to it in any of the next few daysthose new days to Morgan. The arrival of the mail from home seemed only to confirm the newness of those days, for that event no longer took first place in his mind. Home-meaning his native place, his people, and friendsnow took its proper place as the thing which abutted on his life instead of enclosing it. It had become the next estate to his own instead of the one he walked in. In fine, he found he had now a home of his own; a man's home; the heart of the woman he loves. It is assuredly not roof and walls that make home to the man whose calling, like the soldier's, moves him from place to place as the years pile on his head. Morgan had begun to picture to himself what life would be with the girl with the soft gray eyes as the core of it. Then came the day when it suddenly struck him to picture what life would be like without the girl with the gray eyes. It was after luncheon again, when they were sitting smoking, and the thought no sooner went through him than the doctor spoke a little sharply. "What's that white for, young man? Sickening for hospital?"

Morgan smiled, though the gray was not yet all passed from his face. "I'm sickening for something a deal more needful; and, doctor, I'm going to another doctor for it-a doctor outside our lines."

"Ah," spoke the doctor, drawing and dwelling on the sound, "well, and I think you're lucky!"

"Thanks," said Morgan.

Hutchings stirred, stared, and then, with one gesture, indicated that he must now let his comrade come a purler in his own way.

Morgan rose to go at once, and the doctor spoke up in rather an insisting tone. "Hadn't you better call it a reconnaissance and take a gang out with you? The commandant can look on it as exercise for men and horses."

"Have you been down the horse lines this morning?" returned Morgan, quizzically.

"Ah, that's it, is it? Blue-tongue, I suppose," acquiesced the doctor.

Morgan nodded. "Any reconnaissance would have to be done on ammunition boots."

As he threw leg over saddle he found the doctor had followed and was at his knee, speaking. "Is it wise to go out again alone now you have-in the new circumstances?" corrected he.

more

"No," admitted Morgan. "It's a deal more unwise than you can guess, too. It's risking something that's a deal consequence than my death. You'll see that I won't do it again after to-day. It's all my own fault. I took oath to her the other day that I wouldn't come again, but, like an utter ass, I forgot to get a certain promise from her in return. I'm just going for that. Then I'll be good."

"Don't you think you might take the promise for granted, in the circumstances?" suggested the doctor, smoothly.

"I'm not hit that way, doctor. It's gone a lot deeper than that. I can't take anything for granted; but you'll see how good I'll be after this. long, then." So he rode away.

So

He had brought rifle and bandolier. His life had suddenly become precious because he had found a use for it, and because it was precious to her. All the way as he went he kept his eyes roving, and he cast about for a good view of the sluit before riding down into the dip of it. It was clear; everything was clear, and presently he was drawing rein under the great gum-trees.

This time the faces of the father and mother showed only politeness and no warmth of welcome. The girl herself did not appear at the moment of his entering. The mother, however, called for coffee. "Thanks; but never mind

that," spoke Morgan at once. "I haven't come to stay long enough for that, I've only just come to speak to your daughter for one moment, and then I'll go back. Ah!"

The "Ah!" was to greet her appearance as she stepped quietly into the room. It was as if she had been listening and debating whether she would see him, and then, because of his explanation, had decided to come out. Her eyes met his for the briefest glance in the world, and if there was love in them there was a great dread in them, too. Morgan did not wait to be chidden. "May I speak to you for just a minute-as last time?" pleaded he, with grave eagerness.

Her slow, gentle gesture of assent was part of her whole movement as, without a word, she walked to the door to acquiesce. Evidently her parents understood the situation, and left the matter in her own hands, and evidently she took their permission for granted.

Morgan held the door for her, and then followed. Not till she had reached the same spot as before, under the great eucalyptus did she pause: and not till then did he speak. "I know it seems like not playing the game," began he, with earnest haste; "but there was one thing I forgot last time. It's something I can't do without, something I must have. It's your promise."

"My promise?" repeated she, with a catch in the breath, but with no echo of surprise.

She knew. He saw she knew; but he saw her face go white with the tension of the crisis of her life. He saw that she was hesitating to have her fortune put to the touch; and he no longer found any pleasure in forcing her to confess. Instead, he felt the emotion of it for her, and hastened to supply the words. promise I want.

"You know what There is only one. You love me; that I know. And I love you; that you know. But I want

your promise, too, that you'll be my wife. I'll be good then. Only I can't stay away without it."

"Oh!" she said; "oh!" and a sudden gush of happy tears, bright as dewdrops from a shaken branch, rushed out from under her closing eyelids and leaped off her soft cheeks, that curved in a quick, happy smile. But her hands went out a little, just a little way towards him, as if they would catch hold of his, but that they were half afraid.

