broken by daily taunts and unkindness before any change happened in her miserable life. But then a certain Robert Nelson, a sailor brother of Mrs. Philip Lee's, had appeared upon the scene, and fallen in love, or professed to do so, with his sister's wretched little slave. He was rough and rude and unprincipled, but the maltreated girl of seventeen, who had barely sufficient to eat and drink since she had entered upon her life of dependence, was not quick enough to perceive that in marrying Robert Nelson she would but exchange one sort of bondage for another, and accepted his offer with gratitude; a feeling which proved of short duration.

It rises with almost perpendicular sides, and the man who would | a home open to receive her. Yet her spirit had been well-nigh attempt to scale it must be of an adventurous spirit indeed. A curious feature about the rock is its composition, which shows it to have been formed originally at the bottom of a lake. The rock lies in regular strata, and most of them contain fossils of plants and fishes. The plants are all extinct species, and closely allied to our fruit and forest trees; but among them are some palms, indicating a warmer climate in the days when the deposit was formed. Doctor F. V. Hayden, an able geologist, who has spent seventeen years in exploring the regions drained by the Missouri and its northern branches, has given attention to the valley of Green River, and examined its fossils. He found the plants in the upper part of the rock, and, about a hundred feet lower down, he discovered the remains of fishes, all of them belonging to fresh water, and all extinct species. They were embedded in oily shales, and insects were found with them, in a remarkably good state of preservation; there were also the feathers of birds, and a few seeds and water-plants, along with the fishes. This shale rock is so impregnated with oilly matter, evidently derived from the animal life buried in it, that it can be made to burn. On one occasion, the workmen on the road built a fire on the track, and these petroleum shales ignited, and burned for a day or two. There are also in these hills several beds of an earthly substance, which has been used in a stove for fuel. It is not really vegetable matter, like coal, but masses of earth, impregnated with oil; the oil burns out with a good flame and much heat, though the great mass of earth is still left. Consequently, it proved a failure for practical purposes. These rocks belong to one of the great freshwater lakes that abounded in this region during the Tertiary Period.

MEG HARTLEY'S CURE.

Ir was toward the close of a gloomy day in February, and the dusk was fastening heavily upon each object in a scantily-furnished room on the ground-floor of an old-fashioned but respectable house in the crowded district of Soho.

The street lamps had been lighted for the last hour, and the wet window panes flashed like crystal beneath the flickering gas, whilst every now and then a bulging umbrella (so closely did the house abut on the public thoroughfare) would press against the glass, and put the brilliance momentarily out. But the passengers for Soho were few and far between. It had been a wild and stormy day, and no one ventured abroad who was not compelled to do so. Everything looked dull and dark enough, both in the house and out of it, and so thought its mistress, Margaret Hartley, as she sat upon the hearth-rug, with her hands clasped about her knees, and gazed thoughtfully into the fast-fading fire. At a little distance from her stood her sewing-machine: she had been working at it all the afternoon, until her fingers and her feet were weary, and her head ached with the sound of its click; and now, either from motives of economy or taste, she preferred to commune with herself in the dark to summoning artificial light to reveal the discomfort by which she was surrounded. And she had plenty to think of, this woman, ay, and to regret—although five-and-twenty summers had not yet passed over her head.

The expiring embers were not yet so dull but that they revealed the form crouching beside them to be young and graceful; and the face, to such as can accept the beauty of expression before that of feature, attractive. Yet, had each hour of pain through which it had been Margaret Hartley's fate to pass left a wrinkle on her fair smooth brow, it would have been as scamed and puckered as that of an old woman. For she had suffered greatly, and not without cause. As she gazed into the smoldering fire, had she cast her thoughts ten years backward, she might have seen herself as Margaret Lee, when, on the death of her father-a poverty-stricken music master-she entered the house of her brother, a banker's clerk, who had married from a station even lower than his own, to become the drudge and almost the servant of his wife and children. Philip Lee was many years older than his sister, and the world had said at the time that it was a fortunate thing the penniless orphan had such

Mrs. Lee was too incensed at her brother's choice to wish to hold any communication with Margaret after her marriage, and the unfortunate girl soon found that no sort of drudgery is so hard as that of an ill-used and unprotected wife, for Robert Nelson, his first fancy for her cooled, proved a harder taskmaster than she had ever known before. He was his sister, brutalized.

Being attached to some small coasting-vessel, he was seldom at sea for more than six weeks or two months at a time, so he established his young wife in a couple of dark rooms near the docks, where the only happy hours she spent were those during which he was away. For he was exacting, tyrannical, and extremely jealous, scarcely allowing her female companions, lest the indulgence of any society should bring her into contact with the other sex.

