So they watch'd what the end would be.
And we had not fought them in vain,
But in perilous plight were we,

Seeing forty of our poor hundred were slain,

And half of the rest of us maim'd for life

In the crash of the cannonades and the desperate strife; And the sick men down in the hold were most of them stark and cold,

And the pikes were all broken or bent, and the powder was all of it spent;

And the masts and the rigging were lying over the side; But Sir Richard cried in his English pride,

"We have fought such a fight for a day and a night As may never be fought again!

We have won great glory, my men!

And a day less or more

At sea or ashore,

We die-does it matter when?

Sink me the ship, Master Gunner-sink her, split her in

twain!

Fall into the hands of God, not into the hands of Spain."

XI

And the gunner said "Ay, ay," but the seamen made

reply:

“We have children, we have wives,

And the Lord hath spared our lives.

We will make the Spaniard promise, if we yield, to let

us go;

We shall live to fight again and to strike another blow." And the lion there lay dying, and they yielded to the foe.

XII

And the stately Spanish men to their flagship bore him then,

Where they laid him by the mast, old Sir Richard caught

at last,

And they praised him to his face with their courtly foreign

grace;

But he rose upon their decks, and he cried:

"I have fought for Queen and faith like a valiant man and true;

I have only done my duty as a man is bound to do:
With a joyful spirit I, Sir Richard Grenville, die!"
And he fell upon their decks, and he died.

XIII

And they stared at the dead that had been so valiant and

true,

And had holden the power and glory of Spain so cheap That he dared her with one little ship and his English

few;

Was he devil or man? He was devil for aught they knew,

But they sank his body with honor down into the deep, And they mann'd the Revenge with a swarthier alien

crew,

And away she sail'd with her loss and long'd for her

own;

When a wind from the lands they had ruin'd awoke from

sleep,

And the water began to heave and the weather to moan, And or ever that evening ended a great gale blew,

And a wave like the wave that is raised by an earthquake

grew,

Till it smote on their hulls and their sails and their masts and their flags,

And the whole sea plunged and fell on the shot-shatter'd navy of Spain,

And the little Revenge herself went down by the island

crags

To be lost evermore in the main.

Abridged.

Never forget that nothing can happen to us which is not of the same nature as ourselves. Every chance that happens comes to our souls in the shape of our habitual thoughts, and no heroic opportunity has ever come to one who has not been a silent and obscure hero for many years.

Maurice Maeterlinck.

JOHN HALIFAX

BY DINAH MULOCK CRAIK

"Get out o' Mr. Fletcher's road, ye idle, lounging, little-" "Vagabond," I think the woman (Sally Watkins, once my nurse), was going to say, but she changed her mind.

My father and I both glanced round surprised but when the lad addressed turned, fixed his eyes on each of us for a moment, and made way for us, we ceased to wonder. Ragged, muddy, and miserable as he was, the poor boy looked anything but a vagabond.

"Thee need not go into the wet, my lad. Keep close to the wall, and there will be shelter enough both for us and thee," said my father, as he pulled my little handcarriage into the alley, under cover from the pelting rain. The lad, with a grateful look, put out a hand likewise, and pushed me farther in. A strong hand it wasroughened and browned with labor-though he was scarcely as old as I. What would I not have given to have been so stalwart and so tall!

Sally called from her house-door, "Wouldn't Master Phineas come in and sit by the fire a bit?" But it was always a trouble to me to move, or walk; and I liked staying at the mouth of the alley, watching the autumnal shower come sweeping down the street; besides, I wanted to look again at the stranger-lad.

He had scarcely stirred, but remained leaning against the wall-either through weariness, or in order to be out of our way. He took little or no notice of us, but kept his eyes fixed on the pavement-watching the eddying rain-drops, which, each as it fell, threw up a little mist of spray. It was a serious, haggard face for a boy of only fourteen, or so.

Brown eyes, deep-sunken, with strongly-marked brows, a nose like most other Saxon noses, nothing particular; lips well-shaped, lying one upon the other, firm and close; a square, sharply outlined, resolute chin, of that type which gives character and determination to the whole countenance and without which, in the fairest features, as in the best dispositions, one is always conscious of a certain want.

As I have stated, in person the lad was tall and strongly built; and I, poor puny wretch! so reverenced physical strength. Everything in him seemed to indicate that which I had not: his muscular limbs, his square, broad shoulders, his healthy cheek, though it was sharp and thin-even his crisp curls of bright thick hair.

Thus he stood, principal figure in a picture which is even yet as clear to me as yesterday,—the narrow, dirty alley leading out of the High Street, yet showing a glimmer of green field at the farther end; the open housedoors on either side, through which came the drowsy bur of many a stocking-loom, the prattle of children paddling