University of Virginia Library

A
NEW ENGLAND TALE.

1. CHAPTER I.

Mr. Elton was formerly a flourishing trader, or, in rustic
phrase, a merchant, in the village of —. In the early
part of his life he had been successful in business; and
having a due portion of that mean pride which is gratified by
pecuniary superiority, he was careful to appear quite as rich
as he was. When he was at the top of fortune's wheel, some
of his prying neighbors shrewdly suspected, that the show of
his wealth was quite out of proportion to the reality; and
their side-glances and prophetic whispers betrayed their contempt
of the offensive airs of the purse-proud man.

The people in the village of — were simple in their
habits, and economical in their modes of life; and Mr.
Elton's occasional indulgence in a showy piece of furniture,
or an expensive article of dress for himself or for his wife,

attracted notice, and, we fear, sometimes provoked envy, even
from those who were wiser and much better than he was. So
inconsistent are men—and women too—that they often envy
a display of which they really despise, and loudly condemn
the motive.

Mrs. Elton neither deserved nor shared the dislike her
husband received in full measure. On the contrary, she had
the good-will of her neighbors. She never seemed elated by
prosperity; and though she occasionally appeared in an expensive
Leghorn hat, a merino shawl, or a fine lace, the
gentleness and humility of her manners, and the uniform
benevolence of her conduct, averted the censure that would
otherwise have fallen on her. She had married Mr. Elton
when very young, without much consideration, and after a
short acquaintance. She had to learn, in the bitter way of
experience, that there was no sympathy between them; their
hands were indissolubly joined, but their hearts were not related;
he was “of the earth, earthy”—she “of the heavens,
heavenly.” She had that passiveness which, we believe, is
exclusively a feminine virtue (if virtue it may be called),
and she acquiesced silently and patiently in her unhappy
fate, though there was a certain abstractedness in her manner,
a secret feeling of indifference and separation from the
world, of which she, perhaps, never investigated, certainly
never exposed the cause.

Mr. Elton's success in business had been rather owing to
accidental circumstances, than to his skill or prudence; but
his vanity appropriated to himself all the merit of it. He
adventured rashly in one speculation after another, and failing
in them all, his losses were more rapid than his acquisitions
had been. Few persons have virtue enough to retrench
their expenses, as their income diminishes; and no virtue, of

difficult growth, could be expected from a character where no
good seed had ever taken root.

The morale, like the physique, needs use and exercise to
give it strength. Mrs. Elton's had never been thus invigorated.
She could not oppose a strong current. She had not
energy to avert an evil, though she would have borne patiently
any that could have been laid on her. She knew her
husband's affairs were embarrassed; she saw him constantly
incurring debts, which she knew they had no means of paying;
she perceived he was gradually sinking into a vice,
which, while it lulls the sense of misery, annihilates the capacity
of escaping from it—and yet she silently, and without
an effort, acquiesced in his faults. They lived on, as they
had lived, keeping an expensive table, and three or four servants,
and dressing as usual.

This conduct in Mrs. Elton, was the result of habitual
passiveness; in Mr. Elton, it was prompted by a vain hope
of concealing from his neighbors a truth, that, in spite of his
bustling, ostentatious ways, they had known for many months.
This is a common delusion. We all know that from the
habits of our people in a country town, it is utterly impossible
for the most watchful and skilful manœuverer, to keep his
pecuniary affairs secret from the keen and quick observation
of his neighbors. The expedients practised for concealment
are much like that of a little child, who shuts his own eyes,
and fancies he has closed those of the spectators; or in their
effect upon existing circumstances, may be compared to the
action of a frightened woman, who turns her back in a carriage
when the horses are leaping over a precipice.

It may seem strange, perhaps incredible, that Mrs. Elton,
possessing the virtues we have attributed to her, and being a
religious woman, should be accessory to such deception, and

(for we will call “things by their right names”) dishonesty.
But the wonder will cease if we look around upon the circle
of our acquaintance, and observe how few there are among
those whom we believe to be Christians, who govern their
daily conduct by Christian principles, and regulate their
temporal duties by the strict Christian rule. Truly, narrow
is the way of perfect integrity, and few there are that walk
therein.

There are too many who forget that our religion is not
like that of the ancients, something set apart from the ordinary
concerns of life; the consecrated, not the “daily bread;”
a service for the temple and the grove, having its separate
class of duties and pleasures; but is “the leaven that leaveneth
the whole lump,” a spirit to be infused into the common
affairs of life. We fear Mrs. Elton was not quite guiltless of
this fault. She believed all the Bible teaches. She had
long been a member of the church in the town where she
lived. She daily read the Scriptures, and daily offered sincere
prayers. Certainly the waters of the fountain from
whence she drank, had a salutary influence, though they
failed to heal all her diseases. She was kind, gentle, and uncomplaining;
and sustained, with admirable patience, the
growing infirmities and irritating faults of her husband. To
her child, she performed her duties wisely, and with an anxious
zeal; the result, in part, of uncommon maternal tenderness,
and in part, of a painful consciousness of the faults of
her own character, and perhaps, of a secret feeling she had
left much undone that she ought to do.

Mr. Elton, after his pecuniary embarrassments were beyond
the hope of extrication, maintained by stratagem the
appearance of prosperity for some months, when a violent fever
ended his struggle with the tide of fortune that had set

against him, and consigned him to that place where there is
“no more work nor device.” His wife was left quite destitute
with her child, then an interesting little girl, a little more
than twelve years old. A more energetic mind than Mrs.
Elton's might have been discouraged by the troubles which
were now set before her in all their extent, and with tenfold
aggravation; and she, irresolute, spiritless, and despondent,
sunk under them. She had, from nature, a slender constitution;
her health declined, and after lingering for some months,
she died with resignation, but not without a heart-rending
pang at the thought of leaving her child, poor, helpless, and
friendless.

Little Jane had nursed her mother with fidelity and tenderness,
and performed services for her, to which her years
seemed hardly adequate, with an efficiency and exactness
that surprised all who were prepared to find her a delicately
bred and indulged child. She seemed to have inherited nothing
from her father but his active mind: from her mother
she had derived a pure and gentle spirit; but this would
have been quite insufficient to produce the result of such a
character as hers, without the aid of her mother's vigilant,
and, for the most part, judicious training. In the formation
of her child's character, she had been essentially aided by a
faithful domestic, who had lived with her for many years and
nursed Jane in her infancy.

We know it is common to rail at our domestics. Their
independence is certainly often inconvenient to their employers;
but, as it is the result of the prosperous condition of all
classes in our happy country, it is not right nor wise to complain
of it. We believe there are many instances of intelligent
and affectionate service, that are rarely equalled, where
ignorance and servility mark the lower classes. Mary Hull

was endowed with a mind of uncommon strength, and an
affectionate heart. These were her jewels. She had been
brought up by a pious mother, and early and zealously embraced
the faith of the Methodists. She had the virtues of
her station in an eminent degree: practical good sense, industrious,
efficient habits, and handy ways. She never presumed
formally to offer her advice to Mrs. Elton; her instincts
seemed to define the line of propriety to her; but she had a
way of suggesting hints, of which Mrs. Elton learnt the value
by experience. This good woman had been called to a distant
place, to attend her dying mother, just before the death
of Mrs. Elton; and thus Jane was deprived of an able assistant,
and most tender friend, and left to pass through the
dismal scene of death, without any other than occasional
assistance from her compassionate neighbors.

On the day of Mrs. Elton's interment, a concourse of
people assembled to listen to the funeral sermon, and to follow
to the grave one who had been the object of the envy of
some, and of the respect and love of many. Three sisters of
Mr. Elton were assembled with their families.—Mrs. Elton
had come from a distant part of the country, and had no relatives
in —.

Jane's relations wore the decent gravity that became the
occasion; but they were of a hard race, and neither the
wreck their brother had made, nor the deep grief of the solitary
little creature, awakened their pity. They even seemed
to shun manifesting towards her the kindness of common
sympathy, lest it should be construed into an intention of
taking charge of the orphan.

Jane lost in the depths of her sufferings, seemed insensible
to all external things. Her countenance was of a deathlike
paleness, and her features immovable. In the course of

the sermon, agreeably to the usage established in such cases,
the clergyman made a personal address to her, as the nearest
relative and chief mourner. She was utterly unable to rise,
as she should have done in compliance with custom; and
one of her aunts shocked at the omission of what she considered
an essential decorum, took her by the arm, and almost lifted
her from her seat. She stood like a statue, her senses
seeming to take no cognizance of anything. Not a tear escaped,
nor a sigh burst from her breaking heart. The sorrow
of childhood is usually noisy, and this mute and motionless
grief, in a creature so young, and one that had been so happy,
touched every heart.

When the services were over, the clergyman supported the
trembling frame of the poor child to the place of interment.
The coffin was slowly let down into the house appointed for
all. Every one who has followed a dear friend to the grave,
remembers with shuddering the hollow sound of the first clods
that are thrown on the coffin. As they fell heavily, poor
Jane shrieked, “oh, mother!” and springing forward, bent
over the grave, which, to her, seemed to contain all the world.
The sexton, used as he was to pursue his trade amidst the
wailings of mourners, saw something peculiar in the misery
of the lone child. He dropped the spade, and hastily brushing
away the tears that blinded him with the sleeve of his
coat, “Why does not some one,” he said, “take away the
child? it beats all!—her heart's broke!” There was a general
bustle in the crowd, and two young ladies, more considerate,
or perhaps more tender-hearted, than the rest, kindly
passed their arms around her, and led her to her home

The clergyman of—was one of those who are more
zealous for sound doctrine, than benevolent practice: he had
chosen on that occasion for his text, “The wages of sin is

death,” and had preached a long sermon in the vain endeavour
of elucidating the doctrine of original sin. Clergymen who
lose such opportunities of instructing their people in the operations
of Providence, and the claims of humanity, ought not
to wonder if they grow languid, and selfish, and careless of
their most obvious duties. Had this gentleman improved
this occasion of illustrating the duty of sympathy, by dwelling
on the tenderness of our blessed Lord, when he wept with
the bereaved sisters at the grave of Lazarus: had he distilled
the essence of those texts, and diffused their gracious influence
into his sermon—“Bear ye one another's burthens;”
“Weep with those who weep;” “Inasmuch as ye have done
it unto one of these, ye have done it unto me:” had this
preaching usually been in conformity to the teaching of our
Saviour, could the scene have followed, which, as a part of
Jane Elton's story must be told.

We fear there are many who think there is merit in believing
certain doctrines; who, mistaking the true import of
that text, “by grace are ye saved,” quiet themselves with having,
once in their lives, passed through what they deemed
conviction and conversion, and from thence believe their salvation
is secure.

The house, furniture, and other property of Mr. Elton had
lain under an attachment for some time previous to Mrs. Elton's
death; but the sale had been delayed in consideration
of her approaching dissolution. It was now appointed for the
next week; and it therefore became necessary that some arrangement
should be made for the destitute orphan.

The day after the funeral, Jane was sitting in her mother's
room, which, in her eyes, was consecrated by her sickness and
death; the three aunts met at Mr. Elton's house; she heard
the ladies approaching through the adjoining apartment, and

hastily taking up her Bible, which she had been trying to
read, she drew her little bench behind the curtain of her mother's
bed. There is an instinct in childhood, that discerns
affection wherever it exists, and shrinks from the coldness of
calculating selfishness. In all their adversity, neither Jane,
nor her mother, had ever been cheered by a glimmering of
kindness from these relatives. Mrs. Elton had founded no
expectations on them for her child; but with her usual irresolution,
she had shrunk from preparing Jane's mind for the
shocks that awaited her.

The three sisters were led in by a young woman who had
offered to stay with Jane till some arrangement was made for
her. In reply to their asking where she was, the girl pointed
to the bed. “There,” she said, “taking on despertly.—A
body would think,” added she, “that she had lost her uncles
and aunts, as well as her father and mother. And she might
as well,” (she continued, in a tone low enough not to be heard,)
“for any good they will do her.”

The eldest sister began the conference by saying, “That
she trusted it was not expected she should take Jane upon
her hands—that she was not so well off as either of her
sisters—that to be sure she had no children; but then Mr.
Daggett and herself calculated to do a great deal for the Foreign
Missionary Society; that no longer ago than that morning,
Mr. D. and she had agreed to pay the expense of one of
the young Cherokees at the school at—; that there was
a great work going on in the world, and as long as they had
the heart given them to help it, they could not feel it their
duty to withdraw any aid for a mere worldly purpose!”

Mrs. Convers (the second sister) said that she had not any
religion, and she did not mean to pretend to any; that she
had ways enough to spend her money without sending it to

Owyhee, or the Foreign School; that she and her husband
had worked hard, and saved all for their children; and now
they meant they should make as good a figure as anybody's
children in the country. It took a great deal of money, she
said, to pay the dancing-master, and the drawing-master, and
the music-master; it was quite impossible for her sisters to
think how much it took to dress a family of girls genteely.
It was not now, as it used to be when we were girls; now-a-days,
girls must have merino shawls, and their winter hats,
and summer hats, and prunella shoes, and silk stockings;—it
was quite impossible to be decent without them. Besides, she
added, as she did not live in the same place with Jane, it
was not natural she should feel for her. It was her decided
opinion, that Jane had better be put out at once, at some
place where she could do light work till she was a little used
to it; and she would advise, too, to her changing her name;
the child was so young she could not care about a name, and
she should be much mortified to have it known, in the
town of—that her daughters had a cousin that was a
hired girl.

There was something in this harsh counsel which touched
Mrs. Wilson's (the younger sister's) pride, though it failed to
awaken a sentiment of humanity. She said she desired to be
thankful that she had been kept from any such sinful courses
as sending her children to a dancing-school; nobody could
say she had not done her duty by them; the minister's family
was not kept more strict than hers.

“No,” said Mrs. Convers, “and by all accounts is not
more disorderly.”

“Well, that is not our fault, Mrs. Convers, if we plant
and water, we cannot give the increase.”

Mrs. Wilson should have remembered that God does give

the increase to those that rightly plant, and faithfully water.
But Mrs. Wilson's tongue was familiar with many texts that
had never entered her understanding, or influanced her heart.

Mrs. Wilson continued—“Sister Convers, I feel it to be
my duty to warn you—you, the daughter and grand-daughter
of worthy divines who abhorred all such sinful practices, that
you should own that you send your children to dancing
school, astonishes and grieves my spirit. Do you know that
Mr. C—, in reporting the awakening in his parish, mentions
that not one of the girls that attended dancing school
were among the converts, whereas two, who had engaged to
attend it, but had received a remarkable warning in a dream,
were among the first and brightest?”

“I would as soon,” she continued, “follow one of my
children to the grave, as to see her in that broad road to destruction,
which leads through a ball-room.”

“It is easy enough,” replied Mrs. Convers, (adjusting her
smart mourning cap at the glass,) “to run down sins we have
no fancy for.”

Mrs. Wilson's ready answer was prevented by the entrance
of Jane's humble friend, who asked, if the ladies had
determined what was to be done with the little girl.

Mrs. Wilson in her vehemence had quite forgotten the
object of their meeting, but now brought back to it, and
instigated by a feeling of superiority to Mrs. Convers, and a
little nettled by the excuses of Mrs. Daggett, which she
thought were meant as a boast of superior piety, she said,
that as she had no dancing-masters to pay, and had not “that
morning agreed” to adopt a Cherokee—she could afford to
take Jane for a little while. The child, she said, must not
think of depending upon her for life; for though she was a
widow, and could do what she was a mind to her with her

own, she could not justify herself in taking the children's
meat—and she would have added—“to throw it to the dogs,”
—but she was interrupted by a person, who, unregarded by
the ladies, had taken her seat among them.

This was a middle aged woman, whose mind had been
unsettled in her youth by misfortunes. Having no mischievous
propensities, she was allowed to indulge her vagrant inclinations,
in wandering from house to house, and town to
town; her stimulated imagination furnishing continual amusement
to the curious by her sagacious observations, and unfailing
mirth to the young and vulgar, by the fanciful medley in
which she arrayed her person. There were some who noticed
in her a quickness of feeling that indicated original sensibility,
which, perhaps, had been the cause of her sufferings. The
dogs of a surly master would sometimes bark at her, because
her dress resembled the obnoxious livery of the beggar—a
class they had been taught to chase with pharisaical antipathy.
But except when her timid nature was alarmed by the onset
of dogs, which she always called the devil's servants, crazy
Bet found a welcome wherever she went.

It is common for persons in her unfortunate circumstances
to seek every scene of excitement. The sober, sedate manners
of the New England people, and the even tenor of their
lives, afford but few of these, and these few are, for the most
part, of a serious if not a gloomy character. Wherever there
was an awakening, or a camp meeting, crazy Bet was sure to
be found. She was often seen by moonlight, wandering in
the church-yard, plucking the nettles from the graves, and
wreathing the monuments with ground-pine. She would
watch for whole nights by the side of a grave in her native
village, where twenty years before were deposited the remains
of her lover, who was drowned on the day before they were

to have been married. She would range the woods, and
climb to the very mountain's-top, to get sweet flowers, to
scatter over the mound of earth that marked his grave. She
would plant rose bushes and lilies there, and when they
bloomed, pluck them up, because she said their purity and
brightness mocked the decay below.

She has been seen, when the sun came over the eastern
mountain's brow, and shot its first ray on the grave, to clap
her hands, and heard to shout, “I see an angel in the sun,
and he saith, `Blessed and holy is he that hath part in the
first resurrection: on such, the second death hath no power;
but they shall be priests of God and of Christ, and shall reign
with him a thousand years.”'

Poor Bet was sure to follow in every funeral procession,
and sometimes she would thrust herself amidst the mourners,
and say, “the dead could not rest in their graves, if they
were not followed there by one true mourner.” She has been
seen to spring forward when the men were carelessly placing
the coffin in the grave, with the head to the east, and exclaim,
“are ye heathens, that ye serve the dead thus? Know
ye not, the `Lord cometh in the east.”' She always lingered
behind after the crowd had dispersed, and busily moved and
removed the sods; and many a time has she fallen asleep,
with her head resting on the new-made grave, for, she said,
there was no sleep so quiet as `where the wicked did not
trouble.'

The quick eye of crazy Bet detected, through their thin
guise, the pride and hypocrisy and selfishness of the sisters.
She interrupted Mrs. Wilson as she was concluding her most
inappropriate quotation, `Throw it to the dogs;' said she, `It
is more like taking the prey from the wolf.' She then rose,
singing in an under voice,

She approached the bed, and withdrawing the curtain, exposed
the little sufferer to view. She had laid the open Bible
on the pillow, where she had often rested beside her mother,
and laying her cheek on it, had fallen asleep. It was open at
the 5th chapter of John, which she had so often read to her
mother, that she had turned instinctively to it. The page
was blistered with her tears.

Careless of the future, which to her seemed to admit no
light, her exhausted nature had found relief in sleep, at the
very moment her aunts were so unfeelingly deciding her fate.
Her pale cheek, still wet with her tears, and the deep sadness
of a face of uncommon sweetness, would have warmed with
compassion any breast that had not been steeled by selfishness.

“Shame, shame, upon you!” said the maniac; “has pride
turned your hearts to stone, that ye cannot shelter this poor
little ewe-lamb in your fold? Ah! ye may spread your
branches, like the green bay tree, but the tempest will come,
and those who look for you shall not find you; but this little
frost-bitten bud shall bloom in the paradise of God for ever
and ever.”

Untying a piece of crape which she had wound around her
throat, (for she was never without some badge of mourning.)
she stooped and gently wiped the tears from Jane's cheek,
saying, in a low tone, “Bottles full of odours, which are the
tears of saints; then rising, she carefully closed the curtains,
and busied herself for some minutes in pinning them together.
She then softly, and on tiptoe, returned to her seat; and taking

some ivy from her broken straw-bonnet, began twisting
it with the crape. “This,” said she, “is a weed for Elder
Carrol's hat; he lost his wife yesterday, and I have been to
the very top of Taghconnick to get him a weed, that shall
last fresh as long as his grief. See,” added she, and she held
it up, laughing, “it has begun to wilt already; it is a true
token.”

She then rose from her seat, and with a quick step, between
running and walking, left the room; but returning as
suddenly, she said slowly and emphatically, “Offend not this
little one; for her angel does stand before my Father. It
were better that a mill-stone were hanged about your neck.”
Then, courtseying to the ground, she left them.

Bet's solemn and slow manner of pronouncing this warning,
was so different from her usually hurried utterance, that
it struck a momentary chill to the hearts of the sisters. Mrs.
Daggett was the first to break the silence.

“What does she mean?” said she. “Has Jane experienced
religion?”

“Experienced religion! — no,” replied Mrs. Wilson.
“How should she? She has not been to a meeting since her
mother was first taken sick; and no longer ago than the day
after her mother's death, when I talked to her of her corrupt
state by nature, and the opposition of her heart, (for I felt it
to be my duty, at this peculiar season, to open to her the
great truths of religion, and I was faithful to her soul, and
did not scruple to declare the whole counsel,) she looked at
me as if she was in a dumb stupor. I told her the judgments
of an offended God were made manifest towards her in a remarkable
manner; and then I put it to her conscience,
whether if she was sure her mother had gone where the worm
dieth not, and the fire is not quenched, she should be reconciled

to the character of God, and be willing herself to promote
his glory, by suffering the like condemnation? She did
not reply one word, or give the least symptom of a gracious
understanding. But when Mrs. Harvey entered, just as I
was concluding, and passed her arm around Jane, and said to
her, `My child, God does not willingly grieve or afflict you,
the child sobbed out, `Oh no! Mrs. Harvey, so my mother
told me, and I am sure of it.”

“No, no,” she added, after a moment's hesitation; “this
does not look as if Jane had a hope. But, sister Daggett, I
wonder you should mind any thing crazy Bet says. She is
possessed with as many devils as were sent out of Mary Magdalen.”

“I don't mind her, Mrs. Wilson; but I know some very
good people who say, that many a thing she has foretold has
come to pass; and especially in seasons of affliction, they say,
she is very busy with the devil.”

“I don't know how that may be,” replied Mrs. Wilson;
“but as I mean to do my duty by this child, I don't feel
myself touched by Bet's crazy ranting.”

Mrs. Daggett, nettled by her sister's hint, rose, and said,
that, as she was going in the afternoon to attend a meeting
in a distant part of the town, (“for,” said she, “no one can
say that distance or weather ever keeps me from my duties,”)
she had no more time to waste.

Mrs. Convers' husband drove to the door in a smart gig,
and she took leave of her sisters, observing, she was glad the
child was going to be so well provided for. As she drove
away, crazy Bet, who was standing by the gate, apparently
intently reading the destiny of a young girl, in the palm of
her hand, fixed her eyes for a moment on Mrs. Convers, and

whispered to the girl, “All the good seed that fell on that
ground was choked by thorns long ago.”

Mrs. Wilson told Jane's attendant, Sally, to inform her,
she might come to her house the next day, and stay there for
the present.

2. CHAPTER II.

Jane received the intelligence of her destination without the
slightest emotion. The world was “all before her,” and she
cared not whither led her “mournful way.”

Happily for her, the humble friend, mentioned in the beginning
of her history, Mary Hull, returned on that day,
after having performed the last act of filial duty. Jane poured
all her sorrows into Mary's bosom, and felt already a degree
of relief that she had not believed her condition admitted.

Such is the elastic nature of childhood; its moral, like its
physical constitution, is subject to the most sudden changes.

Mary having assuaged the wounds of her youthful friend
with the balm of tender sympathy and just consolation, undertook
the painful, but necessary, task of exposing to Jane the
evils before her, that she might fortify her against them;
that, as she said, being “fore-warned, she might be forearmed.”

She did not soften the trials of dependence upon a sordid
and harsh nature. She told her what demands would be
made on her integrity, her patience, and her humility.

“But, my child,” cried she, “do not be downhearted.
There has One `taken you up who will not leave you, nor
forsake you.' `The fires may be about you, but they will
not kindle on you.' Make the Bible your counsellor; you will
always find some good word there, that will be a light to you
in the darkest night: and do not forget the daily sacrifice of
prayer; for, as the priests under the old covenant were nourished
by a part of that which they offered, so, when the sacrifice
of praise is sent upward by the broken and contrite heart,
there is a strength cometh back upon our own souls: blessed
be His name, it is what the world cannot give.”

Mary's advice fell upon a good and honest heart, and we
shall see that it brought forth much fruit.

The evening was spent in packing Jane's wardrobe, which
had been well stocked by her profuse and indulgent parents.
Mary had been told too, that the creditors of Mr. Elton
would not touch the wearing apparel of his wife. This was,
therefore, carefully packed and prepared for removal; and
Mary, who with her stock of heavenly wisdom had some
worldly prudence, hinted to Jane, that she had better keep
her things out of the sight of her craving cousins.

Jane took up her mother's Bible, and asked Mary, with a
trembling voice, if she thought she might be permitted to
take that.

“Certainly,” replied Mary, “no one will dispute your
right to it; it is not like worldly goods, we will not touch
the spoils, though we were tempted by more than the `goodly
Babylonish garment, the two hundred shekels of silver, and
the wedge of gold' that made Achan to sin.”

In obedience to the strictest dictates of honesty, Mary
forbore from permitting her zeal for Jane's interests to violate
the letter of the law. She was so scrupulous, that she

would not use a family trunk, but took a large cedar chest of
her own to pack the clothes in.

While they were busily occupied with these preparations,
Jane received a note from her aunt, saying, that she advised
her to secure some small articles which would never be
missed: some of “the spoons, table-linen, her mother's ivory
work-box,” &c., &c. The note concluded—“As I have undertaken
the charge of you for the present, it is but right you
should take my advice. There is no doubt my brother's
creditors have cheated him a hundred-fold the amount of
these things; for, poor man! with all his faults, he was so
generous, any body could take him in; besides, though these
things might help to pay the expense I must be at in keeping
you, they will be a mere nothing divided among so many
creditors. I should be the last, child, to advise to any thing
unlawful.”

“Poor woman!” said Mary, to whom Jane had handed
the note, and then checking the expression of her disgust at
what to her upright mind seemed plain dishonesty—she
merely added, “we'll keep on the sure side, Jane; clean hands
make light hearts.”

The next morning arrived, and Mary arose before the
dawn, in order to remove Jane early, and save her the pain
of witnessing the preparations for the vendue. Jane understood
her kind friend's design, and silently acquiesced in it,
for she had too much good sense to expose herself to any unnecessary
suffering. But when every thing was in readiness,
and the moment of departure arrived, she shrunk back from
Mary's offered arm, and sinking into a chair, yielded involuntarily
to the torrent of her feelings. She looked around upon
the room and its furniture as if they were her friends.

It has been said by one, who well understands the mysteries

of feeling, that objects which are silent every where else,
have a voice in the home of our childhood. Jane looked for
the last time at the bed, where she had often sported about
her mother, and rejoiced in her tender caresses—at the curtains,
stamped with illustrations of the Jewish history, which
had often employed and wearied her ingenuity in comprehending
their similitudes—at the footstool on which she had sat
beside her mother—and the old family clock,

Her eye turned to the glass, which now sent back her woebegone
image, and she thought of the time, but a little while
past, when elated with that “promised pleasure near,” she
had there surveyed her form arrayed in her prettiest dress,—
now, the rainbow tints had faded into the dark cloud.

She rose and walked to the open window, about which she
had trained a beautiful honey-suckle. The sun had just
risen, and the dew-drops on its leaves sparkled in his rays.

“Oh, Mary!” said she, “even my honey-suckle seems to
weep for me.”

A robin had built its nest on the vine; and often as she
sat watching her sleeping mother, she had been cheered with
its sprightly note, and maternal care of its young. She looked
to the nest—the birds had flown;—“They too,” she exclaimed,
“have gone from our home.”

“No, Jane,” replied Mary; “they have been provided
with another home; and He who careth for them, will care
much more for you.”

Mary might have quoted (but she was not addicted to any
profane works) the beautiful language of a native poet—

“We shall not,” she said, “be at your aunt's in time for
breakfast; here, tie on your hat, you will need all your
strength and courage, and you must not waste any on flowers
and birds.”

Jane obeyed the wise admonition of her friend; and with
faltering steps, and without allowing herself time to look
again at any thing, hastily passed through the little courtyard
in front of their house.

The morning was clear and bright; and stimulated by
the pure air, and nerved by the counsels Mary suggested as
they walked along, Jane entered her new home with a manner
that indicated the struggle of her self-respect with her
timidity.

Perhaps her timidity, appealing to Mrs. Wilson's love of
authority, produced a softer feeling than she had before shown
to Jane; or perhaps (for scarcely any nature is quite hardened),
the forlornness of the child awakened a transient sentiment
of compassion,—she took her hand, and told her she
was welcome. The children stared at her, as if they had
never seen her before, but Jane's down-cast eye, a little clouded
by the gathering tears, saved her from feeling the gaze of
their vulgar curiosity.

