These few simple words, uttered in a solemn voice, but without one tone of reproach, seemed somewhat to calm the other's trouble, who first looking towards the spot where his child was sobbing to herself, though he heard it not, and then looking up to heaven, ejaculated for her sake a broken prayer. He then would have fain called her to him; but he was ashamed that even she should see him in such a passion of grief--and the old man went to her of his own accord, and bade her, as from her father, again to take her pastime among the flowers. Soon was she dancing in her happiness as before; and, that her father might hear she was obeying him, singing a song.

"For five years every Sabbath have I attended divine service in your chapel--yet dare I not call myself a Christian. I have prayed for faith--nor, wretch that I am, am I an unbeliever. But I fear to fling myself at the foot of the cross. God be merciful to me a sinner!"

The old man opened not his lips; for he felt that there was about to be made some confession. Yet he doubted not that the sufferer had been more sinned against than sinning; for the goodness of the stranger--so called still after five years' residence among the mountains--was known in many a vale--and the Pastor knew that charity covereth a multitude of sins--and even as a moral virtue prepares the heart for heaven. So sacred a thing is solace in this woeful world.

"We have walked together, many hundred times, for great part of a day, by ourselves two, over long tracts of uninhabited moors, and yet never once from my lips escaped one word about my fates or fortunes--so frozen was the secret in my heart. Often have I heard the sound of your voice, as if it were that of the idle wind; and often the words I did hear seemed, in the confusion, to have no relation to us, to be strange syllablings in the wilderness, as from the hauntings of some evil spirit instigating me to self-destruction."

"I saw that your life was oppressed by some perpetual burden; but God darkened not your mind while your heart was disturbed so grievously; and well pleased were we all to think, that in caring so kindly for the griefs of others, you might come at last to forget your own; or if that were impossible, to feel, that with the alleviations of time, and sympathy, and religion, yours was no more than the common lot of sorrow."

They rose--and continued to walk in silence--but not apart--up and down that small sylvan enclosure overlooked but by rocks. The child saw her father's distraction--no unusual sight to her; yet on each recurrence as mournful and full of fear as if seen for the first time--and pretended to be playing aloof with her face pale in tears.

"That child's mother is not dead. Where she is now I know not--perhaps in a foreign country hiding her guilt and her shame. All say that a lovelier child was never seen than that wretch--God bless her--how beautiful is the poor creature now in her happiness singing over her flowers! Just such another must her mother have been at her age. She is now an outcast--and an adulteress."

The Pastor turned away his face, for in the silence he heard groans, and the hollow voice again spoke.--

"Through many dismal days and nights have I striven to forgive her, but never for many hours together have I been enabled to repent my curse.

For on my knees I implored God to curse her--her head--her eyes--her breast--her body--mind, heart, and soul--and that she might go down a loathsome leper to the grave."

"Remember what He said to the woman--'Go, and sin no more!'"

"The words have haunted me all up and down the hills--His words and mine; but mine have always sounded liker justice at last--for my nature was created human--and human are all the passions that pronounced that holy or unholy curse!"

"Yet you would not curse her now--were she lying here at your feet--or if you were standing by her deathbed?"

"Lying here at my feet! Even here--on this very spot--not blasted, but green through all the year--within the shelter of these two rocks--she did lie at my feet in her beauty--and as I thought her innocence--my own happy bride! Hither I brought her to be blest--and blest I was even up to the measure of my misery. This world is hell to me now--but then it was heaven!"

"These awful names are of the mysteries beyond the grave."

"Hear me and judge. She was an orphan; all her father's and mother's relations were dead, but a few who were very poor. I married her, and secured her life against this heartless and wicked world. That child was born--and while it grew like a flower--she left it--and its father--me who loved her beyond light and life, and would have given up both for her sake."

"And have not yet found heart to forgive her--miserable as she needs must be--seeing she has been a great sinner!"

"Who forgives? The father his profligate son, or disobedient daughter?

