A Mason's Story.

innumerable fishing boats , stretched out , revealing a long range of - sands , which shimmered and gleamed with a silvery sheon in the delicious moonlight . And under the shadow of the venerable old church ( which has long ago yielded to the rude hand of the " restorer " ) paced- slowly a youthful couple . It was the old , old , story being enacted over again . Love , and that under , wellnot exactly difficultiesbut rather impracticabilites . But I must not

, , anticipate ; my story will relate itself best in its own way . Of these two , the young man might , at a first glance , have been taken for twenty-six or twenty-seven . This was not the case , however . Study and discontent with his own lot , in which it had pleased the Great Creator to place him , had combined to make him look old before his time . Perhaps an hereditary growth of beard helped to keep up the delusion . His age was at most but

twenty-one summers . In stature he was rather short , with a strong tendency to corpulence , aud his features were heavily cut , inspiring you at first with an almost instinctive dislike to him . But those who formed a dislike to Penhryn Falconer ( for such was his name ) were invariably quickly undeceived . A kinder youth never trod this earth . Full of broadhumanitarian sympathies for his fellow-menhe would

, , have scorned any action which would have harmed the meanest of his fellow creatures . He had been placed by his parents at a public school , and among two or three hundred boisterous specimens of humanity , whose sole ambition was to excel in cricket , football , or hockey , he , the retiring , studious , sensitive lad , had been obliged to rough it alone . By his bold ancl uncompromising love for truth , which , at times , prompted him to say things which were

unpalatable to the ruling powers , he had brought himself in contact with the master in a way which was not calculated to make that functionary feel any reverence or like for him . Perhaps the master saw that the boy had a soul made for things above himself , and that would be sufficient to make him hate the lad . At any rate it was so , ancl often Pem-hyn had undergone punishment for that which was not his fault . Nay , he had been repeatedly punished for defending himself against the tyrannical acts of his young companions .

And the hatred of the pedagogue to his pupil was full y returned . Penrhyn saw , ancl understood , and appreciated his master at his proper worth . Whilst his companions were content to think old Haslam a good fellow , whose onl y fault was a too liberal use of the cane , Penrhyn despised him for his littleness of soul , and- —save in the rudiments of elementary education—ignorance . Often when addressing words of unprovoked insult to the lad , before his schoolmatesthe master ivould be stopped bthe contemptuous look darted

, y on him by his pupil , or the flash of the eye which denoted a consciousness of superior genius to his teacher . Many a time he had striven to keep down the rebellious tears and stifle the prompting to tell his parents his trials . The longest night comes to an end , ancl so it was that Penrhyn Falconer finished his scholastic career , and at fifteen launched out on the world ,

To seek on the treacherous ocean his fate , And in life ' s busy scene take a part . His father—a very peculiar man in his way , of whom I shall have to give an account , seeing he was mainly responsible for the shaping of our hero ' s ideas—decided that Penrhyn should be placed at a mercantile pursuit ; and , in pursuance of this object he was bound apprentice to one of the

leadingmerchants in his native town . If we say that Penrhyn hated his occupation with an intense hatred we shall onl y be speaking the literal truth . The fact was the lad had no liking for business .- At the Church he would have shone as a brilliant orator ; at the Bar he would have made a solid pleader ; as a physician he would have been an earnest , painstaking practitioner ; or in literature he would have made a name as a conscientious and eloquent writer . But the fiat had gone forth , ancl he knew that it would be worse than useless