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2 inexpressible of the grand father, who idolizes the innocent prattle, the enchanting ways, and caressing manner of an only grand-child. Margaret (just five years old) being then at the most charming stage of phy sical and mental development, when, as has been so beautifully said, “the first rays of love and intelligence are piercing, like a star, the white cloud of childhood.” She had perched herself on grand- knee, one arm thrown caressingly round his neck, the other drawing his head down to her, pretending, with much importance, to tell him some wonderful secret, to which he was listening with comic gravity. When the fierce looking man came in, his green eye rested with strange earnestness upon the child, so much so, that involuntarily she clung more closely to her grandfather, as if from a feeling of terror. The man then made a kind of grimace which was his nearest approach to a smile, but which did not at all serve to encourage the little one, who immediate ly moved off, as if from instinct, to get rid of the disagreeable sight; then lie slightly shook bis head, and turning to the old miller, seemed to give him his entire attention. The few words he exchanged were ut tered in a deep, rich voice, whose soft tone seemed to amaze the child to such a degree, that although on the point of going out, she returned as though to assure herself that it was the newly ar rived Savage who spoke; so certainly did she feel, as many others had before her, that the exterior of the instrument corresponded but little to the nature of the sounds it uttered. The man smiled his strange smile, as he noted this movement on the part of the little child, and then turned to answer in his peculiar way, the ques tions the old man naturally wished to put to him. “ In his peculiar way,” that is to say, with such an economy of words as to make one wonder if the mental effort this man was compelled to make in order to condense his thoughts as he did, did not make him pay too dearly for the peculiarity. “Well, my boy,” said Xavier, “I think we will get along very well to gether ; tell me your name then, you know I want to know that.” “ Luc.” “ That is your Christian name—now, the other ?” “ Mas.” “ Luc Mas” —well, now I have them both—the great and the little name, truth to say though, the old adage fails here, for, ‘Le grand ne saurait manger sa soupe sur la tele da petit,'' laughing ly said the jolly old miller, who dearly loved a hearty, honest joke, and who, though not over-fastidious in his speech, could squander in a quarter of an hour all the hoarded words that would have served his future valet for a year. “ How old are you ?” “ Thirty-five.” “ Thirty-five ! I could well spare you five or six, or even ten more. But no matter ; arc you a bachelor or a married man ?” “ Not a bachelor, not married, and, as God is my witness, not desirous of changing my condition,” replied Luc Mas, with a comparative prodigality of words, so remarkable in him, that Xavier was struck with amazement. “ Not a bachelor ? not married? what do you mean ?” “ A widower, and not disposed to marry again.” “Oh ! oh!” exclaimed Xavier, who believed he bad stumbled upon an origi nal character, and attributed to this the strange manner in which Luc had taken his part in the preliminaries of their conversation. “ You have then been very unhappy ?” “ I am the only one who can know that.” “ Then, perhaps, your wife was very —” Xavier here hesitated, doubtless from instinctive reverence for the sanctity of the grave. “ Avery wicked woman ?” hastily an swered Luc, who, decidedly, was not the silent Trappist Xavier had taken him for—“ She wicked ?my poor Catherine ! Ah, well! yes! not wicked. Oh, no! quiet, gentle, industrious, prudeut! If there be a Paradise,she is there. Yes! Oh, yes', she is there ! !” Luc uttered these words with a certain tenderness. “ Well, then,” suggested the old man, “perhaps it was you?” “I ? oh, no! said this strange creature, with unabashed candor, and his head seemed suddenly to disappear between his great, high shoulders. “No not more wicked than she : orderly, quiet, methodical, brave as she ; we couldn’t have been better matched; well! however!” “ However ?” “ That made no difference—none at all.” “ But how was it ? What was it then ?” “ Who knows ? Can anybody tell ? She was not happier than I—l, not hap pier than she. Voila tout.' 1 “Perhaps you married for convenience?” “ No, we loved each other well. She would have walked through fire to serve me : I would have been broken on those mill-rocks to serve her.” “ Perhaps you beat her, then ; people will do that sometimes, even where they love most.” “/, beat her ? Ah !” replied Luc, with earnestness, then added with the grimace which served him as a smile, “to crush her, perhaps; is that what you mean ?” And the movement of the great heavy