Today's Stichomancy for Christian Bale

I did not know my heart could tell his tread, I did not know I loved him till that hour. Within my breast I felt a wild, sick pain, The garden reeled a little, I was weak, And quick he came behind me, caught my arms, That ached beneath his touch; and then I swayed, My head fell backward and I saw his face.

All this grows bitter that was once so sweet, And many mouths must drain the dregs of it. But none will pity me, nor pity him Whom Love so lashed, and with such cruel thongs.

No more was required. That two years ago his godfather should upon certain terms have refused him his house weighed for nothing at the moment. He left his travelling carriage at the little inn and went straight to M. de Kercadiou.

And M. de Kercadiou, startled in such an hour by this sudden apparition, of one against whom he nursed a bitter grievance, greeted him in terms almost identical with those in which in that same room he had greeted him on a similar occasion once before.

"What do you want here, sir?"

"To serve you if possible, my godfather," was the disarming answer.

But it did not disarm M. de Kercadiou. "You have stayed away so

think that we slept more than two or three hours out of the twenty-four.

But, it may be asked, what was my aim, whither went I, what inquiries had I made? To answer the last question first, I had made every possible inquiry, but with little or no result. Marie's letter had said that they were encamped on the bank of the Crocodile River, about fifty miles from Delagoa Bay. I asked everyone I met among the Portuguese--who, after all, were not many--if they had heard of such an encampment of emigrant Boers. But these Portuguese appeared to have heard nothing, except my host, Don Jose, who had a vague recollection of something--he could not remember what.

The fact was at this time the few people who lived at Lorenzo Marquez

Marie

wholly disappeared; why, out of the eighty or ninety tragedies of Aeschylus and Sophocles, only seven of each had been preserved.

Such an age of sciolism and scholasticism may possibly once more get the better of the literary world. There are those who prophesy that the signs of such a day are again appearing among us, and that at the end of the present century no writer of the first class will be still alive. They think that the Muse of Literature may transfer herself to other countries less dried up or worn out than our own. They seem to see the withering effect of criticism on original genius. No one can doubt that such a decay or decline of literature and of art seriously affects the manners and character of a nation. It takes away half the joys and refinements of