No; he disinherits his firstborn, and suffers him to perish, perhaps by an ignominious death. He leaves his only daughter to drag out her days in penury--a widow with orphans. The world may condemn, but is silent; he goes to church every Sabbath, but no preacher denounces punishment on the unrelenting, the unforgiving parent. Yet how easily might he have taken them both back to his heart, and loved them better than ever! But she poisoned my cup of life when it seemed to overflow with heaven. Had God dashed it from my lips, I could have borne my doom. But with her own hand which I had clasped at the altar--and with our Lucy at her knees--she gave me that loathsome draught of shame and sorrow:--I drank it to the dregs--and it is burning all through my being--now--as if it had been hell-fire from the hands of a fiend in the shape of an angel.

In what page of the New Testament am I told to forgive her? Let me see the verse--and then shall I know that Christianity is an imposture; for the voice of God within me--the conscience which is His still small voice--commands me never from my memory to obliterate that curse--never to forgive her, and her wickedness--not even if we should see each other's shadows in a future state, after the day of judgment."

His countenance grew ghastly--and staggering to a stone, he sat down and eyed the skies with a vacant stare, like a man whom dreams carry about in his sleep. His face was like ashes--and he gasped like one about to fall into a fit. "Bring me water"--and the old man motioned on the child, who, giving ear to him for a moment, flew away to the Lakeside with an urn she had brought with her for flowers; and held it to her father's lips. His eyes saw it not;--there was her sweet pale face all wet with tears, almost touching his own--her innocent mouth breathing that pure balm that seems to a father's soul to be inhaled from the bowers of paradise. He took her into his bosom--and kissed her dewy eyes--and begged her to cease her sobbing--to smile--to laugh--to sing--to dance away into the sunshine--_to be happy!_ And Lucy afraid, not of her father, but of his kindness--for the simple creature was not able to understand his wild utterance of blessings--returned to the glade but not to her pastime, and couching like a fawn among the fern, kept her eyes on her father, and left her flowers to fade unheeded beside her empty urn.

"Unintelligible mystery of wickedness! That child was just three years old the very day it was forsaken--she abandoned it and me on its birthday! Twice had that day been observed by us--as the sweetest--the most sacred of holidays; and now that it had again come round--but I not present--for I was on foreign service--thus did she observe it--and disappeared with her paramour. It so happened that we went that day into action--and I committed her and our child to the mercy of God in fervent prayers; for love made me religious--and for their sakes I feared though I shunned not death. I lay all night among the wounded on the field of battle--and it was a severe frost. Pain kept me from sleep, but I saw them as distinctly as in a dream--the mother lying with her child in her bosom in our own bed. Was not that vision mockery enough to drive me mad? After a few weeks a letter came to me from herself--and I kissed it and pressed it to my heart; for no black seal was there--and I knew that little Lucy was alive. No meaning for a while seemed to be in the words--and then they began to blacken into ghastly characters--till at last I gathered from the horrid revelation that she was sunk in sin and shame, steeped for evermore in utmost pollution.

"A friend was with me, and I gave it to him to read--for in my anguish at first I felt no shame--and I watched his face as he read it, that I might see corroboration of the incredible truth, which continued to look like falsehood, even while it pierced my heart with agonising pangs. 'It may be a forgery,' was all he could utter--after long agitation; but the shape of each letter was too familiar to my eyes--the way in which the paper was folded--and I knew my doom was sealed. Hours must have passed, for the room grew dark--and I asked him to leave me for the night. He kissed my forehead--for we had been as brothers. I saw him next morning--dead--cut nearly in two--yet had he left a paper for me, written an hour before he fell, so filled with holiest friendship, that oh! how even in my agony I wept for him, now but a lump of cold clay and blood, and envied him at the same time a soldier's grave!

"And has the time indeed come that I can thus speak calmly of all that horror? The body was brought into my room, and it lay all day and all night close to my bed. But false was I to all our life-long friendship--and almost with indifference I looked upon the corpse.

Momentary starts of affection seized me--but I cared little or nothing for the death of him, the tender and the true, the gentle and the brave, the pious and the noble-hearted; my anguish was all for her, the cruel and the faithless, dead to honour, to religion dead--dead to all the sanctities of nature--for her, and for her alone, I suffered all ghastliest agonies--nor any comfort came to me in my despair, from the conviction that she was worthless; for desperately wicked as she had shown herself to be--oh! crowding came back upon me all our hours of happiness--all her sweet smiles--all her loving looks--all her affectionate words--all her conjugal and maternal tendernesses; and the loss of all that bliss--the change of it all into strange, sudden, shameful, and everlasting misery, smote me till I swooned, and was delivered up to a trance in which the rueful reality was mixed up with phantasms more horrible than man's mind can suffer out of the hell of sleep!

