"I hear," continued Madge, "that the wretch has a wife that is too good for him."

"Too good for him! too good for any man!" cried Cheveley, biting his lip, and completely thrown off his guard by the violence of his own feelings. This was enough for the quick penetration of Madge; at one moment she discovered the truth, for nothing seemed more natural in her mind than that a man who never thought of his own wife, like Lord de Clifford, might find other men to do so for him; and having decided this point to her satisfaction, she determined upon availing herself of it, and acting accordingly.

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Well, well," said she, "it is a waste of time to talk of such as him; so do, kind sir, let me tell you your fortune. I'll warrant, if it ever had any, that the gall is by this time taken out of it."

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By-and-by," replied Cheveley, smiling; "but first tell me the history of this child."

"That will I," said Madge; "I wish I could tell it to the whole world; walk down the glen with me, and you shall hear it."

He followed her till they reached the Fairy's Bath, at the foot of the little winding path, when Madge, having pointed to the park trees of Blichingly, that were visible in the distance, commenced poor Mary Lee's story, and told it to him from beginning to end, acting so vividly the scene on the night that Richard Brindal had found her a senseless idiot in that very place where they were then standing, that Cheveley shuddered.

"Monster!" exclaimed he, drawing his hand across his eyes, as if to shut out some hideous phantom. "I wish I could see those letters ?"

"And so you could," replied Madge, "if you would come as far as poor Lee's cottage; for I know where Mary keeps them, and I could get them and show them to you without her knowing a word about it; not that she now minds any one seeing them; no, no, he has insulted and trampled on her too much to have left any other feelings in her but hatred and revenge! but it's too far for a grand gentleman like you to walk, and all across the fields too."

"How far is it?" asked Cheveley.

66 Nearly three miles."

"Not a bit too far, especially if they are so poor; I may be able to do something for them."

"God bless you for that, sir; but do let me tell you your fortune, for I should like to tell you all the good that I know is in store for you."

"Well, then," said Cheveley, smiling, as he put a sovereign into her hand, "be quick, and give me as much good fortune as this will purchase."

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Madge took his hand, and, examining it minutely, shook her head. "This is no common hand," said she: you have plenty to be happy with, but still you are not so; for there are wings to your heart, and it's not with you; no, nor never will be till all this has passed away. There is blood, and death, and fear, and but little hope; but that little is shrouded in a widow's hood."

Madge perceived a slight tremulousness in the hand she held, and she added, "But this year binds your fate; hush!" continued she, pointing upward, and inclining her ear towards her hand, as though listening to some mysterious sounds, for Cheveley could hear none, "hush! ay, the last sound has died away; all now is over; even when there are not tears there must be time for the dead; and however slowly it may lag," said Madge, suiting the action to the word by drawing her hand through the air, and then suddenly stopping, "it must stop at last, and then your sun will rise, and a brighter one never yet rose than it will be."

The oracular voice and Pythian air that Madge knew so well how to assume, had, in spite of himself, an effect upon Cheveley for a few minutes beyond the power of reason and common sense to ridicule him out of. The skilfully vague way she had alluded to his fate, leaving fancy to interpret, and chance to confirm her predictions, either way, glided from his imagination into his heart; he knew it was a folly, but it was one that for worlds he would not have been disabused of; for love always dislikes the head wisdom that would reduce the heart to sanity, placing the strait waistcoat of reason upon every feeling. There is not, perhaps, a more affecting proof of this extant, than an anecdote Kotzebue mentions, in his "Travels to Paris," of a girl who was in the habit of being accompanied on the harpsi chord by her lover on the harp. The lover died, and his harp remained in her room. After the first paroxysm of despair, she sank into the deepest melancholy, and much time elapsed before she could bear the sound of music; but one day she mechanically struck a few

chords on the harpsichord, when, lo! her lover's harp in perfect unison, resounded to the echo. The girl was at first seized with an awful shuddering, but soon felt a kind of soothing melancholy; she thought the spirit of her lover was hovering near her, and sweeping the strings of the instrument. The harpsichord from this time constituted her only pleasure, as it afforded to her imagination the joyful certainty that her lover was ever near her till one day, one of those awfully wise men, who try to know, and insist upon clearing up and explaining everything, came into the room during one of these mysterious duets; the poor girl begged of him to be still, as, at that moment, the dear harp was playing to her in its softest tones. Being informed of the happy illusion that overcame her reason, he laughed, and, with a great display of learning and absence of feeling, proved to her, by experimental physics, that all this was perfectly natural. From that moment the poor girl drooped, sank into a profound melancholy, and soon after died.*

What is life but a series of illusions? for the most part miserable! then are they not the worst of murderers who would destroy the few happy ones that diversify it?