And yet she had had one friend during that unhappy period of her life; one true, stanch ally, who, in his journeyings amongst the sick and the afflicted, had chanced to light on the abode of this disappointed creature, and striven to make her trace the hand of Providence even in the apparent blasting of her earthly hopes.

And this friend and guide had been a hard-working London curate-John Hartley, her present husband-that she loved so dearly, and yet to know herself the wife of whom had not the power to render her contented!

Had she, then, quite forgotten that awful day on which Robert Nelson first discovered that the curate was trying to imbue her uninstructed mind with the truths it was his profession to impart, and the consolation it was his duty to administer, and, turning him with curses from the door, had given her something harder still than curses as her share of his displeasure?

Had she forgotten the life of terror which she had thenceforth led; and the good cause which her brutal husband gave her to tremble at his frequent reappearances?

Had all remembrance faded from her mind of that day of relief, when after a longer absence than was usual, instead of receiving home the man whom she had learned to hate and dread, the owner of the vessel called upon her, with a lengthened visage, to impart the melancholy news that the " Mary Jane," in making her return voyage from Portugal, had been wrecked somewhere near the coast of Africa, and was supposed to have foundered with all hands on board?

And then, when the intelligence of her husband's death had been amply confirmed, and the owners of the "Mary Jane" had reconciled themselves to the loss of their vessel, and she had so far recovered the first surprise of hearing she was free, as to be trying to persuade herself that Robert Nelson had been better than she thought him, and that she was not so very thankful for her deliverance-John Hartley had come back to her again-come just in time to prevent her entering on service for her support, and told her that he loved her, and wished her for his wife.

Had the short space of three years really been sufficient to blot out or even dull the memory of a moment of happiness like that?

John Hartley! so good and gracious-both in appearance and demeanor !-so infinitely above herself, not only by birth and station, but by the degradation of her marriage.

Had she not thought, when first he brought her home, even to the dull room which she now occupied, that she was the most happy-most fortunate of human creatures?

And when once since, her health had failed, and he had sent

docks, had not the least share in her thoughts. She was thinking of John Hartley, and the many ills of poverty, and the misery of living in Soho, instead. How wretched-how uninteresting-how monotonous, was her life, pent up in that horrid city, where each day seemed to pass alike, and was a burden in itself.

her (at an outlay which he could ill afford) to the country for a | check her ingratitude. Sailors and sudden death, and the dull fortnight by herself, how she had panted to return to the old house and to him! and told him truly, when once more folded to his honest heart, that life was nothing to her when not spent by his side. And they had a child, too-an infant of their own; and John, though often harassed and generally over-worked, still kept his health, and more than his first love for her and she had food and clothes sufficient for her need, and a roof above her head. And yet Meg Hartley was not happy-she was even discontented.

She was thinking of her own cotton dresses and of her husband's shabby coat; of how each morning, were the weather fine or foul, John Hartley had to go forth to his work and labor She had not forgotten her first trials; they had been too real 'midst such dens of infection and of filth, that often, on returnand undisguised to be forgotten; but she had ceased to shuddering to his home, he put his little child's caress aside, lest anyat their memory. She had no more need to dread a recurrence thing contagious should be lurking in his clothes. of them, and so their sting was fading with the lapse of years, and she put their gracious uses far away, and permitted the paltry worries of the present to harass her instead.

As her soft eyes rested on the flickering fire, and a sigh, every now and then, escaped her murmuring heart, no thought, not even the remotest, of Robert Nelson or the past, rose up to

And how, when no such fear existed, his spirits would be so downcast and depressed from the constant witnessing of crime and want and sorrow, that he would turn from his frugal meals almost with loathing, and say he felt as though the bread and meat would choke him, whilst so many were starving without prospect of relief!

And when would it be over?-what chance was there of her husband ever escaping from his present life of anxiety and toil? Were they to drag out all their days in this unhealthy crowded town? Was their child to grow up pale and thin, like the many whom she saw around her, for want of ever breathing the pure sweet air of the country?

Well, and what then? The huge billow was far out of sight; we had almost forgotten what it looked like when so near; the interest of the topic faded, and we began to grumble because the weather was not quite favorable to our sport, or that we sometimes brought up seaweed in our nets instead of fish!

Meg Hartley was no better and no worse than the generality of her fellow-creatures. There are but few of us who know how to make the best of this life; how to extract the sweets which every phase of it, in some sort, contains; and how to cast the inevitable bitter away. She needed a lesson,to be read to her upon contentment; and a heavy one was advancing with the gloom.

