when, one day, on visiting, as we often did, the cottage of our good preceptor, we found little Hubert Gray, a lovely child about a year or two older than myself, and who was soon established as our frequent playmate and companion. He was peculiarly lively and engaging in his disposition, and so won upon the heart of my father, that when I lost my poor brothers, who died before they reached the age of ten, he would often come to the Hall for days in succession, and we were allowed to take lessons together of Simon both on the lute and harp.

"As Hubert Gray grew up he became a general favourite with all who knew him; much of the liveliness, indeed, which had accompanied his very boyish years, wore off, and was succeeded by a somewhat pensive and thoughtful cast of mind; but he was ever kind and courteous in all he said and did, and to a pleasing person and very intelligent set of features, he added the infinitely more valuable acquisitions of a feeling heart and cultivated mind; for Simon Fraser, as he truly told us, loves him like his own child, and has, in fact, taught him all he knew; and Simon Fraser, my friend, though very plain and

simple in his habits and attire, and to outward view little other than a mere cotter, is, as you have doubtless perceived, no ordinary man."

"It is scarcely possible, my dear Helen, to be many minutes in the company of Simon Fraser without discovering that both nature and education have conspired to place him much above the level of that class of society to which at first sight he would seem to belong, and I am, therefore, the more desirous to learn not only his history, but that also of his adopted son Hubert Gray, whose character and conduct are not less interesting and perhaps still more extraordinary; for you have yet to account for his late wayward desertion of all that apparently he could hold dear upon earth. Can you give me no reason," he continued, glancing a look of keen but good humoured suspicion on his companion, "why he should thus so ungallantly leave his young friend and fellow-pupil, to ramble no one knows whither? and have you made no enquiries as to his origin, or that of his preceptor ?"

"O yes," replied Helen with the utmost artlessness, "interested as you must naturally con

ceive me to be in the welfare of both, I have made many enquiries, but hitherto with little success; for a studied obscurity appears to be thrown over every attempt to develope the mystery, both on the part of Fraser and my father. The latter, indeed, has repeatedly told me that he is perfectly ignorant with regard to the birth and parentage of Hubert, for that understanding Simon to be solemnly pledged to secrecy on the subject, he had forborne urging him to a disclosure; and all that I have been able to obtain from the same source, in relation to the personal history of Fraser, has been confined to the mere statement of his being the son of a former bard or minstrel, a retainer of a branch of an ancient family connected with our own; that he came hither about twenty years ago, purchasing a little farm with property which had descended to him from the patronage of that house, and that having no children, he had contrived to live decently on the products of his few acres, together with the emoluments arising from his preceptorship at the Hall, and the small salary which he annually received for the maintenance and care of Hubert Gray."

"But you have forgotten, my love," said Shakspeare, smiling as he spoke, “to assign any reason for the ungracious conduct of this quondam playmate of yours. What could be his motives for quitting the little paradise in which he was seemingly placed?”

"I believe," returned Helen, and she blushed and rather hesitated as she replied, "it may, in a great measure, have been occasioned by a circumstance to which Simon Fraser alluded when speaking of the distressed state of mind of the poor youth, for the salary which used regularly to be transmitted for his education and support, has for the last two years, from some cause or other, been discontinued, and he cannot bear the idea of becoming a pensioner on the scanty means of these good old people, without any prospect of a restitution; and my father too," she continued, her voice assuming a more tremulous accent, whilst her eyes were bent upon the ground, "has for a still longer time estranged himself from him, and not many months, indeed, before he first absented himself from Wyeburne, forbade him all access to the Hall, treating even the aged Simon, whom

he had hitherto patronised, and I may say, highly esteemed, with neglect, on his account. Oh! my dear Sir," she added, after a pause of a few moments, slowly raising her eyes yet glistening with tears, and fixing them with a look of beseeching sorrow on the countenance of the bard, "if I could but interest you, who possess so much influence over my father, in the fate and fortunes of Hubert Gray, and who is, I do assure you, not unworthy of your regard, I think we should soon see him restored to Wyeburne and to peace of mind; for it is the displeasure of my father, involuntarily, and, believe me, sinlessly incurred, on the part of poor Hubert, that sits heaviest at his heart.”

"I can truly tell you, my sweet girl,” rejoined the poet, "that you have already very powerfully excited my sympathies in behalf both of Simon and his scholar; and as I think I can surmise,” he added, looking archly at Helen, "what may partly, and yet very innocently, have occasioned this unhappy coolness between Hubert and his former kind patron, I will venture to promise you, both for your sake and for that of the memory of days long since past,