Jane, in entering the family of Mrs. Wilson, was introduced
to as new a scene as if she had been transported to a
foreign country.

Mrs. Wilson's character might have been originally cast
in the same mould with Mr. Elton's, but circumstances had
given it a different modification. She had married early in

life a man, who, not having energy enough for the exercise of
authority, was weak and vain, tenacious of the semblance,
and easily cozened by the shadow, while his wife retained the
substance. Mrs. Wilson, without having the pride of her
nature at all subdued, became artful and trickish; she was
sordid and ostentatious; a careful fellow-worker with her husband
in the acquisition of their property, she secured to herself
all the power and reputation of its outlay. Whenever a
contribution was levied for an Education or Tract Society, for
Foreign Missions, the Cherokees, or Osages,—Mrs. Wilson
accompanied her donation, which on the whole was quite
handsome, with a remark, that what she did give, she gave
with a willing heart; that women could not command much
money, for it was the duty of wives to submit themselves to
their husbands. After Mrs. Wilson became sole mistress of
her estate, the simple and credulous, who remembered her
professions, wondered her gifts were not enlarged with her
liberty. But Mrs. Wilson would say that the widow was the
prey of the wicked and that her duty to her children prevented
her indulging her generous feelings towards those
pious objects which lay nearest her heart.

Mrs. Wilson had fancied herself one of the subjects of an
awakening at an early period of her life; had passed through
the ordeal of a church-examination with great credit, having
depicted in glowing colors the opposition of her natural heart
to the decrees, and her subsequent joy in the doctrine of election.
She thus assumed the form of godliness without feeling
its power. We fear that in those times of excitement,
during which many pass from indifference to holiness, and
many are converted from sin to righteousness, there are also
many who, like Mrs. Wilson, delude themselves and others
with vain forms of words, and professions of faith.

Mrs. Wilson was often heard to denounce those who insisted
on the necessity of good works, as Pharisees;—she was
thankful, she said, that she should not presume to appear
before her Judge with any of the “filthy rags of her own
righteousness;”—it would be easy getting to heaven if the
work in any way depended on ourselves;—any body could
“deal justly, love mercy, and walk humbly.” How easy it is,
we leave to those to determine who have sought to adjust
their lives by this divine rule.

Mrs. Wilson rejected the name of the Pharisee; but the
proud, oppressive, bitter spirit of the Jewish bigot was manifest
in the complacency with which she regarded her own
faith, and the illiberality she cherished towards every person,
of every denomination, who did not believe what she believed,
and act according to her rule of right. As might be expected,
her family was regulated according to “the letter,” but the
“spirit that giveth life,” was not there. Religion was the ostensible
object of every domestic arrangement; but you might
look in vain for the peace and good will which a voice from
heaven proclaimed to be the objects of the mission of our
Lord.

Mrs. Wilson's children produced such fruits as might be
expected from her culture. The timid among them had recourse
to constant evasion, and to the meanest artifices to
hide the violation of laws which they hated; and the bolder
were engaged in a continual conflict with the mother, in which
rebellion often trampled on authority.

Jane had been gently led in the bands of love. She had
been taught even more by the example than the precepts of
her mother.

She had seen her mother bear with meekness the asperity

and unreasonableness of her father's temper, and often turn
away his wrath with a soft answer.

The law of imitation is deeply impressed on our nature.
Jane had insensibly fallen into her mother's ways, and had,
thus early, acquired a habit of self-command. Mrs. Elton,
though, alas, negligent of some of her duties, watched over
the expanding character of her child with Christian fidelity.
“There she had garnered up her heart.” She knew that
amiable dispositions were not to be trusted, and she sought
to fortify her child's mind with Christian principles. She
sowed the seed, and looked with undoubting faith for the
promised blessing.

“I must soon sleep,” she would say to Mary, “but the
seed is already springing up. I am sure it will not lack the
dews of Heaven; and you, Mary, may live to see, though I
shall not, `first the blade, then the ear, and after that the full
corn in the ear.”'

Mary had seconded Mrs. Elton's efforts. She looked
upon herself as an humble instrument; but she was a most
efficient one. She had a rare and remarkable knack at applying
rules, so that her life might be called a commentary
on the precepts of the Gospel. Mary's practical religion had,
sometimes, conveyed a reproach (the only reproach a Christian
may indulge in) to Mrs. Wilson, who revenged herself
by remarking, that “Mary was indulging in that soul-destroying
doctrine of the Methodists—perfection;” and then she
would add (jogging her foot, a motion that, with her, always
indicated a mental parallel, the result of which was, `I am
holier than thou'), “there is no error so fatal, as resting in
the duties of the second table.” Mrs. Wilson had not learned
that the duties of the second table cannot be done, if the
others are left undone; the branches must be sustained by

the trunk; for He, from whose wisdom there is no appeal, has
said, “If ye love me, ye will keep my commandments.”

Happily for our little friend, Mary was not to be removed
far from her; an agreeable situation was, unexpectedly,
offered to her grateful acceptance.

3. CHAPTER III.

A few weeks before the death of Mrs. Elton, a Mr. Lloyd, a
Quaker, who was travelling with his wife and infant child,
for the benefit of Mrs. Lloyd's health, had stopped at the inn
in —. Mrs. Lloyd was rapidly declining with consumption.
On this day she had, as is not unfrequent in the fluctuation
of this disease, felt unusually well. Her cough was
lulled by the motion of the carriage, and she had requested
her husband to permit her to ride further than his prudence
would have dictated.

The heat and unusual exertion proved too much for her.
In the evening she was seized with a hemorrhage, which reduced
her so much as to render it unsafe to move her. She
faded away quietly, and fell into the arms of death as gently
as a leaf falleth from its stem, resigning her spirit in faith to
Him who gave it.

An extraordinary attachment subsisted between Mr. and
Mrs. Lloyd, which had its foundation in the similarity of

their characters, education, views, and pursuits; and had been
nourished by the circumstances that had drawn and kept
them together.

Three years after their marriage, Mrs. Lloyd gave birth
to a girl. This event filled up the measure of their joy. A
few weeks after its birth, as Mr. Lloyd took the infant from
its mother's bosom, and pressed it fondly to his own, he said,
“Rebecca, the promise is to us and our children; the Lord
grant that we may train His gift in His nurture and admonition.”

“Thou mayest, dear Robert; God grant it,” Rebecca
mournfully replied; “but the way is closed up to me. Do not
shudder thus, but prepare thy mind for the `will of the Lord.'
I could have wished to have lived, for thy sake and my little
one; but I will not rebel, for I know all is right.”

Mr. Lloyd hoped his wife was needlessly alarmed; but
he found from her physician, that immediately after the birth
of the child, some alarming symptoms had appeared, which
indicated a hectic. Mrs. Lloyd had begged they might be
concealed from her husband, from the generous purpose of
saving him, as long as possible, useless anxiety. The disease,
however, had taken certain hold, and that morning, after a
conversation with her physician, during which her courage
had surprised him, she resolved to begin the difficult task of
fortifying her husband for the approaching calamity.

Spring came on, and its sweet influences penetrated to
the sick room of Rebecca. Her health seemed amended, and
her spirits refreshed; and when Mr. Lloyd proposed that
they should travel, she cheerfully consented. But she cautioned
her husband not to be flattered by an apparent amendment,
for, said she, “though my wayward disease may be
coaxed into a little clemency, it will not spare me.”

As she prophesied, her sufferings were mitigated; but it
was but too manifest that no permanent amendment was to
be expected. The disease made very slow progress; one
would have thought it shrunk from marring so young and so
fair a work. Her spirit, too, enjoyed the freedom and beauty
of the country. As they passed up the fertile shores of the
Connecticut, Rebecca's benevolent heart glowed with gratitude
to the Father of all, at the spectacle of so many of her
fellow-creatures enjoying the rich treasures of Providence;
cast into a state of society the happiest for their moral improvement,
where they had neither the miseries of poverty,
nor the temptations of riches. She would raise her eyes to
the clear heaven, would look on the “misty mountain's top,”
and then on the rich meadows through which they were passing,
and which were now teeming with the summer's fulness,
and would say, “Dear Robert, is there any heart so cold,
that it does not melt in this vision of the power and the
bounty of the Lord of heaven and earth? Do not sorrow for
me, when I am going to a more perfect communion with Him,
for I shall see him as he is.”

From the Connecticut they passed by the romantic road
that leads through the plains of West Springfield, Westfield,
&c. There is no part of our country, abundant as it is in the
charms of nature, more lavishly adorned with romantic
scenery. The carriage slowly traced its way on the side of
a mountain, from which the imprisoned road had with difficulty
been won; a noisy stream dashed impetuously along at
their left, and as they ascended the mountain, they still heard
it before them, leaping from rock to rock, now almost losing
itself in the deep pathway it had made, and then rushing with
increased violence over its stony bed.

“This young stream,” said Mr. Lloyd, “reminds one of

the turbulence of headstrong childhood: I can hardly believe
it to be the same we admired, so leisurely winding its peaceful
way into the bosom of the Connecticut.”

“Thou likest the sobriety of maturity,” replied Rebecca;
“but I confess that there is something delightful to my imagination
in the elastic bound of this infant stream; it reminds
me of the joy of untamed spirits, and undiminished strength.”

The travellers' attention was withdrawn from the wild
scene before them to the appearance of the heavens, by their
coachman, who observed that “never in his days had he seen
clouds make so fast; it was not,” he said, “five minutes since
the first speck rose above the hill before them, and now there
was not enough blue sky for a man to swear by:—but,” added
he, looking with a lengthening visage to what he thought
an interminable hill before them, “the lightning will be
saved the trouble of coming down to us, for if my poor beasts
ever get us to the top, we may reach up and take it.”

Having reached the top of the next acclivity, they perceived
by the roadside, a log hut; over the door was a
slab, with a rude and mysterious painting (which had been
meant for a foaming can and a plate of gingerbread), explained
underneath by “cake and beer for sale.” This did not
look very inviting, but it promised a better shelter from the
rain, for the invalid, than the carriage could afford. Mr.
Lloyd opened the door, and lifted his wife over a rivulet,
which actually ran between the sill of the house and the floor-planks
that had not originally been long enough for the dimensions
of the apartment.

The mistress of the mansion, a fat middle-aged woman,
who sat with a baby in her arms at a round table, at which
there were four other children eating from a pewter dish
placed in the middle, rose, and having ejected the eldest boy

from a chair by a very unceremonious slap, offered it to Mrs.
Lloyd, and resumed her seat, quietly finishing her meal.
Her husband, a ruddy, good-natured, hardy-looking mountaineer,
had had the misfortune, by some accident in his childhood,
to lose the use of both his legs, which were now ingeniously
folded into the same chair on which he sat. He turned
to the coachman, who, having secured his horses, had just
entered, and smiling at his consternation, said, “Why, friend,
you look scare't, pretty pokerish weather, to be sure, but
then we don't mind it up here;” then turning to the child
next him, who, in gazing at the strangers, had dropped half
the food she was conveying to her mouth, he said,—“Desdemony,
don't scatter the 'tatoes so.”—“But last week,” he
continued, resuming his address to the coachman, “there was
the most tedious spell of weather I have sen the week before
last thanksgiving, when my wife and I went down into the
lower part of Becket, to hear Deacon Hollister's funeral sarmont—Don't
you remember, Tempy, that musical fellow that
was there?—`I don't see,' says he, `the use of the minister
preaching up so much about hell-fire,' says he, `it is a very
good doctrine,' says he, `to preach down on Connecticut
River, but,' says he, `I should not think it would frighten any
body in such a cold place as Becket.”'

A bright flash, that seemed to fire the heavens, succeeded
by a tremendous clap of thunder, which made the hovel tremble,
terrified all the group, except the fearless speaker.

“A pretty smart flash to be sure; but, as I was saying,
it is nothing to that storm we had last week.—Valorus, pull
that hat out of the window, so the gentleman can see.—
There, sir,” said he, “just look at that big maple tree, that
was blown down, if it had come one yard nearer my house,
it would have crushed it to atoms. Ah, this is a nice place

as you will find any where,” he continued (for he saw Mr.
Lloyd was listening attentively to him), “to bring up boys;
it makes them hardy and spirited, to live here with the wind
roaring about them, and the thunder rattling right over their
heads: why they don't mind it any more than my woman's
spinning-wheel, which, to be sure, makes a dumb noise sometimes.”

Our travellers were not a little amused with the humour
of this man, who had a natural philosophy that a stoic might
have envied. “Friend,” said Mr. Lloyd, “you have a singular
fancy about names; what may be the name of that chubby
little girl who is playing with my wife's fan?”

“Yes, sir, I am a little notional about names; that girl,
sir, I call Octavy, and that lazy little dog that stands by her,
is Rodolphus.”

“And this baby,” said Mr. Lloyd, kindly giving the astonished
little fellow his watch chain to play with, “this must
be Vespasian or Agricola.”

“No, sir, no; I met with a disappointment about that
boy's name—what you may call a slip between the cup and
the lip—when he was born, the women asked me what I
meant to call him? I told them I did not mean to be in
any hurry; for you must know, sir, the way I get my names,
I buy a book of one of them pedlers that are going over the
mountain with tin-ware and brooms, and books and pamphlets,
and one notion and another; that is, I don't buy out and
out, but we make a swap; they take some of my wooden
dishes, and let me have the vally in books; for you must
know I am a great reader, and mean all my children shall
have larning too, though it is pretty tough scratching for it.
Well, sir, as I was saying about this boy, I found a name
just to hit my fancy, for I can pretty generally suit myself;

the name was Sophronius; but just about that time, as the
deuce would have it, my wife's father died, and the gin'ral
had been a very gin'rous man to us, and so to compliment the
old gentleman, I concluded to call him Solomon Wheeler.”

Mr. Lloyd smiled, and throwing a dollar into the baby's
lap, said, “There is something, my little fellow, to make up
for your loss.” The sight and the gift of a silver dollar produced
a considerable sensation among the mountaineers.
The children gathered round the baby to examine the splendid
favour. The mother said, “The child was not old enough
to make its manners to the gentleman, but he was as much
beholden to him as if he could.” The father only seemed
insensible, and contented himself with remarking, with his
usual happy nonchalance, that he “guessed it was easier getting
money down country, than it was up on the hills.”

“Very true, my friend,” replied Mr. Lloyd, “and I should
like to know how you support your family here. You do not
appear to have any farm.”

“No, Sir,” replied the man, laughing, “it would puzzle
me, with my legs, to take care of a farm; but then I always
say, that as long as a man has his wits he has something to
work with. This is a pretty cold sappy soil up here, but we
make out to raise all our sauce,[1] and enough besides to fat a
couple of pigs on; then, Sir, as you see, my woman and I
keep a stock of cake and beer, and tansy bitters—a nice
trade for a cold stomach; there is considerable travel on the
road, and people get considerable dry by the time they get
up here, and we find it a good business; and then I turn
wooden bowls and dishes, and go out peddling once or twice
a-year; and there is not an old woman, or a young one either,

for the matter of that, but I can coax them to buy a dish or
two; I take my pay in provisions or clothing; all the cash
I get is by the beer and cake: and now Sir, though I say it,
that may be should not say it, there is not a more independent
man in the town of Becket than I am, though there is
them that's more forehanded; but I pay my minister's tax
and my school-tax as reg'lar as any of them.”

Mr. Lloyd admired the ingenuity and contentment of
this man, his enjoyment of the privilege, the “glorious privilege,”
of every New-England man, of “being independent.”
But his pleasure was somewhat abated by an appearance of
a want of neatness and order, which would have contributed
so much to the comfort of the family, and which, being a
Quaker, he deemed essential to it.

He looked at the little stream of water we have mentioned,
and which the rain had already swollen so much that
it seemed to threaten an inundation of the house; and
observing that neither the complexion of the floor nor of the
children seemed to have been benefited by its proximity,
he remarked to the man that he “should think a person of
his ingenuity would have contrived some mode of turning
the stream.”

“Why, yes, Sir,” said the man, “I suppose I might, for
I have got a book that treats upon hydrostatics and them
things; but I'm calculating to build in the fall, and so I
think we may as well musquash along till then.”

“To build! Do explain to me how that is to be done?”

“Why, Sir,” said he, taking a box from the shelf behind
him, which had a hole in the centre of the top, through
which the money was passed in, but afforded no facility for
withdrawing it, “my woman and I agreed to save all the
cash we could get for two years, and I should not be afraid

to venture there is thirty dollars there, Sir. The neighbors
in these parts are very kind to a poor man; one will draw
the timber, and another will saw the boards, and they will
all come to raising, and bring their own spirits into the bargain.
Oh, Sir, it must be a poor shack that can't make a
turn to get a house over his head.”

Mr. Lloyd took ten dollars from his pocket-book, and
slipping it into the gap, said, “There is a small sum, my
friend, and I wish it may be so expended as to give to thy
new dwelling such conveniences as will enable thy wife to
keep it neat. It will help on the trade, too; for depend
upon it, there is nothing makes a house look so inviting to a
traveller as cleanliness and order.”

Our mountaineer's indifference was vanquished by so
valuable a donation. “You are the most gin'rous man, Sir,”
said he, “that ever journeyed this way; and if I don't
remember your advice, you may say there is no such thing
as gratitude upon earth.”

By this time the rain had subsided, the clouds were rolling
over, the merry notes of the birds sallying from their
shelters, welcomed the returning rays of the sun, and the
deep, unclouded azure in the west promised a delightful
afternoon.

The travellers took a kind leave of the grateful cottagers,
and as they drove away—“Tempy,” said the husband, “if
the days of miracles weren't quite entirely gone by, I should
think we had `entertained angels unawares.”'

“I think you might better say,” replied the good woman,
“that the angels have entertained us; any how, that sick
lady will be an angel before long; she looks as good and as
beautiful as one now.”

It was on the evening of this day, that Mr. and Mrs.

Lloyd arrived at the inn in the village of —, which, as
we have before stated, was the scene where her excellent and
innocent life closed. She expressed a desire that she might
not be removed; she wished not to have the peace of her
mind interrupted by any unnecessary agitation. Whenever
she felt herself a little better, she would pass a part of the
day in riding. Never did any one in the full flush of health
enjoy more than she, from communion with her Heavenly
Father, through the visible creation. She read with understanding
the revelations of his goodness, in the varied expressions
of nature's beautiful face.

“Do you know,” said she to her husband, “that I prefer
the narrow vales of the Housatonic to the broader lands of
the Connecticut? It certainly matters little where our dust
is laid, if it be consecrated by Him who is the `resurrection
and the life;' but I derive a pleasure which I could not have
conceived of, from the expectation of having my body repose
in this still valley, under the shadow of that beautiful hill.”

“I, too, prefer this scenery,” said Mr. Lloyd, seeking to
turn the conversation, for he could not yet but contemplate
with dread, what his courageous wife spoke of with a tone of
cheerfulness. “I prefer it, because it has a more domestic
aspect. There is, too, a more perfect and intimate union of
the sublime and beautiful. These mountains that surround
us, and are so near to us on every side, seem to me like natural
barriers, by which the Father has secured for His children
the gardens He has planted for them by the river's
side.”

“Yes,” said Rebecca, “and methinks they inclose a sanctuary,
a temple, from which the brightness of His presence
is never withdrawn. Look,” said she, as the carriage passed
over a hill that rose above the valley, and was a crown of

beauty to it; “look, how gracefully and modestly that beautiful
stream winds along under the broad shadows of those
trees and clustering vines, as if it sought to hide the beauty
that sparkles so brightly whenever a beam of light touches
it. Oh! my Rebecca,” said she, turning fondly to her child,
“I could wish thy path led along these still waters, far from
the stormy waves of the rude world—far from its `vanities
and vexation of spirit.”'

“If that is thy wish, my love,” said her husband, looking
earnestly at her, “it shall be a law to me.”

Mrs. Lloyd's tranquillity had been swept away for a moment,
by the rush of thought that was produced by casting
her mind forward to the destiny of her child; but it was
only for a moment. Hers was the trust of a mind long and
thoroughly disciplined by Christian principles. Her face
resumed its wonted repose, as she said, “Dear Robert, I
have no wish but to leave all to thy discretion, under the
guidance of the Lord.”

It cannot be deemed strange that Mr. Lloyd should have
felt a particular interest in scenes for which his wife had
expressed such a partiality. He looked upon them with
much the same feeling that the sight of a person awakens
who has been loved by a departed friend. They seemed to
have a sympathy for him; and he lingered at — without
forming any plan for the future, till he was roused from his
inactivity by hearing the sale of Mr. Elton's property spoken
of. He had passed the place with Rebecca, and they had
together admired its secluded and picturesque situation.
The house stood at a little distance from the road, more
than half hid by two patriarchal elms. Behind the house,
the grounds descended gradually to the Housatonic, whose
nourishing dews kept them arrayed in beautiful verdure.

On the opposite side of the river, and from its very margin,
rose a precipitous mountain, with its rich garniture of beach,
maple, and linden; tree surmounting tree, and the images of
all sent back by the clear mirror below.

Mr. Lloyd had no family ties to Philadelphia. He preferred
a country life; not supinely to dream away existence,
but he hoped there to cultivate and employ a “talent for
doing good;” that talent which a noble adventurer declared
he most valued, and which, though there is a field for its exercise
wherever any members of the human family are, he
compassed sea and land to find new worlds in which to expend
it.

Mr. Lloyd purchased the place and furniture, precisely
as it had been left on the morning of the sale by Jane and
her friend Mary.

4. CHAPTER IV.

The excellent character of Mary Hull had been spoken of to
Mr. Lloyd by his landlady, and he was convinced that she
was precisely the person to whom he should be satisfied to
commit the superintendence of his family. Accordingly, on
the evening of the sale, he sent a messenger to Mrs. Wilson's
with the following note:—

“Robert Lloyd, having purchased the place of the late Mr.
Elton, would be glad to engage Mary Hull to take charge of
his family. Wages, and all other matters, shall be arranged
to her satisfaction. He takes the liberty to send by the
bearer, for Jane Elton, a work-box, dressing-glass, and a few
other small articles, for which he has no use, and which must
have to her a value from association with her late residence.”

Mrs. Wilson had no notion that any right could be prior
to hers in her house. She took the note from the servant,

and, notwithstanding he ventured to say he believed it was
not meant for her, she read it first with no very satisfied air,
and then turning to one of the children, she told her to call
Mary Hull to her. The servant placed the things on the
table, and left the room.

“So,” said she to Jane, who was looking at her for some
explanation of the sudden apparition of the work-box, &c.—
“So, Miss, you have seen fit to disobey the first order I took
the trouble to give you. I should like to know how you dared
to leave these things after my positive orders.”

“I did not understand your note, ma'am, to contain positive
orders; and Mary and I did not think it was quite right
to take the things.”

“Right! pretty judges of right to be sure. She a hired
girl, and a Methodist into the bargain. I don't know how
she dares to judge over my head; and you, miss, I tell you
once for all, I allow no child in my house to judge of right
and wrong; children have no reason, and they ought to be
very thankful, when they fall into the hands of those that are
capable of judging for them. Here,” said she to Mary, who
now entered in obedience to her summons; “here is a proposal
of a place for you, from that Quaker that buried his wife
last week. I suppose you call yourself your own mistress,
and you can do as you like about it; but as you are yet a
young woman, Mary Hull, and this man is a young widower,
and nobody knows who, I should think it a great risk for you
to live with him; for, if nothing worse comes of it, you may
be sure there is not a person in this town that won't think
you are trying to get him for a husband.”

Mary was highly gratified with the thought of returning
to the place where she had passed a large and happy portion
of her life, and she did not hesitate to say, that “she should

not stand so much in her own light as to refuse so excellent
a place; that from all she had heard said of Mr. Lloyd, he
was a gentleman far above her condition in life; and therefore
she thought no person would be silly enough to suppose
she took the place from so foolish a design as Mrs. Wilson
suggested; and she should take care that her conduct should
give no occasion for reproach.”

“Well,” said Mrs. Wilson, chagrined that her counsel
was not compulsory, “it does amaze me to see how some
people strain at a gnat, and swallow a camel.”

Mary did not condescend to notice this remark, but proceeded
quietly to remove the articles Mr. Lloyd had sent,
which she succeeded in doing, without any farther remark
from Mrs. Wilson, who prudently restrained the exercise of
her authority while there was one present independent
enough to oppose its current.

“Oh, Mary,” said Jane, when they were alone, “how glad
I am you are going to live with such a good man; how happy
you must be! And I too, Mary;” and she hastily brushed
away a tear, “I am; at least I should be very happy when I
have such a kind friend as you are so near to me.”

“Yes, yes, dear Jane, try to be happy; this foolish aunt
of yours will try you like the fire, but I look to see you come
out of it as gold from the furnace: keep up a good heart, my
child, it is a long lane that never turns.”

The friends separated, but not till Mary had, with her
usual caution, carefully packed away Jane's new treasures,
saying, as she did it, “that it was best to put temptation out
of sight.”

Mary's plain and neat appearance, and her ingenuous, sensible
countenance, commended her at once to Mr. Lloyd's

favor, and she entered immediately upon the duties of her
new and responsible situation.

We must now introduce those who are willing to go farther
with us in the history of Jane Elton, to the family of Mrs.
Wilson, where they will see she had a school for the discipline
of Christian character.

“Jane,” said Mrs. Wilson to her on the morning after
Mary's departure, “you know, child, the trouble and expense
of taking you upon my hands is very great; but it did not
seem suitable that, being my brother's daughter, you should
be put out at present: you must remember, child, that I am
at liberty to send you away at any time, whereas, as you will
always be in debt to me, you can never be at liberty to go
when you choose. It is a great trial to me to take you, but
the consciousness of doing my duty, and more than my duty
to you, supports me under it. Now as to what I expect from
you:—in the first place, my word must be your law; you
must not hesitate to do any thing that I require of you;
never think of asking a reason for what I command—it is
very troublesome and unreasonable to do so. Visiting, you
must give up entirely; I allow my children to waste none of
their time in company: meetings I shall wish you to attend
when you have not work to do at home; for I do not wish you
to neglect the means of grace, though I am sensible that your
heart must be changed before they can do you any good.
You must help Martha do the ironing, and assist Elvira with
the clear starching and other matters; Nancy will want your
aid about the beds; Sally is but young, and requires more
care than I can give her, for my time is at present chiefly
spent in instructing the young converts; and therefore I shall
look to you to take the charge of Sally; and I expect you to
do the mending and making for David when he comes home;

the other boys will want now and then a stitch or two; and,
in short, miss, (and she increased the asperity of her tone, for
she thought Jane's growing gravity indicated incipient rebellion,)
you will be ready to do every thing that is wanted of
you.”

Jane was summoning resolution to reply, when both her
and her aunt's attention was called to a rustling at the window,
and crazy Bet thrust her head in—

“Go on,” said she, “and fill up the measure of your iniquities;
load her with burthens heavy and grievous to be
borne, and do not touch them with one of your fingers.—
There, Jane,” said she, throwing her a bunch of carnations,
“I have just come from the quarterly meeting, and I stopped
as I came past your house, and picked these, for I thought
their bright colors would be a temptation to the Quaker. And
I thought too,” said she, laughing, “there should be something
to send up a sweet smelling savour from the altar where
there are no deeds of mercy laid.”

“Out of my yard instantly, you dirty beggar!” said Mrs.
Wilson.

Bet turned, but not quickening her step, and went away,
singing, “Glory, glory, hallelujah.”

“Aunt,” said Jane, “do not mind the poor creature. She
does not mean to offend you. I believe she feels for me; for
she has been sheltered many a time from the cold and the
storms in our house.”

“Don't give yourself the least uneasiness, miss. I am
not to be disturbed by a crazy woman; but I do not see
what occasion there is for her feeling for you. You have not
yet answered me.”

“I have no answer to make, ma'am,” replied Jane, meekly,
“but that I shall do my best to content you. I am very

young, and not much used to work, and I may have been too
kindly dealt with; but that is all over now.”

“Do you mean, miss, to say, that I shan't treat you kindly?”

“No, aunt, but I meant—excuse me, if I meant any
thing wrong.”

“I did expect, miss, to hear some thankfulness expressed.”

“I do, ma'am, feel grateful, that I have a shelter over my
head; what more I have to be grateful for, time must determine.”

There was a dignity in Jane's manner, that, with the
spirit of the reply, taught Mrs. Wilson that she had, in her
niece, a very different subject to deal with from her own wilful
and trickish children. “Well, Miss Jane, I shall expect
no haughty airs in my house, and you will please now to tell
the girls to be ready to go with me to the afternoon conference,[2]
and prepare yourself to go also. One more thing I
have to say to you, you must never look to me for any clothing;
that cunning Mary has packed away enough to last you
fifty years. With all her Methodism, I will trust her to
feather your nest, and her own too.”

