Upon a couch, in one corner of a mean apartment, with folded arms and a countenance livid with despair, sat Edward Clifdon; and before him, with an exulting smile, stood the man who had so dexterously escaped during the confusion in the bar-room.

“It is as I tell you, Clifdon,” he said, “the proofs are in my possession. See you now. The drop of blood and your wounded finger; the broken point which fell from the twist of the rope, and which tallies exactly with the knife found in the possession of your own son—the knife I have seen you use a hundred times; the money due from you to the murdered man; your previous quarrel. Truly as that I now stand before you, Edward Clifdon, it was your hand that tampered with the swing from which Mark Brendon fell to meet his death.”

Huge drops gathered upon the brow of the wretched man, but no words fell from his blanched and quivering lips.

“It was the horror of that thought that killed your wife,” pursued his tormentor. “I knew it; I needed no further proof. But you are in my power now, mine enemy.”

“Do as you will,” said Clifdon, gradually recovering from the shock inflicted by this sudden and terrific accusation, and speaking with a remnant of his ancient pride. “If years of anguish and remorse, and the loss of her who was dearer than life’s self, be not sufficient punishment, death has none darker.”

“Brave words!” said Garvin, sneering. “Will you stand up in the open court, to be branded as a murderer? Will you receive the penalty the law awards your crime?”

“Man!” said Edward Clifdon, sternly, and raising his shaken form from the couch upon which he had fallen, “I tell you that in one moment of remorse, one glance to the dark past, there may be more horror than in all the shame and agony of the hangman’s rope; and if by my death I may expiate before human eyes the sin that I have repented before my God, I tell thee, I will meet it, and never tremble.”

“And your children?” returned the other, with a sardonic smile. “Your little Lilia, and your boy, with his haughty brow and curling lip? Think you they will not die for shame? A goodly heritage would you leave them!”

Clifdon bowed his face upon his hands and groaned aloud.

“Revenge for me!” pursued his companion, tauntingly. “Revenge, to heap ashes upon the head of the old man who looked scorn upon me to-night! Revenge, to humble the gay youth who has already learned his pride! Revenge, to see the beauty I covet cast friendless upon the world, and perchance within my reach!”

With a wild cry Clifdon threw himself at his feet.

“Spare me!” he said; “spare them! By the heaven above us, I swear, that from this moment I will be your slave! See, I kneel to you, mine enemy! I will crouch beneath your feet; I will beg for you, toil for you; I will bind myself to you, body and soul—only spare them!”

“No!—never! never!”

“Hark, man! If you have a human soul, listen to me! When I did the deed, it was to save my wife, my child from starvation, from madness. I thought not of myself, Garvin; by the great God, I did not! And by the loss of the child I loved, of the wife for whom I had periled my soul; by years of lone remorse and agony I was punished. Pity me! Pity them—the boy with her sweet eyes and her smiling lips; the child she left me on her death-bed—my little Lilia! Oh, mercy! mercy!”

Like the shriek of a damned spirit thrilled those last words.

“Give me Lilia,” said Garvin, eagerly, and bending forward.

“Monster!” shouted Clifdon, springing to his feet. “Name her not, lest, tempted to a second crime, I strangle thee on the spot! To thee—thee? My pure, my pretty Lilia? Sooner let her lie before me, with her winding sheet about her! To thee? Off, monster! Off, hell-hound—off!”

Intimidated, Garvin retreated, but with outstretched arms his victim followed. One moment more, and with the blood gushing from his mouth and distended nostril, he had fallen to the floor. The tempest of passion had proved too much for a frame already long shaken by fear and anguish; and as Garvin, horror-stricken, raised him to the couch, life seemed almost extinct.

A physician was called in, whose remedies stopped the immediate flow of blood, but who attempted to give no hope of recovery. Ere he left the room, however, the senses of his patient returned.

“Clear the room,” he said, in a low voice to Garvin, “and call them both. If you are not fiend, do this.”

His orders were obeyed, and marveling at the summons, young Mordaunt shortly after followed his grandfather to the room of the dying man.

