LITERATURE.

Globe, Volume VI, Issue 686, 31 August 1876, Page 3

LITERATURE.

ABEL BEES. [By Lynn Wood.] (Contimcvd ) 'Well, Abel,' 1 remarked, 'this is a nice letter from ' your affectionate father. ' Does it mean that you really are going to leave t ' Yes,' he replied. ' Joseph had another letter in my stepfather's writing, addressed to the doctor.' 'Well,' I exclaimed, and sincerely too, 'I am sorry to hear it. You must come and see me in the holidays.' Here a voice came up the stairs, followed by Brown minimus, with his lips covered with butter and breadcrumbs : ' I say, Jones and Kees, do you know we've gone in to breakfast V

' Yes ; I see you have, young Brown.' ' Well, you'd better come along. The doctor's in such a rage. My eye, won't you catch it!' Rather to Brown minimus's disappointment, we did not catch it. The doctor was engaged dissecting his chop when we slunk in, and we escaped notice. Abel was very busy all the morning packing. During the afternoon we were walking together up and down the playground, pending the arrival of Abel's fly, with our arms about each other's necks, as is the custom of boy chums when on very good terms. ' Should you like to know what I was crying about last night, Amberley ?' he said. I could see by the expression of his face that the offer had cost him no slight effort.

' Yes, Abel, old fellow, if you don't mind telling,' I responded. As I answered an absent look came into his eyes, that I had observed several times before, mostly during our long rambles about the country and by the seashore. ' You remember that long walk we had to the Red Reef,' he commenced—a line of rocks some distance along the shore, covered by seaweed of a brilliant red hue, was known to us by that name. We had been there quite lately, during an evening that brought in a violent storm. Without awaiting my reply, Abel continued: 1 Oh, wasn't it beautiful! You heard the moan of the waves as they rolled in; they mistrusted the little catspaws of wind that whispered so softly to them; and you heard the low sound in the caves. The waves heard it, and they recognised the howl of the storm, although it was so soft and subdued j and then the horizon became suddenly dark, the legions of foam-flakes swept the surface, and the seagulls flew eddying over our heads, screaming like terror-stricken creatures ; and then, in a grand crashing chorus, the storm burst upon us in its full fury.' Abel paused, as if rapt in the scene he had recalled to me. His face was pale with emotion, and there was a brightness in his eyes, as of triumph. I was completely puzzled. For the life of me I could not have divined the confidence Abel was about to repose in me. I held my peace ; and after a few moments' silence he continued : ' What a mournful resigned melody was in the moan of the waves !' A pause, and again he was far away. My patience was becoming exhausted, and I remarked, ' But what has all that to do with what you were going to tell me about last night ?' ' Last night ?' he repeated. ' Oh, yes ; this is it, old fellow. When we stood there on the shore, in the midst of those wonderful sights and sounds, there came into my heart—' 'Mr Abel, Mr Abel,' bawled Joseph, as he came lumbering up the playground, 'your fly has come; and you are to be quick, please, or you will lose the train.' There was no help for it. Abel must go. We both rushed to the gate. A hasty shake of the hand, and a hurried promise to write, and he rolled off. A strange feeling of blankness fell upon me as I turned to reenter the house. Abel had occupied so much of my time and thoughts lately ; and now, a note of warning, like some strange beautiful bird which a traveller wonders over and admires as it perches, he had flown.

Not very long after Abel's departure I myself bade adieu to Dr Ducane and the juvenile dominion of which he was autocrat. My education was to be continued at Oxford, whither I proceeded after a long interval of idleness, in the course of which I forgot the better part of the lore instilled into me by Dr Ducane. During the long fallow time I wrote twice to Abel. To the first letter I received no answer; the second was returned by the post office, with the statement that no one of the name of Rees was known at the address given. Thus I was forced to give up all hope of seeing Rees again, much to my regret, as I still continued to take a great interest in him, as much for his affectionate disposition as for the character in which he stood to me—of an unsolved enigma. My career at Oxford was in no way distinguished from that of most young men; and after completing the necessary course of study. I entered the world as an ordained minister of the Church of England. Having an uncle in the enjoyment of a well-endowed living in the East of London, and also a small independency of my own, my future life presented a far more encouraging aspect, in a worldly point of view, than that of so many scholarly and devoted, but uninfluential and penniless, young men, whose most probable fate is a lifelong curacy, with the painful pittance attaching to it. One of my uncle's curates was about to leave him, and it was arranged that I should be his successor. Whilst looking about for apartments in the neighbourhood of the church I lodged with my good uncle, who was a Widower, with an only daughter. My sweet cousin Kate and I were on very good terms, as in my boyhood I had been frequently invited to stay with them during the holidays, the elderly gentleman being fond of boys—a partiality that might be traced, no doubt, to his having had none of his one.

The rectory was a fine old house, older than any of the teeming tenements that stood so thick around it, and there was an air of loftiness and space in the noble rooms that was especially grateful in that neighbourhood. I was welcomed most kindly by both father and daughter, and very soon began to feel like one of the family. The winter had set in with unusual rigour ; and it was very delightful to sit in the dark oak-panelled dining room, as the afternoon shadows fell, before such a tire as can only be seen on the old-fashioned hearths, and watch the firelight as it flickered about the room, so weirdly transforming familiar objects and throwing such shadows as firelight only cau. Sometimes I would dream over the life of some noble devoted man of God, whose biography I had been reading, till the light failed ; but more often I fear my eyes would stray from the peacefully-napping old rector on one side the fire to his his gentle daughter on the other, whose soul centred in the knitting of a pair of warm socks for old Bloggs, who suffered from the ' rheumatiz,' or some other poor parishioner, whose affliction was the passport to her heart. Here my eyes found a frequent restingplace, and the biography would lie disregarded, whilst my thoughts travelled a road, well trodden, but dangerous to young curate whose mind was not so absorbed in his profession as mine. r To be continued.^