it be procured? I have heard it once before, and to hear it again has the effect of the poet's spice winds in the Indian seas, which bear over the wide waters the perfumes of bright lands left far away. It calls back happy days that never will return.'

I do not know that any one has a copy of it but myself and one friend," replied Miss Harding; "the music was composed by my father, who is dead, the words by a young friend who is dead also," and she sighed.

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May I ask who is fortunate enough to possess the other copy ?" asked the stranger.

"Oh, yes," she answered, "it is Mrs. Kenmore, formerly Miss Graham. Perhaps you may have heard her sing it."

The stranger's cheek flushed for a moment as if the sudden blaze of a fire had flashed upon it, and then turned deadly pale again, but he made no answer for several moments. When he did speak, he asked somewhat

abruptly,

"Is she still living in this neighbourhood?"

"Oh, yes,” replied Miss Harding, "she is living at her house at Nutley, about two miles from this place. Indeed she never quits it."

"I have just heard," said the stranger, in the same abrupt manner, "that her husband is dead."

Miss Harding gazed at him for an instant, for she thought his tone was very strange; and she saw that his eyes were fixed upon a spot on the floor, while his lip was quivering as if with strong emotion.

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"Yes," she replied, coldly, he has been dead for more than two years. He was murdered on his wedding-day."

The stranger started as if she had struck him; but for several minutes he uttered not a word, and thinking him both odd and disagreeable, she was going to cross the room to some people whom she knew and saw at the other side, when he renewed the conversation with a very much altered

manner.

"You must think me very strange," he said; "but first your song, and then your conversation, recall times long past and persons long gone. I must not make you think me quite a savage, however, although I have lived long in very uncivilised places, which must plead my excuse for all that you see odd. The sight of white people thronging the roads and thoroughfares does not always bring back our European notions at once." "Have you lived, then, so many years amongst blacks ?" demanded Miss Harding; "I should think you had hardly had time to forget the customs of your own land; but I certainly do not mean to imply that you have done so, although some of your questions were abrupt enough." "Time to forget!" repeated her companion, "it does not depend upon time, my dear lady. Time slowly, grinds out the characters of the past: there are events that efface them in an instant. Long habits, cherished ideas, feelings that we think engrafted in our very nature, will sometimes give way under bitter sorrows, or severe disappointments, or acts which sweep the world of the heart like a hurricane, and leave nothing to be remembered but themselves."

"I know it," replied Miss Harding.

"Do you?" inquired the stranger; "I am sorry for it; for none can know and comprehend such things but those who have suffered them." "Women often suffer more than men know," replied his companion,

"but they have greater powers of submission, if I may use the term. They have an instinct that they are born to endure, and they endure more patiently than men."

"Or perhaps than men can conceive," replied he.

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Assuredly," answered the lady; "we have an instance of it very near. I do not believe that any man could imagine, unless he had seen and known it all step by step, how much has been endured with unmurmuring patience and high resolution by Margaret Graham-for I must still call her so. She is ever Margaret Graham to me."

"Oh, yes, call her so, call her so," said the stranger, earnestly, so earnestly that the lady gazed at him, but no longer with surprise.

"You must have known her well," she said.

The stranger did not reply for a moment, and then answered in a low tone,

"I thought so."

"Then you did," replied Miss Harding, warmly, "for no one can ever be deceived in Margaret Graham."

"Did you ever watch the clouds," asked the stranger, "when on a calm autumnal day they float slowly along the verge of the evening sky, changing their forms as they pass along, and showing us, now snowy mountains and towering alps, now castles and palaces, king's thrones and heads of giants; now wolves, or lions, or crocodiles, or sometimes a mighty eye looking out in radiance upon us from the midst of a thick veil? Who how much of all we see is the work of our own fancy, how much in reality the forms presented to us ?"

can say

"I have," she answered, "and have often thought those cloudy shapes are true images of the objects of man's desires. But Margaret is not one of those shapes. The finest essences exist in the most solid substances. Though her imagination may be as varied as the clouds you have spoken of, the beauty of her character is in its reality."

"I applied my illustration to myself, not to her," replied her companion, "I may have fancied what does not exist-I have often done so with inanimate objects, why not with a thinking being, without that being having any share in the deceit?"

"I cannot answer your why not,'" said the lady, "and yet I do not believe it. There is a convincingness in Margaret's truth which makes me feel that it is almost impossible to mistake her."