A single lamp cast its dull rays through the deserted apartment upon the deathly face of him who, with livid and muttering lips, and glassy, upturned eyes, seemed uttering his last prayer to the unknown God, unto whose throne his spirit was fleeting. But rarely beautiful amid the gloom and horror of that desolate chamber, radiantly fair as a single star shining through the hideous rack of the tempest, knelt by the bedside, a girl—a child of fifteen summers; and with her hands clasped, and the braids and curls of pale-brown hair showering from her upraised face, upon the folds of her white night-robe, she looked up fearlessly, as though through the dark-stained roof, she gazed, amid the blue above, up into the mercy-seat of heaven.

And ever and anon the dying man tossed upon his bed, muttering with ghastly lips, “Pray for me, Lilia; thy lips are pure—pray!” and the child prayed earnestly.

A slight movement of those without attracted his attention, and raising himself in his bed with reviving strength, he beckoned the elder Mordaunt to his side.

“This is death,” he murmured, “terrible, terrible death! Look upon it, old man, and refuse, if you can, the mercy my God will not deny me!”

“What would you with me?” said Mordaunt, moving restlessly. “What would you, Edward Clifdon, for I know you now?”

“Mercy, mercy!” said the dying man. “You cursed her that she clung to me, and I pray for your forgiveness. Let me bear your pardon to her whither I go.”

“Is she then dead?” said Mordaunt, quickly.

“Thank God that I may say it! Thank God, save for Lilia’s sake!”

“And Lilia,” said Mordaunt, after a deep pause.

“Her child, her last-born, who is even now at my side. And for her, and for her only, would I supplicate!” As he spoke, he would have thrown himself from his bed, but his companion forcibly withheld him.

“Kneel not to me!” he said, sternly. “My forgiveness is yours; but I have sworn, and my oath may not be broken. Kneel not to me.” But as he spoke, his eye wandered toward his grandson.

“It shall never pass my lips,” said Clifdon, eagerly, and catching that roving glance. “He shall never hear from me, and Lilia knows it not.”

Mordaunt understood him. “Call him,” he said, turning away. “I forbid you not.” And Philip, summoned, advanced, wondering, to the bedside.

But as Clifdon gazed upon the face of him he yearned to clasp to his bosom and call his son, speech utterly deserted him, and with a face of anguish and wringing hands, he could only point to the crouching form beside him, and the bright head that was now buried amid the drapery of the couch.

And over the soul of the young man there seemed to come a vague and singular remembrance; and pressing his hand upon his brow, he stood like one who strives to recall a bygone thought that ever, despite his efforts, eludes his grasp.

Clifdon was the first to break this dangerous silence.

“Lilia!” he said, and she raised her face, no longer rapt and beaming, but pallid as his own, and deluged with her flowing tears.

“We are strangers,” said Clifdon, turning to Philip, and speaking with difficulty, “nevertheless, as the ear of God is open alike to all, so may one of his creatures in the extremity of need, call upon his fellow. I call upon you now, as you value the mercy of that God, to be merciful.”

“Speak on,” said Philip, with emotion, and bending over the lowly couch.

“Look at my child!” said Clifdon, with a cry of anguish; “on the child I have kept pure as the spirit of her mother! Look upon her. Shall she be cast upon the wide world to eat the bread of shame or starve?”

With a quivering lip the youth averted his eyes.

“Take her, oh, take her!” murmured the dying man. “She is yours! be unto her as a brother! Save her, I pray you! Snatch my lamb from the jaws of the wolf!”

Still hesitating, Philip raised his eyes to his grandfather’s face.

“I leave you free,” said Mordaunt, in a voice hoarse with emotion; “be it as you will.”

With a sudden impulse, the young man bent down and raised in his arms the light and childish form. But she struggled for freedom.

“Ah! no, no!” she shrieked, “I will go with thee, my father!”

“Lilia—child—in mercy!—you harrow my soul!”

Instantly she was motionless, but her face became like death, as it rested on the bosom of her supporter, and from beneath her delicate lids the large tears stole silently.

Deeper and more labored became the respiration of the dying man; and as the agony of death wrung the drops from his working brow, he murmured unconsciously her name.