"Wretched coward that I was to outlive that night! But my mind was weak from great loss of blood--and the blow so stunned me that I had not strength of resolution to die. I might have torn off the bandages--for nobody watched me--and my wounds were thought mortal. But the love of life had not welled out with all those vital streams; and as I began to recover, another passion took possession of me--and I vowed that there should be atonement and revenge. I was not obscure. My dishonour was known through the whole army. Not a tent--not a hut--in which my name was not bandied about--a jest in the mouths of profligate poltroons--pronounced with pity by the compassionate brave. I had commanded my men with pride. No need had I ever had to be ashamed when I looked on our colours; but no wretch led out to execution for desertion or cowardice ever shrunk from the sun, and from the sight of human faces arrayed around him, with more shame and horror than did I when, on my way to a transport, I came suddenly on my own corps, marching to music as if they were taking up a position in the line of battle--as they had often done with me at their head--all sternly silent before an approaching storm of fire. What brought them there? To do me honour! Me, smeared with infamy, and ashamed to lift my eyes from the mire. Honour had been the idol I worshipped--alas! too, too passionately far--and now I lay in my litter like a slave sold to stripes--and heard as if a legion of demons were mocking me with loud and long huzzas; and then a confused murmur of blessings on our noble commander, so they called me--me, despicable in my own esteem--scorned, insulted, forsaken--me, who could not bind to mine the bosom that for years had touched it--a wretch so poor in power over a woman's heart, that no sooner had I left her to her own thoughts than she felt that she had never loved me, and, opening her fair breast to a new-born bliss, sacrificed me without remorse--nor could bear to think of me any more as her husband--not even for sake of that child whom I knew she loved--for no hypocrite was she there; and oh! lost creature though she was--even now I wonder over that unaccountable desertion--and much she must have suffered from the image of that small bed, beside which she used to sit for hours, perfectly happy from the sight of that face which I too so often blessed in her hearing, because it was so like her own! Where is my child? Have I frightened her away into the wood by my unfatherly looks? She too will come to hate me--oh! see yonder her face and her figure like a fairy's, gliding through among the broom! Sorrow has no business with her--nor she with sorrow. Yet--even her how often have I made weep! All the unhappiness she has ever known has all come from me; and would I but leave her alone to herself in her affectionate innocence, the smile that always lies on her face when she is asleep would remain there--only brighter--all the time her eyes are awake; but I dash it away by my unhallowed harshness, and people looking on her in her trouble wonder to think how sad can be the countenance even of a little child. O God of mercy! what if she were to die!"

"She will not die--she will live," said the pitying pastor; "and many happy years--my son--are yet in store even for you--sorely as you have been tried; for it is not in nature that your wretchedness can endure for ever. She is in herself all-sufficient for a father's happiness. You prayed just now that the God of Mercy would spare her life--and has He not spared it? Tender flower as she seems, yet how full of life! Let not then your gratitude to Heaven be barren in your heart; but let it produce there resignation--if need be, contrition--and, above all, forgiveness."

"Yes! I had a hope to live for--mangled as I was in body, and racked in mind--a hope that was a faith--and bittersweet it was in imagined foretaste of fruition--the hope and the faith of revenge. They said he would not aim at my life. But what was that to me who thirsted for his blood? Was he to escape death, because he dared not wound bone, or flesh, or muscle of mine, seeing that the assassin had already stabbed my soul? Satisfaction! I tell you that I was for revenge. Not that his blood could wipe out the stain with which my name was imbrued, but let it be mixed with the mould; and he who invaded my marriage-bed--and hallowed was it by every generous passion that ever breathed upon woman's breast--let him fall down in convulsions, and vomit out his heart's blood, at once in expiation of his guilt, and in retribution dealt out to him by the hand of him whom he had degraded in the eyes of the whole world beneath the condition even of a felon, and delivered over in my misery to contempt and scorn. I found him out;--there he was before me--in all that beauty by women so beloved--graceful as Apollo; and with a haughty air, as if proud of an achievement that adorned his name, he saluted me--_her husband_--on the field,--and let the wind play with his raven tresses--his curled love-locks--and then presented himself to my aim in an attitude a statuary would have admired. I shot him through the heart."