For Meg Hartley did not consider that her husband's lot was much worse than her own. Their hours were spent in equal toil, the only difference being that his had less monotony. What did she live for but to nurse the child and carry it out walking, and help their one household drudge to cook their meals and keep the house clean, and rack her brains from Monday until Saturday to see how she could make the weekly stipend cover the weekly wants? She had no friends, or any she could call such; for the parish of which her husband was but one of several curates, lay at some distance from their own abode, and London neighbors, knowing little and caring less about each other, did not trouble themselves to become acquainted with a parson's wife, who dressed in cotton of an after-tendant, an awkward girl from her husband's national school, noon and carried out her baby for an airing in the park.

Of John Hartley's family she knew nothing. He had plenty of relations, but they were happy country people who lived down in Suffolk; and though he had often said that as soon as he could afford it he must take her and Daisy (as he fondly called his child) to see his mother and his sisters, that time had never come yet, nor seemed likely to do so; and the sewingmachine, which had been a present from her mother-in-law upon her marriage, was the only visible link subsisting between the Hartleys and herself.

The sewing-machine! Yes. She had welcomed it as a useful and expensive gift; but she had been compelled to sit at it so often since, during hot dusty days when she had been panting for a breath of fresh air, and cold dark ones, during which she had scarcely dared use as much fuel as would enable her to work in comfort, that she had come to hate the sound of its untiring needle, and the touch of its patent treadles.

If as she fretfully thought to herself-if she ever had any material worth making up, for which to use the horrid thing, it might be different; but as it was-and she twitched the worn skirt of her alpaca dress impatiently to one side, as if the sight of it, even by those dull embers, was distasteful to her.

But she could scarcely remember what it was to possess a pretty or becoming dress; and her baby was never (what she called) "fit to be seen." As for an entertaining book, or a few fresh flowers or fruits, she had almost forgotten what such things were; and it was hard-it certainly was hard-to spend one's life without a single luxury or pleasure.

And as the thought of these inevitable hardships pressed upon Meg Hartley's mind, tears began to gather in her eyes, and roll slowly down her cheeks.

It was thus that the past had lost its power to make her grateful for the present, and that she could permit the dread memory of blows and curses to be overwhelmed by the existing discomfort of having to eat salt butter and wear unfashionable gar'ments. It was very foolish of her-worse than foolish, it was wrong-and yet it was natural; although the assertion speaks poorly for human nature.

How often, in our short span of life, have we seen a huge billow advancing to meet us, coming onward with resistless force, and threatening to overwhelm our little bark!

She had scarcely realized that she was crying when the approaching sound of an infant's wail, and a rude knock at the parlor-door, caused her to rouse herself, and brush away the tears which stood upon her cheeks.

"If you please, 'M," said the uncouth tones of her sole at

"I think as how the child wants yer, and if yer'll take her, I can be about getting up the tea-things in time for master."

"Give her to me," said Mrs. Hartley, without altering her position, as she listlessly held out her arms for the infant; and in another moment it was cradled on her bosom, and drawing its nourishment from the springs of her own existence.

"The child, not much above a twelvemonth old, was teething, and there was something in the touch of those feverish lips, and the harmless energy with which the little hot hand clutched at her breast, which might, and at any other moment would, have appealed very powerfully to its mother's feelings. But Margaret Hartley was in no humor that evening even to sympathize with little Daisy.

She took the child almost impatiently, and having given it the breast, resumed her occupation of gazing in the fire, whilst her thought returned to the same channel as before.

The girl from the national school having blundered up and down-stairs three or four times—in the course of which peregrinations she had managed to convey the tea-things safely to their destination, and to spread the table with the uninviting loaf of yesterday's baking, the slab of salt butter in its dinnerplate, and the pennyworth of fluid from which the milkman dared to take his name-now demanded of her mistress whether she should light the gas, make up the fire, or take the child again.

To all of which inquiries Meg Hartley only fretfully replied in the negative, telling the girl to go down-stairs and stop there till she was called for.

And then the parlor-door was slammed, and the rough-shod feet shuffled back to the lower regions, and the discontented woman was left musing in the dusk, and, save for the baby on her breast, alone.