In a moment she was at his side, with her small arms clasped across his heaving chest, and her eyes turned eagerly upon his face.

“Lilia! my precious one—my child! her blessing, not mine, rest upon thee!”

“Thine! thine, my father!—Leave me thine!”

He raised himself in his bed, and with her little hands clasped in his own, spoke solemnly, and in a firm voice.

“Not with the lips of purity, not with the heart of the upright man may I invoke a blessing on thee, my Lilia. But if love, perfect love, that has never known chill or change; that has kept thee inviolate in the midst of guilt, and lovely, though surrounded by corruption—if such can win a smile from Heaven, it is thine.”

His head sunk lower and lower, until it rested upon her innocent brow, and upon her shining curls. Suddenly she started with a piteous cry.

“He is cold! he is dead! Leave me not yet, oh, my father!” and lifeless as the corse beside her, the orphan fell to the ground.

Yet a few days, and Philip Mordaunt, strong in the hopes of youth and love, passed forever from the house of death. Unconscious that the little being, whose fair head rested upon his bosom, and whose welfare he had sworn to guard with a brother’s love, possessed indeed a sister’s claim; unconscious that his presence had soothed the dying hour of a parent; unconscious how nearly he had been sent forth branded as the son of a felon. Thus tread we ever blindly amid the precipices of our fate.

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BY WM. H. C. HOSMER.

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BY R. J. DE CORDOVA.

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The evening of a cold and stormy day in February had just set in, when a traveling carriage of rather a better order than usual arrived at the gates of the large and populous town of L——, in the south of France. The horses were covered with foam, and hung their heads with that jaded appearance of fatigue which tells of the labors of a long and hasty journey. The postillion presented the anomalous appearance of a dispirited Frenchman. Drenched to the skin, and bespattered with mud, he descended from his seat on the near horse, and ejaculating with considerable fervor that pithy monosyllable “peste!” which Sterne has rendered famous, he opened the door of the vehicle for the travelers to alight.

The interior of the carriage was occupied by two men, of whom this elder might be five-and-thirty years of age, and the younger nineteen. The one was a handsome, bold-looking, tall man, with rather large black moustaches, and eyes of the same color; the younger had soft and delicate features, much more effeminate than manly, but prepossessing and attractive, with blue eyes, delicate brown moustaches and whiskers, and dark brown hair. The younger of the travelers awoke as the carriage stopped, and called to the other in a delicate and musical voice, which quite accorded with his juvenile appearance, “Rouse up, Pierre; we are already at L.” The sleeper awoke at the summons, and motioning his companion to be silent, bade the postillion call the sergeant of the guard, and request him to attend at the door of the carriage, in order to viser the passports, as the travelers were invalids whom it would be dangerous to remove. The boy did as he was desired, and in a few moments returned with the officer of the guard, who bore a huge sword in one hand and a lantern in the other.

“Bon soir, Monsieur l’officier,” said the elder traveler.

“Bon soir, Monsieur le voyageur,” returned the other drily.

“Do you know the reason, M. l’officier, why I have come to L.?” asked M. Pierre.

“Dame!” replied the officer, “how should I know why you have come to L.? My business is to see that your passports are correct, if you please, and I will trouble you to show them to me as early as you can make it convenient to do so, for standing in the rain does not benefit the constitution.”

“I am sorry,” returned the traveler, “that you have so little curiosity, my friend; but as you will not ask me the question, I will give you the reason of my own accord. I came here because I knew that Jacques Lapin would be the officer on guard to-night, and would allow me to pass even if he suspected my disguise.”

“Diable!” shouted the other—“Eh! pardieu! no man knows me by that name except my former colonel, Monsieur Desart,” and he looked up in the face of his visiter by the light of the lantern which he held in his hand. “Ventrebleu! it is indeed he, and the other must be—”

“Silence!” interrupted the colonel. “Here are the passports, let them be visÉes directly.”

