"Take heed! for Widow Mysie's game is

plain,"

The gossips cried, but warned me all in vain:
Like sugar melting at the toddy's kiss,
My very caution was dissolved in bliss;
Fear died for ever with a mocking laugh,
And Mysie's kisses made his epitaph.

Kisses? Ay, faith, they followed score on

score

After the first I stole behind the door,
And lingered softly on these lips of mine.
Like Massic whiskey, drunk by bards divine.
But oh the glow, the rapture and the glee
That night she let me draw her on my knee,
When bliss thrilled from her to my finger-tips,
Then eddied wildly to my burning lips,

From which she drank it back with kisses
fain,

At that he shrugged his shoulders with a grin: Then blushed and glowed and breathed it "I guessed as much the tale has gone the

back again,

Till, maddened with the ecstasy divine,

I clasped her close and craved her to be mine,
And thrilling, panting, struggling up to fly,
She breathed a spicy "Yes" with glistening

eye,

And while my veins grew bright, my heart heart went wild,

round.

Ye might have stayed till I was underground.
But please yourself: I've nothing to refuse;
Choose where you will; you're old enough
to choose.

But mind," he added, blinking yellow eye, "I'll handle my own guineas till I die. Frankly I own you might have chosen worse, Fell like a sunbeam on my heart, and smiled, Since you have little siller in your purse The inn is thriving, if report be true, And Widow Mysie has enough for two."

The deed thus done, I hied me home, you say,
And rued my folly when I woke next day?
Nay! all my business was to crave and cry
That Heaven would haste the holy knot to tie,
Though "Mysie lass," I said, "my gold and

gear

Are small, and will be small for many a year,
Since father is but fifty years and three,
And tough as cobbler's wax, though spare
and wee."

·

Then running off she mixed, with tender glee, | Then Mysie softened, saddened, and would A glass of comfort, sat her on my knee.

"Come, Tam!" she cried; "who cares a fig Of father's sickness with a dewy cheek;

And musing stood, one little hand of snow
Nestling and fluttering on my shoulder-so !
But father sickened on, and then one night,

And ere they light make murmurs honey- When we were sitting in the ingle-light,

The leech's watch went "tick" at Bungo When to that chamber she had won her way,

Mysie!" I cried, with flushing face, too And, ere I knew, the bells began to clang;
late
And shutting eyes and stopping ears, as red
Stung by the poisonous things whose names I As ricks on fire, I blushing turned and fled.

Reft of the peace a woman's hands can I mean or costly dresses through this globe give? Decide the rank in which men are enrolled, "Mysie!" I shrieked, with heart that seemed Why, then, we'll clothe the wolf in satin robe, to rend, The alligator in fine silk enfold!

A BRAVE CAGOT.

A FRENCH HISTORICAL NARRATIVE.

HE existence of an outcast race
of men, under the name of
Cagots, during several ages
in France, has not failed to
attract the attention of the
curious. To this day, how-
ever, obscurity and doubt
rest upon their history. It
is an error to confound them,
as has often been done, with
the cretins they had neither

the goitre nor the idiocy which distinguished those unfortunates. The only marks by which they were distinguishable from the population of the south were dead bluish eyes, considerable discoloration of the skin and hair of a pale red tinge. Misery and forced isolation, producing their natural effects in the shape indicating physical debility, rendered these peculiar characteristics more striking.

The proscription of the Cagots, resulting neither from faults of conformation, habitual ill health nor impiety-for the Cagots were always esteemed good Catholics-was not merely a popular prejudice: it was sanctioned by the laws of the land. Banished to the foot of the Pyrenees, in the same humid valleys where to this day dwell the hideous family of the cretins, pent up in miserable hovels called cagotteries, the Cagots were legally set apart from the rest of mankind. Only at night were they permitted to leave their homes, and for their sole subsistence

they had to depend on the produce of the
common attached to the cagotterie. Trade
of every kind was interdicted to them.
They were neither allowed to devote them-
selves to any lucrative avocation nor to
mingle their blood with that of a society
which spurned them from its bosom as objects
of horror. For some time they were even
permitted to be sold publicly as slaves. A
legislative enactment positively forbade their
speaking to any person not belonging to
their tribe; and if, by special favor, they
were permitted to attend the church of the
district, they were compelled to enter it
through a distinct portal, granted to them
out of pity by the clergy and studiously
avoided by all the other worshippers. Traces
of these Cagot entrances and the well-trodden
narrow paths leading to them are still visible
in many of the churches of the South of
France. The local usages of Béarn, Gas-
cony and Guienne forced them, moreover, to
cut wood gratuitously, to carry about with
them no other weapon than an axe, and to
wear an infamous costume: a red jacket on
which was stamped, on
a square piece of
white cloth, the figure of a goose's leg, pro-
claimed from afar the approach of the Cagot.

The origin of this singular race of outcasts, notwithstanding the researches of several eminent savans, still remains enveloped in mystery. Various theories, more or less plausible, have been set forth to account for the persecution to which they were subjected.