"And does she live quite alone?" demanded the other, suddenly changing to another part of the subject.

"I am often with her," said Miss Harding, "but at other times she does live quite alone."

"And is she happy?" asked the stranger.

"Nay! what a question," exclaimed Miss Harding, with a smile; "if you will define happiness, perhaps I may be able to answer you."

"That is impossible," he said, "it is one of those simple objects which, like the great facts of an abstract science, are felt though undefinable. We know what they are, we admit them to our minds at once. They are truths-to man's moral consciousness what an axiom is to his intellectual faculties. We do not doubt them though they cannot be explained to us, nor by us to others. I have known what happiness is in myself. I have seen it; but, alas! it is rarely that those who deserve it best find it in this world—but there is another."

Miss Harding was about to reply, but at the moment one of the daughters of the house approached to ask her to sing again, and the conversation dropped.

"Who is that gentleman?" she inquired, as she walked towards the piano with her young companion; "I did not hear the name when Lady Clerk introduced him."

"Oh, don't you

Allan Fairfax."

know?" replied the girl, "that is the Indian hero, Sir

Miss Harding mused, but made no reply.

CHAP. XIII.

RE-UNITED LOVERS.

"COME, Eliza, put on your bonnet, and go with me to Halliday's cottage," said Margaret, the morning after the party at Sir Wild Clerk's. "Oh, stay a little while till I have finished copying this song," replied her friend, "you will have plenty of time afterwards."

Margaret stayed; but Miss Harding was very long in copying the song, longer than Margaret had ever seen her at a similar task. When it was done, she had some other little matter to do, and she was very slow over that, too. Margaret wondered what could be the matter with her, till at length her companion rose with a sigh, and looked out of the drawing-room window.

"Do

you

think it will continue fine?" she asked.

"Oh, yes," replied Margaret, "there is not a cloud in the sky. Come, Eliza, you are idle this morning, or tired with that party last night. The air will do you good," and Miss Harding went to put on her bonnet and shawl, saying to herself, "now he will come while we are out. I do believe there is a fatality in these things."

She did not hurry herself, however, but nevertheless, she was dressed for her walk and out of the garden gate with her friend without any visitor making his appearance. Passing on their way they proceeded through some rich, green lanes, the paths sometimes winding on between high banks which shut out the scenery around, sometimes mounting up and affording a view, over the hedge and between the trees, of the sweeping lines of the lower ground, with hill and moor rising purple behind. How beautifully nature often frames her pictures, and how much more they gain by that frame-work of green boughs, or gray rocks, or old church window, or heavy-browed arch than by all the carving and gilding in the world. It was a fine summer's day, bright, yet no longer without a cloud, for a few masses of vapour low down in the sky, white at the edges and fleecy brown at the centre, were moving slowly along through the air and sweeping the earth with their blue shadows. Margaret often paused to gaze, for, to use a curiously constructed phrase, she had much of the poetry of the painter in her nature. Miss Harding had less. She had more of the ear than the eye; her imagination revelled in sounds, and she was fond of shutting her eyes, not as some people do to see undisturbed the pictures of Fancy, but to hear her songs. Besides, she was anxious to get back again as soon as possible, so that she often called Margaret forward when her fair companion, all unconscious of what was pass

ing in her bosom, would fain have stayed to gaze and meditate, and, with sad memories softened, to dream sweet dreams of what might have been.

Four-and-twenty, it is no unpleasant age. There is nothing like decay in it; the flower has grown and expanded, but not the very edge of a leaf has withered, the perfume of hope must still be in its breast, unless it be blighted indeed by some terrible storm. She was looking very lovely that morning, more so indeed than ever. Whether it was that like the chameleon she took her hues from that which surrounded her, and that the loveliness of the day made her more lovely, or that some mysterious sympathy told her, a change was coming, and brightened her looks with hope and expectation, I cannot tell, but certainly she was very beautiful.

They had gone on for nearly a mile, and were within a couple of furlongs of Ben Halliday's comfortable house, when suddenly dropping down the bank from the side of a tall ash tree appeared the broad but stunted figure and disagreeable countenance, with its wide mouth and slightly squinting eyes, of the idiot, Tommy Hicks. He stood right in the way before them, and Miss Harding suddenly stopped saying "Ah; there is that frightful man. He always alarms me. Really they should shut him up.

"Oh, he will do us no harm," answered Margaret, with a smile. "He is a little inclined to mischief, but more I believe in a spirit of fun than any thing else; but come on, and do not seem frightened at him for that always provokes him."

