KNIGHTS OF THE CROSS.
ST. GEORGE’S CROSS.
BY CAROLINE CHESEBRO’.
A dull November evening: ghosts of a fog aspiring to the summit of a mountain, which formed the startling feature in the background of a landscape: a melancholy dissonance of swelling, rolling, breaking waves—strong, though not violent, moaning of autumnal winds through the valley, and up the mountain side: dark, heavy masses of cloud—red, and silvery, and leaden lines alternating on the horizon, at the point where the sun had disappeared: a girl standing on an enormous stone that was nearly surrounded by the water, a boy seated on the same rock near her feet; they were Ella, the clergyman’s daughter, and George, a shoemaker’s son.
An arm, white, round, and smooth as a girl’s, bared to the elbow, besmeared with blood and India ink, a hand, gliding over it rapidly, making strange tracery as it moved; a voice, soft and melodious, but tremulous in its tones, telling of a heart beating within the speaker’s breast that was keenly susceptible to every emotion—that voice saying,
“Did I show you the verses that I wrote about our Cross, Ella?”
“No! no—did you write verses about it?”
Without replying to the words, the boy laid down the needle he was using, drew from his pocket a little book, took from it a paper which he gave to the girl, silently resuming his work.
And in the gloom and cold she read,