cold weather
begins, otherwise the beautiful club-mosses and ground-pines would be
frozen solid in the damp soil of the swamps and woods, or the whole
would be covered with a snow carpet, broken only by rabbit and squirrel
tracks. The freshest green for Christmas trimming is found in damp
meadows or on springy hillsides, where it nestles in the moist earth,
overshadowed by thickets of alders and birches. It grows in the forests
too; not so much among pine-trees, as the dry carpet of fallen needles
is less nutritious than the loam produced by the accumulations of dead
leaves of oak, maple, and beech trees.

There are many kinds of ground evergreens, most of them members of the
_Lycopodiaceae_, or club-moss family. There is the creeping club-moss,
the cord-like stem of which, sometimes yards long, hides among the dead
leaves, and sends up at intervals graceful whorls of bright green. Tiny
bunches of short white roots run down in the damp mould, where they find
nutriment for the plant. If you work your finger under the stem, and
pull gently, it is wonderful to see the long and beautiful wreath slowly
disentangle itself from the forest floor, disturbing hundreds of little
wood-beetles, which scurry away to hide again among the woodland
rubbish. There are two kinds of creeping green very common in all moist
wooded lands at the North--the kind with leaves rising in whorls, and
that with a ste