He saw those hands, and his long arms went round her instantly, all his blood in his clasp. "Liefste, liefste!" cried he, half fiercely, wholly earnestly. "But let me have the words, too. Say you promise to be my wife."

She looked up at him. She could not hold the look steadfastly into his eyes, but as often as it fell she lifted it again. "Are you sure?" she said, at last. "I "don't want you to do anything like that unless you are quite, very, very sure. I know you love me; I know that, and that justifies me. And you know that I can never-can never love any other man but you, the first and the last. I don't ask you to marry me, dear, dear love. I can be true without that -you know that I can't help being true. But you are a British officer, and I am only a burgher girl. I know what your people think of us, and what they would say to you."

"I'm a man and you are a woman," was all he said. "Promise, promise. liefste! Speak the words."

"Oh!" and she laughed again, soft and low. As soft and sweet as were her eyes so was her laugh then. "I do promise. I promise to be your wife," and she met his kiss half way with a kiss as warm as his own.

Then straightway he, master now be cause this woman was his possession, she having softly stepped into his soul to be the centre of his life henceforthstraightway he began to give orders, and she, feeling an added glory in sub

mitting as his slave, studied at once to obey. "You must pack up and come into the town to-morrow, sweetheart," commanded he. "There I'll get you a permit to go down to Cape Town, out of the way of the war, and all these fevers and things. You must come. All this misery and this bad food-and not half enough of that-it's killing you."

"Must I?" asked she, not in denial, but all for the sheer pleasure of having him reiterate his orders, taking her will out of her own hands and giving her only his own.

"You must, liefste. When I started this afternoon I thought that if I once got your promise that was all I wanted. But now I find that was only the beginning of things. I can't stand it now so long as you're anywhere near this horrible war. You're me, nowall there is of me that's worth anything. And I must get you away to a safe place. You must come."

She made a movement to nestle closer in his arms. "But my father and mother refuse to leave the farm," she answered.

"Yes; but you have friends near Cape Town-I remember you telling me that. So you'll come? Say 'Yes,' sweetheart." He grew more grimly anxious with every moment, as his kisses continued to meet hers in each pause of speech and answer.

"I promise," consented she, her wet eyes swimming in smiles. "My mother has been urging me to go ever since the war began."

"So you'll come in to-morrow. Whom shall I tell to get a room ready for you? You have a cousin inside the town there, haven't you?"

"Yes; but you needn't warn her. She'll be glad to have me as soon as she sees me."

She looked at him with a pause of manner, her eyes debating, her hands and arms lifting a little.

He understood. "Put your arms round my neck, liefste," pleaded he, making a favor to him of what she could not help longing to do.

“Oh, how you understand me!” cried she, lifting her arms to where she had been hungering to place them. To be understood-that is the heaven of every woman in love.

"And now we'll go in till I tell your mother and father. Then I'll get away and be good," ended Morgan.

She put him back, with a special caress. "But please leave them to me. It will be all right. I can promise you that. Still, they are burgher, and you are a khaki. They will take it better from me."

He assented at once. "Very good, sweetheart; but I want just another token; not a flower this time, but something nearer-something of you. Your hair is so very soft and beautiful. Give me one lock of it to be with me till you come in to-morrow."

It was manna to hear him say it. It was glory to loosen her hair, and let it fall to her waist like a shower of splendor in the sunlight, and to let him choose the lock for himself. He took out the folding pair of scissors, which so many officers carried to help in dressing any wounded man, and lingeringly he cut off the tress he had singled out.

Slowly he coiled it, and smilingly she watched him unbutton his tunic and slip the coil inside his shirt till it was over his heart. "Now please pin it fast just there," pleaded he. He was giving her her full dues of courting.

Shyly she pinned it fast, her eyes glowing with the wonder and the happiness of it all. Shyly obedient to his triumphant command she called him her promised husband at parting.

So at last he swung up into the saddle and turned for camp.

It

outposts, galloping headlong, bullet-cut in three different places, and with blood on its saddle and withers. was too late to send out men that night, and the commandant refused to let the doctor go out alone under the red cross.

They found the body, next morning, on the edge of the road, just where he would disappear from sight of the house in dipping down into the sluit. He was shot through the heart, and had two other wounds in the body, but none in the head to disfigure his face. Yet on his face was a woman's handkerchief, with initials, and his hands were crossed on his breast, his limbs straightened. There was no lock of hair on his breast, however; the doctor found that an hour afterwards, all bloodstained still, twisted tightly in the girl's hand, for she was lying on her bed in a state between collapse and crazed brain when they came to burn the house and sweep off everything. She seemed to recognize the doctor as a friend. "I heard the shots," she muttered, in a monotone. "I heard the shots, and I ran, but he was dead, and they were going."