The alacrity with which the order was obeyed manifested some authority on the one hand, and no small amount of obedience on the other. In considerably less time than usual the passports were returned to the travelers, the gloomy postillion mounted to his former perch, and the carriage slowly rumbled through the ill-paved, ill-lighted, and otherwise ill-appointed town of L.

Until they reached the hotel neither of the travelers could trust himself to speak. The victory over impending danger and the present sense of security were too much for words. But as soon as the door of the double-bedded room which they had ordered had closed upon them, they threw themselves into each other’s arms, and sunk on their knees together in gratitude for their deliverance.

Colonel Desart had risen from a very humble rank in a foot regiment to be its colonel. He in a great measure owed his promotion to courage, excellent military judgment, and that admirable savoir-faire which is peculiarly characteristic of an educated Frenchman. He was, nevertheless, indebted for much of the signal good fortune which attended his rise to the partiality of the emperor. Napoleon, who was a profound believer in physiognomy, and who moreover prided himself on being an almost infallible physiognomist, imagined that he could discover marks of great fidelity in the lineaments of Desart’s visage, and trusted him accordingly. Nor was he mistaken; for Desart was ever grateful for the patronage bestowed, and the kindness which was manifested toward him.

It was owing to this partiality that Desart had been able to intercede successfully with the emperor for the life of Jacques Lapin, who had once been condemned to be shot, for a frolick which might have been attended with serious consequences. Nothing would please M. Jacques Lapin, private of the —th foot, on the evening before Jena, when it was absolutely necessary that the position of the army should be kept as much as possible from the knowledge of the enemy, but to adorn two stuffed images of the Emperor of Austria and his imperial spouse with heavy cartridges, and display the same by the aid of fire before the eyes of his delighted countrymen. The reflection of Lapin’s pyrotechnic pleasantry shone even in the tent of Napoleon. The offender was dragged forth and ordered for instant execution. But Desart seized the moment when the emperor’s anger had somewhat abated, ridiculed the exhibition of the unfortunate artiste, proved to demonstration that he had been incited thereto only by his hatred of the enemies of France, got the emperor into good temper and secured a pardon for Lapin, who, as we have seen, did not omit to be grateful in the hour of need.

After basking for so long a period in the sunshine of the emperor’s favor it was with sincere grief that Desart learned, on his return from Moscow, after a long and tedious illness which afflicted him on his way, that his patron and benefactor had quitted France and was then in the island of Elba. His first impulse was to disregard his own feelings as a husband, to leave, for his young and amiable wife, the still ample remnant of his once considerable fortune, and to follow his illustrious patron to his place of exile. But the formation of those wild but heroic clubs of “Buonapartists” led him to change his determination. He felt that he could do more good to the cause of the emperor by assisting it with his counsel, and, if necessary, with his sword, than if he were to retire to the presence of Napoleon for the purpose of sharing an exile which, to say the least, was inactive and useless. He therefore resolved to remain in France. He joined one of the most powerful of these clubs, and became so enthusiastic in his desire for an immediate counter revolution that he was unable, in public, sufficiently to conceal his political bias. He soon fell under the suspicion of the suspicious court, and was fortunate enough to receive, from a devoted brother officer, information of an arrest having been signed, within a minute or two after that document had passed under the hands of the minister. He had scarcely time to effect the necessary disguise of his person, and to pass through one of the gates of Paris, before the alarm was given generally, and ordered to be disseminated throughout the provinces. With the aid of an old passport, however, the date of which had been ingeniously altered, he contrived to evade all the posts on the route, until he arrived at L., where his confidence in his disguise failed him, and he resolved rather to trust to the fidelity and gratitude of his former subordinate soldier.

Le Chevalier Pierre Babat de la Bonbonnerie, and his brother Monsieur Louis Babat soon became extremely fashionable in L. Everybody thought it a duty to call on so accomplished a nobleman who, there was no doubt, had much influence at court; and the chevalier’s table soon “groaned,” as the fashionable novelists of the day term it, “under the weight of visiters’ cards.” The papas of all the respectable families in the town called on the new comers, and not a few mammas of unmarried daughters waited with impatience the visit of the fashionable brothers, to whose credit a vast deal of interest with the king was immediately set down.

