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"She has stolen my child to make him a tumbler, a Kouravar," cried the poor mother; "it is he who is dancing like a puppet at the end of the bamboo. Let her restore my child, and I will release her. Stop! there is her image! See if this clay doll has not a leg pierced with a thousand pricks of a thorn. . . .”

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Ah, the wicked widow!" returned the old woman; "what a shame for a woman to survive her husband, in order to drag on a few miserable years despised by everybody!"

But the clay figure had produced a deep impression on the crowd. In the eyes of this credulous people it was strong testimony in favor of the widow, and an unexceptionable proof of the guilt of the basket-woman. During this debate the Kouravars, fearing some misadventure, sent the little tumbler on a reconnoissance; he passed under the legs of the spectators, and reached the scene of action. Padmavati, releasing the old woman, seized him in her arms, pressed him to her heart, and burst into tears. The people who surrounded her instinctively drew back, that they might not interfere with this expression of feeling.

"Fear nothing," said Padmavati, raising her head triumphantly: "I am not what you think; I put on this costume to preserve me from the outrages to which I might be exposed in traveling through the country alone; I have no further need of them. Who would not respect a mother traveling with a child in her arms?"

And she gazed through her tears with ecstasy at this son, so deeply mourned, and was astonished to find him so sprightly and robust. He, in his turn, found the caresses of his real mother most sweet; for it was not without blows and rough words that he had been taught to pirouette. As for the old woman, had she been in the company's territory, her punishment would have been severe; as it was, the chief of the village put her in the pillory for a day, exposed to the raillery of the populace and the burning heat of the sun.

A fortnight after, Padmavati entered Pondicherry; she did not go directly to her husband, for she wished, after so many humiliations, to enjoy a complete triumph. One of her friends lent her a holiday suit for her child and herself; and

she then repaired to the esplanade, where the Sepoys were going through their drill. Recognizing her husband, she said to her child: "You see that tall soldier, who has two bars of red on his arm? Go straight up to him, call him your father so loudly that all his comrades may hear." The child obeyed; he ran on in spite of the officer, who cried, "Back! back!" and with a quick movement jumped across the shoulders of the Sepoy.

"Corporal," said the officer," what is the meaning of this jest?"

"On my honor, captain, I know nothing of it. This child has taken me by assault before I have had time to recognize him." He put the child down, but it persisted in calling him father, and would not depart. "Captain," said the corporal, visibly moved, "I had but one child; I buried him with my own hands; my wife became mad, and I know not where she is. I cannot understand it."

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He was silent. Padmavati stood before him. Perunal," said she, "remember my words; I will confess everything, and you will forgive me, because I shall bring him back to you! Embrace him, then ; he is our child! I have suffered much, but I have never been mad."

"Go out of the ranks, my brave fellow," said the officer; "your gun falls from your hand, and your legs tremble. You shall explain this mystery another day."

Perunal went home, holding his child by the hand; his wife respectfully followed. They looked at each other with tenderness and surprise, but also with entire confidence.

The child had passed two years in the worst of company, so that there were some little tricks which had to be cured; but when I knew him he was a fine young fellow, who spoke French, Tamul, and Tclinga fluently, and a little English. The Sepoy, too, could count half a dozen other charming children, very black, happy, and well-disposed.

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WOMAN'S DEVOTEDNESS.

E had been an unkind husband, way

life had been far from happy from the hour when she abandoned her maiden name and became Mrs. Dempster. But she loved him, and this is the greatest mystery of woman's love, that when it has nothing lovely to feed upon it will feed upon itself, and in this sense the poet's verse hath truth in it when the poet sings,

"They err who tell us love can die."

A dreadful accident befell him. He was thrown from a gig, his right leg was broken, and a concussion of the brain was feared. | Restless, in pain, and at times delirious, he tossed upon his bed, and there, day after day, with only short intervals of rest, Janet kept her place in that sad chamber. No wonder the sick-room and the lazaretto have so often been a refuge from the tossings of intellectual doubt-a place of repose for the worn and wounded spirit. Here is a duty about which all creeds and all philosophies are at one: here, at least, the conscience will not be dogged by doubt -the benign impulse will not be checked by adverse theory; here you may begin to act without settling one preliminary question. To moisten the sufferer's parched lips through the long nightwatches, to bear up the drooping head, to lift the helpless limbs, to divine the want that can find no utterance beyond the feeble motion of the hand or beseeching glance of the eye; these are offices that demand no self-questionings, no casuistry, no assent to propositions, no weighing of consequences. Within the four walls where the stir and glare of the world are shut out, and every voice is subdued-where a human being lies prostrate, thrown on the tender mercies of his fellow, the moral relation of man to man is reduced to its utmost clearness and simplicity: bigotry cannot confuse it, theory cannot pervert it, passion, awed into quiescence, can neither pollute nor perturb it. As we bend over the sick-bed, all the forces of our nature rush toward the channels of pity, of patience, and of love, and sweep down the miserable choking drift of our quarrels, our debates, our would-be wisdom, and our clamorous selfish desires. This blessing of serene freedom from the importunities of opinion lies in all simple

