You receive one day a letter: it is addressed in the hand of a friend, who is often at the cottage, but who Las rarely written to you. What can have tempted him now? Has any harm come near your home? No wonder your hands tremble at the opening of that sheet;-no wonder that your eyes run like lightning over the hurried lines. Yet there is little in themvery little. The hand is stout and fair. It is a calm letter,—a friendly letter; but it is short-terribly short. It bids you come home-'at once!'

-And you go. It is a pleasant country you have to travel through; but you see very little of the country. It is a dangerous voyage perhaps, you have to make; but you think very little of the danger. The creaking of the timbers, and the lashing of the waves, are quieting music, compared with the storm of your raging fears. All the while, you associate Dalton with the terror that seems to hang over you; and yet,-your trust in Madge, is true as Heaven!

At length you approach that home;-there lies your cottage lying sweetly upon its hill-side; and the autumn winds are soft; and the maple-tops sway gracefully, all clothed in the scarlet of their frost-dress. Once again, as the sun sinks behind the mountain with a trail of glory, and the violet haze tints the grey clouds, like so many robes of angels,-you take heart and courage; and with firm reliance on the Providence

that fashions all forms of beauty, whether in Heaven or in heart, your fears spread out, and vanish with the waning twilight.

She is not at the cottage door to meet you; she does not expect you; and yet your bosom heaves, and your breathing is quick. Your friend meets you, and shakes your hand." Clarence," he says, with the tenderness of an old friend,-" be a man!"

Alas, you are a man;-with a man's heart, and a man's fear, and a man's agony! Little Frank comes bounding toward you joyously-yet under traces of tears:-"Oh, Papa, Mother is gone!"

"Gone!"—And you turn to the face of your friend-it is well he is near by, or you would have fallen.

He can tell you very little; he has known the character of Dalton; he has seen with fear his assiduous attentions-tenfold multiplied since your leave. He has trembled for the issue: this very morning he observed a travelling carriage at the door;-they drove away together. You have no strength to question him. You see that he fears the worst:-he does not know Madge, so well as you.

-And can it be? Are you indeed widowed with that most terrible of widowhoods ?-Is your wife Talk not to such a man of

living, and yet—lost!

the woes of sickness, of poverty, of death;—he will laugh at your mimicry of grief.

-All is blackness; whichever way you turn, it is the same; there is no light; your eye is put out; your soul is desolate forever. The heart, by which had grown up into the full stature of joy, and blessing, is rooted out of you, and thrown like something loathsome, at which the carrion dogs of the world scent, and snuffle!

you

They will point at you, as the man who has lost all that he prized; and she has stolen it, whom he prized more than what was stolen. And he, the accursed miscreant But no, it can never be. Madge

is as true as Heaven!

Yet she is not there: whence comes the light that is to cheer you?

-Your children?

Aye, your children,—your little Nelly,—your noble Frank, they are yours;-doubly, trebly, tenfold yours, now that she, their mother, is a mother no more to them, forever!

Aye, close your doors; shut out the world;-draw close your curtains ;-fold them to your heart,—your crushed, bleeding, desolate heart. Lay your forehead to the soft cheek of your noble boy;-beware, beware how you dampen that damask cheek with your scalding tears:-yet you cannot help it ;-they fall-great

drops, a river of tears, as you gather him convulsively

to your bosom!

"Father, why do you cry so?" says Frank, with the tears of dreadful sympathy starting from those eyes of childhood.

"Why, Papa ?"-mimes little Nelly.

-Answer them if you dare! Try it;-what words--blundering, weak words,-choked with agony, -leading no where,-ending in new, and convulsive clasps of your weeping, motherless children.

Had she gone to her grave, there would have been a holy joy-a great, and swelling grief indeed, but your poor heart would have found a rest in the quiet churchyard; and your feelings rooted in that cherished grave, would have stretched up toward Heaven their delicate leaves, and caught the dews of His grace, who watcheth the lilies. But now,-with your heart cast under foot, or buffeted on the lips of a lying world,— finding no shelter, and no abiding place-alas, we do guess at infinitude, only by suffering.

-Madge, Madge! can this be so? Are still the same, sweet, guileless child of Heaven?

you not

VII.

PEACE.

T is a dream;-fearful to be sure,--but only a

Idream. Madge is true. That

dream. Madge is true. That soul is honest; it could not be otherwise. God never made it to be false; He never made the sun for darkness.

And before the evening has waned to midnight, sweet day has broken on your gloom;-Madge is folded to your bosom;-sobbing fearfully-not for guilt, or any shadow of guilt, but for the agony she reads upon your brow, and in your low sighs.

The mystery is all cleared by a few lightning words from her indignant lips; and her whole figure trembles, as she shrinks within your embrace, with the thought of that great evil, that seemed to shadow you. The villain has sought by every art to beguile her into ap