many things that never have been, to make you happier. I have had concealments from you, put deceptions on you, God forgive me!-and surrounded you with

fancies."

"But living people are not fancies!" she said hurriedly, turning very pale and still retiring from him. "You can't change them."

"I have done so, Bertha," pleaded Caleb. "Tackleton is a stern, sordid, grinding man. A hard master to you and me, my dear, for many years. Ugly in his looks and in his nature. Unlike what I have painted him to you in everything, my child. In everything."

Oh, why," cried the blind girl, "why did you ever do this! Why did you ever fill my heart so full, and then come in like Death and tear away the objects of my love! Oh! Heaven, how blind I am! How helpless and alone!"

Her afflicted father hung his head, and offered no reply but in his penitence and sorrow.

"Mary," said the blind girl," tell me what my home is, what it truly is."

"It is a poor place, Bertha; very poor and bare indeed. The house will scarcely keep out wind and rain another winter. It is as roughly shielded from the weather, Bertha," Mary continued, in a low, clear voice. "as your poor father in his sackcloth coat."

The blind girl spread her hands before her face. "Dear Mary, a moment. One moment! Speak softly

to me.

You are true, I know. You'd not deceive me now, would you?"

"No, I'm sure you would not. You have too much pity for me. Mary, look where my father is my father, so compassionate and loving to me- and tell me what you see.'

"I see," said Mary, who understood her well," an old man sitting in a chair and leaning sorrowfully on the back, with his face resting on his hand. As if his child should comfort him, Bertha."

"Yes, yes. She will. Go on."

"He is an old man, worn with care and work. He is a spare, thoughtful, gray-haired man. I see him now, despondent and bowed down, and striving against nothing. But, Bertha, I have seen him many times before; and striving hard in many ways for one great sacred object. And I honor his gray head and bless him!"

The blind girl broke away from her, and throwing herself on her knees before him, took the gray head to her breast.

"It is my sight restored. It is my sight!" she cried. "I have been blind, and now my eyes are open. I never knew him! To think I might have died and

never truly seen the father who has been so loving to me!"

There were no words for Caleb's emotion.

"There is not a gallant figure on this earth," exclaimed the blind girl, holding him in her embrace, "that I would love so dearly, and would cherish so devotedly, as this! The grayer and more worn, the dearer, father! Never let them say I am blind again. There's not a furrow in his face, there's not a hair upon his head, that shall be forgotten in my prayers and thanks to Heaven!"

Caleb managed to say, "My Bertha!"

"And, in my blindness, I believed him," said the girl, caressing him with tears of exquisite affection, " to be so different! And having him beside me, day by day, so mindful of me always, never dreamed of this!"

"The fresh, smart father in the blue coat, Bertha," said Caleb,-"he's gone!"

"Nothing is gone," she answered. "Dearest father, no! Everything is here

in you. The father that I

loved so well; the father that I never loved enough, and never knew; the benefactor whom I first began to reverence and love because he had such sympathy for me. All are here in you. Nothing is dead to me. The soul of all that was most dear to me is here - here, with the worn face and gray head. And I am not blind, father, any longer! Father," said Bertha, hesitating. "Mary."

"Yes, my dear," returned Caleb. "There is no change in her? thing of her that was not true?"

"Here she is."

You never told me any

"I should have done it, my dear, I am afraid," returned Caleb, "if I could have made her better than she is. But I must have changed her for the worst, if I had changed her at all. Nothing could improve her, Bertha."

CHARLES DICKENS.

incredulity: doubt. sordid: mean; covetous.-compassionate: full of pity. — despondent: low-spirited; sad.

The Meeting of the Waters.

"The Meeting of the Waters," that is, of the rivers Avon and Avoca, forms a part of the beautiful scenery which lies between Rathdrum and Arklow, in County Wicklow, Ireland.

There is not in the wide world a valley so sweet

As that vale in whose bosom the bright waters meet.
Oh, the last rays of feeling and life must depart,
Ere the bloom of that valley shall fade from my heart.

Yet it was not that nature had shed o'er the scene
Her purest of crystal and brightest of green;
'Twas not her soft magic of streamlet or hill,
Oh, no—it was something more exquisite still.