direct acts of mercy, and is one source of that sweet calm which is often felt by the watcher in the sick-room, even when the

Something of that benign result was felt by Janet during her tendance in her husband's chamber. When the first heartpiercing hours were over, when her horror at his delirium was no longer fresh, she began to be conscious of her relief from the burden of decision as to her future course. This illness, after all, might be the herald of another blessing. Robert would get better; this illness might alter him; he would be a long time feeble, needing help, walking with a crutch, perhaps. She would wait on him with such tenderness, such all-forgiving love, that the old harshness and cruelty must melt away forever under the heart-sunshine she would pour around him. Her bosom heaved at the thought, and delicious tears fell. Janet's was a nature in which hatred and revenge could find no place; the long bitter years drew half their bitterness from her ever-living remembrance of the too short years of love that went before; and the thought that her husband would ever put her hand to his lips again, and recall the days when they sat on the grass together, and he laid scarlet poppies on her black hair, and called her his gipsy queen, seemed to send a tide of loving oblivion over all the harsh and stony space they had traversed since. The Divine love that had already shone upon her would be with her; she would lift up her soul continually for help.

These were the thoughts passing through Janet's mind as she hovered about her husband's bed, and these were the hopes she poured out to Mr. Tryan when he called to see her. It was so evident that they were strengthening her in her new struggle-they shed such a glow of calm enthusiasm over her face as she spoke of them, that Mr. Tryan could not bear to throw on them the chill of premonitory doubts, though a previous conversation he had had with Mr. Pilgrim had convinced him that there was not the faintest probability of Dempster's recovery. Poor Janet did not know the significance of the changing symptoms, and when, after the lapse of a week, the delirium began to lose some of its violence, and to be interrupted by longer and longer intervals of stupor, she tried to think that these might be steps on

the way to recovery, and she shrank from questioning Mr. Pilgrim, lest he should confirm the fears that began to get predominance in her mind. But before many days were past, he thought it right not to allow her to blind herself any longer. One day-it was just about noon, when bad news always seems most sickening-he led her from her husband's chamber into the opposite drawing-room, where Mrs. Raynor was sitting, and said to her, in that low tone of sympathetic feeling which sometimes gave a sudden air of gentleness to this rough man:

"My dear Mrs. Dempster, it is right in these cases, you know, to be prepared for the worst. I think I shall be saving you pain by preventing you from entertaining any false hopes, and Mr. Dempster's state is now such that I fear we must consider recovery impossible. The affection of the brain might not have been hopeless, but, you see, there is a terrible complication; and I am grieved to say the broken limb is mortifying."

Janet listened with a sinking heart. That future of love and forgiveness would never come, then he was going out of sight forever, where her pity could never reach him. She turned cold and trembled. "But do you think he will die," she said, "without ever coming to himself? without ever knowing me?"

"One cannot say that with certainty. It is not impossible that the cerebral oppression may subside, and that he may become conscious. If there is anything you would wish to be said or done in that case, it would be well to be prepared. I should think," Mr. Pilgrim continued, turning to Mrs. Raynor, "Mr. Dempster's affairs are likely to be in order—his will is-"

"O, I wouldn't have him troubled about those things," interrupted Janet; he has no relations but quite distant ones-no one but me. I wouldn't take up the time with that. I only want to-"

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slept in the house from the beginning, came in, about half past ten, as usual, he scarcely believed that the feebly struggling life would last out till morning. For the last few days he had been administering stimulants to relieve the exhaustion which had succeeded the alternations of delirium and stupor. This slight office was all that now remained to be done to the patient; so at eleven o'clock, Mr. Pilgrim went to bed, having given directions to the nurse, and | desired her to call him if any change took place, or if Mrs. Dempster required his presence.