“Alas!” thought Jane, as she went to execute her aunt's
commission, “what good does it do my poor aunt to go to
conference?” Perhaps this question would not have occurred
to many girls of thirteen; but Jane had been accustomed to
scan the motives of her conduct, and to watch for the fruit.
The aid extended to our helpless orphan by her pharisaical
aunt, reminds us of the “right of asylum” afforded by the
ancients to the offenders who were allowed to take shelter in
the temples of their gods, and suffered to perish there.

She found the girls very much indisposed to the afternoon

meeting. Martha said she “would not go to hear Deacon
Barton's everlasting prayers; she had heard so many of them,
she knew them all by heart.”

Elvira had just got possession, by stealth, of a new novel;
that species of reading being absolutely prohibited in Mrs.
Wilson's house, she had crept up to the garret, and was promising
herself a long afternoon of stolen pleasure. “Oh, Jane,”
said she, “why can't you go down and tell mother you can't
find me. Just tell her, you guess I have gone down to Miss
Banker's, to inquire whether the tracts have come; that's a
good thought;” and she was resuming her book, when seeing
Jane did not move, she added, “I'll do as much for you any
time.”

“I shall never wish you to do as much for me, Elvira.”

“I do not think it is so very much, just to go down stairs;
besides, Jane,” she added, imperiously, “Mother says, you
must do whatever we ask you to.”

Elvira was so habituated to deceit, that it never occurred
to her, that the falsehood was the difficult part of the errand
to Jane; and when Jane said, “Cousin Elvira, I will do
whatever is reasonable for you, and no more; any thing that
is true, I will tell your mother for you,” Elvira laughed in
derision.

“Pooh, Jane, you have brought your strict notions to a
poor market. It was easy enough to get along with the truth
with your mother, because she would let you have your own
way on all occasions; but I can tell you, disguises are the
only wear in our camp!”

“I shall not use them, Elvira. I should dread their being
stripped off.”

“Oh, not at all. Mother seldom takes the trouble to inquire
into it; and if she does, now and then, by accident,

detect it, the storm soon blows over. She has caught me in
many a white lie, and black one too, and she has not been
half so angry as when I have torn my frock, or lost a glove.
Why, child, if you are going to fight your battles with mother
with plain truth, you will find yourself without shield or
buckler.”

“Ah, Elvira!” replied Jane, smiling,

“That's true enough, Jane. Well, if you will not help
me off from the conference, I must go. Sweet Vivaldi,” said
she, kissing her book, and carefully hiding it in a dark corner
of the garret, “must I part with thee?”

“One would think,” said Jane, “you were parting with
your lover.”

“I am, my dear. I always fancy, when I read a novel,
that I am the heroine, and the hero is one of my favourites;
and then I realize it all, and it appears so natural.”

Elvira was not, at heart, an ill-natured girl; but having
a weak understanding, and rather a fearful, unresisting temper,
she had been driven by her mother's mode of treatment
into the practice of deceit; and she being the weaker party,
used in her warfare as many arts as a savage practises towards
a civilized enemy. A small stock of original invention
may be worked up into a vast deal of cunning. Elvira had
been sent one quarter to a distant boarding-school, where her
name had attracted a young lady, whose head had been
turned by love-stories. They had formed a league of eternal
friendship, which might have a six months' duration; and
Elvira had returned to her home, at the age of sixteen, with
a farrago of romance superadded to her home-bred duplicity.

Martha was two years older than her sister, and more like
her mother: violent and self-willed, she openly resisted her
mother's authority, whenever it opposed her wishes. From
such companions, Jane soon found she had nothing to expect
of improvement or pleasure; but, though it may seem quite
incredible to some, she was not unhappy. The very labour
her aunt imposed on her was converted into a blessing, for it
occupied her mind, and saved her from brooding on the happy
past, or the unhappy present. She now found exercise
for the domestic talents Mary had so skilfully cultivated.
Even the unrelenting Mrs. Wilson was once heard to say,
with some apparent pleasure, that “Jane was gifted at all
sorts of work.” Her dexterous hand was often put in requisition
by her idle and slatternly cousins, and their favour was
sometimes won by her kind offices. But more than all, and
above all, as a source of contentment and cheerfulness—
better far than ever was boasted of perennial springs, or
“Amreeta cups of immortality”—was Jane's unfailing habit
of regulating her daily life by the sacred rules of our blessed
Lord. She would steal from her bed at the dawn of day,
when the songs of the birds were interpreting the stillness of
nature, and beauty and fragrance breathing incense to the
Maker, and join her devotions to the choral praise. At this
hour she studied the word of truth and life, and a holy beam
of light fell from it on her path through the day. Her pleasures
at this social period of her life were almost all solitary,
except when she was indulged in a visit to Mary, whose eye
was continually watching over her with maternal kindness.
The gayety of her childhood had been so sadly checked by
the change of her fortunes, that her countenance had taken
rather a serious and reserved cast. Mr. Lloyd's benevolent
feelings were awakened by her appearance; and Mary, whose

chief delight was in expatiating on the character of her favourite,
took care to confirm his favourable impressions, by
setting in the broadest light her former felicity, her present
trials, and her patience in tribulation.

Mary had orders to leave the furniture in a little room
that had formerly been assigned to Jane, precisely as she
left it, and to tell Jane that it was still called, and should be
considered her room.

“And that beautiful honeysuckle, Jane,” said Mr. Lloyd
to her, “which thy tasteful hand has so carefully trained
about the window, is still thine.”

These, and many other instances of delicate attention
from Mr. Lloyd, saved her from the feeling of forlornness
that she might otherwise have suffered.

5. CHAPTER V.

A few months after Jane entered her aunt's family, an unusual
commotion had been produced in the village of —
by an event of rare occurrence. This was no less than the
arrival of a dancing-master, and the issuing of proposals for
a dancing-school.

This was regarded by some very zealous persons as a
ruse de guerre of the old Adversary, which, if not successfully
opposed, would end in the establishment of his kingdom.

The plan of the disciple of Vestris, was to establish a
chain of dancing-schools from one extremity of the country to
the other; and this was looked upon as a mine which would
be sprung to the certain destruction of every thing that was
`virtuous and of good report.' Some clergymen denounced
the impending sin from their pulpits. One said, that he had
searched the Bible from Genesis to Revelation, and as he
could not find a text that expressly rebuked that enormity,
he was confirmed in a previous opinion that it was included
in all general denunciations of sin! he said that dancing was

one of the most offensive of all the rites of those savage nations
that were under the immediate and visible government
of the prince of this world; and finally, he referred them to
the church documents, those precious records of the piety,
and wisdom, and faithfulness of their ancestors; and they
would there find a rule which prohibited any church member
from “frequenting, or being present at, a ball, or dance, or
frolic, or any such assembly of Satan,” and they would moreover
find that such transgressions had been repeatedly punished
by expulsion from the church, and exclusion from all
christian ordinances. Some of this gentleman's brethren
contented themselves by using their influence in private
advice and remonstrance; and a few said they could not see
the sin nor the danger of the young people's indulging, with
moderation, in a healthful exercise and innocent recreation
adapted to their season of life; that what the moral and pious
Locke had strenuously advocated, and the excellent Watts
approved, it did not become them to frown upon; but they
should use their efforts in restraining the young people
within the bounds of moderation.

The result was, that our dancing-master obtained a few
schools and one in the village which enjoyed the privilege of
Mrs. Wilson's light. She, filled with alarm, `lifted up her
voice and spared not.' Some of her warmest admirers thought
her clamor had more of valor in it than discretion.

Notwithstanding the violence of the opposition, and perhaps
aided by it, the dancing-school was at length fairly
established, and some of the elderly matrons of the village,
who had considered dances as the orgies of Satan, were heard
to confess that, when properly regulated, they might furnish
an amusement not altogether unsuited to youth, and that
they did not, in point of propriety, suffer by a comparison

with the romps, forfeits, and cushion-dances of their younger
days.

At Mrs. Wilson's instance, two new weekly meetings were
appointed, on the same evenings with the dancing-school;
the one to be a conference in the presence of the young people,
and the other a catechetical lecture for them. These her
daughters were compelled to attend, in spite of the bold and
turbulent opposition of Martha, and the well-concerted artifices
of Elvira.

Elvira expressed her surprise at Jane's patience under
the new dispensation. “To be sure, Jane,” she said, “you
have not the trial that I have, about the dancing-school, for a
poor girl can't expect such accomplishments.—I do so long
to dance! It was in the mazy dance Edward Montreville
first fell in love with Selina;—but then these odious—these
hateful meetings! Oh, I have certainly a natural antipathy
to them; you do not always have to attend them; mother is
ready enough to let you off, when there is any hard job to be
done in the family;—well, much as I hate work, I had rather
work than go to meeting. Tell me honestly, Jane, would
not you like to learn to dance, if you were not obliged to
wear deep mourning, and could afford to pay for it?”

Jane, all used as she was to the coarseness of her cousins,
would sometimes feel the colour come unbidden to her cheeks,
and she felt them glow as she replied, “I learned to dance,
Elvira, during the year I spent at Mrs. Benson's boarding-school.”

“La, is it possible? I never heard you say a word
about it.”

“No,” said Jane; “many things have happened to me
that you never heard me say a word about.”

“Oh! I dare say, Miss Jane. Every body knows your

cold, reserved disposition. My sensibility would destroy me,
if I did not permit it to flow out into a sympathizing bosom.”

“But now, Jane,” said she, shutting the door, and lowering
her voice, “I have hit upon a capital plan to cheat
mother. There is to be a little ball to-night, after the school;
and I have promised Edward Erskine to go with him to it.
For once, Jane, be generous, and lend me a helping-hand. In
the first place, to get rid of the meeting, I am going to put a
flannel round my throat, to tell my mother it is very sore,
and I have a head-ache; and then I shall go to bed; but as
soon as she is well out of the house, I shall get up and dress
me, and wind that pretty wreath of yours, which I'm sure
you will lend me, around my head, and meet Erskine just at
the pear-tree, at the end of the garden. Then, as to the
return, you know you told mother you could not go to
meeting, because you was going to stay with old Phillis, and
I just heard the doctor say, he did not believe she would live
the night through. This is clear luck, what mother would
call providential. At any rate, you know, if she should not
be any worse, you can sit up till 12 o'clock, and I will just
tap at Phillis's bed-room window, and you won't refuse, Jane,
to slip the bolt of the outside door for me.”

Jane told her she could not take part in her projects; but
Elvira, trusting to the impulse of her cousin's good-nature,
adhered to her plan.

Mrs. Wilson was not, on this occasion, so keen-eyed as
usual. She had, that very day, received proposals of marriage
from a broken merchant; and though she had no idea
of hazarding her estates and liberty, she was a good deal fluttered
with what she would fain have believed to be a compliment
to her personal charms. Every thing succeeded to Elvira's
most sanguine expectations. Her mother went to the

conference. Elvira, arrayed in all the finery her own wardrobe
supplied, and crowned with Jane's wreath, went off to
meet her expecting gallant, leaving Jane by the bedside of
Phillis; and there the sweet girl kindly watched alone, till
after the return of the family from the conference, till after
the bell had summoned the household to the evening prayer,
and till after the last lingering sound of fastening doors, windows,
&c., had died away.

The poor old invalid was really in the last extremity; her
breathing grew shorter and more interrupted; her eyes
assumed a fearful stare and glassiness. Jane's fortitude forsook
her, and she ventured to call her aunt, who had but
just entered the room, when the poor creature expired.

In the last struggle she grasped Jane's hand; and as her
fingers released their hold, and the arm fell beside her, Jane
raised it up, and gently laying it across her body, and retaining
the hand for a moment in her own, she said, “Poor
Phillis! how much hard work you have done with this hand,
and how many kindnesses for me. Your troubles are all
over now.”

“You take upon you to say a great deal, Jane,” replied
her aunt. “Phillis did not give me satisfying evidence of a
saving faith.”

“But,” said Jane, as if she did not quite comprehend the
import of her aunt's remark, “Phillis was very faithful over
her little.”

“That's nothing to the purpose, Jane,” answered Mrs.
Wilson.

Jane made no reply, unless the tear she dropped on her
old friend might be deemed one, and Mrs. Wilson added,

“Now, child, you must get the things together, to lay her
out.” Then saying, that Phillis's sickness had been a bill of

cost to her, and quite overlooking her long life of patient and
profitable service, she gave the most sordid directions as to
the selection of provisions for the last wants of the poor menial.
Jane went out of the room to execute her orders.

She had scarcely gone, when Mrs. Wilson heard the window
carefully raised, and some one said, “Here I am, Jane;
go softly and slip the bolt of the west door, and don't for the
world wake the old lady.” By any brighter light than the
dim night lamp that was burning on the hearth, Elvira could
not have mistaken her dark harsh-visaged mother for her fair
cousin. A single glance revealed the truth to Mrs. Wilson.
The moonbeams were playing on the wreath of flowers, and
Edward Erskine, who was known as the ringleader of the
ball-faction, stood beside Elvira. She smothered her rage
for a few moments, and creeping softly to the passage, opened
the door, and admitted the rebel, who followed her to
Phillis's room, saying, “Oh, Jane, you are a dear good soul
for once. I have had an ecstatic time. Never try to persuade
me not to play off a good trick on mother.” By this
time they had arrived at Phillis's room, where Jane had just
entered with a candle in her hand.

Mrs. Wilson turned to her child, who stood confounded with
the sudden detection. “I have caught you,” said she, almost
bursting with rage; “caught you both!” Then seizing the
wreath of flowers, which she seemed to look upon as the
hoisted flag of successful rebellion, she threw it on the floor,
and crushing it with her foot, she grasped the terrified girl,
and pushed her so violently that she fell on the cold body of
the lifeless woman: “and you, viper!” continued the furious
creature, turning to Jane, “is this my reward for warming
you in my bosom? You, with your smooth, hypocritical face,
teaching my child to deceive and abuse me. But you shall

have your reward. You shall see whether I am to be browbeaten
by a dependent child in my own house.”

Jane had often seen her aunt angry, but she had never
witnessed such passion as this, and she was for a moment confounded;
but like a delicate plant that bends to the ground
before a sudden gust of wind, and then is as erect as ever,
she turned to Mrs. Wilson, and said, “Ma'am, I have never
deceived, or aided others to deceive you.”

“I verily believe you lie!” replied her aunt, in a tone of
undiminished fury.

Jane looked to her cousin, who had recoiled from the
cold body of Phillis, and sat in sullen silence on a trunk at
the foot of the bed,—“Elvira,” said she, “you will do me the
justice to tell your mother I had no part in your deception.”
But Elvira, well pleased to have any portion of the storm
averted from her own head, had not generosity enough to interpose
the truth. She therefore compromised with her conscience,
and merely said, “Jane knew I was going.”

“I was sure of it,—I was sure of it; I always knew she
was an artful jade; `still waters run deep;' but she shall be
exposed; the mask shall be stripped from the hypocrite.”

“Aunt,” said Jane, in a voice so sweet, so composed, that
it sounded like the breath of music following the howlings of
an enraged animal; “Aunt, we are in the chamber of death;
and in a little time you, and I, and all of us, shall be as this
poor creature; as you will then wish your soul to be lightened
of all injustice—spare the innocent now; you know I never
deceived you; Elvira knows it: I am willing to bear any
thing it pleases God to lay upon me, but I cannot have my
good name taken, it is all that remains to me.”

This appeal checked Mrs. Wilson for a moment; she
would have replied, but she was interrupted by two colored

women, whom she had sent for, to perform the last offices for
Phillis. She restrained her passion, gave them the necessary
directions, and withdrew to her own room, where, we doubt
not, she was followed by the rebukes of her conscience; for
however neglected and stifled, its `still, small voice' will be
heard in darkness and solitude.

It may seem strange, that Mrs. Wilson should have manifested
such anxiety to throw the blame of this affair on
Jane; but however a parent may seek, by every flattering
unction vanity can devise, to evade the truth, the misconduct
of a child will convey a reproach, and reflect dishonor on the
author of its existence.

Jane and Elvira crept to their beds without exchanging a
single word. Elvira felt some shame at her own meanness;
but levity and selfishness always prevailed in her mind, and
she soon lost all consciousness of realities, and visions of
dances and music and moonlight floated in her brain; sometimes
`a change came o'er the spirit of her dream,' and she
shrunk from a violent grasp, and felt the icy touch of death;
and wherever she turned, a ray from her cousin's mild blue
eye fell upon her, and she could not escape from its silent
reproach. The mother and the daughter might both have
envied the repose of the solitary abused orphan, who possessed
`a peace they could not trouble.' She soon lost all memory
of her aunt's rage and her cousin's injustice, and sunk
into quiet slumbers. In her dream she saw her mother tenderly
smiling on her; and heard again and again the last
words of the old woman: “the Lord bless you, Miss Jane!
the Lord will bless you, for your kindness to old Phillis.”

If Mrs. Wilson had not been blinded by self-love, she
might have learnt an invaluable lesson from the melancholy
results of her own mal-government; but she preferred incurring

every evil, to the relinquishment of one of the prerogatives
of power. Her children, denied the appropriate pleasures
of youth, were driven to sins of a much deeper dye than
those which Mrs. Wilson sought to avoid could have had,
even in her eyes; for surely the very worst effects that ever
were attributed to dancing, or to romance-reading, cannot
equal the secret dislike of a parent's authority, the risings of
the heart against a parent's tyranny, and the falsehood and
meanness that weakness always will employ in the evasion of
power; and than which nothing will more certainly taint
every thing that is pure in the character.

The cool reflection of the morning pointed out to Mrs.
Wilson, as the most discreet, the very line of conduct justice
would have dictated. She knew she could not accuse Jane,
without exposing Elvira, and besides, she did not care to have
it known that her sagacity had been outwitted by these children.
Therefore, though she appeared at breakfast more
sulky and unreasonable than usual, she took no notice of the
transactions of the preceding night, and they remained secret
to all but the actors in them; except that we have reason to
believe, from Mr. Lloyd's increased attention to Jane, shortly
after, that they had been faithfully transmitted to him by
Mary Hull, the balm of whose sympathy it cannot be deemed
wonderful our little solitary should seek.

6. CHAPTER VI.

There is nothing in New England so eagerly sought for, or
so highly prized by all classes of people, as the advantages of
education. A farmer and his wife will deny themselves all
other benefits that might result from the gains that have accrued
to them from a summer of self-denial and toil, to give
their children the privilege of a grammar-school during the
winter. The public, or as they are called, the town-schools,
are open to the child of the poorest laborer. As knowledge
is one of the best helps and most certain securities to virtue,
we doubtless owe a great portion of the morality of this blessed
region, where there are no dark corners of ignorance, to these
wise institutions of our pious ancestors.

In the fall subsequent to the events we have recorded, a
school had been opened in the village of —, of a higher
and more expensive order, than is common in a country town.
Every mouth was filled with praises of the new teacher, and
with promises and expectations of the knowledge to be
derived from this newly opened fountain; all was bustle and
preparation among the young companions of Martha and Elvira
for the school; for Martha, though beyond the usual

school-going age, was to complete her education at the new
seminary.

The dancing-school had passed without a sigh of regret
from Jane; but now she felt severely her privation. Her
watchful friend, Mary Hull, remarked the melancholy look
that was unheeded at her aunt's; and she inquired of Jane,
“Why she was so downcast?”

“Ah, Mary!” she replied, “it is a long time since I have
felt the merry spirit which the wise man says, is `medicine
to the heart.”'

“That's true, Jane; but then there's nobody, that is,
there's nobody that has so little reason for it as you have,
that has a more cheerful look.”

“I have great reason to be cheerful, Mary, in token of
gratitude for my kind friends here; and,” added she, taking
Mr. Lloyd's infant, who playfully extended her arms to her,
“you and I are too young, Rebecca, to be very sad.” The
child felt the tear that dewed the cheek to which she was
pressed, and looking into Jane's face, with instinctive sympathy,
burst into tears. Mr. Lloyd entered at this moment,
and Jane hastily replacing the child in Mary Hull's lap, and
tying on her hat, bade them farewell.

Mr. Lloyd asked for some explanation. Mary believed
nothing particular had happened. “But,” she said, “the
poor girl's spirit wearies with the life she leads; it's a chore
to live with Mrs. Wilson—a great change from a home and
mother, to such a work-house and such a task-woman.”

Mr. Lloyd had often regretted, that it was so little in his
power to benefit Jane. The school occurred to him; and as
nothing was more improbable than that Mrs. Wilson would,
herself, incur the expense of Jane's attendance, he consulted
with Mary as to the best mode of doing it himself, without

provoking Mrs. Wilson's opposition, or offending her pride.
A few days after, when the agent for the school presented the
subscription list to Mrs. Wilson for her signature, she saw
there, to her utter astonishment, Jane Elton's name. The
agent handed her an explanatory note from Mr. Lloyd, in
which he said, “that as it had been customary to send one
person from the house he now occupied to the `subscription
school,' he had taken the liberty to continue the custom. He
hoped the measure would meet with Mrs. Wilson's approbation,
without which it could not go into effect.”

Mrs. Wilson, at first, said it was impossible; she could
not spare Jane; but afterwards, she consented to take it into
consideration. The moment the man had shut the door, she
turned to Jane, and misunderstanding the flush of pleasure
that brightened her usually pale face, she exclaimed, “And
so, Miss, this is one of your plans to slip your neck out of the
yoke of duty.”

Jane said she had nothing to do with the plan; but she
trusted her aunt would not oblige her to lose such a golden
opportunity of advantage. Mrs. Wilson made various objections,
and Jane skilfully obviated them all. At last she
said, “There would be a piece of linen to make up for David,
and that put it quite out of the question, for,” said she, “I
shall not take the girls from their studies; and even you,
Miss Jane, will probably have the grace to think my time
more precious than yours.”

“Well, aunt,” said Jane, with a smile so sweet, that even
Mrs. Wilson could not entirely resist its influence, “if I will
get the linen made by witch or fairy, may I go?”

“Why, yes,” replied her aunt; “as you cannot get it
made without witches or fairies, I may safely say you may.”

Jane's reliance was on kindness more potent than magic;

and that very evening, with the light-bounding step of hope,
she went to her friend Mary's, where, after having made her
acknowledgments to Mr. Lloyd with the grace of earnestness
and sincerity, she revealed to Mary the only obstacle
that now opposed her wishes. Mary at once, as Jane expected,
offered to make the linen for her; and Jane, affectionately
thanking her, said, she was sure her aunt would be satisfied,
for she had often heard her say, “Mary Hull was the
best needlewoman in the county.”

Mrs. Wilson had seen Jane so uniformly flexible and submissive
to her wilful administration, and in matters she
deemed of vastly more consequence than six months' schooling,
that she was all astonishment to behold her now so persevering
in her resolution to accomplish her purpose. But
Jane's and Mrs. Wilson's estimate of the importance of any
given object was very different. The same fortitude that enabled
Jane to bear, silently and patiently, the “oppressor's
wrong,” nerved her courage in the attainment of a good end.

Mrs. Wilson had no longer any pretence to oppose Jane's
wishes; and the following day she took her place, with her
cousins, at Mr. Evertson's school. Her education had been
very much advanced for her years; so that, though four
years younger than Martha Wilson, she was, after a very
careful examination by the teacher, classed with her. This
was a severe mortification to Martha's pride; she seemed to
feel her cousin's equality an insult to herself, and when she
reported the circumstance to her mother, she said, she believed
it was all owing to Jane's soft answers and pretty face;
or “may be the quaker, who takes such a mighty fancy to
Jane, has bribed Mr. Evertson.”

“Very likely, very likely,” answered her mother. “It
seems as if every body took that child's part against us.”

Jane, once more placed on even ground with her companions,
was like a spring relieved from a pressure. She entered
on her new pursuits with a vigor that baffled the mean attempts
of the family at home to impede or hinder her course.
She was not a genius, but she had that eager assiduity, that
“patient attention,” to which the greatest of philosophers attributed
the success which has been the envy and admiration
of the world. There was a perpetual sunshine in her face,
that delighted her patron. He had thought nothing could be
more interesting than Jane's pensive, dejected expression;
but he now felt, that it was beautiful as well as natural for
the young plant to expand its leaves to the bright rays of
the sun, and to rejoice in its beams. Mary Hull was heard
to say, quite as often as the beauty of the expression would
justify, “the Lord be thanked, Jane once more wears the
cheerfulness of countenance that betokens a heart in prosperity.”

Double duties were laid on Jane at home, but she won
her way through them. The strict rule of her aunt's house
did not allow her to “watch with the constellations,” but she
“made acquaintance with the gray dawn,” and learnt by
“employing them well,” (the mode recommended by Elizabeth
Smith,) the value of minutes as well as hours. The bad
envied her progress, the stupid were amazed at it, and the
generous delighted with it. She went, rejoicing on her way,
far before her cousins, who, stung by her manifest superiority,
made unwonted exertions; and Martha might have fairly
competed with her for the prizes that were to be given, had
she not often been confused and obstructed by the perversities
of her temper.

The winter and the spring winged their rapid flight. The
end of the term, which was to close with an exhibition, approached.

The note of busy preparation was heard in every
dwelling in the village of —. We doubt if the expectation
of the tournament at Ashby de la Zouche excited a
greater sensation among knights-templars, Norman lords, and
Saxon `churls,' than the anticipation of the exhibition produced
upon the young people of —. Labor and skill
were employed and exhausted in preparations for the event.
One day was allotted for the examination of the scholars, and
the distribution of prizes for the exhibition, during which the
young men and boys were to display those powers that were
developing for the pulpit, and the bar, and the political
harangue. The young ladies were with obvious and singular
propriety excluded from any part in the exhibition, except
that on the first drawing aside, (for they did not know enough
of the scenic art to draw up the curtain,) the prize composition
was to be read by the writer of it.

The old and the young seemed alike interested in promoting
the glories of the day. The part of a king, from one of
Miss Moore's Sacred Dramas, was to be enacted, and there
was a general assembly of the girls of the village to fit his
royal trappings. A purple shawl was converted by a little
girl of ready invention into a royal robe of Tyrian dye. The
crown blazed with jewelry, which to too curious scrutiny appeared
to be not diamonds, but paste; not gold, but gold-leaf,
and gold beads; of which fashionable New England necklace,
as tradition goes, there were not less than sixty strings, lent
for the occasion by the kind old ladies of the village. An
antiquated belle who had once flourished in the capital, completed
the decoration of the crown by four nodding ostrich
plumes, whose `bend did certainly awe the world' of —.
There might have been some want of congruity in the regalia,

but this was not marked by the critics of —, as not one
of the republican audience had ever seen a real crown.

A meeting was called of the trustees of the school, and
the meeting-house (for thus in the land of the Puritans the
churches are still named,) was assigned as the place of exhibition.
In order not to invade the seriousness of the sanctuary,
the pieces to be spoken were all to be of a moral or
religious character. Instrumental music, notwithstanding the
celebrations of Independence in the same holy place were
pleaded as a precedent, was rigorously forbidden. The
arrangements were made according to these decrees, from
which there was no appeal, and neither, as usually happens
with inevitable evils, was there much dissatisfaction. One of
the boys remarked, that he wondered the deacons (three of
the trustees were deacons), did not stop the birds from singing,
and the sun from shining, and all such gay sounds and
sights. Oh that those, who throw a pall over the innocent
pleasures of life, and give, in the eye of the young, to religion
a dark and gloomy aspect, would learn some lessons of theology
from the joyous light of the sun, and the merry carol
of the birds!

A floor was laid over the tops of the pews, which was
covered by a carpet lent by the kind Mr. Lloyd. A chair, a
present from Queen Anne to the first missionary to the Housatonic
Indians, and which, like some other royal gifts, had
cost more than it came to, in its journey from the coast to
the mountainous interior, furnished a very respectable throne,
less mutable than some that have been filled by real kings,
for it remained a fixture in the middle of the stage, while
kings were deposed and kingdoms overthrown. Curtains, of
divers colors and figures, were drawn in a cunningly devised
manner, from one end of the church to the other.

The day of examination came, and our deserving young
heroine was crowned with honours, which she merited so well,
and bore so meekly, that she had the sympathy of the whole
school—except that (for the truth must be told) of her envious
cousins. When the prizes for arithmetic, grammar,
geography, history, and philosophy were, one after another,
in obedience to the award of the examiners, delivered to
Jane by her gratified master, Martha Wilson burst into tears
of spite and mortification, and Elvira whispered to the young
lady next her, “She may have her triumph now, but I will
have one worth a hundred prizes to-morrow, for I am sure
that my composition will be preferred to hers.”