The good old man heard the dreadful words with a shudder--yet they had come to his ears not unexpectedly, for the speaker's aspect had gradually been growing black with wrath, long before he ended in an avowal of murder. Nor, on ceasing his wild words and distracted demeanour, did it seem that his heart was touched with any remorse. His eyes retained their savage glare--his teeth were clenched--and he feasted on his crime.

"Nothing but a full faith in Divine Revelation," solemnly said his aged friend, "can subdue the evil passions of our nature, or enable conscience itself to see and repent of sin. Your wrongs were indeed great--but without a change wrought in all your spirit, alas! my son!

you cannot hope to see the kingdom of heaven."

"Who dares to condemn the deed? He deserved death--and whence was doom to come but from me the Avenger? I took his life--but once I saved it. I bore him from the battlements of a fort stormed in vain--after we had all been blown up by the springing of a mine; and from bayonets that had drunk my blood as well as his--and his widowed mother blessed me as the saviour of her son. I told my wife to receive him as a brother--and for my sake to feel towards him a sister's love. Who shall speak of temptation--or frailty--or infatuation to me? Let the fools hold their peace. His wounds became dearer to her abandoned heart than mine had ever been; yet had her cheek lain many a night on the scars that seamed this breast--for I was not backward in battle, and our place was in the van. I was no coward, that she who loved heroism in him should have dishonoured her husband. True, he was younger by some years than me--and God had given him pernicious beauty--and she was young, too--oh! the brightest of all mortal creatures the day she became my bride--nor less bright with that baby at her bosom--a matron in girlhood's resplendent spring! Is youth a plea for wickedness? And was I old? I, who, in spite of all I have suffered, feel the vital blood yet boiling as to a furnace; but cut off for ever by her crime from fame and glory--and from a soldier in his proud career, covered with honour in the eyes of all my countrymen, changed in an hour into an outlawed and nameless slave. My name has been borne by a race of heroes--the blood in my veins has flowed down a long line of illustrious ancestors--and here am I now--a hidden disguised hypocrite--dwelling among peasants--and afraid--ay, afraid, because ashamed, to lift my eyes freely from the ground even among the solitudes of the mountains, lest some wandering stranger should recognise me, and see the brand of ignominy her hand and his--accursed both--burnt in upon my brow. She forsook this bosom--but tell me if it was in disgust with these my scars?"

And as he bared it, distractedly, that noble chest was seen indeed disfigured with many a gash--on which a wife might well have rested her head with gratitude not less devout because of a lofty pride mingling with life-deep affection. But the burst of passion was gone by--and, covering his face with his hands, he wept like a child.

"Oh! cruel--cruel was her conduct to me; yet what has mine been to her--for so many years! I could not tear her image from my memory--not an hour has it ceased to haunt me; since I came among these mountains, her ghost is for ever at my side. I have striven to drive it away with curses, but still there is the phantom. Sometimes--beautiful as on our marriage-day--all in purest white--adorned with flowers--it wreathes its arms around my neck--and offers its mouth to my kisses--and then all at once is changed into a leering wretch, retaining a likeness of my bride--then into a corpse. And perhaps she is dead--dead of cold and hunger: she whom I cherished in all luxury--whose delicate frame seemed to bring round itself all the purest air and sweetest sunshine--she may have expired in the very mire--and her body been huddled into some hole called a pauper's grave. And I have suffered all this to happen to her!

