"A lonely tree, and a desolate hearth-stone!" muttered he. "It is prophetic!"
"Is the spot known to you?" asked Ida, gently, as they rode on.
"It was my birth-place."
"I had forgotten;" said Charley. "You were very young when you left it."
"But I remember it. I could point out to you the very place where my mother taught me to walk;—a grass-plat before the door:—she upon the step, my father kneeling at a short distance, and each tempting me to undertake the journey from one to the other. They are gone! parents, brother, sisters! there is but one puny scion of a noble line remaining!"
Ida turned her face away. The sad story everywhere! Was there justice—there was not mercy—in thus rending away the sweetest comforts man can know,—while avarice, and pride and malevolence rioted in unharmed luxuriance. Earth was a cheat, and happiness a lie!
"This is a fine piece of road," said Charley, "and we are jogging over it, like Quakers going to market. I say! Art.!"
"Well!" answered his brother, who was some yards in advance.
"Don't you think your Rosinante would be benefitted by a taste of the spur?"