She to whom Amy thus fervently spoke felt that her words were not wholly without truth. Nor could she help admiring the noble, heroic, and virtuous conduct of this poor shepherdess, whom all this world’s temptations would have failed to lure from the right path. Before this meeting she had thought of Amy as far her inferior indeed, and it was long before her proper pride had yielded to the love of her brother, whose passion she feared might otherwise have led to some horrible catastrophe. Now that he had fled from them in distraction, this terror again possessed her, and she whispered it to the pale, trembling shepherdess.
“Follow him—follow him, gentle lady, into the wood; lose not a moment; call upon him by name, and that sweet voice must bring him back. But fear not, he is too good to do evil; fear not, receive my blessing, and let me return to my father’s hut; it is but a few miles, and that distance is nothing to one who has lived all her life among the hills. My poor father will think I have died in some solitary place.”
The lady wept to think that she, whom she had been willing to receive as her sister, should return all by herself so many miles at night to a lonely hut. But her soul was sick with fear for her brother; so she took from her shoulders a long rich Indian silk scarf of gorgeous colours, and throwing it over Amy’s figure, said, “Fair creature and good, keep this for my sake; and now, farewell!” She gazed on the Lily for a moment in delighted wonder at her graceful beauty, as she bent on one knee, enrobed in that unwonted garb, and then, rising up, gathered the flowing drapery around her, and disappeared.
“God, in His infinite mercy, be praised!” cried Walter Harden, as he and the old man, who had been seeking Amy for hours all over the hills, saw the Lily gliding towards them up a little narrow dell, covered from head to foot with the splendid raiment that shone in a soft shower of moonlight. Joy and astonishment for a while held them speechless, but they soon knew all that had happened; and Walter Harden lifted her up in his arms and carried her home, exhausted now and faint with fatigue and trepidation, as if she were but a lamb rescued from a snow-wreath.
Next moon was that which the reapers love, and before it had waned Amy slept in the bosom of her husband, Walter Harden. Years passed on, and other flowers beside the Lily of Liddisdale were blooming in his house. One summer evening, when the shepherd, his fair wife, and their children were sitting together on the green before the door, enjoying probably the sight and the noise of the imps much more then the murmurs of the sylvan Liddal, which perhaps they did not hear, a gay cavalcade rode up to the cottage, and a noble-looking young man, dismounting from his horse, and gently assisting a beautiful lady to do the same, walked up to her whom he had known only by a name now almost forgotten, and with a beaming smile said, “Fair Lily of Liddisdale, this is my wife, the lady of the Priory; come—it is hard to say which of you should bear off the bell.” Amy rose from her seat with an air graceful as ever, but something more matronly than that of Elliot’s younger bride; and while these two fair creatures beheld each other with mutual admiration, their husbands stood there equally happy, and equally proud—George Elliot of the Priory, and Walter Harden of the Glenfoot.
THE UNLUCKY PRESENT.
By Robert Chambers, LL.D.
A Lanarkshire minister (who died within the present century) was one of those unhappy persons who, to use the words of a well-known Scottish adage, “can never see any green cheese but their een reels.” He was extremely covetous, and that not only of nice articles of food, but of many other things which do not generally excite the cupidity of the human heart. The following story is in corroboration of this assertion. Being on a visit one day at the house of one of his parishioners, a poor, lonely widow, living in a moorland part of the parish, Mr L—— became fascinated by the charms of a little cast-iron pot, which happened at the time to be lying on the hearth, full of potatoes for the poor woman’s dinner, and that of her children. He had never in his life seen such a nice little pot. It was a perfect conceit of a thing. It was a gem. No pot on earth could match it in symmetry. It was an object altogether perfectly lovely.
“Dear sake! minister,” said the widow, quite overpowered by the reverend man’s commendations of her pot; “if ye like the pot sae weel as a’ that, I beg ye’ll let me send it to the manse. It’s a kind o’ orra pot wi’ us; for we’ve a bigger ane, that we use oftener, and that’s mair convenient every way for us. Sae ye’ll just tak a present o’t. I’ll send it ower the morn wi’ Jamie, when he gangs to the schule.”
“Oh,” said the minister, “I can by no means permit you to be at so much trouble. Since you are so good as to give me the pot, I’ll just carry it home with me in my hand. I’m so much taken with it, indeed, that I would really prefer carrying it myself.”