How long she remained thus, she could never say, for the occurrence by which her meditations were interrupted were so terrifying as to drive all calculation of time out of her mind. It might have been moments, minutes, or hours, that she sat crouched upon the hearth-rug, with little Daisy slumbering in her arms; but when she was next roused to consciousness, it was from hearing the footstep of her husband in the hall. His footstep decidedly, and yet not like his own. There was no sound of fatigue or languor in that quick, hurrying tread, and How tremulously have we watched its rapid progress-how if he had taken off his wet overcoat he must have flung it on the we have dreamed of it, wept over it, for weeks before it reached pegs in passing, for without the stoppage of a moment he skirted us; and, whilst calling on the Master Mariner for aid in our per- the narrow passage and threw open the sitting-room door. plexity, have yet, in our own minds, felt perfectly convinced that She felt he stood upon the threshold, yet she did not turn her even His help must be unavailing, and that we never could sur-head, but, with her chin upon her hand and her elbow on her vive the shock ! At last, it gained us; we were on the very knee, maintained the attitude in which he found her. verge of eternity, when lo! it broke within a few yards of our "Margaret!" boat, and passing under instead of over it, gave the frail structure an impetus which sent it riding gallantly above its foaming crest once more into smooth water.

The voice was so husky and so low, the tone in which he uttered her name so different to the caressing accents with which John was used to greet her, that curiosity alone would have im

For a few hours, perhaps, we could scarcely mention our de-pelled her to look at him. liverance without tears; and for a few days, or weeks, according to our disposition, any allusion to the danger we had so unexpectedly passed called forth expressions of the deepest 'gratitude."

That white face, drawn with pain or fear, and rendered still paler by the flickering firelight; those sad, yearning eyes, and that agitated mouth-did they, could they belong to her good, contented, cheerful husband?

"John, John! what is the matter? Has anything happened? | allowed pen and ink and postage-stamps to communicate with Are you ill?

"Part of the crew of the wrecked Mary Jane, Margaret, who put off in the long boat, in hopes of reaching land in safety, "There is some one in the house!" she cried. "Oh, John, were driven toward the coast of Barbary, and there taken prisdon't keep me longer in suspense! Is it-arrest?'' For the last three years they have been working in the galleys there, Robert Nelson amongst the number, and were only set free a month or two ago by the aid of an English exploring party.”

"Now, parson!" exclaimed Robert Nelson, as he approached "No, no!" he groaned, when, at last, he had found voice to the wretched pair, "I can't waste any more time here, whilst answer her; "not that, Margaret-oh! I wish it were; I wish you're spinning yarns to my wife; I shall have plenty of oppora life's imprisonment for me could undo what has occurred to-tunities to tell her everything she may want to know concernday. Stop, dearest, stop a minute; don't look that way, and I will summon courage to tell you all. Oh, Margaret! be brave, for I bring you news that is worse than death."

you. I will not! You despised and ill-treated me when I was your wife, and then they said that you were dead, and I married another man, and if I am not his wife, I am no one's. I will not go with you. No power on earth shall make me!"

"I shall never forget you, darling; and-we shall meet again—look up, Meg, and think of that!"

One backward glance at him, whom she had considered as her hushand, as he uttered these last fond words; and Margaret, The bronzed face of the returned sailor grew still darker be- that cruel grip still fixed upon her arm, was hurried out of the neath the flush of rising passion. house into the driving pitiless rain.

"We'll soon see about that," he answered, with fixed teeth. I was going to give you time to get your things together, but you must come without them now-and at once."

Bareheaded, and otherwise unprotected from the inclement weather, it still never struck her as strange, remembering Robert Nelson's brutality to her in days gone by, that he should

"John! John! save me!" she cried, flying to her husband's chose to expose her to the fury of the elements. The rain, if side.

"Margaret! dearest! I am powerless. In the face of your first husband's claim, I can say nothing. He has legal right to you, my poor girl, and I have none. Pray, Margaret-pray, my dearest, that Heaven may grant you strength to do your duty. There is nothing left for either of us except prayer.” Still she struggled in Robert Nelson's grasp, affirming, passionately, that she did not belong to him; that she was not his wife; and that she would sooner die than return to his protection.

"Margaret," interposed the calm voice of John Hartley, "my wife-ah, no! I meant my dearest, listen to me, and be brave; resistance is utterly useless. It is we who, though innocently, have been in the wrong; it is we whose hands are now fettered; and heaven, who has permitted your husband to return alive, intends that you shall do your duty toward him as you have done it to me."

"You don't love ne, John," she answered, mournfully; "you can't love me as I love you, or you would die before you gave me up so easily."

"Easily?" he repeated, bitterly. "If this task be easy, Meg, God have mercy on those who endure harder ones!"