To add the zest of curiosity and surprise to the exhibition,
it had been determined that the writer of the successful
piece should not be known till the withdrawing of the curtain
disclosed the secret. The long expected day arrived. One
would have thought, from the wagons and chaises that poured
in from the neighbouring towns, that a cattle show, or a hanging,
or some such “merry-making matter,” was going on in
the village of —. The church was filled at an early
hour; and pews, aisles, and galleries crowded as we have
seen a less holy place at the first appearance of a foreign
actor. The teacher and the clergyman were in the pulpit;
the scholars ranged on benches at the opposite extremities of
the stage; the crowd was hushed into reverent stillness while
the clergyman commenced the exercises of the day by an appropriate
prayer. The curtains were hardly closed, before
they were again withdrawn, and the eager eyes of the assembly
fell on Elvira. A shadow of disappointment might have
been seen flitting across Mr. Lloyd's face at this moment,
while Mary Hull, who sat in a corner of the gallery, half
rose from her seat, sat down again, tied and untied her bonnet,

and, in short, manifested indubitable signs of disappointment
and vexation; signs, that in more charitable eyes than
Mrs. Wilson's certainly would have gone against the obnoxious
doctrine of “perfection.” Elvira was seated on the
throne, ambitiously arrayed in a bright scarlet Canton crape
frock, and a white sarcenet scarf fantastically thrown over
her shoulders. Her hair, in imitation of some favourite
heroine, flowed in ringlets over her neck, excepting a single
braid, with which, as she fancied, “à la Grecque,” she had
encompassed her brow; and, to add to this confusion of the
classical and the pastoral orders, instead of the crescent of
Diana in the model, she had bound her braid with blue glass
beads.

“Who is that? who is that?” was whispered from one to
another.

“The rich widow Wilson's daughter,” the strangers were
answered.

Mrs. Wilson, whose maternal pride was swollen by the
consciousness of triumph over Jane, nodded and whispered to
all within her hearing, “My daughter, sir—my daughter,
ma'am; you see by the bill, the prize composition is to be
spoken by the writer of it.”

Elvira rose and advanced. She had requested that she
might speak instead of reading her piece, and she spouted it
with all the airs and graces of a self-elected heroine. When
she dropped her courtesy, and returned to her companions,
her usually high colour was heightened by the pride of success,
and the pleasure of display. Some were heard to say,
“She is a beauty;” while others shook their heads, and observed,
“The young lady must have great talents to write
such a piece, but she looked too bold to please them.”

Before the busy hum of comment had died away, an old

man, with a bald head, a keen eye, and a very good-humoured
face, rose and said, “he would make bold to speak a word;
bashfulness was suitable to youth, but was not necessary to
gray hairs: he was kind o' loath to spoil a young body's
pleasure, but he must own he did not like to see so much
flourish in borrowed plumes; that, if he read the notice right,
the young woman was to speak a piece of her own framing;
he had no fault to find with the speaking; she spoke as smart
as a lawyer; but he knew them words as well as the catechism,
and if the schoolmaster or the minister would please
to walk to his house, which was hard by, they might read
them out of an old Boston newspaper, that his woman, who
had been dead ten years come Independence, had pasted up
by the side of his bed to keep off the rheumatis.”

The old man sat down; and Mr. Evertson, who had all
along been a little suspicious of foul play, begged the patience
of the audience, while he himself could make the necessary
comparison. Mrs. Wilson, conscious of the possession of a
file of old Boston papers, and well knowing the plagiary was
but too probable, fidgeted from one side of the pew to the
other; and the conscience-stricken girl, on the pretence of
being seized with a violent toothache, left the church.

The teacher soon returned, and was very sorry to be
obliged to say, that the result of the investigation had been
unfavourable to the young lady's integrity, as the piece had,
undoubtedly, been copied, verbatim, from the original essay
in the Boston paper.

“He hoped his school would suffer no discredit from the
fault of an individual. He should now, though the young
lady had remonstrated against being brought forward under
such circumstances, insist on the composition being read
which had been pronounced next best to Miss Wilson's, and

which, he could assure the audience, was, unquestionably,
original.”

The curtain was once more withdrawn, and discovered
Jane seated on the throne, looking like the “meek usurper,”
reluctant to receive the greatness that was thrust upon her.
She presented a striking contrast to the deposed sovereign.
She was dressed in a plain black silk frock, and a neatly
plaited muslin vandyke; her rich light brown hair was parted
on her forehead, and confined by a handsome comb, around
which one of her young friends had twisted an “od'rous
chaplet of sweet summer buds.” She advanced with so embarrassed
an air, that even Mary Hull thought her triumph
cost more than it was worth. As she unrolled the scroll she
held in her hand, she ventured once to raise her eyes; she
saw but one face among all the multitude—the approving,
encouraging smile of her kind patron met her timid glance,
and emboldened her to proceed, which she did, in a low and
faltering voice, that certainly lent no grace, but the grace of
modesty, to the composition. The subject was gratitude, and
the remarks, made on the virtue, were such as could only
come from one whose heart was warmed by its glow. Mr.
Lloyd felt the delicate praise. Mrs. Wilson affected to appropriate
it to herself. She whispered to her next neighbour,
“It is easy to write about gratitude; but I am sure her
conduct is unthankful enough.”

As Jane returned to her seat, her face brightened with
the relief of having got through. Edward Erskine exclaimed
to the young man next him, “By Jove, it is the most elegant
composition I ever heard from a girl. Jane Elton has certainly
grown very handsome.”

“Yes,” replied his friend; “I always thought her pretty,
but you prefer her cousin.”

“I did prefer her cousin,” answered Erskine; “but I

never noticed Jane much before; she is but a child, and she
has always looked so pale and so sad since the change in her
family. You know I have no fancy for solemn looks. Elvira
is certainly handsome—very handsome; she is a cheating
little devil; but, for all that, she is gay, and spirited, and
amusing. It is enough to make one give one's self to little
artifices and deceits to live with such a stern, churlish woman
as Mrs. Wilson. The girl has infinite ingenuity in cheating
her mother, and her pretty face covers a multitude of faults.”

“So I should think,” replied his friend, “from the character
you have given her. You will hardly applaud the deceits
that have led to the disgrace of this morning.”

“Oh, no!” answered Erskine; “but I am sorry for her
mortification.”

The exhibition proceeded; but as our heroine had no further
concern with it, neither have we; except to say, that it
was equally honourable to the preceptor and pupils. The
paraphernalia of the king was exceedingly admired, and some
were heard to observe (very justly), that they did not believe
Solomon, in all his glory, was arrayed like him!

Jane's situation, at her aunt's, was rendered more painful
than ever, from the events of the school and the exhibition.
Mrs. Wilson treated her with every species of vexatious unkindness.
In vain Jane tried, by her usefulness to her aunt
to win her favour, and by the most patient obedience to her
unreasonable commands, by silent uncomplaining submission,
to soothe her into kindness. It was all in vain; her aunt was
more oppressive than ever, Martha more rude, and Elvira
more tormenting. It was not hearing her called “the just,”
that provoked their hatred; but it was the keen and most
disagreeable feeling of self-reproach that stung them, when
the light of her goodness fell upon their evil deeds: it was
the “daily beauty of her life that made them ugly.”

7. CHAPTER VII.

Jane hoped for some favourable change in her condition, or
some slight alleviation of it, from the visit of David Wilson,
who had just arrived from college, to pass a six-weeks' vacation
with his family. At first, he seemed to admire his
cousin; and partly to gratify a passing fancy, and partly
from opposition to his mother and sisters, he treated her with
particular attention. Jane was grateful, and returned his
kindness with frankness and affection. But she was soon
obliged, by the freedom of his manners, to treat him with reserve.
His pride was wounded, and he joined the family
league against her. He was a headstrong youth of eighteen;
his passions had been curbed by the authority of his mother,
but never tamed; and now that he was beyond her reach, he
was continually falling into some excess; almost always in
disgrace at college, and never in favour.

Mr. Lloyd was made acquainted with the embarrassments
in Jane's condition, by Mary Hull. He would have rejoiced
to have offered Jane a home, but he had no right to interfere;
he was a stranger, and he well knew that Mrs. Wilson would

not consent to any arrangement that would deprive her of
Jane's ill-requited services,—such services as money could
not purchase.

It was, too, about this period, that Mr. Lloyd went, for
the first time, to visit Philadelphia. Jane had passed a day
of unusual exertion, and just at the close of it she obtained
her aunt's reluctant leave to pay a visit to Mary Hull. It
was a soft summer evening: the valley reposed in deep shadow;
the sun was sinking behind the western mountains, tinging
the light clouds with a smiling farewell ray, and his last
beams lingering on the summits of the eastern mountain, as
if “parting were sweet sorrow.” Jane's spirits rose elastic,
as she breathed the open air; she felt like one who has just
issued from a close, pent-up, sick room, and inspires the fresh
pure breath of morning; she was gayly tripping along, sending
an involuntary response to the last notes of the birds
that were loitering on “bush and brake,” when Edward Erskine
joined her; she had often seen him at her aunt's, but,
regarding him as the companion of her cousins, she had
scarcely noticed him, or had been noticed by him. He joined
her, saying, “It is almost too late to be abroad without a
companion.”

“I am used,” replied Jane, “to be without a companion,
and I do not need one.”

“But, I hope you do not object to one? It would be one
of the miseries of human life, to see such a girl as Jane
Elton walking alone, and not be permitted to join her.”

“Sir?” said Jane, confounded by Edward's unexpected
gallantry.

Abashed by her simplicity, he replied, “that he was going
to walk, and should be very happy to attend her.”

Jane felt kindness, though she knew not how to receive

gallantry. She thanked him, and they walked on together.
When Edward parted from her, he wondered he had never
noticed before how very interesting she was, “and what a
sweet expression she has when she smiles; and, oh!” added
he, with a rapture quite excusable in a young man of twenty,
“her eye is in itself a soul.”

“Jane,” said Mary Hull to her, as she entered her room,
you look as bright as a May morning, and I have that to tell
you, that will make you yet brighter. Mr. Evertson has been
here, inquiring for Mr. Lloyd. I had my surmises, that it
was something about you, and though Mr. Lloyd was gone, I
was determined to find out; and so I made bold to break
the ice, and say something about the exhibition, and how
much Mr. Lloyd was pleased with the school, &c., &c.—and
then he said, he was quite disappointed to find Mr. Lloyd
gone; he wanted to consult him about a matter of great importance
to himself and to you. Mr. Lloyd was so kind, he
said, and had shown such an interest in the school, that he
did not like to take any important step without consulting
him; and then he spoke very handsomely of those elegant
globes that Mr. Lloyd presented to the school. He said,
his subscription was so much enlarged, that he must engage
an assistant; but, as he wished to purchase some maps, he
must get one who could furnish, at least, one hundred dollars.
His sick wife and large family, he said, consumed nearly all
his profits; and last, and best of all, Jane, he said, that you
was the person he should prefer of all others for an assistant.”

“Me!” exclaimed Jane.

“Yes, my dear child, you. I told him you was not quite
fifteen; but he said, you knew more than most young women

of twenty, and almost all the school loved and respected
you.”

“But, Mary, Mary,” and the bright flush of pleasure died
away as she spoke, “where am I to get a hundred dollars?”

“Mr. Lloyd,” answered Mary, “I know would furnish
it.”

“No, Mary,” replied Jane, after a few moments' consideration,
“I never can consent to that.”

“But why?” said Mary. “Mr. Lloyd spends all his
money in doing good.”

Jane could not tell why, but she felt that it was not delicate
to incur such an obligation. She merely said, “Mr.
Lloyd's means are well employed. If any man does, he certainly
will, hear those blessed words, `I was hungry and ye
fed me, naked and ye clothed me, sick and in prison, and ye
visited me.”'

“I do not eat the bread of idleness, Mary; I think I
earn all my aunt gives me; and I am not very unhappy
there; indeed, I am seldom unhappy. I cannot tell how it
it, but I am used to their ways. I am always busy, and have
not time to dwell on their unkindness; it passes me like the
tempest from which I am sheltered; and when I feel my
temper rising, I remember who it is that has placed me in
the fiery furnace, and I feel, Mary, strengthened and peaceful
as if an angel were really walking beside me.”

“Surely,” said Mary, as if but thinking aloud, “The
kingdom is come in this dear child's heart.”

Both were silent for a few moments. Jane was making a
strong mental effort to subdue that longing after liberty, that
lurks in every heart. Habitual discipline had rendered it
comparatively easy for her to restrain her wishes. After a
short struggle, she said, with a smile, “I am sure of one thing,

my dear, kind Mary, I shall never lose an opportunity of advantage,
while I have such a watchful friend as you are, on
the look-out for me. Oh! how much have I to be grateful
for! I had no reason to expect such favor from Mr. Evertson.
Every one, out of my aunt's family, is kind to me; I
have no right to repine at the trials I have there; they are,
no doubt, necessary to me. Mary, I sometimes feel the rising
of a pride in my heart, that I am sure needs all these
lessons of humility; and sometimes I feel, that I might be
easily tempted to do wrong—to indulge an indolent disposition,
for which you often reproved me; but I am compelled
to exertion, by necessity as well as a sense of duty. It is
good for me to bear this yoke in my youth.”

“No doubt, no doubt, my dear child; but then you know
if there is a way of escape opened to you it would be but a
tempting of Providence not to avail yourself of it. It is right
to endure necessary evils with patience, but I know no rule
that forbids your getting rid of them, if you can.” Mary
Hull was not a woman to leave any stone unturned, when she
had a certain benefit in view for her favourite. “Now, dear
Jane,” said she, “I have one more plan to propose to you,
and though it will cost you some pain, I think you will finally
see it in the same light that I do. I always thought it was
not for nothing Providence moved the hearts of the creditors
to spare you all your dear mother's clothes, seeing she had a
good many that could not be called necessary; nor was it
a blind chance that raised you up such a friend as Mr. Lloyd
in a stranger. Now, if you will consent to it, I will undertake
to dispose of the articles Mr. Lloyd sent to you, and
your mother's lace and shawls, and all the little nick-nacks
she left; it shall go hard but I will raise a hundred dollars.”

“But, Mary,” said Jane, wishing, perhaps, to conceal from

herself even the involuntary reluctance she felt to the proposal,
“Aunt Wilson will never consent to it.”

“The consent that is not asked,” replied Mary, “cannot
be refused. It is but speaking to Mr. Evertson, and he will
keep our counsel, for he is not a talking body, and when all
is ready, it will be time enough, not to ask Mrs. Wilson's
leave, but to tell her your plans; you owe her nothing, my
child, unless it be for keeping the furnace hot that purifies
the gold. I would not make you discontented with your situation,
but I cannot bear to see your mind as well as your
body in slavery.”

Mary's long harangue had given Jane a moment for reflection,
and she now saw the obvious benefits to result from the
adoption of her judicious friend's plan. The real sorrows
that had shaded her short life, had taught her not to waste
her sensibility on trifles. She doubtless felt it to be very
painful to part with any memorials of her mother, but the
moment she was convinced it was right and best she should
do so, she consented, and cheerfully, to the arrangement.
Mary entered immediately upon the execution of her plan.

Those who have been accustomed to use, and to waste,
thousands, will smile with contempt at the difficulty of raising
a hundred dollars. But let those persons be reduced to
want so mean a sum, and they will cease to laugh at the
obstacles in the way of getting it. Certain it is, that Mary,
anxious and assiduous, spent four weeks in industrious application
to those whom she thought most likely to be purchasers
in the confined market of—. The necessity of secrecy
increased the difficulty of the transaction; but finally, zeal
and perseverance mastered every obstacle, and Mary, with
sparkling eyes, and a face that smiled all over in spite of its habitual
sobriety, put Jane in possession of the hundred dollars.

“This is indeed manna in the wilderness,” said Jane, as she
received it, “but, dear Mary, I am not the less thankful to
you for your exertions for me.”

“My child you are right,” replied Mary; “thanks should
first ascend to Heaven, and then they are very apt to descend
in heavenly grace upon the feeble instrument. But something
seems to trouble you.”

“I am troubled,” answered Jane; “I fear, Mary, this sum
cannot all have come from the articles you sold; you have
added some of your earnings.”

“No, my dear child; some, and all of my earnings, would
I gladly give to you, but you know my poor blind sister takes
all I can earn; while God blesses me with health, she shall
never want. The town has offered to take her off my hands,
as they call it, but this would be a crying shame to me; and
besides,” she added smiling, “I can't spare her, for it is more
pleasant working for her than for myself. Thanks to Mr.
Lloyd, she is now placed in a better situation than I could
afford for her. No, Jane, the money is all yours; I have
told Mr. Evertson, and you are to enter the school on Monday,
and I have engaged a place for you at Mrs. Harvey's,
who will be as kind as a mother to you. Between now and
Monday you will have time to acquaint your aunt with the
fortune you have come to, and to shed all the tears that are
necessary on this woful occasion!”

Jane had now nothing to do but to communicate these
arrangements; but so much did she dread the tempest she
knew the intelligence would produce, that she suffered the day
to wear away without opening her lips on the subject. The
next day arrived; the time of emancipation was so near, she
felt her spirits rise equal to the disagreeable task. The family
were assembled in the `dwelling room;' Mrs. Wilson was

engaged in casting up with her son David some of his college
accounts, a kind of business that never increased her good
humour. Martha and Elvira were seated at a window, in a
warm altercation about the piece of work on which they were
sewing; the point of controversy seemed to be—to which the
mother had assigned the task of finishing it. The two
younger children were sitting on little chairs near their mother,
learning a long lesson in the `Assembly's Catechism,'
and every now and then crying out—“Please to speak to
David, ma'am, he is pinching me;”—“David pulled my hair,
ma'am.” The complainants either received no notice, or an
angry rebuke from the mother. Jane was quietly sewing,
and mentally resolving that she would speak on the dreaded
subject the moment her aunt had finished the business at
which she was engaged. Mrs. Wilson's temper became so
much ruffled that she could not understand the accounts; so
shuffling the papers altogether into her desk, and turning the
key, she said angrily to her son, `her eldest hope,' “You will
please to bear in mind, sir, that all these extravagant bills
are charged to you, and shall come out of your portion—not
a cent of them will I ever pay.”

This did not seem to be a very propitious moment for
Jane's communication, but she dreaded it so much, that she
felt impatient to have it off her mind, and laying down her
work, she was fearfully beginning, when she was interrupted
by a gentle tap at the door. A mean-looking woman entered,
who bore the marks of poverty, and sorrow, and sickness.
She had a pale, half-starved infant in her arms, and two other
little ragged children with her, that she had very considerately
left at the outer door. She curtsied very humbly to
the lady of the house—`hoped no offence'—she had a little
business with Miss Wilson—she believed Miss Wilson had

forgotten her, it was no wonder—she did not blame her,
sickness and trouble made great changes. Mrs. Wilson either
did not, or affected not to recognize her. She was aware
that old acquaintance might create a claim upon her charity,
and she did not seem well pleased when Jane, who sat near,
pushed a chair forward for the poor woman, into which she
sunk, as it appeared, from utter inability to stand.

“Who do you say you are?” said Mrs. Wilson, after embarrassing
the woman by an unfeeling stare.

“I did not say, ma'am, for I thought, may be, when you
looked at me so severe, you would know me.”

“Let me take your baby, while you rest a little,” said
Jane.

“Oh miss, he is not fit for you to take, he has had a dreadful
spell with the whooping-cough and the measles, and they
have left him kind-o' sore and rickety; he has not looked so
chirk as he does to-day since we left Buffalo.” Jane persisted
in her kind offer, and the woman turned again to Mrs.
Wilson—“Can't you call to mind, ma'am, Polly Harris, that
lived five years at your brother Squire Elton's?”

“Yes, yes, I recollect you now; but you married and
went away; and people should get their victuals where they
do their work.”

“I did not come to beg,” replied the woman.

“That may be,” said Mrs. Wilson; “but it is a very poor
calculation for the people that move into the new countries
to come back upon us as soon as they meet with any trouble.
I wonder our Select Men don't take it in hand.”

“Ah! ma'am!” said the woman, “I guess you was never
among strangers; never knew what it was to long to see your
own people. Oh it is a heart-sickness, that seems to wear
away life!”

“Whether I was, or was not, I don't know what that signifies
to you; I should be glad to know what your business
is with me, if you have any, which I very much doubt.”

“I am afraid, ma'am, you will not see fit to make it your
business,” said the poor woman; and she sighed deeply, and
hesitated, as if she was discouraged from proceeding, but the
piteous condition of her children stimulated her courage.
“Well, ma'am, to begin with the beginning of my troubles,
as I was saying, I lived five years with your brother.”

“Troubles!” exclaimed Mrs. Wilson, “you had an easy
life enough of it there; you was always as plump as a partridge,
and your cheeks as red as a rose!”

“I had nothing to complain of but that I could never get
my pay when I wanted it. There never was a nicer woman
than Miss Elton. I believe she saved my life once when I
had the typus fever; but then every body knew she never had
the use of much money; she never seemed to care any thing
about it—when she had any I could always get it; I hope
no offence, but every body knows the Squire was always a
scheming, and seldom had the money ready to pay his just debts.
I am afraid the child tires you, miss;” she continued, turning
to Jane, who had walked to the window to hide the emotion
the woman's remarks produced.

“No,” replied Jane, “I had rather keep it;” and the
woman proceeded—

“It lacked but six weeks of the five years I had lived
at the Squire's, when I was married to Rufus Winthrop.
When Rufus came to a settlement with the Squire, there was
a hundred dollars owing to me. We were expecting to move
off at a great distance, beyond the Genesee, and Rufus
pressed very hard for the payment: the Squire put him off
from time to time: Rufus was a peaceable man, and did not

want to go to law, and so the upshot of it was, the Squire
persuaded him to to take his note—

“That's a very likely story,” said Mrs. Wilson, impatiently
interrupting the narrative—“I don't believe one word of
it.”

“Well, ma'am,” replied Mrs. Winthrop, “I have that
which must convince you;” and she took from an old pocket-book
a small piece of paper, and handed it to Mrs. Wilson—
“there is the identical note, ma'am, you can satisfy yourself.”

Jane cast her eye on the slip of paper in her aunt's hand;
it was but too plainly written in her father's large and singular
character. Mrs. Wilson coldly returned it, saying, in a
moderate tone, “It is as good to you now as a piece of white
paper.”

“Then I have nothing in this world,” said the poor woman,
bursting into tears, “but my poor sick, destitute children.”

“How came you in such a destitute condition?” inquired
Mrs. Wilson, who, now that she saw the woman had no direct
claim on her, was willing to hear her story.

“Oh,” answered the poor creature, “it seemed as if every
thing went cross-grained with us. There was never a couple
went into the new countries with fairer prospects; Rufus had
tugged every way to save enough to buy him a small farm.
When we got to Buffalo, we struck down south, and settled
just on the edge of Lake Erie. We had a yoke of oxen, but
one of them was pretty much beat out on the road, and died
the very day after we got to our journey's end: there was a
distemper among the cattle the next winter, and we lost the
other ox and our cow. In the spring, Rufus took the long
ague, working out in the swampy ground in wet weather, and

that held him fifteen months; but he had made some clearings,
and we worried through; and for three years we seemed
to be getting along ahead a little. Then we both took the
lake fever: we had neither doctor nor nurse: our nighest
neighbors were two miles off; they were more forehanded
than we, and despert kind, but it was not much they could
do, for they had a large sick family of their own. The fever
threw my poor husband into a slow consumption, and he died,
ma'am, the 20th of last January, and that poor baby was born
the next week after he died. It seemed as if nothing could
kill me, though I have a weakness in my bones 'casioned by
the fever, and distress of mind, that I expect to carry to my
grave with me. Sometimes my children and I would almost
starve to death; but Providence always sent some relief.
Once there was a missionary put up with us; he looked like
a poor body, but he left me two dollars; and once a Roman
Catholic priest that was passing over into Canada, gave me
a gold piece, and that I saved, till I started on my journey.
While my husband was sick, he had great consarn upon his
mind about Squire Elton's note; we had heard rumours like
that he had broke; but Rufus nor I could not believe but
what there would be enough to pay the note, out of all his
grandeur, and so Rufus left it in strict charge with me to
come back as soon as I could after the spring opened. And
so, ma'am, as soon as the roads were a little settled, I pulled
up stakes and came off. My good christian neighbours helped
me up to Buffalo. I have been nine weeks getting from
there, though I was favoured with a great many rides”—

Here Mrs. Wilson interrupted the unfortunate narrator,
saying,—“I cannot see what occasion there was for you to be
nine weeks on the road; I have known persons to go from
Boston to the Falls, and back again, in three weeks.”

“Ah, ma'am!” replied the woman, “there is a sight of
difference between a gentleman riding through the country
for pleasure, with plenty of money in his pocket, and a poor
sickly creature, begging a ride now and then of a few miles,
and then walking for miles with four little children, and one
a baby.”

“Four! your story grows — I thought you had but
three.”

“I have but three, ma'am; I buried my only girl, the
twin to the second boy, at Batavy. She never was hearty,
and the travelling quite overdid her.” The afflicted woman
wiped away the fast gathering tears with a corner of her
apron, and went on. “At Batavy I believe I should have
gived out, but there was a tender-hearted gentleman from the
eastward, going on to see the Falls, and he paid for my passage,
and all my children's, in a return-stage, quite to Genevy.
This was a great relief to my spirits, and easement to the
children's feet; and so after that, we came on pretty well,
and met with a great deal of kindness; but, oh! ma'am, 'tis
a wearisome journey.”

“And here you are,” said Mrs. Wilson; “and I suppose
the town must take care of you.”

“I did not mean to be a burden to the town,” replied the
woman. “If it pleased the Lord to restore my health, and if
I could have got the hundred dollars, I would not have been
a burden to any body. I calculated to hire me a little place,
bought a loom, and turned my hand to weaving—I am a master
weaver, ma'am.”

“I am sorry for you, good woman,” said Mrs. Wilson.
“Here,” said she, after rummaging her pocket and taking out
a reluctant nine-pence; “Here is a `widow's mite' for you.
I can't give you the least encouragement about my brother's

debt. He left nothing but a destitute child that I have had
to support ever since his death.”

“Is that little Jane?” exclaimed the woman, for the first
time recalling to mind the features of our heroine. “Well,”
added she, surveying her delicate person with a mingled expression
of archness and simplicity, “I think it can't have
cost you much to support her, ma'am. I wonder I did not
know you,” she continued, “when you took my baby so
kindly. It was just like you. I used to set a great store by
you. But you have grown so tall, and so handsome; as to
the matter of that, you was always just like a Lon'on doll.”

Jane replaced the child in the mother's lap, and said to
Mrs. Winthrop, “I recollect you perfectly, Polly. You were
very good to me.”

I could not help it, for you was always as pleasant as a
little lamb, and as chipper as a bird; but,” said she, observing
the too evident traces of tears on Jane's cheeks, “I am
sorry if I have touched your feelings about the money. I
never mistrusted that it was you.”

“Do not be uneasy on that account,” replied Jane. “I
am glad I have heard your story, Polly.”

She had listened to the unfortunate woman's history
with the keenest anguish. There is no feeling so near of kin
to remorse as that which a virtuous child suffers frrom the
knowledge of a parent's vices. The injustice of her father
appeared to Jane to have either caused or aggravated every
evil the poor woman had suffered. Each particular was
sharper than a serpent's tooth to our unhappy orphan. She
had not that convenient moral sense, quick to discern and
lament the faults of others, but very dull in the perception of
our own duties. It was the work of an instant with her to
resolve to appropriate her newly acquired treasure to the reparation

of her father's injustice; and with the hasty generosity
of youth, she left the room to execute her purpose.
But, when she took the pocket-book from its hiding-place, and
saw again that which she had looked upon with so much joy,
as the price of liberty and the means of independence, her
heart misgave her; she felt like a prisoner, the doors of
whose prison-house have been thrown open to him, who sees
the inviting world without, and who is called upon, in the
spirit of martyrdom, to close the door, and bar himself from
light and hope. Those who have felt the difficulty of sacrificing
natural and virtuous wishes to strict justice, will pardon
our heroine a few moments' deliberation. She thought
that, as the money had been chiefly the avails of the articles
given her by Mr. Lloyd, it could not be considered as derived
from her father. She thought how much Mary Hull had exerted
herself, and how disappointed she would be; the engagement
with Mr. Evertson occurred to her, and she was
not certain it would be quite right to break it; and, last of
all, she thought, that if her present plans succeeded, it could
not be very long before she might earn enough to cancel the
debt. Jane had not been used to parleying with her duties,
or stifling the voice of conscience; and in a moment the recollection
of her father's dishonesty, and the poor woman's
perishing condition, swept away every selfish consideration.
“Oh, Lord!” she exclaimed, “if I have not compassion on
my fellow-servant, how can I hope for thy pity.”

