engaged during the forenoon in conversation with the have taken my jewel? I could not conjecture, and I family, and some friends who called to see me. durst not inquire; because inquiry would end in a disTowards noon my father alluded incidentally to the closure of my love-engagement with a Jewess—a sesale of a horse, which he had lately made to a traveller.cret, which in my present state of mind, I could not I asked some question which led him to give us an bear to reveal. amusing account of the transaction-amusing to all the rest, and it would have been equally so to me, if my unsuspecting parent had not used an expression, which I had often heard and often used myself, but which now had gall and wormwood in it to my feelings. "He tried to Jew me," said my father.

After some days my conscience smote me for withholding so important a communication from my parents, who had a right to know my matrimonial scheme; and who were best qualified to teach me by their cool and experienced judgment, how to distinguish the dictates of sober reason from the illusions of passion and the

"Was it that little bald, sharp-faced man that I saw suggestions of prejudice. Freely could I tell them all with you at the post-office ?" asked my sister.

but the one fact, that although my Judith was the best

"Yes, (said my father,) with small gray eyes and a and the most beautiful of maidens, and wealthy withal, shrill voice."

'Perhaps he was a Jew," added my sister.

"Possibly enough, (said my father:) his knavish looks would at least become a Jew. He tried first to impose on me by undervaluing the horse, and then by passing uncurrent money upon me, protesting that it was current. If he was not a rogue of a Jew, he was a Jew of a rogue."

These unusually bitter expressions of my father went like daggers' points to my heart. But my kindred most undesignedly condemned me to still keener torments. My good mother spoke up, and said:

"It is a happy circumstance that we have no Jews among us in the Valley. I should hate to have any thing to do with them."

yet she was that most disagreeable thing--a Jewess. Oh misery! how often, when the story was on the point of my tongue, did I shudder and draw back at the thought of telling that. But that was the critical point of the case; to withhold that would be to evade the gist of the difficulty.

Days and weeks rolled on but gave no return of brightness to my soul,-no decisive result to my agonising reflections. I moped and mused and pined away. My friends observed my melancholy air and haggard looks. They ascribed all to returning consumption, and often took counsel about the means of cure. they little dreamed that the malady was consuming the heart and not the lungs.

Alas!

Thus I drooped and hesitated, until the month of

the friendly letter which my Judith had so earnestly

My mother's face exhibited her anti-Jewish disgust May, was three-fourths gone. I had not written even as she spoke. "They are not all so bad," said my father in extenua-requested. What a beast was I? Now the time was tion; and I thanked him in my heart for the sentiment. But my mother drove the dagger up to the hilt, when she replied:

come when I must decide the matrimonial question, either by action or by procrastination. I must now write to my lovely Jewess, or forfeit all claim even to

"Good or bad, a Jew is a Jew; and I should hate to her friendly regard. I had promised to write my dehave any of them about me."

