a tone of disappointment, "then she could not
have been very pretty."

"I dare say she was, but I do not know," returned Leam.

"And she died?" continued Fina, yawning in a childishly indifferent
manner.

"Yes, she died."

"Why? Who killed her? Did papa?" asked Fina.

Leam's face was very white: "No, not papa."

"Did God?"

"I cannot tell you, Fina," said Leam, to whom falsehoods were
abhorrent and the truth impossible.

"Did you?" persisted Fina with childish obstinacy.

"Now go," said Leam, putting her off her lap and rising from her chair
in strange disorder. "You are troublesome and ask too many questions."

Fina began to cry loudly, and Mr. Dundas, from his library below,
heard her. He came up stairs with his fussy, restless kindness, and
opened the door of the room where his two daughters, of nature and by
adoption, were.

"Heyday! what's all this about?" he cried. "What's the matter, my
little Fina? what are you crying for? Tut, tut! you should not cry
like this, darling; and, Leam," severely, "you should really keep the
child better amused and happy. She is as good as gold with me: with
you there is always something wrong."

Fina ran into his arms sobbing. "Leam is cross," she said. "She will
not tell me who killed mamma."

The man's ruddy face, reddened and roughened with travel, grew white
and pitiful. "God took her away, my darling," he said with a sob.
"She was too good for me, and He took her to live with the angels in
heaven,"

"And Leam's mamma? Is she in heaven too with the angels?" asked Fina,
opening her eyes wide through their tears,

"I hope so," Sebastian answered in an altered voice.

Leam covered her face in her hands; then lifting it up, she said
imploringly, "Papa, do not talk to her of mamma. It is sacrilege."

"I agree with you, Leam," said Mr, Dundas in a steady voice. "We meet
at the same point, but perhaps by different methods."

[TO BE CONTINUED.]

LETTERS FROM SOUTH AFRICA

BY LADY BARKER.

CAPE TOWN, October 16, 1875.

Safe, safe at last, after twenty-four days of nothing but sea
and sky, of white-crested waves--which made no secret of their
intention of coming on board whenever they could or of tossing
the good ship Edinburgh Castle hither and thither like a
child's plaything--and of more deceitful sluggish rolling
billows, looking tolerably calm to the unseafaring eye, but
containing a vast amount of heaving power