We would recommend to all persons, placed in similar
circumstances, to all who find almost as many arguments for
the wrong as for the right, to bring to their aid the certain
light of Scripture, and we think they will be altogether persuaded
to be like our heroine, not “saving her bonds.” Sure
we are, that she was never more to be envied than when, at the

sound of the closing of the parlour door, she flew down stairs,
joined Mrs. Winthrop just as she was saying, half sobbing, to
her children, “Come, boys—I am poor now, for my hope is
all gone;” and walking a little distance, till a sharp angle in
the road concealed them from the house, she said, “Polly,
here is a hundred dollars. I know the debt my father owed
you amounts to a good deal more now, but this is all I have,—
take it. It is not probable that I shall ever be able to pay
the rest, but I shall never forget that I owe it.”

Mrs. Winthrop was for a moment dumb with surprise;
then bursting into tears of gratitude and joy, she would have
overwhelmed Jane with thanks, but she stopped her, saying,
“No, Polly, I have only done what was right. I have two
favours to beg of you—say nothing to any body in the world,
of your having received this money from me; and,” added
she, faltering, “do not, again, tell the story of the —” injustice,
she would have said, but the word choked her. “I
mean, do not say, to any one, that my parents did not pay
you.”

“Oh! Miss Jane,” replied the grateful creature, “I'll
mind every thing you tell me, just as much as if it was spoken
to me right out of Heaven.”

And we have reasons to believe, she was quite as faithful
to her promise as could have been expected; for she was
never known to make any communication on the subject, except
that, when some of her rustic neighbours expressed their
surprise at the sudden and inexplicable change in her circumstances,
she would say, “She came by it honestly, and
by the honesty of some people too, who she guessed, though
they did it secretly, would be rewarded openly.” And when
she heard Jane Elton's name mentioned, she would roll up
her eyes and say, “That if every body knew as much as she

did, they would think that girl was an angel upon earth.”
These oracular hints were, perhaps, not quite so much heeded
as Polly expected; at any rate, she was never tempted to
disclose the grounds of her opinion.

Jane had a difficult task in reconciling her friend Mary
to her disappointment. While she felt a secret delight in
the tried rectitude of her favourite, she could not deny herself
the indulgence of a little repining.—“If you had but waited,
Jane, till Mr. Lloyd came home, he would have advanced the
money with all his heart.”

“Yes, but Mary, you must recollect Mr. Lloyd is not to
return these six weeks; and, in the mean time, what was to
become of the poor woman and her starving children? No,
Mary, we must deal justly while we have it in our power. Is
it not your great Mr. Wesley who says, `It is safe to defer
our pleasures, but never to delay our duties?”'

“It seems to me, Jane,” replied Mary, “you pick fruit
from every good tree, no matter whose vineyard it grows in.
Well, I believe you have done right; but I shall tell the
story to Mr. Evertson and Mrs. harvey with a heavy heart.”

“Tell them nothing,” said Jane, “but that I had an
unexpected call for the money, and beg them to mention
nothing of the past, for I will not unnecessarily provoke
aunt Wilson.”

“Jane,” said Mary earnestly, “you must not deny me the
satisfaction of telling how you have laid out the money.”

“No,” replied Jane, “you cannot have that pleasure without
telling why I was obliged thus to lay it out.—Oh,” added
she with more emotion than she had yet shown, “I have
never blamed my father that he left me penniless; had he
left me the inheritance of a good name, I would not have
exchanged it for all the world can give!”

Mary consoled her friend as well as she was able, and then
reluctantly parted from her, to perform her disagreeable duty.
Mr. Evertson was exceedingly disappointed; he said he had
an offer of a very good assistant, who could furnish more
money than he expected from Jane; he had preferred Jane
Elton, for no sum could outweigh her qualifications for the
station he wished her to fill. He was, however, obliged to
her for so promptly informing him of her determination,
as he had not yet sent a refusal to the person who had solicited
the place.

Mrs. Harvey, not content with deploring, which she did
sincerely, that she could not have Jane for an inmate, wondered
what upon earth she could have done with a hundred
dollars! and concluded “that it would be just like Jane Elton,
though it would not be like any body else in the world,
to pay one of her father's old debts with it.” Will not our
readers pardon Mary, if Mrs. Harvey inferred from the smile
of pleasure that brightened her face, that she had sagaciously
guessed the truth? Let that be as it may; all parties promised,
and what is much more extraordinary, preserved secrecy;
and all that was left of Jane's hopes and plans was the consciousness
of having acted right—from right motives. Could
any one have seen the peacefulness of her heart, he would
have pronounced that consciousness a treasure that has no
equivalent.

Thus our horoine, placed in circumstances which would
have made some desperate, and most discontented; by
`keeping her heart with all diligence,' proved that `out of it
are the issues of life;' she was first resigned, and then happy.
She was on an eminence of virtue, to which the conflicts and
irritations of her aunt's family did not reach.

8. CHAPTER VIII.

More than two years glided away without the occurrence of
any incident in the life of our heroine that would be deemed
worthy of record, by any persons less interested in her history
than Mary Hull, or the writer of her simple annals. The
reader shall therefore be allowed to pass over this interval,
with merely a remark, that Jane had improved in mortal and
immortal graces; that the development of her character
seemed to interest and delight Mr. Lloyd almost as much as
the progress of his own child, and that her uniform patience
had acquired for her some influence over the bad passions of
her aunt, whose rough points seemed to be a little worn by
the continual dropping of Jane's virtues.

In this interval, Martha Wilson had made a stolen match
with a tavern-keeper from a neighbouring village, and had removed
from her mother's house, to display her character on a
new stage, and in a worse light.

Elvira, at eighteen, was much the same as at sixteen, except,
that the gayety of her spirits was somewhat checked by
the apprehension (that seemed to have grown of late) that

Edward Erskine's affections, which had been vacillating for
some time between her and her cousin, would finally preponderate
in Jane's favour. It may appear singular, that the
same person should admire both the cousins; but it must be
remembered, that Edward Erskine was not (as our readers
are) admitted behind the scenes; and it must be confessed,
that he had not so nice a moral sense, as we hope they possess.
He neither estimated the purity of Jane's character,
as it deserved to be estimated, nor felt for the faults of Elvira
the dislike they merited. Edward Erskine belonged to
one of the best families in the county of—. His parents
had lost several children in their infancy, and this boy alone
remained to them—to become the sole object of their cares
and fondness. He was naturally what is called `good-hearted,'
which we believe means thoughtlessly kind and unscrupulously
generous. Flattery, and unlimited indulgence made
him vain, selfish, and indolent. These qualities were, however,
somewhat modified by a frank and easy temper, and sheltered
by an uncommonly handsome exterior. Some of his college
companions thought him a genius, for, though he was seldom
caught in the act of studying, he passed through college
without disgrace; this (for he certainly was neither a genius
nor a necromancer) might be attributed in part to an aptness
at learning, and an excellent memory; but chiefly to an
extraordinary facility at appropriating to himself the results
of the labours of others. He lounged through the prescribed
course of law studies, and entered upon his professional
career with considerable éclat. He had a rich and powerful
voice; and it might be said of him, as of the chosen king of
Israel—that `from the shoulders upwards, he was taller and
fairer than any of his brethren.' These are qualifications
never slighted by the vulgar; and which are said to be passports
to ladies' favour. He had too, for we would do him
ample justice, uncommon talents, but not such as we think
would justify the remark often made of him, “that the young
squire was the smartest man in the country.” In short, he
belonged to that large class of persons who are generous, but
not just; affectionate, but not constant; and often kind,
though it would puzzle a casuist to assign to their motives
their just proportions of vanity and benevolence. He had
recently, by the death of his parents, come into the possession
of a handsome estate; and he was accounted the first match
in the county of —.

Mrs. Wilson could not be insensible to the advantages
that she believed might be grasped by Elvira, and she determined
to relax the strict rule of her house, and to join her
assiduities to her daughter's arts, in order to secure the prize.
She was almost as much embarrassed in her manœuvres as
the famous transporter of the fox, the geese, and the corn.
If she opened her doors to young Erskine, to display her
daughter, Jane must be seen too; and though she was sufficiently
ingenious in contriving ways and means of employing
Jane, and securing a clear field for Elvira, Erskine, with the
impatience and perversity of a spoiled child, set a double
value on the pleasure that was denied him.

The affairs of Mrs. Wilson's household were in this train,
when the following conversation occurred between the cousins:—

“If there is a party made to-morrow, to escort the bride,
do you expect to join it, Jane?” said Elvira to her cousin,
with an expression of anxiety that was quite as intelligible as
her question.

“I should like to do so,” replied Jane.

“Ah, that of course,” answered Elvira; “but I did not
ask what you would like, but what you expect.”

“You know, Elvira, I am not sure of obtaining your
mother's permission.”

“For once in your life, Jane, do be content to speak less
like an oracle, and tell me in plain English, whether you expect
to go, if you can obtain mother's permission.”

“In plain English, then, Elvira, yes,” replied Jane, smiling.

“You seem very sure of an invitation,” answered Elvira,
pettishly. Jane's deep blush revealed the truth to her suspicious
cousin, which she did not wish to confess or evade;
and Elvira continued, “I was sure I overheard Edward say
something to you about the ride last night, when you parted
on the steps.” She paused, and then added, her eyes flashing
fire, “Jane, Edward Erskine preferred me once, and in spite
of your arts, he shall prefer me again. Remember, miss, the
fate of lady Euphrasia.”

Jane replied, good naturedly, “I do remember her; but
if her proud and artful character suits me, the poverty and
helplessness of my condition bears a striking resemblance to
the forlorn Amanda's. I trust, however, that my fate will resemble
neither of your heroines, for you cannot expect me,
on account of the honour of being your rival, to be dashed
from a precipice, to point the moral of your story; and I am
very certain of not marrying a lord.”

“Yes, for there is no lord in this vulgar country to
marry; but, with all your affectation of modesty, you aspire
to the highest station within your reach.”

Jane made no reply, and Elvira poured out her spleen in
invectives, which neither abated her own ill humour, nor disturbed
her cousin's equanimity. She was determined to

compass her purposes, and in order to do so, she imparted her
conjectures to her mother, who had become as faithful, as she
was a powerful auxiliary.

In the evening they were all assembled in the parlour.
Edward Erskine entered, and his entrance produced a visible
sensation in every member of the little circle. Mrs. Wilson
dropped half a needleful of stitches on her knitting work,
and gave it to Jane to take them up. Jane seemed to find
the task very difficult; for a little girl, who sat by the working
stand, observed, “Miss Jane, I could take up the stitches
better than you do; you miss them half.”

“Give me my spectacles—I'll do it myself,” said Mrs.
Wilson. “Some people are very easily discomposed.”

It was a warm evening in the latter part of September;
the window was open; Jane retreated to it, and busied herself
in pulling the leaves off a rose-bush. Erskine brought
matters to a crisis by saying, “I called, Mrs. Wilson, to ask
of you the favour of Miss Elton's company to-morrow on the
bridal escort.”

“I am sorry,” replied Mrs. Wilson, “that any young
woman's manners, who is brought up in my house, should authorize
a gentleman to believe she will, of course, ride with
him if asked.”

“I beg your pardon, madam,” replied Edward (for he, at
least, had no fear of the redoubtable Mrs. Wilson), “I have
been so happy as to obtain Miss Elton's consent, subject to
yours.”

“Is it possible!” answered Mrs. Wilson, sneeringly—
“quite an unlooked-for deference from Miss Elton; not unnecessary,
however, for she probably recollected, that to-morrow
is lecture day; and, indifferent as she is to the privilege

of going to meeting, she knows that no pleasures ever prevent
my going.”

“No, madam,” replied Erskine, “the pleasures of others
weigh very light against your duties.”

Before Mrs. Wilson had made up her mind whether or
not to resent the sarcasm, Erskine rose, and joining Jane at
the window, whispered to her, “Rouse your spirit, for heaven's
sake; do not submit to such mean tyranny.”

Jane had recovered her self-possession, and she replied,
smiling, “It is my duty to subdue, not rouse my spirit.”

“Duty!” exclaimed Erskine; “leave all that ridiculous
cant for your aunt: I abhor it. I have your promise, and
your promise to me is surely as binding as your duty to your
aunt.”

“That promise was conditional,” replied Jane, “and it is
no longer in my power to perform it.”

“Nor in your inclination, Miss Elton?”

Jane was not well pleased that Erskine should persevere,
at the risk of involving her with her aunt; and to avoid his
importunity, and her aunt's displeasure, she left the room.
“The girl wants spirit,” said Erskine, mentally; “she is
tame, very tame. It is quite absurd for a girl of seventeen
to talk about duties.”

He was about to take leave, when Mrs. Wilson, who knew
none of the skilful tactics of accomplished manœuverers,
though her clumsy assaults were often as irresistible, said,
“Don't be in such haste, Mr. Erskine. Elvira may go with
you.”

Edward's first impulse was to decline the offer; but he
paused. Elvira was sitting by her mother, and she turned
upon him a look of appeal and admiration; his vanity, which
had been piqued by Jane, was soothed by this tribute, and

he said, “If Miss Wilson is inclined to the party, I will call
for her to-morrow.”

Miss Wilson confessed her inclination with a glow of
pleasure that consoled him for his disappointment.

Elvira made the most of the advantage she had gained.
Mrs. Wilson had of late, though the effort cost her many a
groan, indulged Elvira's passion for dress, in the hope that
the glittering of the bait would attract the prey. In this
calculation she was not mistaken; for, though Erskine affected
a contempt for the distinctions of dress, he had been too
much flattered for his personal charms, to permit him to be
insensible to them; and when he handed Elvira into his gig,
he noticed, with pleasure, that she was the best dressed and
most stylish looking girl in the party. His vanity was still
further gratified, when he overheard his servant say to one of
his fellows, “By George, they are a most noble looking pair!”
Such is the cormorant appetite of vanity, never satisfied with
the quantity, and never nice as to the quality of the food it
devours.

Elvira had penetration enough to detect the weakest points
in the fortress she had to assail; and so skilfully and successfully
did she ply her arts on this triumphant day, that Erskine
scarcely thought of Jane, and we fear not once with
regret.

Poor Jane remained at home, mortified that Edward went
without her, and vexed with herself that she was mortified.
To avoid seeing the party on their return, she went out to
walk, and was deliberating whither to direct her steps, when
she met her friend Mr. Lloyd. “Ah, Jane,” said he, “I just
came on an errand from my saucy little girl; she has succeeded
for the first time to-day in hitching words together, so
as to make quite an intelligible sentence; and she is so much

elated, that she has bid me tell thee she cannot go to sleep
till `dear Jane' has heard her read.”

Jane replied, she “should be glad to hear her;” but with
none of the animation with which she usually entered into
the pleasures of her little friend. Mr. Lloyd was disappointed;
but he thought she had been suffering some domestic
vexation, and they walked on silently.

After a few moments he said, “Quaker as I am, I do not
like a silent meeting;—though I should be used to it, for,
except that I must answer the questions of my Rebecca, and
am expected by thy friend Mary to reply to her praises of
thee, I have not much more occasion for the gift of speech
than the brothers of La Trappe.”

“You forget,” replied Jane, who felt her silence gently
reproached, “that besides all the use you have for that precious
faculty, in persuading the stupid and the obstinate to
adopt your benevolent plans of reform, you sometimes condescend
to employ it in behalf of a very humble young
friend.”

“But that young friend must lay aside her humility so
far as to flatter me with the appearance of listening.”

Jane was a little disconcerted, and Mr. Lloyd did not
seem quite free from embarrassment; but as he had roused
her from her abstractedness, he began to expatiate on the
approach of evening, the charms of that hour when the din of
toil has ceased, and no sound is heard but the sweet sounds
of twilight breathing the music of nature's evening hymn;
he turned his eye to the heavens, which, in their “far blue
arch,” disclosed star after star, and then the constellations in
their brightness. He spoke of the power that formed, and
the wisdom that directed them. Jane was affected by his
devotion; it was a Promethean touch, that infused a soul

into all nature. She listened with delight, and before they
reached the house, her tranquillity was quite restored; and
the child and father were both entirely satisfied with the
pleasure she manifested in the improvement of her little favourite.
But her trials were not over: after the lesson was
past—“Dear Jane,” said Rebecca, “why did not thee go with
the party to-day? I saw them all go past here, and Mr.
Erskine and Elvira were laughing, and I looked out sharp
for thee; would not any body take thee, Jane?”

Jane did what of all other things she would least have
wished to have done—she burst into tears.

The sweet child, whose directness had taken her by surprise,
crept up into her lap, and putting her arms around her
neck, said affectionately, “I am sorry for thee, dear Jane;
don't cry, father would have asked thee, if he had gone.”
Poor Jane hid her blushes and her tears on the bosom of her
kind, but unskilful comforter. She felt the necessity of saying
something; but confessions she could not make, and pretences
she never made.

Mr. Lloyd saw and pitied her confusion: he rose, and
tenderly placing his hand on her head, he said, “My dear
young friend, thou hast wisely and safely guided thy little
bark thus far down the stream of life; be still vigilant and
prudent, and thou wilt glide unharmed through the dangers
that alarm thee.” He then relieved Jane from his presence,
saying, “I am going to my library, and will send Mary to
escort thee home.”

Jane could not have borne a plainer statement of her
case; and though it was very clear that Mr. Lloyd had detected
the lurking weakness of her heart, yet she was soothed
by his figurative mode of insinuating his knowledge and his
counsel. Persons of genuine sensibility possess a certain

tact, that enables them to touch delicate subjects without
giving pain. This touch differs as much from a rude and
unfeeling grasp as does the management of a fine instrument
in the hands of a skilful surgeon, from the mangling and
hacking of a vulgar operator.

Mr. Lloyd had heard the village gossip of Edward Erskine's
divided attentions to the cousins. Nothing that concerned
Jane was uninteresting to him; and he had watched
with eager anxiety the character and conduct of Erskine.
He had never liked the young man; but he thought that he
had probably done him injustice, and he had too fair a mind
to harbour a prejudice. “Perhaps,” he said to himself, “I
have judged him hardly; I am apt to carry my strait-coat
habits into every thing; the young man's extravagant way of
talking, his sacrifices to popularity, and his indolence and
love of pleasure, may all have been exaggerated in my eyes
by their opposition to the strict, sober ways in which I have
been bred; at any rate, I will look upon the bright side.
Jane Elton, pure, excellent as she is, cannot love such a man
as Edward Erskine appears to me to be; and she is too
noble, I am sure, to regard the advantages which excite the
cupidity of her vulgar aunt.”

The result of Mr. Lloyd's investigations was not favourable
to Erskine. Still his faults were so specious, that they
were often mistaken for virtues; and virtues he had, though
none unsullied. There was nothing in his character or history,
as far as Mr. Lloyd could ascertain it, that would give
him a right to interfere with his advice to Jane; but still
he felt as if she was on the brink of a precipice, and he had
no right to warn her of her danger. Perhaps this was a
false delicacy, considering the amount of the risk; but there
are few persons of principle and refinement who do not shrink

from meddling with affairs of the heart. Mr. Lloyd hoped—
believed that Jane would not marry Edward Erskine; but
he did not allow enough for the inexperience of youth, for
the liability of a young lady of seventeen to fall in love; for
the faith that hopes all things, and believes all things—it
wishes to believe.

The fall, the winter, and the spring wore away, and, as
yet, no certain indication appeared of the issue of this, to our
villagers, momentous affair. Edward certainly preferred
Jane, and yet he was more at his ease with Elvira. He could
not but perceive the decided superiority of Jane; but Elvira
made him always think more and better of himself; and this
most agreeable effect of her flatteries and servility reflected
a charm on her. Jane was never less satisfied with herself
than during this harassing period of her life. A new set of
feelings were springing up in her heart, over which she felt
that she had little control. At times, her confidence in Edward
was strong; and then, suddenly, a hasty expression, or
an unpremeditated action, revealed a trait that deformed the
fair proportions of the hero of her imagination. Elvira's continual
projects, and busy rivalry, provoked, at last, a spirit of
competition; which was certainly natural, though wrong; but,
alas! our heroine had infirmities. Who is without them?

In the beginning of the month of June, David Wilson
came from college, involved in debt and in disgrace. His
youthful follies had ripened into vices, and his mother had
no patience, no forbearance for the faults, which she might
have traced to her own mismanagement, but from which she
found a source that relieved her from responsibility. The
following was the close of an altercation, noisy and bitter, between
this mother and son:—“I am ruined, utterly ruined, if
you refuse me the money. Elvira told me you received a

large sum yesterday; and 'tis but one hundred dollars that
I ask for.”

“And I wonder you can have the heart to ask,” replied
Mrs. Wilson, sobbing with passion, not grief; “you have no
feeling; you never had any for my afflictions. It is but two
months, yesterday, since Martha died, and I have no reason
to hope for her she died without repentance.”

“Ha!” replied David, “Elvira told me, that she confessed,
to her husband, her abuse of his children, her love of the
bottle, (which, by the by, every body knew before,) and a
parcel of stuff that, for our sakes, I think she might have kept
to herself.”

“Yes, yes, she did die in a terrible uproar of mind about
some things of that kind; but she had no feeling of her lost
state by nature.”

“Oh, the devil!” grumbled the hopeful son and brother;
“if I had nothing to worry my conscience but my state by
nature, I might get one good night's sleep, instead of lying
from night till morning like a toad under a harrow.”

This comment was either unheard or unheeded by the
mother, and she went on: “David, your extravagance is more
than I can bear. I have been wonderfully supported under
my other trials. If my children, though they are my flesh
and blood, are not elected, the Lord is justified in their destruction,
and I am still. I have done my duty, and I know
not `why tarry His chariot wheels.”'

“It is an easy thing, ma'am,” said David, interrupting
his mother, “to be reconciled to everlasting destruction; but
if your mind is not equally resigned to the temporal ruin of
a child, you must lend me the money.”

“Lend it! You have already spent more than your portion

in riotous living, and I cannot, in conscience, give you
any thing.”

Mrs. Wilson thus put a sudden conclusion to the conversation,
and retreated from the field, like a skilful general,
having exhausted all her ammunition.

As she closed the door, David muttered, “curses on her
conscience; it will never let her do what she is not inclined
to, and always finds a reason to back her inclinations. The
money I must have; if fair means will not obtain it, foul
must.”

9. CHAPTER XI.

It was on the evening of the day on which the conversation
we have related had occurred between young Wilson and his
mother, that Jane, just as she had parted with Erskine, after
an unusually delightful walk, and was entering her aunt's
door, heard her name pronounced in a low voice. She turned,
and saw an old man emerging from behind a projection of the
house. He placed his finger on his lips by way of an admonition
to silence, and said softly to Jane, “For the love of
Heaven, come to my house to-night; you may save life: tell
no one, and come after the family is in bed.”

“But, John, I do not know the way to your house,” replied
Jane, amazed at the strange request.

“You shall have a guide, miss. Don't be afraid; 'tis
not like you to be afraid when there is good to be done; and
I tell you, you may save life; and every one that knows me,
knows I never tell a lie for any body.”

“Well, said Jane, after a moment's pause “if I go, how
shall I find the way?”

“That's what I am afraid will frighten you most of all;

but it must be so. You know where Lucy Willett's grave is,
on the side of the hill, above the river; there you will find
crazy Bet waiting for you. She is a poor cracked body, but
there is nobody I would sooner trust in any trouble; besides,
she is in the secret already, and there is no help for it.”

“But,” said Jane, “may I not get some one else to go
with me?”

“Not for the wide world. Nothing will harm you.”

Jane was about to make some further protestation, when
a sound from the house alarmed the man, and he disappeared
as suddenly as he had appeared.

John was an old man who had been well known to two or
three successive generations in the village. He had not
strength or health for hard labour, but had gained a subsistence
by making baskets, weaving new seats into old chairs, collecting
herbs for “spring beer,” and digging medicinal roots
from the mountains; miscellaneous offices, which are usually
performed by one person, where the great principle of a division
of labour is yet unknown and unnecessary. A disciple of
Gall might, perhaps, have detected in the conformation of the
old man's head, certain indications of a contemplative turn of
mind, and a feeling heart; but, as we are unlearned in that
fashionable science, we shall simply remark, that there was in
the mild cast of his large but sunken eye, and the deep-worn
channels of his face, an expression that would lead an observer
to think he had felt and suffered; that he possessed the
wisdom of reflection, as well as the experience of age; and
that he had been accustomed, in nature's silent and solitary
places to commune with the Author of Nature. He inhabited
a cottage at some distance from the village, but within
the precincts of the town. When the skill of the domestic
leeches was at fault, in the case of a sick cow or a wormy child,

he was called to a consultation; and the efficacy of the simples
he had administered, had sometimes proved so great, as
to induce a suspicion of a mysterious charm. But the superstitious
belief in witches and magic has vanished with the
credulities of other times; and the awe of `John of the
Mountain,' as he was called, or, for brevity's sake, `John
Mountain,' never outlived the period of childhood.

Jane knew that John was honest and kind-hearted, and
particularly well disposed to her, for he had occasionally
brought her a pretty wild-flower, or a basket of berries; and
then he would say, “Ah, Miss Jane, I grow old and forgetful,
but the old man can't forget the kindness that's been done
to him in days past; you was as gay as a lark then. My
poor old bald head! it's almost as bare inside as out; but I
shall never forget the time—it was a sorrowful year, we had
had a hard winter, the snows drifted on the mountains, and
for six weeks I never saw the town, and poor Sarah lying
sick at home; and when I did get out, I came straight to
your mother's, for she had always a pitiful heart, and an open
and full hand too, and she stalked my alms basket full of
provisions. Then you came skipping out of the other room,
with a flannel gown in your hand, and your very eyes laughed
with pleasure, and when you gave it to me, you said, “It is
for your wife, and I sewed every stitch of it, John;” and then
you was not bigger than a poppet, and could not speak plain
yet. When I got home, and told my old woman, she shook
her head, and said, you “was not long for this world;”
but I laughed at her foolishness, and asked her, if the finest
saplings did not live to make the noblest trees? Thanks to
Him that is above, you are alive at this day, and many a
wanderer will yet find shelter under your branches.”

We trust our readers will pardon this digression, and accept

the gratitude of the old man, as a proof that all men's
good deeds are not `written in sand.'

After John's departure, Jane remained for a few moments
where he had left her, ruminating on his strange request,
when her attention was called to a noise in her aunt's sleeping
apartment, and she heard, as she thought, crazy Bet's
voice raised to its highest pitch. She passed hastily through
the passage, and on opening her aunt's door, she beheld a
scene of the greatest confusion. The bed-clothes had been
hastily stripped from the bed and strewed on the floor, and
Bet stood at the open window with the bed in her right hand.
She had, by a sudden exertion of her strength, made an enormous
rent in the well-wove home made tick, and was now
quite leisurely shaking out the few feathers that still adhered
to it. In her left hand she held a broom, which she dexterously
brandished, to defend herself from the interference of
Sukey, the colored servant girl, who stood panic-struck and
motionless; her dread of her mistress's vengeance impelling
her forward, and her fear of the moody maniac operating upon
her locomotive powers, like a Gorgon influence. Her conflicting
fears had not entirely changed her Ethiopian skin, but
they had subtracted her colour in stripes, till she looked like
Robin Hood's willow wand.

“Why did you not stop her?” exclaimed Jane, hastily
passing the girl.

“Stop her, missy? the land's sake! I could as easy stop
a flash of lightning! missy must think me a 'rac'lous creature,
respecting me to hold back such a harricane.”

At Jane's approach Bet dropped the broom, and threw
the empty bed-tick at poor Sukey, who shook it off, not, however,
till her woolly head was completely powdered with the
lint. “Now, Sukey,” screamed Bet with a wild peal of

laughter, “look in the glass, and you'll see how white you'll
be in Heaven; the black stains will all be washed out
there!”

“But, Bet,” said Jane, where are the feathers?”

“Where child? she replied, smiling with the most provoking
indifference, “where are last year's mourners? where is
yesterday's sunshine, or the morning's fog?”

“Why did you do this, Bet?”

“Do you ask a reason of me?” she replied, with a tone
in which sorrow and anger were equally mingled, and then
putting her finger to her forehead, she added, “the space is
empty where it should be, Jane—quite empty, and sometime
aching!”

Jane felt that the poor woman was not a subject of reproach;
and turning away, she said, “Aunt will be very
angry.”

“Yes,” replied Bet, “she will weep and howl, but she
should thank me for silencing some of the witnesses.”

“Witnesses, Bet?”

“Yes, child, witnesses; are not moth-caten garments and
corrupted riches witnesses against the rich, the hard-hearted,
and close-handed? She should not have denied a bed to my
aching head and weary body. She should not have told me,
that the bare ground and hard boards were soft and easy
enough for a “rantipole beggar.”