cision at the latest by the sharp-visaged miser Levi, who This was too much for my feelings. I rose hastily would embark at New-York on the first day of June. and went out to conceal my agony. Doleful indeed Often did I sit down with pen in hand, resolved to write were my dumps. "They will never consent," said I, something. But what could I write? That I was well? as I rushed away from the house, with as much hurry-No; That I had decided to marry her? No; That I ing impetuosity, as if I were stung by a swarm of had consulted my friends? No; not even that ;--That hornets. "Perhaps they never ought to consent," was I was tormented with doubts and fears, and yet unable the next reflection. The whole train of my evil thoughts to decide? yes; but why write a fact which could only returned, headed this time by the squeaking miser distress her? Better not write at all: the failure of the Levi, so like my father's horse buyer. I hurried wildly promised letter might be imputed to accident. But on on, till I found myself on the brow of a precipice by second thoughts, this appeared unfeasible; for she had the river side. I was not prepared for a lover's leap reason to expect several letters; and all could hardly into the stream below; therefore I stopped, and seating fail. One other course remained; I might if I pleased myself on a rock, leaned my head upon my knees, and say to her 'Forget me, lovely Judith. In a misanthroin that meditative posture sank deeper and deeper into pic mood, when every thought was dark and bitter, I the black sea of my reflections. Here I was found by twice sat down in desperate resolve to end the strife by a negro boy sent to tell me that dinner was ready. writing her a letter of dismissal-but ere the fatal After swallowing what I supposed might conceal my sentence, "I have decided not to marry you, my Juwant of appetite, I remembered that Judith's portrait dith," could be finished, I seemed to hear thunders had hitherto operated as a charm, either to keep off the roll at a distance, and to see the lightning flash of my black demons, or to exorcise them if they had posses- tutelary angel as he descended at this awful moment; sion. Inspired with eager hope, I rose from table and and then a monitory voice within me would whisper, went hastily up stairs for the portrait. I found myCast not that pearl away?" Then I could not-for my table drawer unlocked, as I had inadvertently left it in the morning. I hastily searched the drawer, and lo! the portrait was gone! My talisman was gone! Instead of the hoped-for relief, additional miseries came upon me; the dun clouds of despair boiled up more thickly and fearfully in the horizon of my soul. Who could

life I durst not-wilfully cast that pearl away.

The eve of the last day had arrived when I must write to secure the stipulated conveyance. To defer my answer beyond the next day, would be in effect to discard my beloved Jewess. The sun of the evening had set in the deepest gloom of a cloudy atmosphere;

up my Judith? No, no; the dominion and the wealth of the world were a boon too poor to buy her out of my arms. I would have dared the stormy deeps of every sea-I would have crossed frozen Alps and torrid Sahara-I would have braved the shadow of death, and gone down, like Orpheus for Eurydice, to the dusky mansions of departed spirits-and would have deemed myself well rewarded to win so lovely a creature at last. The clouds were now dispersed, that had so long obscured the bright prospects before me. The word Jewess no longer drew after it the gloomy conceptions of fear, and of a diseased imagination; it was now associated only with Judith's self-with the radiance of her beauty, the unalloyed sweetness of her temper, the unsullied purity of her principles, and all the attractive qualities of her mind. Even my religious scruples, heretofore aggravated by melancholy, now gave way again to the conviction, that Judith already so esteemed christianity and was so nearly persuaded of its truth, as only to await the influences and the occasion that our marriage would present, to believe and to profess the whole. What then had I to fear? Nothing. Such was my conclusion within two hours after her portrait had begun its reviving influence upon my heart. Some of the reasonings which led to this comfortable conclusion, may have been the logic of reanimated passion. Whether it were so or not, my understanding then accorded its approval to the desire of the heart.