hand, which he spread out at the end of his short arm, bore witness to the truth of this rather hyperbolical assertion. “ May be you quarreled then—kept a noisy house ?” “No more noise than blows. Five years we kept house. The neighbors heard no sounds.” “ Finally ?” then said Xavier, com pletely baffled. “ Finally—it was nothing at all—no thing at all— voila, 1 ' said Luc, who seemed to have this expression alw 7 ays at hand. “This is very droll,” said Xavier again. “ No! not droll.” “ It is very astonishing then.” “No! not astonishing.” “ Then you must kuow the cause of it.” “Ah! bah! marriage signifies nothing.” “ This is your opinion.” “Yes,” said Luc, drily; then added, in the most oracular manner, “ there are no happy homes ; no—none —not one !” “Bah ! bah!” said the old man, who. for waDt of better objections found, to say the least, this sweeping assertion grated painfully upon his own pious memories of his home. And cutting short a discus sion, which at best interested him but little, said to Luc : “ Come, let us break a crust and drink a glass of wine to ratify our engagement,” and he led him to the basement of the Mill. They drew near the table, and notwithstanding the double excitement of the rattle of the glasses, and the old miller’s genial manner, he found Lucas singularly parsimonious of his words as he was at first; save when by chance the conversation returned to the subject, which had already seemed to loosen the tongue of the former spouse of Catherine from its usual bondage ; even then, Xavier found him still tenaciously adhering to his first opinion ; and when ever after this, it was his pleasure to rouse his assistant from his natural taci turnity, it was only necessary to revert to this question, on which he professed so emphatic and exclusive an opinion, apparently founded—general as it was— on so singularly narrow a foundation. As to searching out the origin of this strange character, Xavier troubled him self but little, either at that time or here after. Ho satisfied himself—and others had already come to the same conclu sion—that this was only one of those harmless idiosyncrasies which often origi nate in the healthiest brain ; one of those partial mental aberrations where the suf ferer gives almost amusing proof of in sanity on someone subject, though the mind seems well-balanced on every other. Like an agaric plainly seen on the trunk of an oak, to destroy which no one ever dreams of cutting down the grand old tree, in other respects so perfect and vig orous : so, in like manner, some whim is often smilingly tolerated in a man, which by no means lessens the earnest esteem inspired by his otherwise noble nature. “ After all, where will we find any one who has not some pet crochet of bis own snugly tucked in under his skull-eap,” said Xavier laughing, while everybody assented to the quaint assertion ; and when they had laughed over “ the little crochet tucked in under the calotte of honest Luc,” they were fain to admit that after all he made a very good defence of it. It they argued with him about it, it was simply to amuse themselves and tease him. But no matter how much his opponents seemed amused by his sharp conclusions, it was always with the same gravity, amounting almost to solemnity, that Luc entered upon and supported his argument; and no one ever reflected that if to that man (whose mental faculties, if limited, were at least clear on all other points,) the defense of that one isolated opinion had become the great and only study of his life, there must be some other cause for this, than the accidental de rangement of one fibre of his brain ; no one ever suspected that this monomania, like many other weaknesses that are thoughtlessly ridiculed, must have its origin in some deep and touching senti ment. It icas, nevertheless, a deep and MffBII ©f EBB BQUBffl. touching mystery in which that one eccentricity of the miller’s clerk had its source ; and it t cos, nevertheless, a well regulated soul that the great Creator had enclosed in the repulsive exterior of Luc Mas. [to be continued.] [For the Banner of the South.] LOVE AND THE EAGLE. BY WALTER ELDON. I, Walter Eldon, of 18 Milk street and Hadley Villa, Busby Park, desire to relate the event which, in its results, both imme diate and subsequent, has been proven the most important of my life. And I would offer the account to the consideration of those philosophers who say that it rests in each man’s hands to be whatsoever he will, regardless of circumstances. In the year of our Lord, 1851, I resigned my place in a Liverpool counting-room, and took passage for California, where gold had only recently been discovered, and whither the discontented, the adventurous, and the desperate, were flocking from Eu rope and America. Seven months from the day I landed at San Francisco, found me in the City of Mexico, after an over land journey