It was far from being the interest of the colonel to keep himself secluded from society. Retirement would have created mystery, and mystery would have set all the officious mischief-mongers of L. writing voluminous dispatches to the minister of police in Paris; by which means his retreat would have been discovered, and his plans frustrated. He accordingly returned all the visits which were paid at his hotel, sometimes accompanied by his brother, but most frequently alone. In the meanwhile, the younger ladies of L. had, individually and collectively, lost their hearts to the young Monsieur Louis Babat. He was considered “charming, piquant, so delicate a figure, so sweet a voice, so elegant an every thing in fact.” The strangers were duly fÊted, and amused in every variety of way which the ingenuity of the inhabitants could invent. The gentlemen became jealous as fast as the young ladies grew enamored of Monsieur L., and the peace and quiet of the town of L. was more disturbed by the arrival of monsieur le chevalier and his brother, than Paris had been by his departure.

Madame la Comtesse de DemibÊte, in particular, was very desirous to bring about a match between her daughter and Monsieur Louis. This young lady was, to say the truth, much superior to the generality of the lady butterflies who were so much attracted by the new light; but as she was enamored of a young merchant, on whose birth the proud mamma looked down with considerable disdain, and who was then on a voyage to the Indies, she was not likely to fall very readily into the plan of captivation which her mamma designed for the young nouveau venu. Between Mademoiselle Mathilde and Monsieur Louis, however, there appeared to grow up a sort of feeling which no one could understand. It was not love, for it seemed to be entirely divested of every thing like passion; it was not indifference, for there really seemed to exist a sort of affection between the two young people. All therefore that the scandal-mongers of L. could discover, was that they knew nothing about it, and that it was impossible to fathom the nature of the partiality which was so palpably evinced on both sides. Immediately, however, it was ascertained that there was a penchant on the part of Monsieur Louis for one of the young ladies, all the rest broke out into bitter enmity against the offending “boy,” (a great deal was meant to be conveyed by the use of this word) who could dare to choose one particular young lady from among so many who voluntarily offered. “And she, too,” as they one and all remarked, “by no means either pretty or witty, or even tolerably sensible.” It was at a large evening party given by M. Bassecour, a converted Buonapartist, (people were converted most miraculously after the abdication,) who preserved a sort of middle place between the aristocracy and the people, and whose company, consequently, consisted of a strange mÊlÉe of both classes, that the first positive outbreak took place.

The chevalier and his brother had arrived late; and, in spite of all their attempts to appear at ease and cheerful, there was an evident disquiet and an unusual degree of thoughtfulness unwillingly expressed on their countenances. The rooms were filled when they arrived, and several dancers were enjoying their favorite exercise in excellent spirits. Such of the young ladies as were not dancing, immediately separated and repaired to unoccupied sofas, where they might leave spare seats beside them—a manoeuvre which is often performed by young ladies when a favorite enters the room—for what reason, of course, they best know.

Monsieur Louis Babat looked rather wearily round the room for his friend Mathilde. She was dancing with the brother of the young merchant, much to the rage and chagrin of her aristocratic mamma. Shunning the too lively clatter of the ladies, Louis seated himself near two dowagers, who were warmly discussing the correct pattern of the new court-sleeve for evening dresses, hoping that they would be too much engrossed by their wordy combat to attend to him. He was doomed to disappointment. Madame Nezrouge no sooner discovered who her neighbor was than she immediately turned to the attack.

“Ah! Monsieur Louis, I am charmed to see you. You are late this evening—but you seem ill. Is any thing the matter?”

“Yes, madame,” answered Louis, “I have not been well to-day.”

“Ah!” returned the old lady, “I see how it is. You young men dissipate too much. You should marry, Monsieur Louis. You should look out to settle yourself in life: all young men should. But I do not wonder, indeed I cannot, at young men remaining single. The young ladies of the present day are not what they were when my lamented husband had the honor of carrying Louis the Sixteenth’s snuff-box. They are too bold, Monsieur Louis—much too bold. I am sure I preach enough to my girls. Many and many’s the time I say to them, ‘continue, my dear children, in your present course. Do not imitate the follies and vanities of your companions. The great aim of a woman’s life should be to make her husband happy.’ Thank Heaven my girls listen to my advice. They are not like the rest. I’m sure, my poor lamented husband, who had the honor of carrying the king’s snuffbox used often to say—”

“Who knows what to-morrow may bring forth!” murmured Louis, between his teeth, carried away from the babble of his neighbor by the intensity of his own feelings.

