all, gaunt figure that came and went among them, laboring ceaselessly,
striving always against the current, they regarded with tolerating eyes
as a species differing from theirs, but good in its way, especially for
work. The children loved the still silent old woman, and generously
allowed her to take care of them until she tried to teach them; then
away they flew like wild birds of the forest, and not one learned more
than the alphabet.

Doro died first, a middle-aged man; gently he passed away without pain,
without a care. "You have been very good to me, aunt; my life has been a
happy one; I have had nothing to wish for," he murmured, as she bent to
catch the last look from his dying eyes.

He was gone; and she bore on the burden he had left to her. I saw her
last year--an old, old woman, but working still.

OLD GARDISTON.

One by one they died--
Last of all their race;
Nothing left but pride,
Lace and buckled hose;
Their quietus made,
On their dwelling-place
Ruthless hands are laid:
Down the old house goes!

Many a bride has stood
In yon spacious room;
Here her hand was wooed
Underneath the rose;
O'er that sill the dead
Reached the family tomb;
All that were have fled--
Down the old house goes!

EDMUND CLARENCE STEDMAN.

Old Gardiston was a manor-house down in the ricelands, six miles from a
Southern seaport. It had been called Old Gardiston for sixty or seventy
years, which showed that it must have belonged to colonial days, since
no age under that of a century could have earned for it that honorable
title in a neighborhood where the Declaration of Independence was still
considered an event of comparatively modern times. The war was over, and
the mistress of the house, Miss Margaretta Gardiston, lay buried in St.
Mark's churchyard, near by. The little old church had long been closed;
the very road to its low stone doorway was overgrown, and a second
forest had grown up around it; but the churchyard was still open to
those of the dead who had a right there; and certainly Miss Margaretta
had this right, seeing that father, grandfather, and great-grandfather
all lay buried there, and their memorial tablets, quaintly emblazoned,
formed a principal part of the decorations of the ancient little
sanctuary in the wilderness. There was no one left at Old Gardiston now
save Cousin Copeland and Gardis Duke, a girl of sev