Horace N. Pym

"She will return, I know she will,

She will not leave me here alone."

Staying many years ago in a pleasant country-house, whilst walking home after evening church my host remarked, as we passed in the growing darkness a house from which streamed a light down the path from the front door, "Ah! Jane has not yet returned." The phrase sounded odd, and when we were snugly ensconced in the smoking-room, he that evening told me the following story, which, however, then stopped midway, but to which I am now able to add the sequel.

A certain John Manson (the name is, of course, fictitious), an elderly wealthy City bachelor, married late in life a young girl of great beauty, and with no friends or relations.

She found her husband's country home, in which she was necessarily much alone, very dull, and she thought that he was hard and unsympathising when he was at home; whereas, although a curt, reserved manner gave this impression, he was really full of love for, and confidence in his young wife, and inwardly chafed at and deplored his want of power to show what his real feelings were.

The misunderstanding between them grew and widened, like the poetical "rift within the lute," and soon after the birth of her child, a girl, she left her home with her baby, merely leaving a few lines of curt farewell, and was henceforth lost to him. His belief in her honesty never wavered; and night after night, with his own hand, he lighted and placed in a certain hall-window a lamp which thus illuminated the path to the door, saying, "Jane will return, poor dear; and it's sure to be at night, and she'll like to see the light."

Years passed by, and Jane made no sign, the light each evening shining uselessly; and still a stranger to her home, she died, leaving her daughter, now a beautiful girl of twenty, and marvellously like what her mother was when she married.

The husband, unaware of the death of his wife, himself came to lay him for the last beneath his own roof-tree, and still his one cry was, "Jane will return." It seemed as if he could not pass in peace from this world's rack until it was accomplished—when, lo! a miracle came to pass; for the daughter arrived one evening with a letter from her mother, written when she was dying, and asking her husband's forgiveness, and the light still beamed from the beacon window.

The old man was only semi-conscious, and mistaking his child for her mother, with a strong voice cried out, "I knew you'd come back," and died in the moment of the joy of her supposed return.

By a curious coincidence, since writing this true story, which was told to me in 1865, some of the incidents, in an altered form, have found a place in Mr. Ian Maclaren's popular book, "Beside the Bonnie Brier Bush." It would be interesting to know from whence he drew his inspiration, and whether his story should perchance trace back to a common ancestor in mine.

A few years ago Mr. Walter Hamilton published, in six volumes, the most complete collection of English parodies ever brought together. Amongst others, he gave a vast number upon the well-known poem by Charles Wolfe of "Not a drum was heard." Page after page is covered with them, upon every possible subject; but the following one, written by an "American cousin" many years ago, and which was not accessible to Mr. Hamilton, is perhaps worth repeating and preserving. He called it "The Mosquito Hunt," and it runs as follows, if my memory serves me faithfully, I having no written note of it:—