"The Bride Of The Aar."
It was the day after Christmas; a heavy fall of snow during the night, the tiny flakes full of graceful motion till long past noon, had made a gloomy day for the inmates of Myrtlebank. True, there was many a gay trill and clear silvery laugh ringing through the old rooms. Alick was spending his college vacation at home, and Frank and Carry were merry as school-girls are wont to be, when books are flung aside, and fun and frolic take the place of study and recitation.
"What are you dreaming about, uncle Paul?" and Carry perched herself on the arm of her uncle's chair, and patted his cheek with her little dimpled hand.
"I have been thinking, child"—and there was a choking sensation in uncle Paul's throat, and a strange mist in his clear gray eyes. Carry's sympathies were awakened.
"Thinking about something long time ago, uncle Paul?" and the rosy cheek was laid close to the thin, pallid one.
"Tell us, uncle Paul; you know you promised us;" and Carry slid her arms about her uncle's neck, and felt his great heart beat against her own.
"It was a long time ago," began uncle Paul. "I had just finished my studies, and not being strong, the physician advised a year's travel on the continent. My father was a merchant, and had friends in the different European cities, and there was little danger that I should lack for attention; and with a supply of letters, and one in particular to a friend of my father's, a pastor among the mountains of Switzerland, I started. I pass over the leave-taking; finding myself alone on the sea; the nights of calm when leaning over the ship's side, looking down into the dark depths, murmuring snatches of home songs, bringing up vividly before me faces of those I loved; and as the ocean swells came rocking under us, down we went into the valleys and up over the hills of water. I felt as safe, rocked in the great cradle of the deep, as when at home. His eye was upon me; His arm encircled me.
"But pleasant as the voyage and full of memories, I see that you are impatient to pass over to the mountains of Switzerland. Words are weak to describe the magnificence of the Juras: looking upon the rolling heights shrouded with pine-trees, and down thousands of feet at the very roadside, upon cottage roofs and emerald valleys, where the deer herds were feeding quietly. All this I had seen, and then we came to a little town called Bex; and here, from too much expenditure of enthusiasm perhaps, I was confined for weeks with a raging fever.
"One day, when the fever left me weak and feeble as a child, who should enter but the good pastor Ortler. He had heard of my illness, and leaving home, he had travelled over the hills to nurse me in my weakness; and when I grew strong enough to bear it, he treated me to short drives along Lake Leman, whence we could see the meadows that skirt Geneva, the rough, shaggy mountains of Savoy, and far behind them, so far that we could not distinguish between cap and cloud, Mont Blanc and the needles of Chamouni.