CHAPTER XV.

He returned to bid his home and patrimony an eternal farewell. His father had, soon after his marriage, died, and bequeathed him the lands which had been in the family for centuries, beautiful in their woods, mountains, and sea. Now he wandered with Emily to take leave of each dear remembered walk of his childhood. They saw, for the last time, the little hamlet swelling from the strand, and the soft tintless light, so like the dreamy noon of a southern summer's night-reflected from the ocean on its streets and spire.

How deep the interest which even the property of a few transient years gives to the wilds and scenery of nature! Many may wander there. The painter may be the historian of those valleys, and there the poet may forget Avoca-but will they tell what the exiles felt

when they saw even the trees look sadder and the ruin more solemn, as things that had grown older by one hour's change of possession than by a hundred years of time? Whilst the birds seemed to realize old fables, and bid a plaintive adieu; and the little flower appeared to hide deeper, and to close its violet leaves, as if conscious that its own bloom and sweetness were sequestered with the glen, and that it now blossomed for a foreign hand. The world was indeed before them where to choose," but though it hath many fair fruits and many a lovely clime, it is but to the heart of the exile a field to bury strangers in.

Circumstances of a more painful nature soon made the sorrows of banishment appear comparatively light, and retarded Adrian's voyage over the distant main. His wife had borne the fluctuation of hope and fear during his imprisonment; a deep and low fever had supported her.

The dim associations of this fleeting world during the trial had been to her weary frame the shadow of sleep: it had suspended her sensibility of pain, but given no rest; and now her illness was too evident to be concealed. She

could only inhale the breath of autumn from the garden, and then from her seat at the threshold; and, lastly, for the one sweet and lovely hour at which she might look on the fields from the window of her chamber-so long she wished fervently to live.

"Oh that I might walk with you once again in those fields, Adrian," she would say; "but if not, when in some far country you see the flitting ray of twilight, like this-travelling through the vale, or feel the sighing wind as it visits the flowers in the evening, think that I am there-And yet not so. I am weak, or I should not have thought of such an idle romance. trust my husband's love too deeply to require these dim associations. We are united by holier, dearer, never-fading ties; and in such nights as this our conversation shall be in the far heaven.

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"You shall think of me, not by the tokens of human mould, or by the signs of mortal sorrow; but by the solemn and holy pages of that book which tells of a future world, and of spirits there pardoned through a Redeemer's merits united in his love. If you remember me, it shall be when you read the history of the Christian's resurrection; and if you believe in

Him who is The Resurrection and the Life-if you "do his will, and know of his doctrine that it is of God"-then shall it be no sin to think at times, even with hope, upon your dead Emily. You shall look forward as to one of the rewards of the race that is set before us, to a future and inseparable communion; when yon starry firmament that divides the spirits on earth from the spirits in heaven shall be withdrawn, and the holy family of the redeemed kindreds of the universe shall be one body in Christ, and members one of another.

None but those who have found too late that they have undervalued a dear and affectionate friend, or those to whom, after years of sorrow, joy has come too late, because of the memory of those who were only companions in affliction-none but such can estimate the anguish of the Roman Catholic, as he knelt at the bedside of his suffering wife. She had now laid her down as if for her purest and sweetest rest; but at times she spoke with such a fervor that it was doubtful whether the intensity of her feelings had acted as a restorative, or whether it was the lightning before death which beamed in every feature, and gave to her language that

clearness of truth. She was as mild toward death as she had ever been in life.

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row not as one that is without hope," she would say, "for this changing and fading form; for ere long I may be where I shall no longer need the decoration. How sublime is this lesson against human pride, that death leaves not even to the body that hath been so proud-a temple of such glorious workmanship, sufficient remains to occupy even a space in the earth, or fill for many years the narrow bed in which it is deposited; and that there is no name in language for the decayed image of mankind when it has lost its identity, and has no longer a distinction from dust and ashes. And this is the history of the body as to the remembrance of this world: but there is one by whom the atoms of the dead are all numbered." Adrian shuddered at this view of the region of the sepulchre.

Why," she continued, "why should we be disquieted at these things? Do we not know this day that our "Spirits shall return to God who gave them?" and shall we doubt that there is One who will keep even our bodies under his protection? The most secret mote of this terrestrial clay shall draw sweetly unto Him who

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