JUDITH. "AN OWER TRUE TALE." EXTRACTED FROM A TRAVELLER'S JOURNAL. A recent excursion conducted me into a beautiful valley on the other side of the Alps, where peace seemed to have taken up her abode, by reason of its remoteness from scenes of worldly conflict. Here, thought I to myself, here if anywhere the innocent find a retreat from the troubles of life, and be at rest. But I was soon undeceived. An aspect of anxiety in the natives, the search and bustle that were observable, and the appearance of military uniforms issuing from behind rocks and brakes, proclaimed the whole scene to be in a state of unusual commotion. In answer to my inquiries, I learnt that the municipal force of the district was in pursuit of a young female. "A criminal of the deepest dye!" I exclaimed. My informants shook their heads, and looked ashamed of breathing the very air, where such injustice was committed; assuring me that a more amiable or virtuous damsel never walked a mountain path, than the youthful fugitive who was now flying from the armed men, whose company was so unwelcome in the valley. But I must not anticipate. The catastrophe will follow soon enough; and those who are acquainted with the country in which the scene is laid, will readily discover, to use the language of the best narrator of the day, through the disguise of borrowed names and added incidents, the leading particulars of AN OWER TRUE TALE." Would to heaven that it had not too many counterparts in reality and intensity of suffering! I know, that at the very moment when the feeling and the pitying are weeping over Judith's fate, other mothers may be experiencing the same unmerited anguish of mind and body, in the same region, and under the same accusation. In the spring of 1810, a Roman Catholic family, whom I will call the Caspals, purchased a small property in a hamlet where the inhabitants were for the most part members of the reformed church, and where, from time immemorial, the Protestant Faith had prevailed. The whole region round about was peopled by a race who refused to hold communion |