my soul was gloomy as the shadow of death. My powers of mind and body were almost prostrated by long and deep melancholy, now reaching the acme of a doleful hypochondria. I sat in my room; my candle burned dimly with its knobbed, unsnuffed wick. I leaned over the back of my chair with my elbow behind it and my temple supported with the palm of my hand; my eyes were half closed, and scarcely sensible of the glimmering light in the room. Horrid spectres now for the first time flitted across the fields of my imagination, and disappeared. Then they reappeared, bloody and fierce; they stopped and gloated and grinned at me, until I almost fainted with terror. I was verging to absolute madness. Suddenly I heard a low tapping at the door. I started up, shuddering with dread; for I conceived that murderers were coming with daggers to stab me. "Who is there?" I cried, with a scarcely audible voice. "Me, massa Willie,” was the answer. I felt instant relief, when I recognised the voice of old Hannah, my nurse, in infancy, who always had for me a mother's affection. She opened the door softly, and completed my restoration to sober sense by the sight of her honest face. "Massa Willie, I don't want to 'sturb you now, when you got so poorly again. I jist came to ax you if that slut Poll that Massa hired last Christmas, didn't take this curious piece o' money, or whatever it is, from you. I thought it must be your'n, for I know it ain't none o' her'n. See, here it is," said she, coming forward and holding up what I saw instantly to be my locket-case-my talisman! As the famished tiger | or the boa-constrictor springs upon his prey, so did I spring forward and clutch my jewel; and when I had it in my grasp, I lifted both hands aloft and cried "Thank God, thank God, I have her once more." Then I said quickly, “Go down now, aunt Hannah, I wish to be alone." She was amazed, as well she might be, but retired promptly, saying as she went, "That can't be money, no how, that makes Massa Willey so glad." I hastily locked the door after her, already sensible of a new spirit within me; then taking my seat at the ta-appointed as the earliest period of our nuptials. ble, I snuffed the candle, and pressed the locket-spring. Having written thus much, I went to bed; leaving The lid flew up, and again presented to my longing what remained to be filled up in the morning, after a eyes that sweet enrapturing face. The picture restored consultation with my parents. The next morning I did with magical force and rapidity, the lovely traits, cor-state the case to my parents, but with fear and tremporeal and mental, of the dear original, now so nearly bling; not that I expected opposition from them after abandoned. I looked and looked; the beauteous image they should hear all; but I scarcely hoped for their full seemed to acquire animation as I gazed upon it, and to approval. Nevertheless, although they were shocked, rise before the imagination into the living fulness and as I expected them to be, at the Judaism of my betrothreality of Judith's lovely self. Yes, now my Judithed, yet after I had given them a full history of our acwas herself again. Melancholy with all his imps of darkness vanished at her presence. Again I felt the impression of those love-darting eyes; again heard in my soul the soft melody that flowed from those sweet lips; memory awoke and presented in pristine fresh-satisfaction to hear them yield their approval, and ness and with enchanting effect, all the affecting images advise me to write immediately. They saw the hand of the past;-the journey to Charleston-our stay there, of Divine Providence in the circumstances, and were with the piano and the songs of heart-melting pathos; persuaded that my happiness would be less hazarded then the disaster at sea, the throes of her grief, and the by consummating the marriage, than by doing violence sympathy of our souls ;-then our sojourn in Philadel- to my feelings, and plunging again into the deeps of phia, the maturity and the embarassments of our love-melancholy. the purity, the self-control and the intensity of her affection; lastly, the parting hour, its keen sorrows and thrilling delights, with all that made them keen and thrilling. I saw and felt them all again. After this revival of former emotions in my soul, could I then give

I hesitated no longer, but wrote the chief part of the letter that night; declaring my undiminished love, and my fixed resolution to go and claim her hand, as soon as she would permit me. I apologised for my delay, by acknowledging the diseased state of my mind, and the gloomy views that succeeded and produced a long struggle. I expressed my intention to visit her in London before the expiration of the year; but said that I would await an answer from her, that I might, if she gave permission, go prepared to consummate our union before the next spring which was the time that she had

quaintance, and exerted my eloquence in depicting her excellencies,-not forgetting the symptoms of her inclination for christianity, nor the fact so generally agreeable to parents, that she was very rich, I had the

So I finished my letter, and directed it under cover to Simon Levi at New York. It went by that day's mail, and would in due course reach New York on the 30th of May.

But one expression which the gray-eyed miser had

Whilst I had been able to cherish a lingering remnant of hope, that slow passages, or accidental deten

dropped about his "boy Joseph," gave me a suspicion, that if he knew the state of affairs between me and Judith, he might suppress my letter, with the view of get-tions by sea or land, had only delayed the answer; I ting Judith's fortune into his own family. Therefore to avoid the possibility of failure in this way, I wrote a second letter, directed to Judith's self in London, to go by the usual mode of conveyance in the New York packets. This I put into the post office four days after the other. Thus if the one should fail, I might rely upon the success of the other. I met with an immediate reward for my late fidelity; for when I put the second letter into the office, I found one there from Judith; short and written very hastily on her landing at Liverpool. She apologised for its brevity, saying that a swift sailing packet was to sail immediately for New York, and that she had time only to tell me of her pros perous voyage, good health and unchanged heart. She concluded with the promise of writing fully on the receipt of my first letter, which she hoped to receive within a fortnight after her arrival at home.