Or have I suffered her to become one of the miserable multitude who support hated and hateful life by prostitution? Black was her crime; yet hardly did she deserve to be one of that howling crew--she whose voice was once so sweet, her eyes so pure, and her soul so innocent--for up to the hour I parted with her weeping, no evil thought had ever been hers;--then why, ye eternal Heavens! why fell she from that sphere where she shone like a star? Let that mystery that shrouds my mind in darkness be lightened--let me see into its heart--and know but the meaning of her guilt--and then may I be able to forgive it; but for five years, day and night, it has troubled and confounded me--and from blind and baffled wrath with an iniquity that remains like a pitch-black night through which I cannot grope my way, no refuge can I find--and nothing is left me but to tear my hair out by handfuls--as, like a madman, I have done--to curse her by name in the solitary glooms, and to call down upon her the curse of God. O wicked--most wicked! Yet He who judges the hearts of His creatures knows that I have a thousand and a thousand times forgiven her, but that a chasm lay between us, from which, the moment that I came to its brink, a voice drove me back--I know not whether of a good or evil spirit--and bade me leave her to her fate. But she must be dead--and needs not now my tears. O friend! judge me not too sternly--from this my confession; for all my wild words have imperfectly expressed to you but parts of my miserable being--and if I could lay it all before you, you would pity me perhaps as much as condemn--for my worst passions only have now found utterance--all my better feelings will not return nor abide for words--even I myself have forgotten them; but your pitying face seems to say, that they will be remembered at the Throne of Mercy. I forgive her." And with these words he fell down on his knees, and prayed too for pardon to his own sins. The old man encouraged him not to despair--it needed but a motion of his hand to bring the child from her couch in the cover, and Lucy was folded to her father's heart. The forgiveness was felt to be holy in that embrace.

The day had brightened up into more perfect beauty, and showers were sporting with sunshine on the blue air of Spring. The sky showed something like a rainbow--and the Lake, in some parts quite still, and in some breezy, contained at once shadowy fragments of wood and rock, and waves that would have murmured round the prow of pleasure-boat suddenly hoisting a sail. And such a very boat appeared round a promontory that stretched no great way into the water, and formed with a crescent of low meadow-land a bay that was the first to feel the wind coming down Glencoin. The boatman was rowing heedlessly along, when a sudden squall struck the sail, and in an instant the skiff was upset and went down. No shrieks were heard--and the boatman swam ashore; but a figure was seen struggling where the sail disappeared--and starting from his knees, he who knew not fear plunged into the Lake, and after desperate exertions brought the drowned creature to the side--a female meanly attired--seemingly a stranger--and so attenuated that it was plain she must have been in a dying state, and had she not thus perished, would have had but few days to live. The hair was grey--but the face, though withered, was not old--and as she lay on the greensward, the features were beautiful as well as calm in the sunshine.

He stood over her awhile--as if struck motionless--and then kneeling beside the body, kissed its lips and eyes--and said only, "It is Lucy!"

The old man was close by--and so was that child. They too knelt--and the passion of the mourner held him dumb, with his face close to the face of death--ghastly its glare beside the sleep that knows no waking, and is forsaken by all dreams. He opened the bosom--wasted to the bone--in the idle thought that she might yet breathe--and a paper dropt out into his hand, which he read aloud to himself--unconscious that any one was near.

"I am fast dying--and desire to die at your feet. Perhaps you will spurn me--it is right you should; but you will see how sorrow has killed the wicked wretch who was once your wife. I have lived in humble servitude for five years, and have suffered great hardships. I think I am a penitent--and have been told by religious persons that I may hope for pardon from Heaven! Oh! that you would forgive me too! and let me have one look at our Lucy. I will linger about the Field of Flowers--perhaps you will come there, and see me lie down and die on the very spot where we passed a summer day the week of our marriage."

"Not thus could I have kissed thy lips--Lucy--had they been red with life. White are they--and white must they long have been! No pollution on them--nor on that poor bosom now. Contrite tears had long since washed out thy sin. A feeble hand traced these lines--and in them a humble heart said nothing but God's truth. Child--behold your mother.

Art thou afraid to touch the dead?"

"No--father--I am not afraid to kiss her lips--as you did now.

Sometimes, when you thought me asleep, I have heard you praying for my mother."

"Oh! child! cease--cease--or my heart will burst."