They walked on in silence nearly the whole of the way; while the two dogs, who had by this time entered into an honest friendship with each other, amused themselves by running races and beating the hedges.

"And so these Lees are very poor?" said Cheveley. 'Very poor now, indeed, sir; few people had a better business than John Lee before poor Mary's troubles; but since, he does not seem to exert himself to please people as he used; and the old lady up at the Park, God forgive her for that and all her other wickedness, since her son's villany, has tried to prevent people dealing with him; and as they are chiefly her tenants round Blichingly, they are obliged to do whatever she pleases, so that he has little now to do beyond the workhouse coffins; but Mary being better, poor thing, takes in plain work again, which helps them a little. Lee could have got a very good job to repair the outhouses at Campfield last week, but he had no money to buy timber, and so was obliged to give it up."

*This anecdote has furnished the subject of a Tale by the heroic poet Korner, called "The Harp."

This narration brought them in sight of Lee's cottage; the garden was wild and desolate as usual, but opposite the door was a white birch, which Coleridge has immortalized as the

"Most beautiful

Of forest trees, the Lady of the Woods."

Its leafless and shadowy branches were now waving to and fro as the wind sighed through them, and although it was a bright sunny day in the woods and fields, there was a gray gloom round the nook in which Lee's cottage was situated that harmonized with the neglected look of the once-blooming garden. Wasp having done the honours to Prince by pushing open the gate with his paws, and flinging a look of invitation to him over his shoulder to follow, Madge in her turn preceded Cheveley, and pioneered away the long entangled weeds on each side of the gravel-walk that would have intercepted his passage.

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Stop," said he, as Madge laid her hand on the latch of the door; "my sudden appearance, without any ostensible reason, might distress the poor girl; so you can say I have come to bespeak some work from her father, which I intend to do; but, before I do so, I should like to see those letters you mention; you can make some excuse to call me into the garden, and show them to me there."

Madge nodded assent as she raised the latch and put down the child, who ran to its mother.

"How he do grow, to be sure," said Mrs. Stokes, who was interrupted by the child's arrival in an eloquent lament over the depredations her poultry-yard had lately experienced; all of which she unhesitatingly attributed to Richard Brindal's revenge and her husband's inertness. Mary was sitting at work on one side of the fireplace, while her father, who had his ironrimmed spectacles on his forehead, paused from his occupation (which was that of fixing up a bracket at the other side of the chimneypiece) to listen to Mrs. Stokes's grievances.

"As I tell 'em," resumed Mrs. Stokes, speaking with even more energy and vitality than usual, "all these here worries'll be the death of me, and who'll manage the concern when I'm gone? and who'll manage John Stokes, I should like to know? oh! it won't bear a thought!"

"Hush!" said Madge, placing her finger on her lip; and then turning to old Lee, she said aloud," See here, Mr. Lee, I've brought you a good gentleman, who wants you to do some work for him."

The old man bowed, Mary rose and blushed. As she did so, which for the moment brought back all her former beauty, Mrs. Stokes fidgeted into the perpendicular as she rubbed with her apron the chair she had just vacated and presented it to Cheveley; during these ceremonies, Madge left the room to get the letters. "Sit down, pray," said Cheveley, seating himself in the chair Mrs. Stokes had placed for him; "don't let me disturb you; I merely came about some work that I wanted done, which I will tell you of presently, if you will allow me to rest for a few minutes."

Certainly, sir," said the old man; "is there anything I can offer you? all we have is but poor fare; but, such as it is, I should feel proud of your taking it."

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Anythink the gentleman would like, I could soon step home and fetch it," said Mrs. Stokes; and, continued she, rummaging in her pocket, and at length producing a card, which she presented to Cheveley, with many low courtesies, "At any time you should want posters, sir, we've the very best; and post twopence a mile cheaper than the Good Ooman; in short, we've hexellent 'commodation of hevery kind; stabling, lock-up coach-houses, beds, foreign wines, genuine spirits; and, though I say it as shouldn't say it, as good a larder as there is in England; no one never hears no complaints of the De Clifford's Harms!"

Having thanked Lee but declined his offer, Cheveley, as soon as Mrs. Stokes would allow him to speak, promised to patronise the De Clifford Arms whenever he should need the hospitality of an inn.

"Thankee, sir; much obleged to you, I'm sure; but you'll please to hobserve, sir, that hits the right-hand side as you come hup from the postoffice; for I can't a-bear to see gentlefolks entrapped by the Good Ooman that has nothink fit to be seen. And if they arrive at dusk, it's sometimes the case, when they don't exsac-ly know. which side our house is hon."

Much to Cheveley's relief, Madge now returned.

"Now, sir," said she, "if you please, I'll show you the beehives I told you of."