The expression of this hope gave me a severe pang of self-reproach. "Wretched procrastinator that I am! (said I,)—how sadly disappointed she must be!" But I had done my duty at last.

clung to that, and waited for the result before I would take any other step. But when five, and then six months had passed away, my characteristic hesitancy on such occasions, again operated to make me postpone any decisive movement to solve the mystery of my disappointment. One of two things I might do; write again and repeatedly, or go myself to London. To write again, presupposed that either both my letters or her answer had failed to reach their destination. But not only was I discouraged by the fact, that such failures had become very rare; but there was this further difficulty, that by writing again, I could gain no explanation in less than three months-a delay which my impatient heart could not resolve to incur. I concluded at last to renew my preparations for a voyage; but various difficulties (and in my desponding state of mind, mole-hills swelled to mountains,) caused delay until the opening of the spring. I was then completing my arrangements, and expected soon to depart, when an unfortunate accident gave another turn to my feelings.

I have since my college days been passionately fond of botany; and have never failed, when the mild sunshine and early flowers invite the lovers of nature abroad, to make frequent excursions about the warm dells and romantic cliffs of my homestead. One day, late in March, when the sun shone sweetly, and my heart was troubled with gloomy thoughts, I took a farewell stroll about the rocky steeps of the vicinage, ex

my lost bride. I was clambering along the side of a steep cliff, washed at base by the river, now swollen and muddy from late rains. Happening to espy on the brow of the cliff above me, a flower of rare species, and of attractive form and colors, I started eagerly to reach it by climbing the precipice. But in my haste, I slipped and fell back almost into the river. I saved myself only by catching hold of a sappling, as I slid and rolled. My bodily hurt was small, but my sick heart received a fatal wound. My precious locket-case, which I still wore in my bosom, fell out, was caught by a stub as I descended, and the ribbon being broken, the case rolled down and plunged into the angry flood, out of sight and out of reach. "Oh, mercy! (I exclaimed ;) she she is gone! she is gone!" Vainly did I go to the water's edge, and gaze wistfully at the turbid current, as if I expected it to restore my talisman-my Judith. At last I went home, gathering new grief and melancholy from this ill-omened accident. The reader knows me well enough by this time, to anticipate the consequence. Despair began to flap her raven wings over me, and dismal phantoms to haunt my imagination.

Now the months seemed ages until I should receive her answer. I began to make preparations for my expected voyage; and became weekly more impatient for the summons of my betrothed. I watched the growing and the waning moons, and 'chid the lazy lagging foot of time.' The delightful summer of our mountains seemed interminably long; for it shed its flowers and matured its foliage, but brought me no answer. I had set four months as the utmost limit to which even fear could post-pecting in two or three days to leave them in search of pone the return of an answer. Three months I thought sufficient; I was by that time prepared for the voyage, and went to the post office every mail day, expecting to find the desired summons to depart. Every mail day I went disheartened away; but still indulging the hope that the next mail would not disappoint me. Thus the fourth month passed over my impatient spirit--but to the end of it no letter came. I saw the leaves of autumn put on the bright hues of approaching decay, making the forest glorious to all eyes but mine. Still no letter came. Impatience was converted into fearful anxiety. I saw the leaves of autumn fade; and then fly, withered and sear, before the northern blast, until the forest looked sad beneath the gathering storms of winter. Sad and sadder grew my heart; for not a word from Judith reached my longing eyes. Winter shed his snows over mountain and valley; Christmas came, and New Year came; when days are shortest and dreariest in the out-door world; but hearts are merry by firesides: but my heart was more dreary than the dead earth and the leaden face of a cloudy sky. The winter began to yield to the benign power of the ascending sun; nature began to revive under the genial influence; but not so my desolate heart. Early flowers looked out on sunny banks; meadows drank new verdure from the joyful streams, that gushed out of showery hills, and bounded through the vallies. Now came the anniversary of the journey to Charleston--then of the sea voyage--then of the love pledges and the parting hour. The star of my hopes had faded into utter darkness; my letters were never to be answered; what could be the matter?