"I'll have no more of this," said Robert Nelson, rudely; "I'm sick of such bosh. Put down that brat, and follow me. I'll not wait another second."

"My child! must I part with my child?" screamed the unhappy woman, as she pressed the infant closer to her breast. "Oh, John! can he take away my baby? Can he force me to leave that, too, behind?"

anything, was coming down harder than it had done before; in a few minutes her dress was clinging miserably about her wet ancles, and her shoes were soaked through; and yet the soreness of her heart and the great dread creeping over her of the man into whose power she had again been thrown, prevented her thoughts dwelling upon anything but the two dear ones she had left in the old house behind her, and the hard grasp upon her arm which seemed to press into her flesh like heated iron.

Onward he hurried her; never relaxing that unnecessary torture of restraint; never addressing to her a word of comfort or affection; whilst she, walking at her utmost speed to keep up with his stride, did not so much as lift her eyes to the dark dreaded face which she felt ever and again to be regarding her. She never inquired where he was taking her. They passed stand after stand of hackney cabs, but Robert Nelson did not offer to put her into one of them, and she did not venture to suggest that he should. They might have been walking to the world's end together for aught she knew or cared. She could think but of two things-her regret for the past and her fear for the future.

By-and-by, after they had traversed what had seemed to Margaret miles of dark and sloppy pavements, Robert Nelson, without relaxing his hold upon her arm, turned suddenly in another direction, and she found herself inside a railway station. A busy, bustling station, where bells were ringing, and passengers pushing, and porters calling, and everything gave token that a train was just about to start; and from which in another minute she found herself rushing into the dark unknown country, the sole companion of Robert Nelson in a first-class carriage. "And am I to have nothing, Margaret?" replied John Hart-She shrunk into a corner and resigned herself to thought. ley, in a voice of despair; "am I to lose wife and child at one blow? all the desire of my eyes at a stroke? Won't you leave Daisy behind you, as a little comfort that may prevent my heart from breaking?"

She rushed back to him, and put the baby in his arms. "Mine," she whispered, with feverishly excited eyes, and gasping tone," mine and yours-ours, John-I give her to you; love her for her wretched mother's sake."

"You shouldn't have taken her, anyway," growled Robert Nelson; "I'll have no other man's brat kicking about my premises; but it's as well, perhaps, to make a virtue of a necessity. Now, are you ready?"?

Then she turned, and fell at that hard man's feet, and embraced his knees with her hands, as she poured forth her soul in an entreaty that he would give her up.

"Robert, have pity on me--on us-I shall never live with John Hartley again; I shall leave this dear home, where I have been so happy; but don't ask me to return and be your wife. To remain here would not be right, but to return to you seems worse. Oh, Robert, have pity-have mercy on us both! Listen to my baby wailing for me, and don't separate me utterly from all that is so dear!"

But she might as well have laid her head against a stone wall, and implored it to respond to her passionate entreaty.

The only answer which she obtained from Robert Nelson was a harsh laugh at her distress, as with a grasp of iron on her arm he dragged her roughly toward the open door, and she felt that her fate was decided, and hope, in this world, over for her. "Husband, God bless you for all the love you have showered upon me! I have been ungrateful, John, often impatient, discontented, and careless, but I have loved you faithfully through it all. Oh, don't forget me now that I am going!"

Then it was in the cold and silent night, the only light being the dim oil-lamp which burned in the centre of the carriage, that all the petty discontent of which she had been that day guilty came back upon Margaret's mind to sting it with self-reproach. What would she have given at that moment to be installed once more mistress of the dull home, where visitors came seldom, and pleasures (such as the world terms "pleasures") were few and far between! How sweet appeared in retrospect the peaceful hours when she had known no fear, which she had passed in nursing her baby, or sitting at her once despised sewing-machine! How calm and happy, how free from jar and disaffection, had been those quiet evenings, when John, wearied by the long day's toil, would bid her be idle with himself; and in summer take her for a stroll until heaven was dotted with stars, or in winter draw her chair beside his own, and hold her hand in his, whilst he told her how he loved her, and pictured the future which might one day be theirs.

As she thought of all this, and compared her present feelings with those which she had encouraged but a few hours before, Margaret shuddered at her ingratitude for the benefits which heaven had sent her, and hated herself for having entertained it.

Such were her farewell sentences, frantically uttered, as, half-deal with even in the old times, and I dare say the parson's discidragged and half-supported, she was borne through, the dark passage toward the outer door,

pline hasn't made you any better. But what did for him won't do for me. You know me-none better, and I tell you, once