People began to gather about the body--but awe kept them aloof; and as for removing it to a house, none who saw it but knew such care would have been vain, for doubt there could be none that there lay death. So the groups remained for a while at a distance--even the old pastor went a good many paces apart; and under the shadow of that tree the father and child composed her limbs, and closed her eyes, and continued to sit beside her, as still as if they had been watching over one asleep.

That death was seen by all to be a strange calamity to him who had lived long among them--had adopted many of their customs--and was even as one of themselves--so it seemed--in the familiar intercourse of man with man. Some dim notion that this was the dead body of his wife was entertained by many, they knew not why; and their clergyman felt that then there needed to be neither concealment nor avowal of the truth. So in solemn sympathy they approached the body and its watchers; a bier had been prepared: and walking at the head, as if it had been a funeral, the Father of little Lucy holding her hand, silently directed the procession towards his own house--out of the FIELD OF FLOWERS.

COTTAGES.

Have you any intention, dear reader, of building a house in the country?

If you have, pray, for your own sake and ours, let it not be a Cottage.

We presume that you are obliged to live, one half of the year at least, in a town. Then why change altogether the character of your domicile and your establishment? You are an inhabitant of Edinburgh, and have a house in the Circus, or Heriot Row, or Abercromby Place, or Queen Street. The said house has five or six stories, and is such a palace as one might expect in the City of Palaces. Your drawing-rooms can, at a pinch, hold some ten score of modern Athenians--your dining-room might feast one half of the contributors to _Blackwood's Magazine_--your "placens uxor"

has her boudoir--your eldest daughter, now verging on womanhood, her music-room--your boys their own studio--the governess her retreat--and the tutor his den--the housekeeper sits like an overgrown spider in her own sanctum--the butler bargains for his dim apartment--and the four maids must have their front area-window. In short, from cellarage to garret all is complete, and Number Forty-two is really a splendid mansion.

Now, dear reader, far be it from us to question the propriety or prudence of such an establishment. Your house was not built for nothing--it was no easy thing to get the painters out--the furnishing thereof was no trifle--the feu-duty is really unreasonable--and taxes are taxes still, notwithstanding the principles of free trade, and the universal prosperity of the country. Servants are wasteful, and their wages absurd--and the whole style of living, with long-necked bottles, most extravagant. But still we do not object to your establishment--far from it, we admire it much; nor is there a single house in town where we make ourselves more agreeable to a late hour, or that we leave with a greater quantity of wine of a good quality under our girdle. Few things would give us more temporary uneasiness, than to hear of any embarrassment in your money concerns. We are not people to forget good fare, we assure you; and long and far may all shapes of sorrow keep aloof from the hospitable board, whether illuminated by gas, oil, or mutton.

But what we were going to say is this--that the head of such a house ought not to live, when ruralising, in a Cottage. He ought to be consistent. Nothing so beautiful as consistency. What then is so absurd as to cram yourself, your wife, your numerous progeny, and your scarcely less numerous menials, into a concern called a Cottage? The ordinary heat of a baker's oven is very few degrees above that of a brown study, during the month of July, in a substantial, low-roofed Cottage. Then the smell of the kitchen! How it aggravates the sultry closeness! A strange, compounded, inexplicable smell of animal, vegetable, and mineral matter.

It is at the worst during the latter part of the forenoon, when everything has been got into preparation for cookery. There is then nothing savoury about the smell--it is dull, dead--almost catacombish. A small back-kitchen has it in its power to destroy the sweetness of any Cottage. Add a scullery, and the three are omnipotent. Of the eternal clashing of pots, pans, plates, trenchers, and general crockery, we now say nothing; indeed, the sound somewhat relieves the smell, and the ear comes occasionally in to the aid of the nose. Such noises are windfalls; but not so the scolding of cook and butler--at first low and tetchy, with pauses--then sharp, but still interrupted--by-and-by, loud and ready in reply--finally a discordant gabble of vulgar fury, like maniacs quarrelling in Bedlam. Hear it you must--you and all the strangers. To explain it away is impossible; and your fear is, that Alecto, Tisiphone, or Megaera, will come flying into the parlour with a bloody cleaver, dripping with the butler's brains. During the time of the quarrel the spit has been standing still, and a gigot of the five-year-old black-face burnt on one side to a cinder.--"To dinner with what appetite you may."