Hitherto I had refused to entertain a suspicion of Judith's fidelity. When such a thought occurred, one look at her portrait was sufficient to dispel it. I was perplexed, discouraged, and sad enough, at the long delay, and ultimate failure of an answer to my letters; but rather than think her false, I would suppose that the letters had been lost on the way, or that death had snatched her beyond the reach of my arms. Now I began to fear that she had repented of her engagement; that her return home to her kindred and friends bad

Going by the post office one forenoon, I was called to receive a letter which had arrived by the last mail: I turned in, expecting nothing unusual; when lo! it was a ship-letter, with the London post-mark. I instantly recognised upon it the hand writing of Judith Bensaddi! Good Heavens! what a volcanic stirring and heaving, what a rekindling and burning, of irrepressible fires, did I feel immediately within me. The flame of love had been smothered by despair, but the fuel was unconsumed, and the fire smouldering in secret; the first breath of hope was sufficient to reawaken its dormant energies.

affected her, as the same circumstance had for weeks affected me; with the restoration of habitual feelings first, and then less pleasing views of the brief episode of our love-adventure. My suspicion, once allowed to take root, and nurtured by a brooding melancholy, grew apace into a dark and bitter jealousy. In a few days I could even say in the bitterness of my soul: "Why should I go to see her? Or why write a third time? Shall I allow her to show myself or my third letter to her cockney beaux? of which she told me that she had crowds; that they may laugh at the uncouth simplicity of a mountain bumpkin of Virginia; who by his services at a critical period, when her grief was deep I hurried out of the town on my way home, intendand her heart unguarded, had made a transient impres-ing, as soon as I reached a private place, to tear open sion on her; but whom, in her cooler moments, she the mystery at once. But when I found a suitable could not think of marrying; though she felt obliged to place, I could not summon the resolution to break the him for his kindness, and had, under the impulse of gra-seal. Hope shed reviving rays upon my soul, and I titude, given him more encouragement than prudence allowed. Shall I expose myself to such treatment as this? No, verily I will not!"

These suggestions of the melancholy demon were sometimes resisted by my better feelings; but never subdued, so that I could resolve again to prosecute my ill-fated love. I still indulged, from time to time, my bitter surmisings of Judith's falsehood; although my conscience often whispered that they were unjust. What inconsistencies will not a wretched man perpetrate in the bitterness of his soul!

Finally, I resolved that as the case seemed to be desperate, I would strive to forget that I had ever loved Judith Bensaddi. I was impelled to some decisive course, by the dread of a settled melancholy and imbecile moping, or of downright madness for life. Once conclusively resolved, I was as prompt and energetic in execution, as I was indecisive and procrastinating in cases of doubtful deliberation.

longed to realize its promise: but fear drew up a cloud from the Stygian lake, that threatened to overwhelm and extinguish forever the last star in my heaven of love. Hitherto the evidence that Judith had changed her mind, was purely negative; I had received no communication from her; that was all. Now I was to learn from herself the certainty of what I might still hope, or of what I had long feared: the question that had cost me so much excruciating conjecture, was now to be solved: I was to know in a moment, whether the lovely Judith might yet be mine, or whether the gulf between us was now fixed and impassable. When I put my thumb-nail to the seal, and felt that I was about to read the doom of a love, whose renovated power now ruled my soul, "terror took hold on me, and trembling which made all bones to shake." I could not break the seal. I staggered homewards under my load of fearful anxiety. Several times I stopped, and said, "Now!" but I could not; every nerve in my body quivered. When I got home, I stole unobserved into my room and locked the door. "Here (said I,) is the place, and now is the time." Still I hesitated; I sat; I lay down on the bed; I got up and paced the room: It would not do; my heart quailed and shrunk from the dread revelation. "I cannot do it here (said