“Why, yes, Monsieur Louis,” continued the old lady, “he did say that, too, sometimes, though how you ever came to know it, I am sure I can’t tell—but what I was going to say—”

“Pardon me, madam, but Mademoiselle Mathilde is about to sing. Would you permit me to join her at the piano?”

“Oh! certainly, if you wish it,” returned Madame Nezrouge, bridling up. “Of course: oh! certainly.”

In fact, Mathilde had already taken her place at the piano. She had one of those sweet, dear, yet mellow voices which belong only to southern countries, and she sang with deep feeling, as well as artistic correctness. As Louis walked to the piano, his brother whispered in his ear, “Be firm, for God’s sake; he is here.”

The lip of Louis quivered as he prepared to turn the leaves of the page before Mathilde, and he was so excited that he did not hear one syllable of the following song.

Before the song was concluded, a group of ladies had been formed in the centre of the room wondering what could possibly cause the singular agitation of Monsieur Louis. Some whispered that it was love—others that it was wine—and one or two audibly expressed a pious wish that it might not “prove something worse,” which many persons are ever ready to do whenever they happen to be profoundly ignorant.

As Louis gave his arm to Mathilde to lead her from the piano, his brother whispered in his ear, “Courage for one hour more—It is all right; Lapin has returned.”

A ray of joy shone over the pallid features of the youth, as he heard these words; yet he seemed to tremble. He had advanced as far as the group of ladies, with his brother on one arm and Mathilde on the other, when a sinister looking individual was seen to approach from the other end of the room. There appeared, for the moment, to be considerable excitement among the company, but every thing was as silent as the grave while the strange man marched slowly up to the chevalier.

“Du par le Roi,” said he, as he approached, “I arrest you, Colonel Desart, on a charge of treason against the king.”

“Colonel Desart, the Buonapartist!” shrieked the horrified ladies, in discordant chorus.

“The same, ladies, at your service,” replied the colonel, with that look of quiet and sarcastic disdain which annihilates impertinence.

“Du par le Roi,” continued the savage-looking individual, addressing Louis, “I arrest you Madame Louise Desart, nÉe Plestours—”

The storm of voices here interrupted the officer.

“What! Madame Desart! a woman!”

“Yes, ladies,” returned the soft, sweet voice of the abashed lady, “I could not leave my husband in his danger.” She turned as she spoke, and fell fainting in the arms of the affectionate Mathilde, whose penetration had long since discovered the secret of her sex but whose prudence and good breeding had put a seal upon her lips on that subject.

“You are my prisoners,” said the dark man, turning towards the colonel, who was quietly putting his whiskers and black wig into the fire; “you will, if you please, prepare for instant departure to Paris.”

“Indeed,” coolly replied the colonel, “I shall not go to Paris to-night, nor yet to-morrow.”

“Monsieur, the colonel,” said his captor, “will forgive me if I remind him that I have with me an armed force, to sustain the authority of the king’s command.”

“Oh! do not disturb yourself at all on my account,” replied the colonel, “I dare say you have an armed force—so have I—what then?”

“Monsieur is jesting,” answered the officer. “You must really depart at once for Paris.”

“For what purpose, my good friend?” asked the colonel, with enviable naivetÉ.

“Parbleu! it is the king’s pleasure,” returned the other—who began to feel that he was being quizzed.

“But the king will not be in Paris when I arrive, Monsieur l’Officier. How then?”

“Oh! diable! you must wait till his majesty comes back—that’s all.”

“But he will never come back, Monsieur l’Officier.”

“Mille tonnÉres! and why not?” thundered the officer, who was waxing wroth, in proportion as his prisoner become cooler. “And why will not the king come back?”

