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Rh and, for a moment, the thought that there might be truth in what his aged comrade said, seemed as awful in its consequences as an actual death-knell.

Sergeant-major Joyce was a veteran soldier, who had gained the respect and esteem of his whole regiment—officers and men. There was a bond between him and them which his withdrawal from active service could not cancel. So, after his wife's death, timing that a few of his old companions in arms were inmates of Chelsea College, he removed to its vicinity; passing his time between the lofty corridors of the palace-hospital and the small sitting-room of his child; ever walking with and talking to "the pensioners," or that dear and delicate "copy" of the wife he had so truly loved. And Lucy was a girl of whom any parent might have been proud. Delicacy of constitution had given refinement to her mind as well as to her appearance: she read, perhaps, more than was good for her, if she had been destined to live the usual term of life, in her proper sphere. She thought, also, but she thought well; and this, happily for herself, made her humble. Faith is the foundation of that righteous affection, without which nought is pure; her faith was clear and firm—in nothing wavering;, and belief had given her, without an effort, tenfold the strength which those who rely for strength upon the broken and bending reed of , seek for in vain. You inquire, who taught her this? Was it her kindly but half-crazed father? No: he was full of a rough soldier's honour, mingled, at times, with the more than woman's softness, which often tempers dispositions fierce as his; but in all this faith, in the trust and purity, the meek, cheerful, warm spirit of love and tenderness, Lucy—I say it with deep reverence—Lucy, in all these things—the fruits of a regenerate nature—was taught of. She made no show of piety; but her father knew that every night her Bible was placed beneath her pillow; for he had often seen it there, when stealing into her little room to be assured she slept. She read much besides, and had that youthful leaning towards poetry which is often the sure evidence of a good and highly tempered mind; but many a time she shut her "poesy book" with something like distate [sic], to fill out her heart with the inspired numbers of Isaiah, or the glories of the holy Psalms. Well might she be her father's darling; she was more than that, though he did not know it; she was his ministering angel. At times her heart would throb wildly at tales of the wars in which he had borne a part. And even on the sabbath day she seldom knelt beneath the shadow of the trophies of our country's prowess—trophies which glorify the old Hospital-Chapel of Chelsea—without feeling proudly thankful they were there; but her care was ever to soothe and tranquillize, to watch for and avert her father's stormy moods, and be ready with a word in season, to recall him to himself.

Mr. Joyce soon reached his home after he left his comrades. "Mary," he inquired of an Irishwoman, the widow of a soldier, who had nursed his daughter from