"Perhaps (said I to myself) it is a merciful interposition of Providence, that has thwarted an affection, which might have planted a thorn in my breast for life. A christian is forbidden to marry an infidel, and the prohibition is a wise one. Now for study and learning, and the glorious achievements of professional exertion." My studies had been much interrupted by consump-I)-I must go to the woods and rocks." To the woods tion first, then by love and melancholy. During a year I had made little progress; now I betook myself with renewed zeal to my books. But many a time and oft, while leaning over my learned author on the table, did I start out of a reverie, and find that my soul had unconsciously strayed into the regions of love, and drank sweeter waters at the fountain of Venus, than Helicon had ever yielded to poet or philosopher. But by persevering efforts, I conquered this propensity to revive scenes and emotions, which, however delightful once, were fleeting as a dream, and, like a dream, should be forgotten.

CHAPTER X.

AN UNEXPECTED LETTER.

By the end of the ensuing summer, my mind had recovered its usual tone and steady habits, and I had just finished the preparatory studies of my profession; when an incident occurred, which again raised my feelings to a tempest, and formed the closing scene of

my story.

and rocks about the farm I went. For hours I wandered from shade to shade, and from rock to rock, in deep and agitated thought; often forgetting where I was, or what was the matter. Often I took out the letter from my pocket, looked at it, one while examining the superscription, another while the seal; and then returning it to my pocket with a groan, I wandered again, like the evil spirit, “seeking rest and finding none.” It may seem strange, that I should voluntarily undergo this lengthened agony of suspense, when I could end it in a moment. But I durst not end it. What man could dare, if he might, unseal the book of his final destiny? He would rather live in the uncertainty of a trembling hope, than hazard the withering blast of a remediless despair.

Towards evening I found myself by the river side in a solitary nook, to which I was wont to resort when in a musing mood. It was a snug corner, with the river in front, and high cliffs, topped with cedars, curving round the other sides. Three or four trees spread their umbrageous tops over head, and beneath a small fountain drew its silvery thread of cool water from the

inner angle to the river, between turfy banks and mossy | ble, worthy gentleman." So I went on, until I had told stones. Here I had often meditated on my love, and him all. "He shall have you, Judith; he deserves to here I resolved at all events to know its issue. I threw have you; he is the very man to make you happy.” myself down upon a sweet grassy bank, near the river Then was the joy of my love complete. that ran murmuring by. Here a tuft of the golden rod waved its yellow plumes in the breeze; at the base of the cliff, near my seat, the wild aster was opening its purple-fringed eyes, seemingly to watch the dog-star in his nightly rounds. Elsewhere the atmosphere was glowing with summer heat; here all was cool, dusky and still. Again I took the letter from my pocket, and again I trembled all over like an aspen leaf. But my resolution was taken: "Now it must be done." My thumb-nail was again applied, and with a convulsive jerk I tore off the seal. With trembling hands I unfolded the closely written sheet, and with palpitating heart I read as follows:

My Beloved Friend :

LONDON, July 10th, 1820.

With you it is impossible for me to be ceremonious. I have experienced too much of your kindness, and I may add of your love, to suspect you of unkind neglect, or to think of you with any other feeling than gratitude and friendship. I wrote you a few hasty lines from Liverpool by a packet that was about to sail immediately after our landing. I will now give you the outlines of my sad history since I left Philadelphia.