“Oh, I will tell you why, with all my heart,” replied the colonel, “and when you go back to Paris, which you will do by yourself all alone, presently, and even without your soldiers, you can retail the information in every quartier and faubourg. Here! stoop down and I’ll tell you quietly.”

The officer stooped as he was bidden, with a heart full of misgiving, while the colonel shouted with the voice of an officer commanding a regiment,

“Because THE EMPEROR is in France, and will be in L. in a few moments; and further, because his avant-garde is now passing through these streets on the way to the Tuilleries.”

He had scarcely concluded the last sentence, before a tremendous shout of “Vive l’Empereur,” was heard from the street. The officer turned and fled, as Lapin sprang into the room, threw up the window which overhung the street, and joined, with all his might, in the loud viva of joy which marked the unhappy return of Napoleon Buonaparte to the land which his valor had twice won for him.

Colonel and Madame Desart started for Paris early next morning, in the train of the emperor.

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BY THOMAS BUCHANAN READ.

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BY WM. P. BRANNAN.

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BY A NEW CONTRIBUTOR.

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Poca favilla gran Fiamma seconda.Dante.

When Ada Somers was a romp of twelve years, she chanced one day, in too bold a search for some water-lilies, to fall headlong into the stream from whose blue depths they lifted their pretty heads.

Truth alone compels us to relate this mishap of Ada’s: for although the quasi drowning of heroines has been a popular tableau of romance ever since streams and heroines were; still, this is the era of investigation; and we who on our railroads outstrip the speed of the bronze horse—we for whom the delicate and trembling wires of the telegraph do the office of a thousand Ariels—we who have called upon the sun to be our portrait-painter, and upon the moon to yield up her secrets that our lecture-rooms may be crowed; surely we have some right to think for ourselves! and we boldly proclaim that nothing can be less sublime and more ridiculous than the loss of one’s equilibrium—a plunge head-foremost—and the spectacle of two inverted feet without any apparent body.

Perhaps that sometime race of heroines, who wandered up hill and down dale in satin slippers—unsoiled—undraggled—and unscratched—and wept without the concomitants of red eyes and swelled noses; perhaps a race of such curious physiological construction possessed also the secret of losing their balance without losing their grace. But our poor Ada was not of this race: she was only a little American girl, subject to the laws of gravitation, so she fell into the river in the manner above described. Poor little thing! she might have floated off to keep company with Glendower’s spirits in the vasty deep, but for the timely interposition of a certain youth, by name James Darrington. James was taking his afternoon ride along the river-bank, when he heard a sudden splash, and turned his eyes just in time to catch a view of the two little feet above-mentioned. He was not, like the Countess Hahn-Hahn, versed in the physiognomy of feet, so without venturing a guess as to the ownership of the pair in question, he sprung from his horse and plunged into the river.

The spot where Ada had fallen was deep, and its bed was a mass of treacherous slime; but James was a bold swimmer, and after some moments of struggle, ay, and of danger too, he succeeded in bearing his prize to the shore.

Now, as Ada was no heroine, she did not emerge from the river like a water-nymph: her faithful chronicler is fain to say that her dress was a net-work of slimy weeds; that her hair was tangled, and her face dirty. Nevertheless, she was a pretty little thing in spite of her draggled condition, and when James went home and thought over the matter, he felt bound by the chivalry of fifteen to fall in love with her, and he did so. To be sure, he had passed Ada Somers a hundred times, in his father’s house and at hers, without bestowing a thought upon her—but now that Destiny had thrown her into his arms, he saw that her hazel eyes were starry with brightness—that her rosy mouth was the nest of all the loves—and he resolved to keep her where she was.

Up to the day of her mishap, Ada had never thought of any thing more sentimental than skipping-ropes, pet fawns and ponies—but she suddenly became addicted to solitary walking, wild-flowers and moonlight. (N. B. These tastes lasted for about a week.) And instead of scampering over the country with a servant behind her, her pony Lightfoot roamed his paddock in lazy leisure, unless James Darrington was at liberty to accompany Lightfoot’s mistress in her ride.

