CHAPTER VIII.
E'en such is Time; which takes in trust
Our youth, our joys, and all we have;
And pays us nought but age and dust,
Which in the dark and silent grave,
When we have wander'd all our ways,
Shuts up the story of our days.
Sir Walter Raleigh.
Robin, when he quitted the Buccaneer, proceeded not towards his mother's house, but again entered the chamber in which Barbara lay: he paused, and listened to ascertain if she again slept. He heard no sound, and at length ventured to divide the drapery, and look within. The motion, slight as it was, was noticed by the gentle maid, who beckoned with her finger, and her lover was in an instant by her side.
"I shall be well—soon well again, Robin," she murmured; "and I know you will be glad when I am so."
Robin made no reply, but stood wondering at the exceeding beauty of the beloved object that lay upon that strange, but not ungraceful couch. He had heretofore only seen Barbara in the oddly-fashioned dress, and with the humble bearing of a servant; but now, reclining on piles of skins and velvets, her hair falling in unconstrained and untutored profusion over her white throat, and shrouding her slight figure, she seemed to him the embodying of all he had ever imagined as belonging to the exquisite creatures of other worlds. Sour and sarcastic as he was, there were few in that age who had more frequently dreamed of the pure and holy beings that people the imagination of richly-endowed minds. Solitude is the nurse of all that is good within us. The world stains what it touches; and the more we withdraw from it, the better we become. Robin knew much of its wickedness; but, fortunately, had ever sufficient leisure and sufficient loneliness for reflection. Never tell us, that a man can walk beneath the rainbow's arch, and not think of the power that placed it there! that he can stand on the tall cliff's peak, and not drink in the fullness of God's exceeding glory—that he can hear the small lambs bleat, or inhale the perfume of the hawthorn, without thankfulness to the great Author of all! Devoid of any thing like a settled creed, he still had many vague, yet sublime conceptions of the mightiness and the goodness of a Power that fills the universe with His presence. Many there are with such belief; and many, whose hearts aspire to a more defined and intimate knowledge of the Great Fountain of Life; and for lack of opportunity—for want of proper direction, either plunge amid the pitfalls and quagmires of infidelity, or are lost amid the equally dangerous fallacies of various and contradictory interpretations of the same perfect and beautiful creed. Happy was it for the Ranger that she he so truly loved was religious in its purest and simplest sense—gifted with that gentle and holy wisdom, which instructed her in the honest rule of right, and rendered her unobtrusively impervious to temptation.
"I shall be soon well again," she repeated; "and do not look so sadly on me, Robin; indeed I shall soon be well."
"Thank God for that, Barbara!" he replied. "I bless God that it is so!"
"Robin! Do you really mean that you do thank God: is it your heart, or your lips that speak?"