Welsh Journals

WHAT CANNOT LOVE DO. 129 an Englishman whose friendship he had made, while the latter was on a tour through Ireland, he would find even more freshly wild, picturesque, and grand, because more concentrated, than his own country. Larry, laughingly, refused to believe anything of the kind. " Pay me a visit there and try," challenged the Englishman. " I will," said Larry, " some day." " There is my address," said the friend, giving his card. All this Larry recalled, connecting therewith the lost card and the forgotten address, but remembering with pleasure the warm-heartedness of his many-days companion, and thinking he might possibly find him while engaged in another and dearer search. Looking at his time table, he saw Chester might be best taken as a sort of fine old vestibule to the land of the Cymry, so he determined to begin his walking tour from there.* Chester! How the name recalled the hot fever of his first pursuit of the fugitives, and the first of his decisive failures ; for it was there he began to realise the extreme probability that they had finally escaped him. It was an unlucky omen. But Larry had changed his views of Fortune's unkindness since that time. So he thought it might now be a good omen his accidental visit to the same place. For after all, what certainty could his evening search of one day, and his morning search of another, have given that she might not have been there all the while—possibly might be there still ? The treasured home he had prepared for her he put into hands that he could trust to guard it safely, and show it to, no one under any circumstance. It seemed to him like preparing an unexpected birthday gift for one dear, which it would be a sacrilege for any eye but her's to be the first to see. And, if all went well, would not that be a birthday gift indeed ? For what is marriage for those who love but a kind of a second birth, opening to a new and higher life ? (To be continued.)