James, though only fifteen, was so accomplished a horseman that Ada’s parents had no hesitation in committing her to his care. They were often joined in their rides by Ada’s favorite playmate, Catharine Ashton; but sometimes they rode alone, and although these rides were generally silent ones, still James thought them pleasanter when Catharine’s merry voice was not constantly challenging them to some childish feat, or making the woods ring with its bursts of glee.

“I hope I shall have her to myself to-day,” thought he, as he rode up the oak avenue to Mr. Somers’ house. Yes, there was Lightfoot pawing the ground alone—and no Catharine trying Fenella feats—cracking her riding-whip, and breaking the luxurious silence of his reveries with her ceaseless mirth.

James threw himself from his horse, rushed up the steps of the portico, and just as he was stammering an apology to Mrs. Somers for nearly upsetting her as she advanced to greet him, Ada came out equipped for her ride.

How sweetly the little gipsy looked, with her habit of dark green, her tiny while collar, and her black velvet hat and plume. Before James could present his hand, she sprung into her saddle, and cantered off with such speed that he put spurs to his horse to overtake her. The woods were gorgeous with beauty. Summer still lingered in the tender green of some trees, while others, tinted by the bold hand of autumn, towered in all the pomp of scarlet and yellow foliage. The crisp leaves rustled to the tread of their horses’ hoofs, and the soft breeze that swept over golden meadow and sunny hill, came laden to their young hearts with those sweet, vague reveries that visit the soul but once—but once!—in that untried season of youth when the earth seems starred with flowers, the sea mirrors naught but heaven, and the very consciousness of animal life is happiness. For some time the youthful pair rode on in silence, till at length emerging from the shady woods they came suddenly to an opening, where a grassy slope led down to the river, and to the spot which some months before had been the scene of Ada’s misfortune.

“Oh, how beautiful!” exclaimed she, as she drew in her rein to look around. The turf was still bright with sunshine—the waters sparkled as if they had stolen the golden bed of the Pactolus—and above them, forever changing shape and hue, floated the silver clouds that hide from mortal gaze the home of Immortality!

“Beautiful!” was the response of her companion.

“Did you ever see such a bright sky!” continued the delighted child of nature. “And such a soft green turf, which, by the bye, Lightfoot is enjoying in his way—see, James, how nicely he crops the grass in a circle. Do you remember the story of the Dervise and the stray Camel? How he not only knew him to be astray, but found out that he was blind of one eye, lame in one leg, had lost a tooth, and was loaded with corn and honey, and all without having seen him? What a curious observer he must have been, that dervise!”

No answer was vouchsafed to this piece of Oriental lore, whose connection with Lightfoot’s skill in cropping grass was somewhat unintelligible to one who had not read the story; so Ada broke into new raptures over the beauty of the river.

This time James looked up, and gazed earnestly at her varying and animated countenance. “That stream had nearly wedded us, Ada.”

Ada tossed her pretty little head as she replied, “I am glad that I escaped such an ugly bridal.”

“Pshaw!” thought James, “she is but a child, and does not understand me.”

And he was quite right; for while he was perfectly aware of his being “in love,” Ada was utterly ignorant of the meaning of the phrase. All she knew was that James Darrington’s presence materially increased her happiness; but she would not have confessed to the very reeds and rushes that she liked him even more than she did her dear Catharine. Her wise and gentle mother, aware that her little daughter was in an Eden of ignorant bliss, prudently forbore to tender her the fruit of precocious wisdom. She knew that Ada was as childish as became her years, and she judged it best to leave that little heart undisturbed by knowledge of the good and evil of artificial life.

James, on the contrary, though he ventured no more declarations to the lady of his thoughts, indemnified himself for the same, by pouring out his ecstasies into his mother’s ear. Mrs. Darrington was something more than amused with this juvenile courtship; she was delighted to be the recipient of her son’s confessions: too well skilled in the human heart to repulse his confidence by ridicule, she contented herself with reminding him that to win Ada he must deserve her. So, the course of Mr. James Darrington’s true love ran on, for a while, without a ripple.

——