The recollection of the promise she had given to John
now occurred to Jane, and she was deliberating whether or
not to speak to Bet about it, when Mrs. Wilson, who had been
absent on a visit to one of her neighbors, came in. In her
passage through the kitchen, Sukey had hinted to her her
loss, and she hastened on to ascertain its extent. Inquiries
were superfluous; the empty tick was lying where Sukey had

left it, and the feathers which it had contained were not.
Mrs. Wilson darted forwards towards Bet, on whom she
would have wreaked her hasty vengeance, but Bet, aware of
her intention, sprang through the window, quick as thought,
and so rapid, and seemingly, spiritual, was her flight, that a
minute had scarcely passed, when the shrill tones of her voice
were heard rising in the distance, and they were just able to
distinguish the familiar words of her favorite methodist
hymn—

Mrs. Wilson turned to Jane, and with that disposition
which such persons have when any evil befalls them, to lay
the blame on somebody, she would have vented her spite on
her, but it was too evident that the only part Jane had had
in the misfortune was an ineffectual effort to avert it, and the
good lady was deprived of even that alleviation of her calamity.
This scene at which, in spite of her aunt's awful presence,
Jane had laughed heartily, was not at all adapted to
inspire her with confidence in the guide, whose wild and fantastic
humours she knew it to be impossible for any one to
control. Her resolution was a little shaken; but, after all,
she thought, “It is possible I may find the house without her.
I know the course I should take. At any rate, I should be
miserable if any evil should come of my neglect of old John's
request. There can be no real dangers, and I will not imagine
any.”

Still, after the family were all hushed in repose, and Jane
had stolen from her bed and dressed herself for her secret
expedition, she shrunk involuntarily from the task before
her. “I do not like this mystery,” said she, mentally. “I
wish I had told my aunt, and asked David to go with me, or

I might have told Mary Hull. There could have been no
harm in that. But it is now too late. John said, I might
save life, and I will think of nothing else.”

She rose from the bed, where she had seated herself to
ponder, for the last time, upon the difficulties before her, crept
softly down stairs, passed her aunt's room, and got clear of
the house unmolested, except by a slight growl from Brutus,
the house-dog, whose dreams she had broken, but, at her well-known
kindly patting, and “Lie down, Brutus, lie down,” he
quietly resumed his sleeping posture. Her courage was
stimulated by having surmounted one obstacle. The waning
moon had risen, and shed its mild lustre over the peaceful
scene. “Now,” thought Jane, “that I have stirred up my
womanish thoughts with a manly spirit, I wonder what I
could have been afraid of.”

Anxious to ascertain whether she was to have the doubtful
aid of crazy Bet's conduct, or trust solely to her own, she
pressed onward. To shorten her way to Lucy's grave, and
to avoid the possibility of observation, she soon left the public
road, and walked along under the shadow of a low-browed
hill, which had formerly been the bank of the river, but from
which it had receded and left an interval of beautiful meadow
between the hill and its present bed. The deep verdure of
the meadow sparkled with myriads of fire-flies, that seemed
in this, their hour, to be keeping their merry revel by the
music of the passing stream. The way was, as yet, perfectly
familiar to Jane. After walking some distance in a straight
line, she crossed the meadow by a direct path to a large tree,
which had been, in part, uprooted by a freshet, and which now
lay across the river, and supplied a rude passage to the adventurous;
the tenacity of some of its roots still retaining it
firmly in the bank. Fortunately the stream was unusually

low, and when our heroine reached the farther extremity of
the fallen trunk, she sprang without difficulty over the few
fect of water between her and the dry sand of the shore.

“That's well done!” exclaimed crazy Bet, starting up
from a mound in the form of a grave. “Strong of heart, and
light of foot, you are a fit follower for one that hates the broad
and beaten road, and loves the narrow straight way and the
high rock. Sit down and rest you,” she continued, for Jane
was out of breath from ascending the deep bank to where
crazy Bet stood; “sit down, child; you may sit quiet. It
is not time for her to rise yet.”

“Oh, Bet,” said Jane, “if you love me, take those greens
off your head; they make you look so wild.”

A stouter heart than Jane's would have quailed at Bet's
appearance. She had taken off her old bonnet and tied it on
a branch of the tree that shaded the grave, and twisted
around her head a full leaved vine, by which she had confined
bunches of wild flowers, that drooped around her pale brow
and haggard face; her long hair was streaming over her
shoulders; her little black mantle thrown back, leaving her
throat and neck bare. The excitement of the scene, the purpose
of the expedition, and the moonlight, gave to her large
black eyes an unusual brightness.

To Jane's earnest entreaty she replied, “Child, you know
not what you ask. Take off these greens, indeed! Every
leaf of them is a prayer. There is a charm in every one of
them. There is not an imp of the evil one that dares to
touch me while I wear them. The toad with his glistening
eye, springs far from me; and the big scaly snake, glides
away from me.”

“But,” said Jane, in a tone of more timid expostulation,
“what have I to guard me, Bet?”

“You!” and as she spoke she stroked Jane's hair back
from her pure smooth brow; “have not you innocence? and
know you not that is `God's seal in the forehead' to keep you
from all harm. I have had Guerdeen, but innocence is
stronger than a regiment of them! Foolish girl! sit down—
I say, she will not rise yet.”

Jane obeyed her command, and rallying her spirits, replied,
“No, Bet, I am not afraid she will rise. I believe the
dead lie very quiet in their graves.”

“Yes, those may that die in their beds, and are buried by
the tolling of the bell, and lie with company about them in
the churchyard; but, I tell you, those that row themselves
over the dark river, never have a quiet night's rest in their
cold beds.”

“Come,” said Jane, impatiently rising, “for mercy's sake,
let us go.”

“I cannot stir from this spot,” replied Bet, “till the moon
gets above that tree; and so be quiet, while I tell you Lucy's
story. Why, child, I set here watching by her many a night,
till her hour comes, and then I always go away, for the dead
don't love to be seen rising from their beds.”

“Well, Bet, tell me Lucy's story, and then I hope you
will not keep me any longer here; and you need not tell me
much, for, you know, I have heard it a thousand times.”

“Ah! but you did not see her as I did, when Ashley's
men went out, and she followed them, and begged them on
her knees, for the love of God, not to fire upon the prisoners;
for the story had come, that Shay's[3] men would cover their
front with the captives; and you did not see her when he
was brought to her shot through the heart, and dead as she

is now. She did not speak a word—she fell upon his neck,
and she clasped her arms round him; they thought to cut
them off, it was so hard to get them loose;—and when they
took her from him, (and the maniac laid her hand on Jane's
head) she was all gone here. The very day they put him
under the green sod, she drowned herself in that deep place,
under the mourning willow, that the boys call Lucy's well.
And they buried her here for the squires and the deacons
found it against law and gospel too, to give her christian
burial.”

Bet told all these circumstances with an expression and
action that showed she was living the scene over, while her
mind dwelt on them. Jane was deeply interested; and when
Bet concluded, she said, “Poor Lucy! I never felt so much
for her.”

“That's right, child: now we will go on; but first let
that tear-drop that glistens in the moonbeam, fall on the
grave, it helps to keep the grass green; and the dead like to
be cried for,” she added mournfully.

They now proceeded; crazy Bet leading the way, with
long and hasty strides, in a diagonal course still ascending
the hill, till she plunged into a deep wood, so richly clothed
with foliage, as to be impervious to the moon-beams, and so
choaked with underbrush, that Jane found it very difficult
to keep up with her pioneer. They soon however, emerged
into an open space, completely surrounded and enclosed by
lofty trees. Crazy Bet had not spoken since they began their
walk; she now stopped, and turning abruptly to Jane, “Do
you know,” said she, “who are the worshippers that meet
in this temple? the spirits that were `sometime disobedient,'
but since He went and preached to them, they came out from

their prison house, and worship in the open air, and under the
light of the blessed heavens.”

“It is a beautiful spot,” said Jane; I should think all
obedient spirits might worship in this temple.

“Say you so;—then worship with me.” The maniac fell
on her knees—Jane knelt beside her: she had caught a spark
of her companion's enthusiasm. The singularity of her situation,
the beauty of the night, the novelty of the place, on
which the moon now riding high in the heavens poured a
flood of silver light, all conspired to give a high tone to
her feelings. It is not strange she should have thought
she never heard any thing so sublime as the prayer of
her crazed conductor—who raised her arms and poured
out her soul in passages of scripture the most sublime
and striking, woven together by her own glowing language.
She concluded suddenly, and springing on her feet, said to
Jane, “Now follow me: fear not, and falter not; for you
know what awaits the fearful and unbelieving,”

Jane assured her she had no fear but that of being too
late. “You need not think of that; the spirit never quits
till I come.”

They now turned into the wood by a narrow pathway,
whose entrance laid under the shadow of two young beach trees:
crazy Bet paused—“See ye these, child,” said she, pointing
to the trees, “I know two who grew up thus on the same
spot of earth;—so lovingly they grew,” and she pointed to the
interlacing of the branches—“young and beautiful; but the
axe was laid to the root of one—and the other (and she pressed
both her hands on her head, and screamed wildly) died
here.” A burst of tears afforded her a sudden relief.

“Poor broken-hearted creature!” murmured Jane.

“No, child; when she weeps, then the band is loosened

for,” added she, drawing closer to Jane and whispering,
“they put an iron band around her head, and when she is in
darkness, it presses till she thinks she is in the place of the
tormenter: by the light of the moon it's loosened. You cannot
see it; but it is there—always there.”

Jane began now to be alarmed at the excitement of Bet's
imagination; and turning from her abruptly, entered the
path, which, after they had proceeded a few yards, seemed to
be leading them into a wild trackless region. “Where are
we going Bet?” she exclaimed. “Through a pass, child,
that none knows but the wild bird and the wild woman.
Have you never heard of the “caves of the mountain?”[4]

“Yes,” replied Jane; “but I had rather not go through
them to-night. Cannot we go some other way!”

“Nay, there is no other way; follow me, and fear not.”

Jane had often heard of the pass called the `Mountain-Caves,'
and she believed it had only been penetrated by a few
rash youths of daring and adventurous spirit. She was appalled
at the thought of entering it in the dead of night, and
with such a conductor; she paused, but she could see no way
of escape, and summoning all her resolution, she followed
Bet, who took no note of her scruples. They now entered a
defile, which apparently had been made by some tremendous
convulsion of nature, that had rent the mountain asunder,
and piled rock on rock in the deep abyss. The breadth of the
passage, which was walled in by the perpendicular sides of the
mountain, was not in any place more than twenty feet; and
sometimes so narrow, that Jane thought she might have extended

her arms quite across it. But she had no leisure for
critical accuracy; her wayward guide pressed on, heedless of
the difficulties of the way. She would pass between huge
rocks, that had rolled so near together, as to leave but a very
narrow passage between them; then grasping the tangled
roots that projected from the side of the mountain, and placing
her feet in the fissures of the rocks, or in the little channels
that had been worn by the continual dropping from the
mountain rills, she would glide over swiftly and safely, as if
she had been on the beaten highway. They were sometimes
compelled, in the depths of the caverns, to prostrate themselves,
and creep through narrow apertures between the rocks
it was impossible to surmount; and Jane felt that she was
passing over masses of ice, the accumulation perhaps of a
hundred winters. She was fleet and agile, and inspired with
almost supernatural courage; she, `though a woman, naturally
born to fears,' followed on resolutely, till they came to an
immense rock, whose conical and giant form rested on broken
masses below, that on every side were propping this `mighty
monarch of the scene.'

For the first time, crazy Bet seemed to remember she had
a companion, and to give a thought to her safety. “Jane,”
said she, “go carefully over this lower ledge, there is a narrow
foothold there; let not your foot slip on the wet leaves,
or the soft moss. I am in the spirit, and I must mount to
the summit.”

Jane obeyed her directions, and when without much
trouble, she had attained the farther side of the rock, she
looked back for crazy Bet, and saw her standing between
heaven and earth on the very topmost point of the high rock:
she leant on the branch of a tree she had broken off in her
struggle to reach that lofty station. The moon had declined

a little from the meridian; her oblique rays did not penetrate
the depths where Jane stood, but fell in their full brightness
on the face of her votress above. Her head, as we have
noticed, was fantastically dressed with vines and flowers;
her eyes were in a fine `frenzy, rolling from earth to heaven,
and heaven to earth;' she looked like the wild genius of the
savage scene, and she seemed to breathe its spirit, when, after
a moment's silence, she sang, with a powerful and thrilling
voice, which waked the sleeping echoes of the mountain, the
following stanza:

In vain Jane called upon her. In vain she entreated her
to descend. She seemed wrapped in some heavenly vision;
and she stood mute again and motionless, till a bird, that had
been scared from its nest in a cleft of the rock, by the wild
sounds, fluttered over her and lighted on the branch she still
held in her hand. “Oh!” exclaimed she, “messenger of
love and mercy, I am content;” and she swiftly descended
the sloping side of the rock, which she hardly seemed to
touch.

“Now,” said Jane, soothingly, “you are rested, let us go
on.”

“Rested! yes, my body is rested, but my spirit has been
the way of the eagle in the air. You cannot bear the revelation
now, child. Come on, and do your earthly work.”

They walked on for a few yards, when Bet suddenly
turned to the left and ascended the mountain, which was

there less steep and rugged than at any place they had passed.
At a short distance before her Jane perceived, glimmering
through the trees, a faint light. “Heaven be praised!” said
she, “that must be John's cottage.”

As they came nearer the dog barked; and the old man,
coming out of the door, signed to Jane to sit down on a log,
which answered the purpose of a rude door-step; and then
speaking to crazy Bet, in a voice of authority, which, to Jane's
utter surprise, she meekly obeyed—“Take off,” said he, “you
mad fool, them jinglements from your head, and stroke your
hair back like a decent christian woman; get into the house,
but mind you, say not a word to her.”

Crazy Bet entered the house, and John, turning to Jane,
said, “You are an angel of goodness for coming here to-night,
though I am afraid it will do no good; but since you are
here, you shall see her.”

“See her! see what, John?” interrupted Jane.

“That's what I must tell you, miss; but it is a piercing
story to tell to one that looks like you. It's telling the deeds
of the pit to the angels above.” He then went on to state,
that a few days before, he had been searching the mountains
for some medicinal roots, when his attention was suddenly
arrested by a low moaning sound, and on going in the direction
from which it came, he found a very young looking
creature, with a new-born infant, wrapped in a shawl, and
lying in her arms. He spoke to the mother, but she made no
reply, and seemed quite unconscious of every thing, till he
attempted to take the child from her; she then grasped it so
firmly, that he found it difficult to remove it. He called his
wife to his assistance, and placed the infant in her arms.
Pity for so young a sufferer, nerved the old man with unwonted
strength, and enabled him to bear the mother to his hut.

There he used the simple restoratives his skill dictated; but
nothing produced any effect till the child, with whom the old
woman had taken unwearied pains, revived and cried. “The
sound,” he said, “seemed to waken life in a dead body.” The
mother extended her arms, as if to feel for her child, and they
gently laid it in them. She felt the touch of its face, and
burst into a flood of tears, which seemed greatly to relieve
her; for after that she took a little nourishment, and fell into
a sweet sleep, from which she awoke in a state to make some
explanations to her curious preservers. But as the account
she gave of herself was, of necessity, interrupted and imperfect,
we shall take the liberty to avail ourselves of our knowledge
of her history, and offer our readers a slight sketch
of it.

10. CHAPTER X.

The name of the stranger was Mary Oakley. Her parents
had gone out adventurers to the West Indies, where, at the
opening of flattering prospects, they both died victims to the
fever of the climate, which seldom spares a northern constitution.
Mary, then in her infancy, had been sent home to her
grandparents, who nursed this only relic of their unfortunate
children with doting fondness. They were in humble life;
and they denied themselves every comfort, that they might
gratify every wish, reasonable and unreasonable, of their darling
child. She, affectionate and ardent in her nature, grew
up impetuous and volatile. Instead of `rocking the cradle of
reposing age,' she made the lives of her old parents resemble
a fitful April day, sunshine and cloud succeeding each other
in rapid alternation. She loved the old people tenderly—
passionately, when she had just received a favour from them;
but, like other spoiled children, she never testified that love
by deferring her will to theirs, or suffering their wisdom to
govern her childish inclinations. She grew up

Most unhappily for her, there was a college in the town
where she lived, and she very early became the favourite belle
of the young collegians, whose attentions she received with
delight, in spite of the remonstrances and entreaties of her
guardians, who were well aware that a young and beautiful
creature could not, with propriety or safety, receive the civilities
of her superiors in station, attracted by her personal
charms.

David Wilson, more artful, more unprincipled than any
of his companions, addressed her with the most extravagant
flattery, and lavished on her costly favours. Giddy and credulous,
poor Mary was a victim to his libertinism. He soothed
her with hopes and promises, till, in consequence of the fear
of detection in another transaction, where detection would have
been dangerous, he left — and returned to his mother's,
without giving Mary the slightest intimation of his departure.

She took the desperate resolution of following him. She
felt certain she should not survive her confinement, and hoped
to secure the protection of Wilson for her infant. Her tenderness,
we believe, more than her pride, induced her to conceal
her miseries from her only true friends. She thought
any thing would be easier for them to bear than a knowledge
of her misconduct; and for the few days she remained under
their roof, and while she was preparing a disguise for her
perilous journey, she affected slight sickness and derangement.
They were alarmed and anxious, and insisted on making a
bed for her in their room: this somewhat embarrassed her
proceedings; but, on the night of her escape, she told them,
with a determined manner, that she could only sleep in her
own bed, and alone in her own room. They did not resist

her; they never had. Mary kissed them when she bade them
good-night with unusual tenderness. They went sorrowing
to their beds. She wrote a few incoherent lines, addressed
to them, praying for their forgiveness; expressing her gratitude
and her love; and telling them, that life before her
seemed a long and a dark road, and she did not wish to go
any farther in it, and begging them not to search for her, for
in one hour the waves would roll over her. She placed the
scroll on the table, crept out of her window, and left for ever
the protecting roof of her kind old parents.

When they awoke to a knowledge of their loss, they were
overwhelmed with grief. Their neighbours flocked about them,
to offer their assistance and consolation; and though some of
the most penetrating among them suspected the cause of the
poor girl's desperation, more forbearing and kind than persons
usually are in such circumstances, they spared the old
people the light of their conjectures.

Poor Mary persevered in her fatiguing and miserable
journey, which was rendered much longer by her fearfully
shunning the public road. She obtained a kind shelter at
the farmers' houses at night, where she always contrived to
satisfy their curiosity by some plausible account of herself.
At the end of a week she arrived, wearied and exhausted, in
the neighbourhood of Wilson. She watched for him in the
evening, near his mother's house, and succeeded in obtaining
an interview with him. He was enraged that she had followed
him, and said that it was impossible for him to do any
thing for her. She told him she asked nothing for herself;
but she entreated him not to add to his guilt the crime of
suffering their unhappy offspring to die with neglect. Utterly
selfish and hard-hearted, the wretch turned from her without
one word of kindness: and then recollecting that if she was

discovered, he should be involved in farther troubles, he returned,
and gave her a direction, which she believed would
enable her to find John's cottage on the mountain. If she
gets there, thought he as he left her, whether she lives or
dies, she will be far out of the way for the present—and the
future must take care of itself.

Mary with a faint heart followed his direction, and the
next day she was discovered by old John in the situation we
have mentioned. Perhaps there are some who cannot believe
that any being should be so utterly depraved as David Wilson.
But let them remember, that he began with a nature
more inclined to evil than to good, that his mother's mismanagement
had increased every thing that was bad in him,
and extinguished every thing that was good—that the continual
contradictions of his mother's professions and life, had
led him to an entire disbelief of the truths of religion, as well
as a contempt of its restraints.

After the old man had finished Mary's story, or rather so
much of it as he had been able to gather from her confessions,
Jane asked him “Why she had been sent for?”

“Why miss,” he replied, “after the poor thing had come
to herself, all her trouble seemed to be about her baby, and
I did not know what to advise her; my woman and I might
have done for it for the present, but our sun is almost set,
and we could do but for a little while. I proposed to her to
go for Wilson, and I am sure the sight of her might have
softened a heart of flint; but she shivered at the bare mention
of it: she said, `No, no; I cannot see that cruel face
upon my deathbed.' And then I thought of you, and I told
her if there was any body could bring him to a sense of right
it was you, and that at any rate you might think of some
comfort for her; for I told her every body in the village

knew you for the wisest and discreetest, and gentlest. At
first she relucted; and then the sight of her baby seemed to
persuade her, and she bade me go, but she gave me a strict
charge that no one should come with you; for she said she
wished her memory buried with her in the grave. When I
left her to go to you, I hoped you might speak some words of
comfort to her that would be better than medicine for her,
and heal the body as well as the mind; but when I came
back, there was a dreadful change—the poor little one had
gone into a fit, and she would take it from my wife into her
arms, and there it died more than an hour ago—and she sits
up in the bed holding it yet—and she has not spoken a word,
nor turned her eyes from it—her cheeks look as if there was
a living fire consuming her. Oh, Miss Jane, it is awful to
look upon such a fallen star! Now you are prepared—come
in—may be the sight of you will rouse her.”

Jane followed John into his little habitation. The old
couple had kindly resigned their only bed to the sufferer.
She was sitting as John had described her, fixed as a statue.
Her beautiful black glossy curls, which had been so often admired
and envied, were snarled, and clustered in rich masses
over her temples and neck. A tear that had started from
the fountain of feeling, now sealed for ever, hung on the dark
rich eye-lash that fringed her downcast eye. Jane wondered
that any thing so wretched could look so lovely. Crazy Bet
was kneeling at the foot of the bed, and apparently absorbed
in prayer, for her eyes were closed, and her lips moved,
though they emitted no sound. The old woman sat in the
corner of the fire-place, smoking a broken pipe, to soothe the
unusual agitation she felt.

Jane advanced towards the bed. “Speak to her,” said
John. Jane stooped, and laid her hand gently on Mary's.

She raised her eyes for the first time, and turned them on
Jane with a look of earnest inquiry, and then shaking her
head, she said in a low mournful voice—“No, no; we cannot
be parted; you mean to take her to heaven, and you say I
am guilty, and must not go. They told me you were coming
—you need not hide your wings—I know you—there is none
but an angel would look upon me with pity.”

“Oh!” exclaimed Jane, “can nothing be done for her?
at least let us take away this dead child, it is growing cold
in her arms.” She attempted to take the child, and Mary
relaxed her hold; but as she did so, she uttered a faint
scream, the paleness of death overspread her face, and she fell
back on the pillow.

“Ah, she is gone!” exclaimed John.

Crazy Bet sprang on her feet, and raised her hand—
“Hush!” said she, “I heard a voice saying, `Her sins are
forgiven'—`she is one come out of great tribulation.”'

There were a few moments of as perfect stillness as if they
had all been made dumb and motionless by the stroke of death.
Jane was the first to break silence—“Did she,” she inquired
of the old man, “express any penitence—any hope?”

John shook his head. “Them things did not seem to lay
on her mind; and I did not think it worth while to disturb
her about them. Ah, miss, the great thing is how we live,
not how we die.”

Jane felt the anxiety, so natural, to obtain some religious
expression, that should indicate preparation in the mind of
the departed.

“Surely,” said she, “it is never too late to repent—to beg
forgiveness.”

“No, miss,” replied John, who seemed to have religious
notions of his own—“especially when there has been such a

short account as this poor child had; but the work must be
all between the creature and the Creator; and for my part, I
don't place much dependence on what people say on a death-bed.
I have lived a long life, Miss Jane, and many a one
have I seen, and heard too, when sickness and distress were
heavy upon them, and death staring them in the face, and
they could not sin any more—they would seem to repent, and
talk as beautiful as any saint; but if the Lord took his
hand from them, and they got well again, they went right
back into the old track. No, Miss Jane, it is the life—it is
the life, we must look to. This child,” he added, going to
the bed, and laying his brown and shrivelled hand upon her
fair young brow, now `chill and changeless;' “this child was
but sixteen, she told me so. The Lord only knows what
temptations she has had. He it is, Miss Jane, that has put
that in our hearts that makes us feel sorry for her now; and
can you think that He is less pitiful than we are? I think
she will be beaten with few stripes; but,” he continued solemnly,
covering his face with his hands,—“we are poor ignorant
creatures; it is all a mystery after this world; we
know nothing about it.”

“Yes,” said Jane, “we do know, John, that all will be
right.”

“True,” he replied; “and it is that should make us lay
our fingers on our mouths and be still.”

Jane had been so much absorbed in the mournful scene,
that the necessity of her return before the breaking of day
had not occurred to her mind, and would not, perhaps, if
John had not, after a few moments' pause, reminded her of it,
by saying, “I am sorry, Miss Jane, you have had such a walk
for nothing; but,” added he, “to the wise nothing is vain,
and you are of so teachable a make, that you may have learned

some good lessons here; you may learn, at least, that there
is nothing to be much grieved for in this world but guilt;
and some people go through a long life without learning that.
You had better return now; I will go round the hill with
you, and show you the path this crazy creature should have
led you. She is in one of her still fits now: there is nothing
calms her down like seeing death: she will not move from
here till after the burying.”

Jane looked for the last time on the beautiful form before
her, and with the ingenuous and keen feeling of youth,
wept aloud.

“It is indeed a sore sight,” said John; “it makes my old
eyes run over as they have not for many a year. The Lord
have mercy on her destroyer! Oh, miss! it is sad to see
this beautiful flower cut down in its prime; but who would
change her condition for his? He may go rioting on, but
there is that gnawing at his heart's core that will not be quieted.”

Jane told the kind old man that she was now ready to go, and
they left the hut together. He led her by a narrow foot-path
around the base of the mountain, till they came to a part of
the way familiar to Jane. She then parted from her conductor,
after inquiring of him if he could inter the bodies secretly?
He replied, that he could without much difficulty; and
he certainly should, for he had given his promise to the young
creature, who seemed to dread nothing so much as a discovery
which might lead to her old parents knowing her real
fate.

Anxious to reach home in time to avoid the necessity of
any disclosures, Jane hastened forward, and arrived at her
aunt's before the east gave the slightest token of the approach
of day. She entered the house carefully, and turned into

the parlour to look for some refreshment in an adjoining pantry.
A long walk, and a good deal of emotion, we believe,
in real life, are very apt to make people, even the most refined,
hungry and thirsty.

Jane had entered the parlour, and closed the door after her,
before she perceived that she was not the only person in it;
but she started with alarm, which certainly was not confined
to herself, when she saw standing at Mrs. Wilson's desk,
which was placed at one corner of the room, her son David,
with his mother's pocket-book in his hand, from which he
was in the act of subtracting a precious roll of bank bills
that had been deposited there the day before. Jane paused
for a moment, and but for a moment, for as the truth flashed
on her, she sprang forward, and seizing his arm, exclaimed,
“For Heaven's sake, David, put back that money! Do not
load yourself with any more sins.”

He shook her off, and hastily stuffing the money in his
pocket, said that he must have it; that his mother would not
give him enough to save him from destruction; that he
had told her ruin was hanging over his head; that she
had driven him to help himself; and, “as to sin,” he added
fiercely, “I am in too deep already to be frightened by that
thought.”

It occurred to Jane that he might have been driven to
this mode of supplying himself, in order to relieve the extreme
need of Mary Oakley; and she told him, in a hurried
manner, the events of the night. For a moment he felt the
sting of conscience, and, perhaps, a touch of human feeling;
for he staggered back into a chair, and covering his face with
his hands, muttered, “Dead! Mary dead! Good God! Hell
has no place bad enough for me;” and then rousing himself,
he said, with a deep tone, “Jane Elton, I am a ruined, desperate

man. You thought too well of me, when you imagined
it was for that poor girl I was doing this deed. No, no! her
cries did not trouble me; but there are those whose clamours
must be hushed by money—curse on them!”

“But,” said Jane, “is there no other way, David? I will
entreat your mother for you.”

“Yes! yes, and she will heed you as much as a wolf does
the bleating of a lamb. I tell you, I am desperate, Jane,
and care not for the consequences. But,” he added, “I will
run no risk of discovery,” and as he spoke, he drew a pistol
from beneath his surtout, and putting the muzzle to his
breast, said to Jane, “give me your solemn promise, that you
will never betray me, or I will put myself beyond the reach
of human punishment.”

“Oh!” said Jane, “I will promise any thing. Do not
destroy your soul and body both.”

“Do you promise, then?”

“I do, most solemnly.”

“Then,” said he, hastily replacing the pistol, and locking
the desk with the false key he had obtained; “then all is as
well as it can be. My mother will suspect, but she will not
dare to tell whom; and your promise, Jane, maks me secure.”

Jane saw he was so determined, that any further interposition
would be useless; and she hurried away to her own
apartment, where she threw herself upon her bed, sorrowing
for the crimes and miseries of others. Quite exhausted with
the fatigues of the night, she soon fell asleep.