from the mines, where my experience had been that of many others. I was footsore, my clothes were travel stained and tattered, my heart was heavy, and my purse contained a quarter doub loon and one real, which, on offering it for a loaf of bread, I discovered to be counter feit. Y r ou of my readers who have ever had the same fortune, will understand my feelings in remembering your own —to others it would be useless to describe them. In wandering through the town, the morning after my arrival, I was attracted by an English name over the doorway| of a business house, and what was more, it seemed familiar. lat length remembered it to be the style of a firm with which my Liverpool employers had been engaged in some transactions, and to whom, in my capacity of corresponding clerk, I had written several letters. I went in, ob tained an interview with the head of the firm, told him my name and condition, referred him to my previous situation, and, having verified my statement by consulting his files of correspondence, he engaged me. I had seen enough of adventure during the ten months which had elapsed since leaving England, to satisfy my thirst for excitement for a time, and was w r ell con tent to endeavor, by close application and • irnest attention to better my fortune, and I worked hard and faithfully. My efforts met with success, and at the time I write of I held the position of assistant bookkeeper in the house of Dawson Sons, General Com mission Merchants, City of Mexico. Among the customers of the house was Senor Don Miguel Benavides, a wealthy planter and ranchero. About a year pre vious I had been sent by the firm to effect a transaction with him which was of too important a nature to be done by letter, and the fulfilment of my mission had de tained me some weeks at his hacienda. His daughter, the Senorita YTsabel had just returned from a French convent where she had been educated, and during my stay — half as guest, half as man of business—l was thrown a good deal in her society. She was about seventeen, and would have been too tall for perfect beauty, but for the finely moulded fullness of form and utter symmetry of shape which made her what she was—the loveliest woman I ever saw. An oval face, with just enough irreg ularity of outline to redeem it from classic coldness, finely cut but mobile lips, dark eyes, that, if occasion called, could sparkle with merriment or flash with scorn, but whose habitual look was one of lustrous languor; a cheek, pale olive, tinged as it were by the shadow of the rose, and a wavy mass of silky auburn hair, completed the picture which lingered in my recollec tion and led my slumbers through regions of enchantment. I first admired-then loved; and when I loved, I wished to win, for my disposition was not one to be daunted by obstacles, and in my buffetings with the world I had at least learned, or thought I had, that difficulties were but made to be overcome. Doubtless my determination was sustained to a more than ordinary de gree by the priceless estimation in which I held the objects which inspired it, but so it was, and so my resolve was only made stronger by time. The next winter Ysabel was in the city, and whenever I could snatch a moment from my duties I sought her presence. Be fore she returned to the country, I had heard her acknowledgment that love was mutual. When 1 informed Don Miguel of this, and asked his consent to our marriage, he plainly told me his objections. They were threefold : First, my family, which, as a foreigner, was unknown to him; second, his daughter’s youth; and, third, my pov erty. For the first, I satisfied him by letters from England; for the second, I was willing to wait till time should remedy the lack; but, for the third, I had no re butting evidence, nor could I show the prospect of its removal. Under these cir cumstances, we parted, and soon afterwards she returned with her father to his hacien da. Before our separation, I had obtained the promise from her that she would write, but it would be bard to tell if there was more of pleasure or pain in hearing from her. The happiness of touching the paper which her hand had pressed, but showed in harsher outlines the inauspicious future. Three months passed. One evennig my labor at the office had been prolonged till late, making out a balance sheet, and, as I walked home, heart and brain were still busy with figures, revolving and reflecting on the trade operations whose results I had been calculating, and from participation in the like of which I was debarred by lack of means. Up to this time I had been carefully husbanding my resources, and by the practice of strict economy, had saved some three thousand dollars, which was deposited in the coin-vault at the counting room. It had been a fancy of mine to keep it in silver, as it made a better show, and never miser enjoyed his hoard more than I did the