In the meanwhile Tommy Hicks was himself approaching, talking all the way he came in a low and muttering tone, sometimes laughing and sometimes swearing, for he was not at all times very choice in his language.

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Ah, my pretty girl," he said, coming up to Margaret, "so you are out walking.'

"Yes," answered Margaret, trying to pass him, "it is a fine day you

gee."

"For birds to look for their mates," answered Tommy; "but you shan't have him. I won't give my consent-it's no use talking, though he were the sun, and the moon, and the stars, you shan't have him, and to prevent it you shall marry me; so come along."

"I am afraid I can't this morning, Tommy," answered Margaret, mildly, "you must let me pass, my good man, for I am going on business."

"No, I won't," answered the idiot, "my business first; you shall marry me, here under the green tree. Then you can't have two husbands in one day, and I am determined that fellow shall not have pretty Meg of Allerdale. May he be" and the idiot began to curse and swear most fearfully. "You can't have two husbands in one day, I tell you, it is against the law. King George would have done the same if he could, but they would not let him, for though King David had nine wives, and his sons increased and multiplied, yet that was a long time ago."

"Let me pass, sir," said Margaret, somewhat sternly fixing her eye firmly upon him. "Stand out of the way directly."

But idiots and madmen have an extraordinary power of divining whether those who attempt to command them are really frightened at them or not, and Tommy Hicks perceived at once that, notwithstanding her assumed calmness, Margaret was alarmed.

"I won't," he cried with a loud laugh, "you shall be my wife this

minute. I take you for my wedded wife," and at the same moment he stretched out his hand and grasped her tight by the arm.

Margaret did not scream, but Miss Harding did loud and fearfully. "Hold your tongue," shouted the idiot, without letting go Margaret's arm; "hold your tongue, or I will dash your brains out. Is that the way that bride's maids scream at a wedding?"

As he spoke, the sounds of a horse's feet galloping hard were heard, and turning round to look in the direction from which they had come, Miss Harding saw a gentleman on horseback followed by a servant, advancing at full speed, apparently alarmed by her cries. He was up in a moment and off his horse, and the next instant his horsewhip went round and round the shoulders of Tommy Hicks, applied with a right good will and a powerful arm in a manner which soon sent the idiot howling down the lane.

Margaret Graham turned as pale as death; but the gentleman withdrew his left arm from his rein, gave his horse to the servant, and holding out his hand to the lady said, in a low tone, "Margaret, do you not know me?"

The blood rushed back again into poor Margaret's face, writing the glowing tale of the heart, on cheek, and forehead, and temples, “Oh, yes, I know you," she answered, giving him her hand, "but I have been alarmed, and am agitated still, and faint."

"Lean upon me," said Fairfax, drawing her arm through his, and gazing at her tenderly. Then recollecting that there were others present he turned to Miss Harding with a smile, and held out his hand saying, "I must claim acquaintance here, too."

"Willingly acknowledged," replied Miss Harding, shaking hands with him, "but I really think, Sir Allan, that we had better get home again as soon as possible, for Margaret has been very much frightened, and so have I, too."

"It is the best plan we can pursue," answered Fairfax, “if she is able to walk so far. I have been to your house," he continued, turning to the beautiful girl on his arm, "and most fortunately inquired which way you had gone when the servant told me you were out. Can you walk, Margaret, or shall I send for a carriage?"

"I can walk," she answered, with a faltering voice, "I can walk quite well. I shall very soon be better. I was going to Halliday's cottage to speak of some matters to be done at the farm ; but perhaps it will be better to go home now."

"Much," answered Fairfax, and leading her towards her own house, he told his servant to follow with the horses, and for full five minutes walked on by Margaret's side in perfect silence. It was upon his left arm she leaned however; and she felt his heart beating in a way which told how agitated he was. Oh, what a host of feelings were there in the bosom of Fairfax at that moment! and poor Margaret, too, what were her sensations! Between those two no word of love had ever been spoken; but there are languages which have no words, and she knew that she was loved. When she had last seen him he had called her "Miss Graham," and now three times he had said "Margaret." How did she read it? That she had always been Margaret Graham in his thoughtsthat she had been his "Margaret" still, in absence, in danger, in suffering, throughout five long years. She forgave him for calling her so; she felt, she comprehended that he could give her no other name, and so they went on in silence.