She was too much distressed and terrified, to reflect upon
the consequences that might result from the exacted promise.
She had, doubtless, been unnecessarily alarmed by David's
threat of self-slaughter; for, confused and desperate as he

was, he would hardly have proceeded to such an outrage;
and, besides, we have reason to believe the pistol was neither
primed nor loaded, but that he had provided himself with it
for emergencies which might occur in the desperate career in
which he had engaged. He had been concerned with two
ingenious villains in changing the denomination of bank bills.
His accomplices had been detected and imprisoned, and they
were now exacting money from him by threatening to disclose
his agency in the transaction.

Always careless of involving himself in guilt, and goaded
on by the fear of the state-prison, he resolved, without hesitation,
on this robbery, which would not only give him the
means of present relief, but would supply him with a store
for future demands, which he had every reason to expect from
the character of his comrades.

11. CHAPTER XI.

Jane, exhausted by the agitations of the night, contrary to
her usual custom, remained in bed much longer than the
other members of the family, and did not awake from deep
and unquiet slumbers, till the bell called the household to
prayers.

Mrs. Wilson was scrupulous in exacting the attendance of
every member of her family at her morning and evening devotions.
With this requisition Jane punctually and cheerfully
complied, as she did with all those that did not require
a violation of principle. But still she had often occasion
secretly to lament, that where there was so much of the form
of worship, there was so little of its spirit and truth; and she
sometimes felt an involuntary self-reproach, that her body
should be in the attitude of devotion, while her mind was following
her aunt through earth, sea, and skies, or pausing to
wonder at the remarkable inadaptation of her prayers to
the condition and wants of humanity in general, and especially
to their particular modification in her own family.

Mrs. Wilson was fond of the bold and highly figurative
language of the prophets; and often identified herself with
the Psalmist, in his exultation over his enemies, in his denunciations,
and in his appeals for vengeance.

We leave to theologians to decide, whether these expressions
from the king of Israel are meant for the enemies of the
church, or whether they are to be imputed to the dim light
which the best enjoyed under the Jewish dispensation. At
any rate such as come to us in `so questionable a shape,'
ought not to be employed as the medium of a Christian's prayer.

When Jane entered the room, she found her aunt had begun
her devotions, which were evidently more confused than
usual; and when she said (her voice wrought up to the highest
pitch) “Lo! thine enemies, O Lord! lo, thine enemies shall
perish: all the workers of iniquity shall be scattered; but
my horn shalt thou exalt like the horn of a unicorn: I shall
be anointed with fresh oil: mine eye also shall see my desire
on my enemies, and my ears shall hear my desire of the
wicked that rise up against me;” Jane perceived, from her
unusual emotion, that she must allude to something that
touched her own affairs, and she conjectured that she had already
discovered the robbery. Her conjectures were strengthened
when she observed, that, during the breakfast, her aunt
seemed very much agitated; but she was at a loss to account
for the look she darted on her, when one of the children said,
“How your hair looks, Jane; this is the first time I ever saw
you come to breakfast without combing it.”

Jane replied, that she had overslept.

“You look more,” said Elvira, “as if you had been watching
all night, and crying too, I should imagine, from the redness
of your eyes—and now I think of it,” she added, regardless

of Jane's embarrassment, “I am sure I heard your door
shut in the night, and you walking about your room.”

Jane was more confused by the expression of her aunt's
face, than by her cousin's observations. What, thought she,
can I have done to provoke her? I certainly have done
nothing; but there is never a storm in the family, without
my biding some of its pitiless pelting.

After breakfast, the family dispersed, as usual, excepting
Mrs. Wilson, David, and Jane, who remained to assist her
aunt in removing the breakfast apparatus. Mrs. Wilson,
neither wishing nor able any longer to restrain her wrath,
went up to her desk, and taking hold of a pocket handkerchief
which appeared to lie on the top of it, but which, as she
stretched it out, showed one end caught and fastened in the
desk—“Do you know this handkerchief, Jane Elton?” she
said, in a voice choking with passion.

“Yes, ma'am,” replied Jane, turning pale—“it is mine.”
She ventured, as she spoke, to look at David. His eyes were
fixed on a newspaper, he seemed to be reading; not a muscle
of his face moved, nor was there the slightest trace of emotion.

“Yours,” said Mrs. Wilson; “that you could not deny,
for your name is at full length on it; and when did you have
it last?”

“Last night, ma'am.”

“And who has robbed me of five hundred dollars? Can
you answer to that?”

Jane made no reply. She saw, that her aunt's suspicions
rested on her, and she perceived, at once, the cruel dilemma
in which she had involved herself by her promise to David.

“Answer me that,” repeated Mrs. Wilson, violently.

“That I cannot answer you, ma'am.”

“And you mean to deny that you have taken it yourself?”

“Certainly I do, ma'am,” replied Jane, firmly, for she
had now recovered her self-possession. “I am perfectly innocent;
and I am sure that, whatever appearances there may
be against me, you cannot believe me guilty—you do not.”

“And do you think to face me down in this way? I have
evidence enough to satisfy any court of justice. Was not you
heard up in the night—your guilty face told the story, at
breakfast, plainer than words could tell it. David,” she continued
to her son, who had thrown down the paper and walked
to the window, where he stood with his back to his mother,
affecting to whistle to a dog without; “David, I call you to
witness this handkerchief, and what has now been said; and
remember, she does not deny that she left it here.”

One honest feeling had a momentary ascendency in David's
bosom; and he had risen from his seat with the determination
to disclose the truth, but he was checked by the recollection
that he should be compelled to restore the money,
which he had not yet disposed of. He thought, too, that his
mother knew, in her heart, who had taken the money; that
she would not dare to disclose her loss, and if she did, it
would be time enough for him to interpose when Jane should
be in danger of suffering otherwise than in the opinion of his
mother, whose opinion, he thought, not worth caring for.
Therefore, when called upon by his mother, he made no reply,
but turning round and facing the accuser and the accused, he
looked as composed as any uninterested spectator.

Mrs. Wilson proceeded, “Restore me my money, or
abide the consequences.”

“The consequences I must abide, and I do not fear them,

nor shrink from them, for I am innocent, and God will protect
me.”

At this moment they were interrupted by the entrance of
Edward Erskine; and our poor heroine, though the instant
before she had felt assured and tranquil in her panoply divine,
burst into tears, and left the room. She could not endure
the thought of degradation in Erskine's esteem; and she
was very sure that her aunt would not lose such an opportunity
of robbing her of his good opinion. She did not mistake.
Mrs. Wilson closed the door after Jane; and seating herself,
all unused as she was to the melting mood, gave way to a
passion of tears and sobs, which were, as we think, a sincere
tribute to the loss she had experienced.

“For Heaven's sake, tell me what is the matter?” said
Erskine to young Wilson; for his impatience for an explanation
became irrepressible, not on account of the old woman's
emotion, for she might have wept till she was like Niobe, all
tears, without provoking an inquiry, but Jane's distress had
excited his anxiety.

“The Lord knows,” replied David; “there is always a
storm in this house;” and he flung out of the room without
vouchsafing a more explicit answer.

Erskine turned to Mrs. Wilson: “Can you tell me,
madam, what has disturbed Miss Elton?”

Mrs. Wilson was provoked that he did not ask what had
disturbed her, and she determined he should not remain
another moment without the communication, which she had
been turning over in her mind to get it in the most efficient
form.

“Oh! Mr. Erskine,” she said, with the abject whine of a
hypocrite; “oh! my trial is more than I can endure. I
could bear they should devour me and lay waste my dwelling-place;

I could be supported under that; but it is a grief too
heavy for me to reveal to you the sin, and the disgrace, and
the abomination, of one that I have brought up as my own—
who has fed upon my children's bread.”

“Madam,” interrupted Erskine, “you may spare yourself
and me any more words. I ask for the cause of all this excitement?”

Mrs. Wilson would have replied angrily to what she
thought Erskine's impertinence; but, remembering that it
was her business to conciliate not offend him, she, after again
almost exhausting his patience by protestations of the hardship
of being obliged to uncover the crimes of her relation, of
the affliction she suffered in doing her duty, &c., &c., told him
with every aggravation that emphasis and insinuation could
lend to them, the particulars of her discovery.

With unusual self-command he heard her through; and
though he was unable to account for the suspicious circumstances,
he spurned instinctively the conclusion Mrs. Wilson
drew from them.

Her astonishment, that he neither expressed horror, nor
indignation, nor resentment towards the offender, was not at
all abated when he only replied by a request to speak alone
with Miss Elton.

Mrs. Wilson thought he might intend the gathering storm
should burst on Jane's head; or, perhaps, he would advise her
to fly; at any rate, it was not her cue, to lay a straw in his
way at present. She even went herself and gave the request
to Jane, adding to it a remark, that as she “was not very
fond of keeping out of Erskine's way, she could hardly refuse
to come when asked.”

“I have no wish to refuse;” replied Jane, who, ashamed
of having betrayed so much emotion, had quite recovered her

self-possession, and stood calm in conscious integrity—“But
hear me, ma'am,” said she to her aunt, who had turned and
was leaving the room—“all connection between us is dissolved
for ever; I shall not remain another night beneath a
roof where I have received little kindness, and where I now
suffer the imputation of a crime, of which I am certain you
do not believe me guilty.”

Mrs. Wilson was for a moment daunted by the power of
unquestionable innocence.—“I know not where I shall go, I
know not whether your persecutions will follow me; but I am
not friendless—nor fearful.”

She passed by her aunt, and descended to the parlour.
`No thought infirm altered her cheek;” her countenance was
very serious, but the peace of virtue was there. Her voice
did not falter in the least, when she said to Edward, as he
closed the door on her entrance into the parlour—“Mr. Erskine,
you have no doubt requested to see me in the expectation
that I would contradict the statement my aunt must have
made to you. I cannot, for it is all true.”

Edward interrupted her—“I do not wish it, Jane. I believe
you are perfectly innocent of that and of every other
crime—I do not wish you even to deny it. It is all a devilish
contrivance of that wicked woman.”

“You are mistaken, Edward; it is not a contrivance; the
circumstances are as she has told them to you: Elvira did
not mistake in supposing she heard me up in the night; and
my aunt did find my handkerchief in her desk. No, Edward:
she is right in all but the conclusion she draws from these
unfortunate circumstances; perhaps,” she added after a moment's
pause, “a kinder judgment would not absolve me.”

“A saint,” replied Edward cheeringly, “needs no absolution.
No one shall be permitted to accuse you, or suspect

you; you can surely explain these accidental circumstances,
so that even your aunt, malicious—venomous as she is, will
not dare to breathe a poisonous insinuation against you, angel
as you are.”

“Ah,” replied Jane, with a sad smile, “there are and there
ought to be, few believers in earthborn angels. No, Mr. Erskine,
I have no explanation to make: I have nothing but
assertions of my innocence, and my general character to rely
upon. Those who reject this evidence must believe me
guilty.”

She rose to leave the room. Erskine gently drew her
back, and asked if it were possible she included him among
those who could be base enough to distrust her; and before
she could reply he went on to a passionate declaration of his
affections, followed by such promises of eternal truth, love,
and fidelity, as are usual on such occasions.

At another time, Jane would have paused to examine her
heart, before she accepted the profession made by her lover,
and she would have found no tenderness there that might
not be controlled and subdued by reason. But now, driven
out from her natural protectors by suspicion and malignant
accusation, and touched by the confiding affection that refused
to suspect her; the generosity, the magnanimity that
were presented in such striking contrast to the baseness of
her relations—she received Edward's declaration with the
most tender and ingenuous expression of gratitude; and
Erskine did not doubt, nor did Jane at that moment, that
this gratitude was firmly rooted in love.

Edward, ardent and impetuous, proposed an immediate
marriage: he argued, that it was the only, and would be an
effectual, way of protecting her from the persecutions of her
aunt.

Jane replied, that she had very little reason to fear that
her aunt would communicate to any other person her suspicions.
“She had a motive towards you,” she added, “that
overcame her prudence. I have found a refuge in your heart,
and she cannot injure me while I have that asylum. I have
too much pride, Edward, to involve you in the reproach I
may have to sustain. I had formed a plan this morning,
before your generosity translated me from despondency to
hope, which I must adhere to, for a few months at least. An
application has been made to me to teach some little girls
who are not old enough for Mr. Evertson's school: my aunt,
as usual, put in her veto; I had almost made up my mind
to accept the proposal in spite of it, when the events of the
morning came to my aid, and decided me at once, and I have
already announced to my aunt my determination to leave her
house. I trust that in few months something will occur, to
put me beyond the reach of suspicion, and reward as well as
justify your generous confidence.”

Edward entreated—protested—argued—but all in vain;
he was obliged at length to resign his will to Jane's decision.
Edward's next proposal was to announce the engagement
immediately. On this he insisted so earnestly, and offered
for it so many good reasons, that Jane consented. Mrs.
Wilson was summoned to the parlour, and informed of the
issue of the conference, of which she had expected so different
a termination. She was surprised—mortified—and most
of all, wrathful—that her impotent victim, as she deemed
Jane, should be rescued from her grasp. She began the
most violent threats and reproaches. Edward interrupted
her by telling her that she dare not repeat the first, and from
the last her niece would soon be for ever removed; as he
should require they should in future be perfect strangers.

Mrs. Wilson felt like a wild animal just encaged; she might
lash herself to fury, but no one heeded her.

Edward left the room, saying, that he should send his
servant to convey Jane's baggage wherever she would order
it to be sent. Jane went quietly to her own apartment,
to make the necessary arrangements; there she soon overheard
the low growlings of Mrs. Wilson's angriest voice,
communicating, as she inferred from the loud responsive exclamations
and whimpering, her engagement to Elvira. Mrs.
Wilson's perturbed spirit was not quieted even by this outpouring;
and after walking up and down, scolding at the
servant and the children, she put on her hat and shawl, and
sallied out to a shop, to pay a small debt she owed there.
No passion could exclude from her mind for any length of
time the memory of so disagreeable a circumstance as the
necessity of paying out money. After she had discharged
the debt, and the master of the shop had given her the
change, he noticed her examining one of the bills he had
handed her with a look of scrutiny and some agitation. He
said, “I believe that is a good bill, Mrs. Wilson; I was a
little suspicious of it too at first; I took it, this morning,
from your son David, in payment of a debt that has been
standing more than a year. I thought myself so lucky to
get any thing, that I was not very particular.”

Mrs. Wilson's particularity seemed to have a sudden
quietus, for she pushed the bill into the full purse after the
others, muttering something about the folly of trusting boys
being rightly punished by the loss of the debt.

The fact was, that Mrs. Wilson recognized this bill the
moment she saw it, as one of the parcel she had received the
day before, and which she had marked, at the time, for she was
eagle-eyed in the detection of a spurious bill. There is nothing

more subtle, more inveterate than a habit of self-deception. It
was not to the world alone that Mrs. Wilson played the hypocrite,
but before the tribunal of her own conscience she appeared
with hollow arguments and false pretences. From the
moment she had discovered her loss in the morning, she had,
at bottom, believed David guilty; she recollected the threats
of the preceding day, and her first impulse was to charge
him with the theft, and to demand the money; but then, she
thought, he was violent and determined, and that without
exposing him (even Mrs. Wilson shrunk from the consequences
of exposure to her son), she could not regain her
money. She was at a loss how to account for the appearance
of Jane's handkerchief; but neither that, nor Jane's subsequent
emotion at the breakfast table, nor her refusal to make
any explanation of the suspicious circumstances, enabled Mrs.
Wilson to believe that Jane had borne any part in the dishonesty
of the transaction. Such was the involuntary tribute
she paid to the tried, steadfast virtue of this excellent being.
Still she could not restrain the whirlwind of her passion;
and it burst, as we have seen, upon Jane. She was at a loss
to account for Jane's refusal to vindicate herself. It was
impossible for her to conceive of the reasons that controlled
Jane. She could not see up to such an elevation. She felt
so fearful, at first, that any investigation would lead to the
discovery of the real criminal, that she had not communicated
the fact of the handkerchief to any one, even to Elvira;
whose discretion, indeed, she never trusted; but, after
she found that Jane was in a dilemma, from which she
would not extricate herself by any explanations, she thought
herself the mistress of her niece's fate; and the moment she
saw Erskine, she determined to extract good out of the evil
that had come upon her, to dim the lustre of Jane's good
name, that `more immediate Jewel of her soul,' and thus to
secure for her daughter the contested prize. But Mrs. Wilson,
it seems, was destined to experience, on this eventful day,
how very hard is the way of the transgressor. Her niece's
fortunes were suddenly placed beyond her control or reach;
and nothing remained of all her tyranny and plots, but the
pitiful and malignant pleasure of believing, that Jane thought
herself in some measure in her power, though she knew that
she was not.

After the confirmation of her conjecture at the shop, she
saw that secrecy was absolutely necessary; and she was too
discreet to indulge herself with telling Elvira any of the particulars,
about which she had been so vociferous to the young
lovers.

Perhaps few ladies, old or young, were ever less encumbered
with baggage than Jane Elton, and yet, so confused
was she with the events of the night and morning, that the
labour of packing up, which at another time she would have
despatched in twenty minutes, seemed to have no more tendency
to a termination than such labours usually have in
dreams. In the midst of her perplexities one of the children
entered and said Mr. Lloyd wished to speak to her. She
was on the point of sending him an excuse, for she felt an
involuntary disinclination to meet his penetrating eye at this
moment, when recollecting how much she owed to his constant,
tender friendship, she subdued her reluctance, and obeyed his
summons. When she entered the room, “I am come,” said
he, “Jane, to ask thee to walk with me. I am an idler and
have nothing to do, and thou art so industrious thou hast time
to do every thing. Come, get thy hat. It is `treason against
nature' sullenly to refuse to enjoy so beautiful a day as this.”
Jane made no reply. He saw she was agitated, and leading

her gently to a chair, said, “I fear thou art not well, or, what
is much worse, not happy.”

Jane would have replied, “I am not;” but she checked
the words, for she felt as if the sentiment they expressed, was
a breach of fidelity to Erskine; and instead of them she said,
hesitatingly, “I ought not to be perfectly happy till my best
(I should say one of my best) friends knows and approves
what I have done this morning.”

“What hast thou done, Jane?” exclaimed Mr. Lloyd,
anticipating from her extraordinary embarrassment and
awkwardness the communication she was about to make;
“hast thou engaged thyself to Erskine?”

She faltered out, “Yes.”

Mr. Lloyd made no reply: he rose and walked up and
down the room, agitated, and apparently distressed. Jane
was alarmed; she could not account for his emotion; she
feared he had some ground for an ill opinion of Edward, that
she was ignorant of. “You do not like Edward?” said she;
“you think I have done wrong?”

The power of man is not limited in the moral as in the
natural world. Habitual discipline had given Mr. Lloyd
such dominion over his feelings, that he was able now to say
to their stormy wave, `thus far shalt thou come, and no
farther.' By a strong and sudden effort he recovered himself,
and turning to Jane, he took her hand with a benignant expression—“My
dear Jane, thy own heart must answer that
question. Dost thou remember a favourite stanza of thine?

Jane imagined that Mr. Lloyd felt a distrust of her motives.
“Ah!” she replied, “the integrity of my heart will
fail to make me happy, if I have fallen under your suspicion.
If you knew the nobleness, the disinterestedness of Erskine's
conduct, you would be more just to him, and to me.”

“It is not being very unjust to him, or to any one, to think
him unworthy of thee, Jane. But since these particulars
would raise him so much in my opinion, why not tell them to
me? May not `one of your best friends' claim to know, that
which affects, so deeply, your happiness?”

Jane began a reply, but hesitated, and faltered out something
of its being impossible for her to display to Mr. Lloyd,
Erskine's generosity in the light she saw it.

“Dost thou mean, Jane, that the light of truth is less
favourable to him than the light of imagination?”

“No,” answered Jane; “such virtues as Edward's, shine
with a light of their own; imagination cannot enhance their
value.”

“Still,” said Mr. Lloyd, “they shine but on one happy
individual. Well, my dear Jane,” he continued, after a few
moments' pause, “I will believe without seeing. I will believe
thou hast good reasons for thy faith, though they are
incommunicable. If Erskine make thee happy, I shall be
satisfied.”

Happily for both parties, this very unsatisfactory conference
was broken off by the entrance of Erskine's servant, who
came, as he said, for Miss Elton's baggage. Jane explained,
as concisely as possible, to Mr. Lloyd, her plans for the
present, and then took advantage of this opportunity to retreat
to her own apartment, which she had no sooner entered than
she gave way to a flood of tears, more bitter than any her
aunt's injustice had cost her. She had, previous to her interview

with Mr. Lloyd, determined not to disclose to him, or
Mary Hull, the disagreeable affair of the robbery. She
wished to spare them the pain which the knowledge of a perplexity
from which they could not extricate her, must give to
them. She was sure Mary, whose discrenment was very
quick, and who knew David well, would, at once, suspect him;
and therefore, she thought, that in telling the story, she should
violate the spirit of her promise; and, at bottom, she felt a
lurking apprehension that Mr. Loyd might think there was
more of gratitude than affection in her feelings to Erskine;
she thought it possible, too, he might not estimate Edward's
magnanimity quite as highly as she did; for “though,” she
said, “Mr. Lloyd has the fairest mind in the world, I think
he has never liked Erskine. They are, certainly, very different”—and
she sighed as she concluded her deliberations.

Mr. Lloyd, after remaining for a few moments in the posture
Jane had left him, returned to his own home, abstracted
and sad. `The breath of Heaven smelt as wooingly,' and the
sun shone as brightly as before, but there was now no feeling
of joy within to vibrate to the beauty without; and he certainly
could not be acquitted of the `sullen neglect of nature,'
that he had deemed treason an hour before.

“I knew,” thought he, “she was fallible, and why should I
be surprised at her failure? It cannot be Erskine, but the
creature of her imagination, that she loves. She is too young
to possess the Ithuriel touch that dissolves false appearances:
she could not detect, under so specious a garb, the vanity and
selfishness that counterfeit manly pride and benevolence. If
he were but worthy of her, I should be perfectly happy.”

Mr. Lloyd mistook; he would not, even in that case, have
been perfectly happy. He did not, though he was very much
of a self-examiner, clearly define all his feelings on this trying

occasion. He had loved Jane first as a child, and then as a
sister; and of late he had thought if he could love another
woman, as a wife, it would be Jane Elton. But his lost Rebecca
was more present to his imagination than any living
being. He had formed no project for himself in relation to
Jane; yet he would have felt disappointment at her appropriation
to any other person, though, certainly, not the sorrow
which her engagement to Erskine occasioned him. Mr.
Lloyd was really a disinterested man. He had so long made
it a rule to imitate the Parent of the universe, in still educing
good from evil, that, in every trial of his life, it was his first
aim to ascertain his duty, and then to perform it. He could
weave the happiness of others, though no thread of his own
was in the fabric. In the present case, he resolved still to
watch over Jane; to win the friendship of Erskine, to
endeavor to rectify his principles, to exert over him an insensible
influence, and, if possible, to render him more worthy of
his enviable destiny.

In the course of the day, Mary Hull heard the rumours
that had already spread through the village, of Jane's removal
to Mrs. Harvey's, and her engagement. She ran to the
library door, and in the fulness of her heart, forgetful of the
decorum of knocking, she entered and found Mr. Lloyd sitting
with his little girl on his knee. “Mary, I am glad to
see thee,” said the child; “I cannot get a word from father;
he is just as if he was asleep, only his eyes are wide open.”

Mary, regardless of the child's prattle, announced the
news she had just heard. Mr. Lloyd coldly replied, that he
knew it already; and Mary left the room, a little hurt that
he had not condescended to tell her, and wondering what
made him so indifferent, and then wondering whether it was
indifference; but as she could not relieve her mind, she

resolved to go immediately to Jane, with whom the habits of
their early lives, and her continued kindness, had given and
established the right of free intercourse.

She found Jane alone, and not looking as happy as she
expected. “You have come to give me joy, Mary,” she said,
smiling mournfully as she extended her hand to her friend.

“Yes,” replied Mary, “I came with that intention, and
you look as if joy was yet to be given. Well,” she continued
after a pause, “I always thought you and Mr. Lloyd were
different from any body else in the world, but now you puzzle
me more than ever. I expected to see your aunt Wilson look
grum—that's natural to her, when any good befalls any one
else; and Elvira, who every body knows has been setting her
cap every way for Erskine, ever since she was old enough to
think of a husband: she has a right to have her eyes as red
as a ferret's. But there is Mr. Lloyd, looking as sorrowful
as if he had seen some great trouble, and could not relieve it;
and you, my dear child, I have seen you pass through many
a dark passage of your life with a happier face than you wear
now, when you are going to have the pride of the county for
your husband, to be mistress of the beautiful house on the
hill, and have every thing heart can desire.”

Jane made no explanation nor reply, and after a few moments'
consideration Mary proceeded—“To be sure, I could
wish Erskine was more like Mr. Lloyd; but then he is six or
eight years younger than Mr. Lloyd, and in that time, with
your tutoring, you may make him a good deal like Mr. Lloyd
(Mr. Lloyd was Mary's beau-ideal of a man); that is, if your
endeavours are blessed. It is true, I always thought you
would not marry any man that was not religious; not but
what 'tis allowable, for even professors do it; but then, Jane,
you are more particular and consistent than a great many

professors; and, I know, you think there is nothing binds
hearts together like religion—that bond endures where there
is neither marrying nor giving in marriage.”

Poor Jane had listened to Mary's pros and cons with considerable
calmness; but now she laid her head in her
friend's lap, and gave vent to the feelings she had been all
day arguing down, by a flood of tears. “Ah! my dear Jane,
is it there the shoe pinches? I an't sorry to find you have
thought of it though. If the `candle of the Lord' is lighted
up in the heart, we ought to look at every thing by that light.
But now you have decided, turn to the bright side. I don't
know much about Mr. Erskine; he is called a nice young
man, and who knows what he may become, when he sees how
good and how beautiful it is to have the whole heart and life
ordered and governed by the christian rule. I often think to
myself, Jane, that your life, and Mr. Lloyd's too, are better
than preaching. Don't take on so, my child,” she continued,
soothingly; “you have Scripture for you; for the Bible says,
`the believing wife may sanctify the unbelieving husband;'
and that must mean that her counsel and example shall win
him back to the right way, and persuade him to walk in the
paths of holiness. Cheer up, my child, there is good missionary
work before you; and I feel as if you had many happy
days to come yet. Those that sow in tears, shall reap with
joy. It is a load off my mind, at any rate, that you are away
from your aunt's, and under good Mrs. Harvey's roof. I
stopped at your aunt's on my way here, and she raised a hue
and cry about your leaving her house so suddenly; she said,
your grand fortune had turned your head; `she was not disappointed,
she had never expected any gratitude from you!
but 'twas not for worldly hire she did her duty!' Poor,
poor soul! I would not judge her uncharitably; but I do

believe she has the `hope that will perish.' I just took no
notice of her, and came away. As I was passing through the
kitchen, Sukey says to me, `Mrs. Wilson may look out for
other help, for now Miss Jane is gone out from us, I shan't
stay to hear nothing but disputings, and scoldings, and
prayers.' `But,' says I, `Sukey, you don't object to the prayers?'
`Yes,' says she, `I don't like lip prayers—it is nothing but a
mockery.”'

“Sukey has too much reason,” replied Jane. “But now,
Mary, you must not think from what you have seen that I am
not happy, for I have reason to be grateful, and I ought to be
very, very happy.”

`Ought,' thought Mary, `she may be contented, and
resigned, and even cheerful, because she ought—but happiness
is not duty-work.' However, she had discretion enough to
suppress her homely metaphysics; and patting Jane's head
affectionately, she replied, “Yes, my child, and if you wish it,
I will set these tears down for tears of joy, not sorrow.”
Jane smiled at her friend's unwonted sophistry, and they
parted: Mary, confirmed in a favourite notion, that every
allotment of Providence is designed as a trial for the character;
that all will finally work together for good; and that
Jane was going on in the path to perfection, which, though
no Methodist, she was not (in her partial friend's opinion)
far from attaining. Jane was very much relieved by Mary's
wise suggestions and sincere sympathy.

A sagacious observer of human nature and fortunes has
said, that “if there were more knowledge, there would be
less envy.” The history of our heroine is a striking exemplification
of the truth of this remark: when all was darkness
without, she had been looked upon by the compassionate as
an object of pity, for they could not see the sunshine of the

breast; and now that she was considered as the chief favourite
of the fickle goddess, there was not one that would have envied
her, if the internal conflict she suffered—if that most unpleasant
of all feelings, disagreement with herself, had been
as visible as her external fortunes were.