sight of those three bags of a thou sand Mexican dollars each, whenever they met my eyes. When, however, I remem bered the close application, the refraining from dissipation of any sort, even the most venial, and recollected the constant toil, and the abnegation of things which were almost necessities, and then thought of the small result of all my sacrifices, my reflec tions were exceedingly gloomy, and de spondency came nearer. As I crossed the Grand Plaza, with these feelings in full sway, the broad floods of light from the lace-curtained windows of a building opposite attracted my attention, and, looking up, I remembered its having been pointed out as one of the largest gaming-houses in the city. Even from where I was, I could hear the murmur of conversation, the clink of coin, and the clatter of checks within. Impelled more by a desire to get rid of myself than any other notion, I entered, and was almost dazzled at first by the brilliance of the in terior. From the low windows, which opened on a broad balcony over-looking the Plaza, a long suite of rooms, thrown into one, extended back with arched ceil ings frescoed in glaring colors and sup ported on richly carved and gilded pillars. A bright India matting partly covered the marble floor, and along the walls statues, flower-wreathed, alternated with immense mirrors, in which the cut-glass chandeliers multiplied themselves almost indefinitely. Between the columns, down the sides of the rooms, were the green tables where monto, rouge-et-noir, faro, trente-et-quar ante, and roulette, held their worshippers and victims, or drew the gaze of the spec tators, who lounged from one to the other, stopping a moment to watch a heavy bet, or standing in careless conversation rolling a cigarritoand discussing the last cock-fight or the new danseuse at the opera. I stood abstractedly at the roulette table, while the wheel revolved monotonously, lis tening to the rattle of the ball as it bounded round the circle, and with a final leap set tled into a niche, and the mechanical, half involuntary tones of the croupier repeating, “ Make your bets, gentlemen! The game’s made. Nineteen —red. Twenty-seven for one upon the eagle, and nobody on him.” Only varying his song with the varying chances of the game. So occupied, I had almost lost the consciousness of my sur roundings, when my apathy was dispelled by a vehement “ carrajo /” from some spectator less cold-blooded than the rest, and looking up I saw fifty dollars had been laid upon the eagle and it had won. The croupier was counting out the coin which —by the rule of the game, twenty seven fold when the bet is ventured upon a single number—made a tempting display to one whose desire of gold amounted, as with me, to something approaching famine. Suddenly the thought came to me with a power which was startling by its vehe mence : Why may not such fortune be mine? True that I had thirty chances against to one in my favor, but I was ex cited by what I had just witnessed, and weary of my slowness in accumulating that which, to me, was far more than money, for it represented bliss and Ysabel. An instant sufficed to determine me; my money was in the vault, and I bad the keys; so quieting the whisperings of cau tion with the mental resolve that I would only risk one-third of my earnings, I started from the room. A tew minutes took me to the counting-house ; as many moments more, and I stood in the open door of the vault, with the money ranged in sacks upon the shelves. That afternoon I had received a heavy payment in Mexican dollars, and had placed them in hags, of a thousand each, upon a certain shelf. I went to this, took down a sack, and hastily closing the door, locked it securely, and returned to the gaming-house. Without hesitation, I walked up to the roulette-table. The croupier was about making a roll. I called to him. He stopped a moment, and I placed the sack of coin upon the eagle. I could hear from the muttered exclamations, that the spec tators were aroused by the largeness of the bet. They rose to their feet to await the result. The ball sped round and round; round —round it went, my anxiety seeming to increase with every fraction of a second, until I felt as though it would crush me down. At last, with a little flutter, the bit of ivory stopped—and I had won ! In the short while since I had come up, the crowd had greatly increased, attracted, probably, by my appearance, for it was a desperate stake for me, and, doubtless, my look showed it. The croupier took the sack; broke the seal; untied the cord which fastened it, and poured out the con tents upon the table. They were gold doubloons! Sixteen thousand dollars—my employers’ money—and laid upon a game where the chances had been thirty to one against me! My brain sickened at the thought of the consequences had I lost— innocence impossible to be proved—em bezzlement —disgrace—and I tottered and fell, fainting. When I recovered consciousness, the owner of the house, a physician who had been summoned, and a few of the more curious of the company, were around i ne . the rest had gone, the play having ceased with my winning, and the servants were extinguishing the lights. The banker of fered me a seat in his carriage, which Ia cepted, and was set down at the counting room. The sack of doubloons I took with me, and on reaching the office restored it to the vault, where, as it afterwards ap peared one of the partners, while I was temporarily absent, had place*! it that afternoon, little fancying what the result would be. I locked the vault again, and after securing the front door, threw myself upon a lounge to wait for morning. The long night at last ended. Sleep had been out of the question, and my suspense be came unendurable. I was eager to have the burden off my mind, and at the earliest moment, when I might hope to find the servants up, I went to the residence of the head of the firm. I was shown into his dressing-room, and in a few moments M”, Dawson came in. I told him, ss collected ly as I could, what had happened, and that 1 had come to inform him that the amount —nearly half a million of dollars— was subject to his order. His consideration, not less than his generosity, I can never forget. In the kindest manner, he let me see that he fully appreciated the circum stances in which I had been placed, and the motives which had actuated me, and con cluded by saying that he could not consent to receive on account of the firm more than the one-half of the amount. Then, with warm congratulations on his part for my good fortune, we separated. To say that the same day I set out to communicate the tidings of my new-found prosperity to Ysabel; that she was over joyed and wept, and that my eyes were not dry; that Don Miguel consented to our union, and that we were married three mouths from that time, may seem to he all of them supererogatory statements; but such is the truth, and as I wish to be truthful, I write them down. I have no thing more to tell, except that I have been very happy, and have not played roulette since. GEMS OF PROS! AND POETRY. HAPPINESS. BY <J. B. LOWELL. Wing-footed! thou abid’st with him That asks it not; but he who hath Watched o’er the waves thy fading path Will never more on ocean’s rim At morn or eve behold returning The high-heaped canvas shoreward yearning ; Thou only teachest us the core And inmost meaning of No More, Turned o’er the shoulder’s parting grace, And whose sad footprints we can trace Away from every mortal door! Money is a good thing, hut contentment is better. The only advantage of wealth is power, and this it sometimes, with poetic justice, turns against its possessor. Culti vate contentment, at all events. If cash comes after that, you will be able to bear it. The good distrust themselves—they per verse their neighbors. A German Emperor took for bis motto: “ Better please one good man than a crowd of bad ones.” What a world of meaning there is in poor old Rip Van Winkle’s query, after waking from his twenty years’ sleep to find that no one recognized him: “Are we so soon forgotten ?” When uttered by Joe Jefferson, this simple inquiry has al most a supernatural effect, which no one who has heard it can ever cease to feel. This reminds us that George Cooper wrote these pertinent lines: HOW SOON WE FORGET! How soon we forget! The glory of the summer fades, The dead leaves rustle in the glades, And mournfully the lone wind grieves. Our memories are fallen leaves, Though green and fair but yesterday, Now swept away. How soon we forget! The kiss of one who left our side: Will it remain till eventide, Unsullied, unforgotton still ? Though fairer skies may dawn to fill Our days! Too frail to bide decay! It fades away. How soon we forget! Vain dreamer! when the year shall keep Its glories mid its winter sleep: When that we name as Love shall bloom A little while above our tomb. For fame hope thou—leaf of to-day— Soon swept away! Nothing attracts like benignity of lan guage and gentle manners; nothing so promptly extinguishes the flames of or appeases discord, as the readiness 01 gentle minds to yield all that can be yielded without betraying the rights of justice asu* truth. The Faithful Wife.—A true andbtV tiful tribute to woman, by Daniel WebsUy “May it please your Honors, there n nothing upon this earth that can Compaq with the faithful attachment of a wife . creature for whom the object of her is so indomitable, so persevering, so reaA to suffer and to die. Under the most tressing circumstances, woman's weak in' becomes mighty power, her timidity c comes fearless courage, all her sbrinknv passes away, and her spirit acquires firmness of marble, adamantine when circumstances drive her to put 1° all her energies, under the inspiration her affections.