I hoped in a fortnight or sooner to receive a friendly letter, telling me of your safe return, if nothing more. The fortnight seemed very long; and when a month passed without bringing me a letter, it seemed to have been a year. "But I am sure of one by Mr. Levi," said I; and so I endeavored to comfort myself. I could hardly wait until he should come, and when at last I was told that he was arrived, and actually in the house, I ran breathless with joy and demanded my letter. "None, (said he)-I went to the post office the first of June, and found none for you." "None?" said I. "No, sure, not one." I remember nothing more, until I found myself in bed and the physician by my side.

Still, though stricken down, I was not in despair. "Some accident has disappointed me, (said I,)—the letter may have miscarried; or he may choose to come, and give me a joyful surprise by bearing his own tidings. I shall hear or see before.long." But another month passed-so long!-yet no tidings. We heard of a New York packet-ship wrecked on the coast of Ireland: the letter-bag lost--and some passengers; but your name was not among them. On this chance of your letter being lost, I fed my declining hope. But long months of fruitless expectation, compelled me at The night when we parted! I yet weep at the re- last to conclude that you had found the scheme of our membrance of it: had I then anticipated our long, long union unpropitious to your hopes of happiness, and that separation, my grief would have turned to distraction. your kind compassion would not suffer you to tell me Our journey to Boston was speedy, and would have so. I had promised not to blame you; I did not; but been pleasant, any thing could have given pleasure my heart bled, nevertheless-ah, many a weary day and so shortly after that parting hour. Two days after-weary night. I fled from the crowded city to hide my wards I took ship with my cousin. The ship and the grief, and if possible to relieve it, among the lakes and sea revived all my griefs; for they brought affectingly mountains of Cumberland. They reminded me of the to mind the horrible day when I lost the dearest of bro-delightful scenery which you had described; where thers, and found all a brother's kindness in you. The voyage, as I wrote before, was prosperous; and on the thirty-fifth day after our separation, I was in the arms of my dear father. Cousin Von Caleb had written him notice of our calamity from Boston, on the day when he received my letter; so that before our arrival my afflicted parent had learned his irreparable loss: now he seemed equally divided between joy for his recovered daughter, and grief for his lost son.

I related to him as well as my feelings would allow, the circumstances of the disaster, and the history of my acquaintance with you, from the first day to the last; omitting at first the affair of our love. I told him how you had saved my life at the hazard of your own, and how you had thenceforth nursed me in my desperate grief, cherished me as a sister, and taken me far out of your way to restore me to my friends, until your care of me occasioned the severe hurt that confined you in Philadelphia. "Now blessed be that good young stranger, (said my father, with tears in his eyes)-how can we reward him for his goodness to my poor destitute child? I owe him for your life; yes, twice-for without him you would first have perished in the water, and then in your grief. We must do something-yes, a great deal, to show our gratitude. I trust that you showed yourself grateful, daughter-did you?" "Yes, father, your daughter endeavored to show that she could love such a kind protector, and such an honora

you made me hope to live, communing with nature and with the dear friend whose heart seemed purposely formed to sympathise with mine. But I must not pain that dear friend with the recital of my sorrows.

Long was the time before I could give you up with dutiful resignation. I imagined various reasons for your long silence, and sometimes renewed my hope on the ground of some vain supposition. Sometimes again I feared that you were dead; and then I mourned for you as for my brother. But I was relieved of this painful apprehension, two months ago. A friend of my father's has some lands in the mountains of Virginia. When he went to see them, my father requested him to visit your village and inquire after you. He learned that you were alive and well. Then I knew that you had abandoned our engagement, and that longer hope was vain if not sinful. Often had I dreamed both asleep and awake of rural felicity with you, my comforter in sorrow and my chosen companion for life. But when I found that all was a dream, and that I must resign my heart to widowhood, I resisted the fondness of a love that could only make me miserable. Hard was it to bring so sweet and so cherished a passion within the bounds of moderation. Often would it invite the fond illusion, that your difficulties might yet be removed, and that your love for me was yet sufficient to bring you over the waters in search of your Judith. But one long year and months of another passed away,