Janet could not be persuaded to leave the room. She was yearning and watching for a moment in which her husband's eyes would rest consciously upon her, and he would know that she had forgiven him. How changed he was since that terrible Monday, nearly a fortnight ago! He lay motionless, but for the irregular breathing that stirred his broad chest and thick, muscular neck. His features were no longer purple and swollen; they were pale, sunken, and haggard. A cold perspiration stood in beads on the protuberant forehead, and on the wasted hands stretched motionless on the bed-clothes.

It was

better to see the hands so, than convulsively picking the air, as they had been a week ago.

Janet sat on the edge of the bed through the long hours of candle-light, watching the unconscious, half-closed eyes, wiping the perspiration from the brow and cheeks, and keeping her left hand on the cold, unanswering right hand that lay beside her on the bed-clothes. She was almost as pale as her dying husband, and there were dark lines under her eyes, for this was the | third night since she had taken off her clothes; but the eager, straining gaze of her dark eyes, and the acute sensibility that lay in every line about her mouth, made a strange contrast with the blank unconsciousness and emaciated animalism of the face she was watching.

There was profound stillness in the house. She heard no sound but her husband's breathing and the ticking of the watch on the mantlepiece. The candle, placed high up, shed a soft light down on the one object she cared to see. There was a smell of brandy in the room; it was given to her husband from time to time; but this smell, which at first had produced in her a faint, shuddering sensation, was

now become indifferent to her; she did not even perceive it; she was too un

INDIA, AND THE MUTINY.

conscious of herself to feel either tempta- ENGLISH periodicals, from the grave

tions or accusations. She only felt that the husband of her youth was dying; far, far out of her reach, as if she were standing helpless on the shore, while he was sinking in the black storm-waves; she only yearned for one moment in which she night satisfy the deep, forgiving pity of her soul, by one look of love, one word of tenderness.

Her sensations and thoughts were so persistent that she could not measure the hours, and it was a surprise to her when the nurse put out the candle, and let in the faint morning light. Mrs. Raynor, anxious about Janet, was already up, and now brought in some fresh coffee for her; and Mr. Pilgrim, having awaked, had hurried on his clothes, and was come in to see how Dempster was.

This change from candle-light to morning, this recommencement of the same round of things that had happened yesterday, was a discouragement rather than a relief to Janet. She was more conscious of her chill weariness; the new light thrown on her husband's face seemed to reveal the still work that death had been doing through the night; she felt her last lingering hope that he would ever know her again forsake her.

But now Mr. Pilgrim, having felt the pulse, was putting some brandy in a teaspoon between Dempster's lips; the brandy went down, and his breathing became freer. Janet noticed the change, and her heart beat faster as she leaned forward to watch him. Suddenly a slight movement, like the passing away of a shadow, was visible in his face, and he opened his eyes full on Janet.

It was almost like meeting him again on the resurrection morning, after the night of the grave.

"Robert, do you know me ?"

He kept his eyes fixed on her, and there was a faintly perceptible motion of the lips, as if he wanted to speak.

But the moment of speech was forever gone the moment for asking pardon of her, if he wanted to ask it. Could he read the full forgiveness that was written in her eyes? She never knew; for, as she was bending to kiss him, the thick vail of death fell between them, and her lips touched a corpse.

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quarterly to the penny paper, teem with articles relative to India, and the work of blood which, for many months, has there been witnessed. Events are brought about with such rapidity, that to keep pace with them is no easy matter. Every steamer brings intelligence, more or less startling, and what is news at the time we write, will, in all probability, be entirely superseded before reaching our roaders. In the meantime we copy the substance of an able article which we find in a late number of the Wesleyan Magazine. For its facts, and the Christian tone in which they are uttered, it will be read with interest.

A hundred years ago a merchant's clerk at Calcutta, whose indignation is raised to its highest pitch by the notorious BlackHole massacre, lays aside his quill, seizes a sword, and promptly avenges the dreadful death of his countrymen. He restores peace, wins territory, and founds an Indian empire. Yet, alas! such is the intoxicating power of fame and military glory, that eventually Lord Clive, all dizzy upon the pinnacle of honor, lifts a suicidal hand, and, unbidden, rushes into the awful presence of his Maker.

As all England is just now absorbed in the subject of the Sepoy Rebellion-a glance of its horrors, especially those practiced upon helpless women and innocent babes, having made Anglo-Saxon blood boil again, and yet again—a brief account of the outbreak and progress of the mutiny may seasonably suggest the moral and religious lessons which such a crisis enforces. As, even upon the admission of the most sanguine, India will necessarily occupy a large portion of anxious attention for some time to come, the reader will do well to imprint upon his memory the outlines of that country, the richest foreign gem in the British crown.