The doctor put her into the wagonette Longman's Magazine.

himself, and saw to it that most of her clothing was saved and brought in with her. In time he pulled her through to a sort of melancholy state of joyless health before he was ordered to a field hospital further on. When he went he gave her the handkerchief she had laid on her lover's face before her father dragged her from the body, and every night after that she covered her own face with it when she lay down to sleep. She never troubled to contradict the accusation which went from tongue to tongue that she had trapped Morgan to his death; and she remained in the town where she could see his grave every day.

Later, when the brother was cap tured, he could only be sent to Ceylon. To ambush the enemy is perfectly good tactics in war. He had done nothing contrary to the laws of war. The murder of his sister's heart was not a thing that could come under either law, martial or civil; and she thanked me most earnestly because I had not shot him out of hand at the moment of capture, as so many had vowed to do. It was I who captured him and his

men.

A. O. Vaughan.

Hara-kiri! The word has been before us, of late, at every turn. In translating it the English equivalent is often given as "disembowelling"-a ghastly term, and, moreover, inappropriate. "Happy despatch" was formerly the phrase employed; it is, as it seems to me, a far better term, though how that expression originated no one seems to know. The matter itself, to the Western notion, is already not an agreeable one to talk about, but the recent translation of the term makes it worse.

It

may not be wholly without interest for the reader if I try to explain, though with some diffidence from the very nature of the subject, the true signifi eation of the act, and at the same time endeavor in some degree to account for the sensitiveness displayed by my own country-people at the misapprehensions produced by a wrong translation.

Literally, of course, hara-kiri is "belly-cutting," and this is the expres sion in common use, but kappuku, or more usually seppuku, is the word em

ployed by persons of refinement, the actual meaning, however, being the same as hara-kiri. Seppuku and kappuku are expressions coined from Chinese. There are vigorous Anglo-Saxon terms in use in Great Britain which people of taste often prefer to replace -at afternoon tea, for example-by something, perhaps equally forcible, derived from the Latin. The instance is similar.

Seppuku was, in the feudal period, an honorable mode of committing suicide. It was unknown to the Japanese of ancient days, and was a custom which grew with the age of chivalry. With us, in the Far East, to hang oneself is looked upon as the most cowardly of all methods of self-destruction, and drowning oneself or taking poison was deemed to be no better. Even to shoot himself was, in a samurai, regarded as a base and ignoble way of shuffling off this mortal coil; it was vulgarly spoken of as teppo-bara, [h is changed into b for euphony], an abbreviation of teppohara-kiri, in other words hara-kiri by means of a gun, though in reality the throat, and not the hara, was the usual spot assailed in this case.

There was never an instance, so far as can be traced, of seppuku by a female, and the honorable equivalent thereof for a samurai lady was death by a stab in the throat from her own dirk, a weapon she generally carried in her girdle to be used in time of need. Where a Roman dame would in ancient times have plunged her dagger into her own heart, a Japanese heroine preferred to thrust the weapon into her neck, and there is no record of either male or female in Japan ending existence in the fashion that is SO often depicted in Western novels, and less frequently, perhaps, in real life.

Seppuku was not only a mode of self-despatch, but was prescribed as a form of capital punishment for all of samurai rank. Beheading, and still

more hanging, were forms of execution that might not be employed in cases of offenders of the military classes, whose position, even to the last of their existence, merited respect; and when, in very extreme cases, the crime of which a samurai had been convicted was heinous enough to deserve exemplary punishment by condemnation to an ignominious death, the culprit was first stripped of his rank and privileges as one of the samurai class. No samurai was ever to be beheaded; still less to be hanged.

Naturally under such conditions the act of seppuku came to be invested with much formality, and cases in which the most elaborate etiquette had to be strictly observed were those when a daimio, i.e. a feudal baron, or samurai of particularly high standing, was called upon by the proper authorities to despatch himself in this way in expiation of some political offence. A special commissioner was then sent from the proper quarters to witness the due execution of the sentence, and a kai-shaku-nin was chosen to assist the principal in ridding himself of the burden of life. This person was selected by the condemned from the circle of his own immediate relatives, friends, or retainers, and the kai-shaku-nin's office was an honorable one, inasmuch as he was thereby privileged to render a last service to his comrade or chief.

There was always a special apartment or pavilion prepared in which the ceremony had to take place; a particular dress, designed for use only on these melancholy occasions, had to be worn; and the dagger, or short sword, was invariably placed before the seat of the condemned on a clean white tray, raised on legs, termed sambo, which in the ordinary way is a kind of wooden stand used for keeping sacrifices offered to the gods, or for some similar solemn purpose. The actual cutting open of the body was not es