CHAPTER I.
“Children’s voices should be dear
(Call once more) to a mother’s ear;
Children’s voices wild with pain,
Surely she will come again;
Call her once, and come away!”
The Forsaken Merman.
It was a summer’s evening. The yellow sunshine streamed through the boles of the forest trees, tinting them with purple, vermilion, gold, or the richest brown. It gave a metallic luster to the tops of the giant oaks, and lighted up with a silvery gleam the long feathery sprays of the graceful beech-trees, waving gently and slowly as the soft breeze passed rustling among them. The same slanting sunbeams fell on the dark glossy foliage of the tall groups of holly, and twinkled like stars upon their stiff-pointed leaves.
Beneath these ancient and hoary trees, on a natural terrace clothed with soft mossy turf, and commanding, along the glade in the forest, a full view of the glowing west, there walked, with slow and lingering step, two persons, who seemed too deeply engrossed in conversation to heed the loveliness of the evening. One of these was a woman, who might perhaps be half way between thirty and forty, but still possessing a large share of personal beauty; tall, dark, glowing, with bright black eyes, and hair as black as jet, parted off her forehead in rich braids, and as she carried her bonnet in her hand, they caught the gleaming