With an atlas before him, he will survey a vast and crowded peninsula, some fifteen thousand miles from England, lying between 80 and 350 north latitude, being at its greatest length nineteen hundred miles long, and ranging from 67° to 91° east longitude. From east to west, at the furthest extremities, its breadth is not less than fifteen hundred miles. India is bounded on the north by a range of mount

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ains, the peaks of which look down, as with lofty pride, upon all other mountains of the earth; some of them stretching into the clouds, to the stupendous height of twenty-five thousand feet above the sea. The Himalaya Mountains derive their name from the Sanscrit word hima, signifying snow;" because many of their heads are covered with this turban of everlasting whiteness. In these mountains are the sources of the two great rivers that bound the country; that on the east, called Brahmaputra, which, uniting with the Ganges, falls into the Bay of Bengal; that on the west, the Indus, which has the honor of giving name to the country. In some parts the Indus is called the Sinde: it flows in a southerly direction, and receives at once the five rivers of the Punjab; after which it divides, and falls into the sea by seven mouths. From the rivers Indus and Brahmaputra, the country, both east and west, narrows very considerably, running down till it becomes a tongue of land at Cape Comorin; southeast of which stretches the island of Ceylon, reaching to within six degrees of the equator. In the northeast of India there is the worldfamed Ganges, esteemed as highly by the Hindoos as the Nile by the Egyptians. Having its source in the Himalayas, this stream is joined at Allahabad by the Jumna; in its course it receives other rivers; some two hundred miles from the sea, it forms a delta; and at length, by several branches, falls into the Bay of Bengal.

While a great portion of India is ostensibly under British rule, the remainder is nominally in the possession of vassal states, yet dependent upon England, and virtually under her sway; the princes, kings, or rajahs, receiving pensions. Some few states, however, remain independent. France possesses Pondicherry, a city on the Coromandel coast, south of Madras; Chandernagore, in Bengal, a few miles above Calcutta; and two or three other insignificant places; altogether, confessedly, of no political importance. Goa, situated a little above 150 on the west coat, belongs to the Portuguese. quebar, (long known as a Danish settlement,) the reader may see, is south of Pondicherry, at one of the mouths of the River Cavery. Serampore, twelve miles north of Calcutta, also belonging till of late to the Danes, will be long remembered as one of the principal stations of

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the Baptists' Mission. The latter places were ceded to Great Britain, by purchase, a dozen years ago. In fact, with insignificant exceptions, Hindostan belongs to Britain, by conquest, and a hundred years' possession. To her God has committed the grave responsibility of ruling this large, idolatrous, and densely-populated country.

In

Politically, Hindostan is divided into three presidencies. First, Bengal, comprising, westward, Bahar and Allahabad; with Oude, north of Allahabad, recently annexed amid considerable discontent. West of Allahabad is Agra; north of which is Delhi, a name now pronounced as often as Sebastopol two years ago. The province of Delhi is sterile, being interspersed with jungles and forests. Delhi, the city, and capital of the province, has long been the residence of the Mogul; now, of course, a titular only. It is almost a thousand miles from Calcutta. Delhi "there are a great number of mosques, with high minarets and gilded domes; and above all are seen the palace of the emperors, a very high and extensive cluster of Gothic towers and battlements; and the Jumma Musjeed, the largest and handsomest place of Mohammedan worship in Hindostan." In this city, situated on the banks of the River Jumna, to which millions of flashing eyes are now turned, is caged its rebellious king, whom a terrible justice awaits; and in this earthly paradise of the Mohammedans are many thousands of Sepoy mu tineers, encompassed, it is presumed, ere this, by English soldiery, God's sword. In the northwest of Hindostan is the Punjab-the first place to send troops for the rescue of Delhi from the usurper's grasp. The second presidency is Madras, in the south, including the Carnatic, stretching along the Coromandel coast to Cape Comorin, a distance of five hundred miles; also the province of Circars, running along the Bay of Bengal. West of the Carnatic is Mysore; northwest of Mysore is Bejapoor, stretching along the coast some three hundred miles, and bounded on the north by Aurungabad. Here, also, are two ranges of mountains, the Eastern and Western Ghauts. The third is the Bombay presidency. Bombay, the western capital of India, is situated on a small island, separated from the main land by a narrow strait. Its provinces are Anrungabad, east of Bombay; Gujerat, between

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