His augury of evil was well-founded, but the blight fell upon his own heart. As soon as he heard of the rising in the west, he joined the royal forces at the head of his tenantry. During his absence, and while the storm of civil war was raging over the land, his cherished one was seized with the pangs of premature labour. She lay in the same grave with her child, before her husband could reach his home. The remembrance of what she had undergone, her loneliness amid the tempests of winter, her isolation from all friends, had so shaken her frame that the first attack of illness snapped the thread of life. Her sufferings were comparatively short. But the widower! He sought to efface the remembrance of his loss in active service. Wherever insubordination showed itself, he prayed for employment. The Presbyterians learned at last to consider him as the embodied personification of persecution. The story of his mysterious marriage got wind. He was regarded as one allied to, and acting under, the influence of unholy powers. He knew it, and, in the bitterness of his heart, he rejoiced to be marked out by their fear and terror, as one who had nothing in common with them. His own misery, and this outcast feeling, made him aspire to be ranked in their minds as a destroying spirit. The young, gallant, and kind-hearted soldier became the most relentless persecutor of the followers of the Covenant. Even yet does his memory, and that of his Fairy Bride, live in popular tradition like a thunderstorm, gloomy and desolating, yet not without lambent flashes of more than earthly beauty.—Edinburgh Literary Journal.
THE LOST LITTLE ONES.
Chapter I.
I have a story to tell relative to what happened to Sir George and Lady Beaumont, the excellent and beloved proprietors of the Hermitage, in a neighbouring county. At the period of which I speak, their family consisted of five children, three sons and two daughters; and their eldest, a daughter called Charlotte, was then nine years of age. She was a remarkably clever child, and a great favourite of her parents; but her mother used to remark that her vivacity required checking, and, notwithstanding her partiality for her, she never failed to exercise it when it became necessary. It would have been well had others acted equally judiciously.
It happened one day, as the family were going to sit down to dinner, that Charlotte did not make her appearance. The maid was sent up to her room, but she was not there. The dinner-bell was ordered to be rung again, and a servant was at the same time dispatched to the garden; and this having been done, Sir George and his lady proceeded with the other youngsters to the dining-room, not doubting but Charlotte would be home immediately. The soup, however, was finished without any tidings of her, when, Lady Beaumont seeming a little uneasy, Sir George assured her there was no cause for alarm, as Charlotte would probably be found under her favourite gooseberry bush. Lady Beaumont seemed to acquiesce in this, and appeared tolerably composed, till the servant who had been sent to the garden came back to say that she was not there. Sir George insisted that the man had probably passed her without seeing her, the garden being so large; but the servant averred that he had been through the whole of it, and had shouted repeatedly Miss Charlotte’s name.
“Oh!” exclaimed Sir George, “she has pretended not to hear you, Robert, and, I daresay, will be back immediately, now that she has succeeded in giving you a race round the garden; however,” added he, “you may go back again, and take Samuel and Thomas with you, and if you do not find her hiding herself in the garden, you may take a peep into the shrubbery, as she may slip in there, on seeing you returning; and as you go along, you may call to her, and say that dinner waits, and that Lady Beaumont is much displeased with her being out at this time of the day. And now, my love,” continued Sir George to his lady, “just let us proceed with dinner, and compose yourself.”
Lady Beaumont forced a smile, and busied herself in attending to her young ones; but her own plate was neglected, and her eyes were continually turned towards the window which looked upon the lawn.
“What can keep Robert, papa?” said Charles to his father.
“Indeed, my boy,” said Sir George, “I do not know. Charlotte,” continued he to Lady Beaumont, “do you see any thing?”
“They are all coming back,” exclaimed Lady Beaumont, “and alone!” and she rose hastily from her chair.