Erskine was in too good humour with himself, and with
Jane, to find fault with any thing: yet he certainly was a
little disappointed, that in spite of his earnest persuasions to
the contrary, she firmly persisted in the plan of the school;
and we fear he was surprised, perhaps slightly mortified, that
she showed no more joy at having secured a hand and a station,
to which he knew so many had aspired.

12. CHAPTER XII.

Jane entered upon the duties of her new vocation with more
energy and interest than could have been reasonably expected
from a young lady who had so recently entered into an
engagement of marriage, and one which opened upon her the
most flattering prospects. She already felt the benefits resulting
from the severe discipline she had suffered in her aunt's
family. She had a rare habit of putting self aside; of deferring
her own inclinations to the will, and interests, and
inclinations of others. A superficial survey of the human mind
in all its diversity of conditions, will convince us that it may
be trained to any thing; else, how shall we account for the
proud exultation of a savage amidst the cruellest tortures his
triumphant enemy can inflict; or for any of the wonderful
phenomena of enterprise, of fortitude, of patience, in beings
whose physical natures are so constituted, that they instinctively
shrink from suffering?

Our fair young readers (if any of that class condescend

to read this unromantic tale) will smile at the idea that Jane
had any farther occasion for the virtues of adversity; but
she was far from being happy; she had not that firm confidence
in the character of her lover that could alone have
inspired the joy of hope, and secured a quiet spirit. Since
her engagement, and even before, and ever since she had
been interested in Erskine, she had not dared to sound the
depths of her heart. Though quite a novice in the experience
of love, she would have been able to detect its subtleties;
she would have been able to ascertain the nature, and
amount of her affection for Erskine, had she not been driven
by his apparent magnanimity, and the oppression of her relations,
to a sudden decision. We appeal then once more to
our fair young readers, and trust their justice will award to
our heroine some praise, for her spirited and patient performance
of her duties to her young pupils, who were very
far from imagining that their kind and gentle teacher had
any thing in the world to trouble her, or to engage her mind,
but their wants and pursuits.

Her disquietude did not escape the quickened vision of
her vigilant friend Mr. Lloyd; he observed the shadows of
anxiety settling on her usually bright and cheerful countenance,
but even he had no conception of the extent of her
busy apprehensions and secret misgivings.

Week after week passed away, and three seemed to be no
prospect that any thing would occur to free Jane from the
very unpleasant situation in which her aunt's accusations had
placed her. Erskine became restless and impatient, derided
all Jane's arguments in favor of delaying their marriage, and
finally affected to distrust her affection for him. If the undefined,
and undefinable sentiment which was compounded
in Jane's heart of youthful preference and gratitude, was not

love, Jane believed it was, and she at last yielded a reluctant
consent, that the marriage should take place at the end of
three months, even though nothing should occur to release
her from her aunt's power.

It was a few days after this promise had been given, that
as she was one day returning from her school, Erskine joined
her.—“Your friend Robert Lloyd,” said he, “has taken a
mighty fancy to me of late—I cannot conceive what is the
reason of it.”

Jane blushed, for she thought he might have guessed the
reason. “I am glad of it,” she replied, “for he seems to
have withdrawn from me, and you are the only person, Edward,
to whom I should be willing to relinquish any portion
of Mr. Lloyd's regard.”

“Ah, Jane! you need not be alarmed; he and I should
never mix, any more than oil and vinegar.”

“I am sorry for that; but which is the oil, and which is
the vinegar?”

“Oh, he is the oil, soft—neutralizing—rather tasteless;
while I, you know, have a character of my own—am positive
—am—but perhaps it would not be quite modest for me to
finish the parallel. To confess the truth to you, Jane, I
have always had an aversion to Quakers; they are a very
hypocritical sect, depend upon it; pretending, sly, avaricious,
cheating rogues.”

“That's a harsh judgment,” replied Jane, with some
warmth, “and a prejudice, I think: is not Mr. Lloyd the
only Quaker you know?”

“Why—ye—yes, the only one I know much of.”

“And does he justify your opinion?”

“I don't know: it takes a great while to find them out;
and even if Lloyd should be what he would seem, the

exception only proves the rule. I have always disliked
Quakers. I remember a story my father used to tell, when I
was a child, about his being overreached in a most ingenious,
practised manner, by one of the sly-boots, as he called the
whole race. It was not an affair of any great moment; but
no man likes to be outwitted in a bargain, and my father
used to say it gave him an antipathy to the very name of
a Quaker.”

“I think your father was in fault,” replied Jane, “so
carelessly to implant a prejudice, which, as it seems to have
had very slight ground, I trust has not taken such deep root
that it cannot he eradicated.”

“There is more reason in my judgment than you give me
credit for,” replied Edward pettishly. “If they are an upright,
frank people, why is the world kept in ignorance of
their belief? The Quakers have no creed; and though I have
no great faith in the professors of any sect, yet they ought to
let you know what they do think; it is fair and above board.
You may depend upon it, Jane, the Quakers are a jesuitical
people.”

“Have you ever read any of their books?” inquired Jane.

“I read them!” he replied, laughing; “why, my dear
girl, do you take me for a theologian? No—I never read
the books of any sect; and Quaker books, I believe there are
not. Quaker books!” he continued, still laughing, “no, no
—I shall never addict myself to divinity, till Ann Ratcliffe
writes sermons, and Tom Moore warbles hymns.”

Jane did not join in his laugh; but replied, “There is a
book, Edward, that contains the creed of the Quakers: a
creed to which they have never presumed to add any thing,
nor have they taken any thing from it; the only creed to
which they think it right to require the assent of man, and

from which no rational man can dissent—that book is the
Bible! and,” she continued, earnestly, “their faith in this
creed is shown by their works. My dear Edward, examine
their history for their vindication.”

“That I need not, while their cause has so fair a champion.”

“Spare me your sarcasms, Edward, and let me entreat
you to look at the life of their wise and excellent Penn. See
him patiently and firmly enduring persecution, and calumny,
and oppression at home; giving up his time, his fortune, his
liberty, to the cause of suffering humanity, in every mode of
its appeal to his benevolence. Follow him with his colony
to the wilderness, and see him the only one of all the colonial
leaders, (I grieve that I cannot except our fathers, the
pilgrims)[5] the only one who treated the natives of the land
with justice and mercy. Our fathers, Edward, refused to
acknowledge the image of God in the poor Indian. They
affected to believe they were the children of the evil one,
and hunted them like beasts of prey, calling them `worse
than Seythian wolves;' while Penn, and his peaceful people,
won their confidence, their devotion, by treating them with
even-handed justice, with brotherly kindness; and they had
their reward; they lived unharmed among them, without

forts, without a weapon of defence. Is it not the Friends that
have been foremost and most active in efforts for the abolition
of slavery? Among what people do we find most reformers
of the prisons—guardians of the poor and the oppressed—
most of those who `remember the forgotten, and attend to
the neglected—who dive into the depths of dungeons, and
plunge into the infection of hospitals?”'

There was a mingled expression of archness and admiration
in Edward's smile as he replied, “My dear Jane, you
are almost fit to speak in meeting. All that your defence
wants in justness, is made up by the eloquence of your eye
and your glowing cheek. I think friendship is a stronger
feeling in your heart than love, Jane,” he continued, with a
penetrating look that certainly did not abate the carnation of
her cheek. “If I, and all my ancestors had gone on crusades
and pilgrimages, the spirit would not have moved you to
such enthusiasm in our cause, as you manifest for the broad-brimmed,
straight-coated brethren of friend Lloyd.”

“Edward, have you yet to learn of me, that I speak least
of what I feel most?”

The gentleness of Jane's manner, and the tenderness of
her voice, soothed her lover; and he replied, “Forgive me,
dear Jane, a little jealousy; you know jealousy argues love.
To confess to you the honest truth, I felt a little more ticklish
than usual, this evening, on the subject of quakerism. I
had just parted with Mr. Lloyd; and he has been earnestly
recommending to me, to undertake a reform in our poorlaws,
by which he thinks, that we should rid ourselves of the
burden of supporting many who are not necessarily dependent
on us, and improve the condition of those who are. The
plan seems to me to be good and feasible.”

“And what then, Edward, provoked your displeasure?”

“Why, he wished me to take the whole conduct of it.
He preferred that the plan should appear to originate with
me; that I should head a petition to the Legislature; and
if we succeeded, that I shall superintend the execution of
the plan.”

“Still, dear Edward, I see any thing but offence in all
this.”

“Because your eye-sight is a little dimmed by your partiality.
Do you believe, Jane, that any man would be willing
to transfer to another all the merit and praise of a scheme,
which, if it succeed, will be a most important benefit to the
community; will be felt, and noticed, and applauded by
every body? No—there is some design lurking under this
specious garb of disinterestedness—disinterestedness! it
only exists in the visions of poets, or the Utopian dreams of
youth; or, perhaps, embodied in the fine person of a hero of
romance.”

Oh! my dear Edward, it does exist; it is the principle,
the spirit of the Christian!”

“For example—of your aunt Wilson, and of sundry other
stanch professors I could mention, who,

“Is it fair,” replied Jane, “to condemn a whole class because
some of its members are faithless and disloyal? A
commander does but decimate a mutinous corps; and you
exclude the whole from your confidence, because a few are
treacherous. I allow,” continued Jane, “there are a few,
very few, who are perfectly disinterested; but every Christian,
in proportion to his fidelity to the teachings and example

of his Master, will be moved and governed by this principle.”

Perhaps Edward felt a passing conviction of the truth of
Jane's assertions; at any rate, he made no reply, and afterwards
he shunned the subject; and even Jane seemed to
shrink from it as one upon which they had no common
feeling.

The day before entering on the duties of her second
school-term, Jane determined to indulge herself in a solitary
walk to the cottage of old John of the Mountain. She had
purchased some comforts for the old people, with a part of
her small earnings, and she knew if she carried them herself
she should double their value. She found the way without
difficulty, for her night-walk had indelibly impressed it on
her memory. On her approach to the cottage, and as she
emerged from the wood, she perceived just on its verge a
slight rising in the form of a grave; a wild rose-bush grew
beside it. Jane paused for a moment, and plucking one of
the flowers, she said, “fragrant and transient, thou art a fit
emblem of the blasted flower below!” As she turned from
the grave, she perceived that a magical change had been
wrought upon John's hut. Instead of a scarcely habitable
dwelling, of decayed logs, filled in with mud, she saw a neat
little framed house, with a fence around it, and a small garden
annexed to it, inclosed with a post and rail fence of neat
construction. Jane hastened forward, and entered the cottage
with the light step of one who goes on an errand of
kindness.

“Who would have thought,” said the good dame, as she
dusted a chair and handed it to Jane, “of your coming all
this way to see whether we were above ground yet?”

“Ah,” said John, “there are some in this world, a precious

few, who remember those that every body else forgets.”

“I could not forget you, my good friends,” replied Jane,
“though John does not come any more to put me in mind of
you.”

“Why, Miss Jane,” said John, “I grow old, and I have
been but twice to the village since that mournful night you
was here, and then I was in such a worrying matter that I
did not think even of you.”

“What have you had to disturb you?” inquired Jane.
“I hoped from finding you in this nice new house that all had
gone well since I saw you.”

“Ah,” replied John, “I have been greatly favoured; but
the storm came before the calm. Miss Jane, did you never
hear of my law-suit? the whole town was alive with it.”

Jane assured John that she had never heard a word of it;
that she had a little school to take care of; and that she saw
very few persons, and heard little village news, even when it
was as important as his law-suit.

“Then, Miss Jane,” said John, “if you have time and
patience to hear an old man's story, I will tell you mine.
It is fifty years since my old woman and I settled down in
these woods. Like all our fellow-creatures, we have had our
portion of storms and sunshine: it has pleased the Lord to
lop off all our branches, to cut down the little saplings
that grew up at our feet, and leave us two lonely and bare
trunks, to feel, and resist the winds of heaven as we may:
two old evergreens,” he continued, with a melancholy smile,
“that flourish when every thing has faded about them. Yes,
fifty years I have seen the sun come over that mountain
every morning; and there is not a tree in all these thick
woods but it seems like an old friend to me. Here my sons

and daughters have been born to me, and here I have buried
them, all but poor Jem, who you know was lost at sea. They
died when they were but little children, and nobody remembers
them but us; but they are as fresh in our minds as if it
was but yesterday they were playing about us, with their
laughing eyes and rosy cheeks. This has not much to do
with my lawsuit,” continued John, after a pause, and clearing
his voice, “only that I shall want some excuse for loving
the old spot so well before I get through with my story. I
hired this bit of land of a man that's been dead twenty years,
and it has changed hands many a time since, but I have
always been able to satisfy for the rent; it was but a trifle,
for no one but I would fancy the place. Lately it's come
into the hands of the two young Woodhulls, by the death of
the Deacon their father. They are two hard-favoured, hard-hearted,
wild young chaps, Miss Jane, that think all the
world was made for them, and their pleasure. If my memory
serves me, it was just one week after you was here, that they
were up hunting in these woods with young Squire Erskine.
John, the eldest, took aim at a robin that was singing on the
tree just before my door: it had built its nest there early in
the summer: we had fed it with crumbs from our table, and
it was as tame as a chicken. I told this to them, and begged
the little innocent's life so earnestly, that the boys laughed,
but Erskine said, `Let the old man have his way.' They
said it was nonsense to give up to my whims, and told me to
take away my hand, (for I had raised it up to protect the
nest,) or they would fire through it. I did take it away, and
the nest with it, and brought it into the house. They
came swearing in, and demanded the bird. I refused to give
it up; they grew more and more angry: may be Erskine
might have brought them to reason, but he had walked away.
They said it was their land, and their bird, and they would
not be thwarted by me; and they called me, and my wife too,
many a name that was too bad for a decent person's ear.
They worked themselves up to a fury, and then warned me
off the ground. I made no reply; for I thought when they
got over their passion they'd forget it. But they returned
the next day with handspikes, and threatened to pull the
house down on our heads, if we did not come out of it. I
I have had a proud spirit in my day, Miss Jane, but old age
and weakness have tamed it. I begged them to spare us our
little dwelling, with tears in my eyes; and my poor old
woman prayed she might bring out the few goods we had;
but oh! `a fool in his folly is like a bear robbed of her
whelps.' They said they would dust our goods for us; and
so we came out and turned away our faces; but we heard the
old house that had sheltered us so long crumble to pieces, as
you would crush an egg-shell in your hand; yes, and we
heard their loud deriding laugh; but thank the Lord, we
were too far off, to hear the jokes they passed between every
peal of laughter. Ah, there is more hope of any thing than of
a hard heart in a young body.”

“Can it be possible,” interrupted Jane, “that for so slight
a cause the Woodhulls could do you such an injury?”

“It is even so,” replied John; “youth is headstrong, and
will not bear crossing.”

“But where did you find a shelter?”

“I led my wife down the other side of the mountain, to
one Billy Downie's, a soft feeling creature, who has more
goodness in his heart than wit in his head, and he made us
kindly welcome. I left my wife there, and the next day I
came over to the village, to see if the law would give me
justice of those that had no mercy. I should have gone to

Squire Erskine with my case, for I knew he was called a fine
pleader, though he is too wordy to suit me—but he was a
friend of the Woodhulls, and so I applied to the stranger
that's lately moved in: he proved a raw hand. The trial was
appointed for the next Saturday. The day came; and all
the men in the village were collected at the tavern, for Erskine
was to plead for the Woodhulls, and every body likes to
hear his silver tongue.”

“Erskine plead for the Woodhulls!” exclaimed Jane.

“Oh yes, Miss Jane; for, as I told you, they are very
thick. My attorney was a kind of a 'prentice-workman at
the law; he was afraid of Erskine too; and he stammered,
and said one thing and meant another, and made such a jingle
of it, I could not wonder the justice and the people did not
think I had a good claim for damages. But still, the plain
story was so much against the Woodhulls, and the people of
the village are so friendly-like to me, that it is rather my
belief I should have been righted, if Erskine had not poured
out such a power of words, that he seemed to take away
people's senses. He started with what he called a proverb of
the law, and repeated it so many times, I think I can never
forget it, for it seemed to be the hook he hung all his argufying
upon. It was `cujus est solum, ejus est usque ad cœ
lum, (we have taken the liberty slightly to correct the old
man's quotation of the Latin;) which, if I rightly understood
it, means, that whoever owns the soil, owns all above it to the
sky; and though it stands to reason it can't be so, yet Erskine's
fine oration put reason quite out of the question; and
so the justice decided that the Woodhulls had a right to do
what seemed good in their own eyes with my furniture; and
then he gave me a bit of an exhortation, and told me I should
never make out well in the world, if I did not know more of

the laws of the land! and concluded with saying, I ought to
be very thankful I had so little to be destroyed. I said
nothing; but I thought it was late in the day for me to study
the laws of the land; and my mite was as much to me as his
abundance to him. When the trial was over, Erskine and
the Woodhulls invited the justice and the company in the
bar-room to treat them; and through the open door I heard
Erskine propose a bumper to those who knew how to maintain
their rights. “No,” Woodhull said, “it should be to
him who knew how to defend a friend”—right or wrong,
thought I. But,” said John, pausing, “my story is too long
for you Miss Jane.”

Jane had turned away her head; she now assured John
she was listening to every word he said, and begged him to
go on.

“Well, miss, I thought I was alone in the room, and I
just let out my heart, as you know a body will when he thinks
there is no eye but His that's above, sees him. I saw nothing
before Sarah and I, but to go upon the town, and that's
what I always had a dread of; for, though I have been a
poor man all my life, Miss Jane, what I had was my own. I
have been but weakly since I was a boy, but my woman and
I have been sober and industrious. We have always had a
shelter for ourselves; and sometimes, too, for a poor houseless
creature that had not a better; and we wanted but little,
and we were independent: and then you know, what the town
gives is neither given or taken with a good will. Well, as I
said, I thought I was alone in the room; but I heard a slight
noise behind me, and there was one who had not followed the
multitude; he had a clear open face, and that look—I can't
justly describe it, Miss Jane, but it seems as if it was the
light of good deeds sent back again; or, may be, the seal the

Lord puts upon his own children—and pity and kindness
seemed writ in every line of his face. Do you know who I
mean?”

“Mr. Lloyd,” she replied, in a scarcely audible voice.

“Yes, yes—any body that had ever seen him would guess.
He beckoned to me to shut the door, and asked me if I had
any particular attachment to this spot; and I owned to him,
as I have to you, my childishness about it; and he smiled,
and said he was afraid I was too old to be cured of it; and
then asked, if I believed I could persuade the young men to
sell as much of the land as I should want. I was sure I could,
for I know they are wasteful and ravenous for money, and besides
they had had their own will, and the land was of no use
to them. And then he told me, Miss Jane, that he would give
me the money for the land, if I could make a bargain with the
Woodhulls, and enough besides to build me a comfortable little
house. I could not thank him—I tried, but I could not; and so
he just squeezed my hand and said, he understood me—and
charged me to keep it a secret where I got help; and I have
minded him till this day, but I could not keep it from you.”

“You'd better stop now, John,” said the old woman, “for
the long walk, and the long story, have quite overdone Miss
Jane; she looks tired out, and pale and red in a minute.”

Jane was obliged to own she did not feel well; but after
drinking some water, she made an effort to compose herself,
and asked the old man, “What reason he had to think the
Woodhulls and Erskine were intimate friends?”

“Why, did you never hear, miss, that it was Erskine that
got John Woodhull clear when Betsy Davis sued him for
breach of promise? I was summoned to court as a witness.
It was a terrible black business; but Erskine made it all
smooth; and after the trial was past, I overheard these chaps

flattering Erskine till they made him believe he was more
than mortal. At any rate, they put such a mist before his
eyes, that he could not see to choose good from evil, else he
never would have chosen them for his companions; he never
would have been led to spend night after night with them at
the gambling club.”

“At the gambling club, John!—where—what do you
mean?” and poor Jane clasped her hands together, and looked
at him with an expression of such wretchedness, that the old
man turned his eyes from her to his wife and back again to
Jane, as if he would, but durst not, inquire the reason of her
emotion.

“I have done wrong,” he stammered out, “old fool that I
was. Erskine is your friend, Miss Jane. The Lord forgive
me,” he added, rising and walking to the door. Jane had
risen also, and with a trembling hand was tying on her hat.
“And the Lord help thee, child,” he continued, turning again
towards her, “and keep thee from every snare. Well, well!—
I never should have thought it.”

Jane felt humbled by the old man's sympathy; and yet
it was too sincere, too kindly felt, to be repressed. She was
hastening away, when Sarah said, “You have forgotten your
bundle, miss.”

“It is for you, my good friend,” she replied; and, without
awaiting their thanks, she bade them farewell, and was
soon out of sight of the old man, whose eye followed her quick
footsteps till she was hid by the adjoining wood. He then
turned from the door, and raised his hands and his faded eyes,
glistening with the gathering tears, to Heaven—“Oh Lord!”
he exclaimed, “have mercy on thy young servant. Suffer
not this child of light to be yoked to a child of darkness.”

We believe that, in all classes and conditions, women are

more inclined than men to look on the bright side of marriage.
In this case Sarah, after a little consideration, said,
“I'm thinking, John, you take on too much; you are borrowing
trouble for Miss Jane. She is a wise, discreet young
body, and she may cure Mr. Erskine of his faults. Besides,
if he does go astray a little, that's no uncommon thing for a
young man; he is not wicked and hard-hearted like the
Woodhulls.”

“No, no, Sarah, he an't so bad as the Woodhulls, but he
has been a spoilt child from the beginning: he is a comely
man to look to, and he has a glib tongue in his head; but he
is all for self—all for self, Sarah. You might as well undertake
to make the stiff branches of that old oak tender and
pliable as the sprouts of the sapling that grows beside it, as
to expect Miss Jane can alter Erskine. No—He alone can
do it with whom all things are possible. We have no right
to expect a miracle. She has no call to walk upon the sea,
and we cannot hope a hand will be stretched out to keep her
from sinking. It is the girl's beauty has caught him; and
when that is gone, and it is a quickly fading flower, she will
have no hold whatever on him.”

We know not how long the old man indulged in his reflections,
for he was not again interrupted by Sarah, whose
deference for her husband's superior sagacity seems to have
been more habitual than even her namesake's of old.

Our unhappy heroine pursued her way home, her mind
filled with `thick coming' and bitter fancies, revolving over
and over again the circumstances of John's narrative. He
had thrown a new light on the character of her lover; and she
blamed herself, that faults had seemed so dim to her, which
were now so glaring. She was not far from coming to the
result, which, we trust, our readers have expected from the

integrity and purity of her character. “If I had remained
ignorant of his faults,” she thought, “I should have had some
excuse: I might then have hoped for assistance and blessing
in my attempts to reform him. It would be presumption to
trust, now, in any efforts I could make; and what right have
I, with my eyes open, to rush into a situation where my own
weak virtues may be subdued by trials—must be assailed
by temptation? Oh! when I heard him speak lightly
of religion, how could I hope he would submit to its requisitions
and restraints? I started at the first thought, that he
was unprincipled; and yet I have always known there was
no immovable basis for principle, but religion. Selfish—
vain—how could I love him? And yet—and she looked at
the other side of the picture—his preference of me was purely
disinterested—an orphan — destitute—almost an outcast—
liable to degradation—and he has exposed himself to all the
obloquy I may suffer—and does he not deserve the devotion
of my life?” A moment before, she would have answered
her self-interrogation in the negative; but now she seemed
losing herself in a labyrinth of opposing duties. She thought
that she ought not to place implicit reliance in John's statements.
He might have exaggerated Erskine's faults. In
his situation, it was natural he should; but he had such a
calm, sober way with him, every word bore the impress of
truth. The story of the gambling club had turned the scale;
but John might have been misinformed.

Thus, after all her deliberations, Jane re-entered her home
without having come to any decision. Though we believe
the opinion of a great moralist is against us, we doubt if
“decision of character” belongs to the most scrupulously virtuous.

13. CHAPTER XIII.

As Jane entered Mrs. Harvey's door, she met her kind hostess
just returning from a walk, her face flushed with recent
pleasure. “Where upon earth have you been?” she exclaimed.
“Ah! if you had gone with me, you would not have come
home with such a wo-begone face. Not a word! Well—
nothing for nothing is my rule, my dear; and so you need
not expect to hear where I have been, and what superb papers
have come from New York, for the front rooms; and beautiful
china, and chairs, and carpets, and a fine work-table, for an
industrious little lady, that shall be nameless; all quite too
grand for a sullen, silent, deaf and dumb school-mistress.”
She added, playfully, “If our cousin Elvira had been out in
such a shower of gold, we should have been favoured with
sweet smiles and sweet talk for one year at least. But there
comes he that will make the bird sing, when it won't sing to

any one else: and so my dear, to escape chilling a lover's
atmosphere, or being melted in it, I shall make my escape.”

Jane would gladly have followed her, but she sat still,
after hastily throwing aside her hat, and seizing the first
book that she could lay her hands upon, to shelter her embarrassment.
She sat with her back to the door.

Edward entered, and walking up to her, looked over her
shoulder as if to see what book had so riveted her attention.
It chanced to be Penn's “Fruits of Solitude.” “Curse on all
Quakers and quakerism!” said he, seizing the book rudely
and throwing it across the room; “wherever I go, I am
crossed by them.”

He walked about, perturbed and angry. Jane rose to
leave him, for now, she thought, was not the time to come to
an explanation; but Erskine was not in a humour to be
opposed in any thing. He placed his back against the door,
and said, “No, Jane, you shall not leave me now. I have
much to tell you. Forgive my violence. There is a point
beyond which no rational creature can keep his temper. I
have been urged to that point; and, thank Heaven, I have
not learnt that smooth-faced hypocrisy that can seem what
it is not.”

Jane trembled excessively. Erskine had touched the
`electric chain;' she sunk into a chair, and burst into tears.

“I was right,” he exclaimed; “it is by your authority,
and at your instigation, that I am dogged from place to
place by that impertinent fellow; you have entered into a
holy league; but know, Miss Elton, there is a tradition in
our family, that no Erskine was ever ruled by his wife; and
the sooner the lady who is destined to be mine learns not to
interfere in my affairs, the more agreeable it will be to me,
and the more safe for herself.”

Jane's indignation was roused by this strange attack; and
resuming her composure, she said, “If you mean that I shall
understand you, you must explain yourself, for I am ignorant
and innocent of any thing you may suspect me of.”

“Thank heaven!” replied Erskine, “I believe you, Jane;
you know in the worst of times I have believed you; and it
was natural to be offended that you should distrust me. You
shall know the `head and front of my offending.' The sins
that have stirred up such a missionary zeal in that Quaker
saint, will weigh very light in the scales of love.”

“Perhaps,” said Jane gravely, “I hold a more impartial
balance than you expect.”

“Then you do not love me, Jane, for love is, and ought to
be, blind; but I am willing to make the trial; I will never
have it repeated to me, that `if you knew all, you would withdraw
your affections from me.' No one shall say that you
have not loved me, with all my youthful follies on my head.
I know you are a little puritanical; but that is natural to
one who has had so much to make her miserable; the unhappy
are driven to religion. But you are young and curable,
if you can be rescued from this Quaker influence.”

Edward still rattled on, and seemed a little to dread making
the promised communication; but at last, inferring from
Jane's seriousness that she was anxious, and impatient himself
to have it over, he went on to tell her—that from the
beginning of their engagement, Mr. Lloyd had undertaken
the surveillance of his morals; that certainly he had been
very civil to him, and possibly, if he had not been fortified by
his antipathy to Quakers, he should have surrendered his confidence
to him.

“No gentleman,” he said, “no man of honourable feeling
—no man of proper sensibility—would submit to the interference

of a stranger—a man not much older than himself—in
matters that concerned himself alone; it was an intolerable
outrage. If Jane were capable of a fair judgment, she would
allow that it was so.”

Jane mildly replied, that she could only judge from the
facts; as yet she had heard nothing but invectives. Erskine
said, he had imagined he was stating his case in a court of
love, and not of law; but he had no objection, since his judge
was as sternly just as an old Roman father, to state facts.
He could pardon Mr. Lloyd his eagerness to make him adopt
his plans of improvement in the natural and moral world: to
the first he might have been led by his taste for agriculture,
(which he believed was unaffected,) and to the second he was
pledged by the laws of meddling quakerism. Still he said
none but a Quaker would have thought of prying into the
affairs of people who were strangers to him—however, that
might be pardoned; as he said before, he supposed every
Quaker was bound to `bear his testimony,' that he believed
was their cant term for their impertinence. “But, my sweet
judge, you do not look propitious,” Erskine continued after
this misty preamble, from which Jane could gather nothing
but that his prejudices and pride had thrown a dark shadow
over all the virtues of Mr. Lloyd.

“I cannot, Erskine, look propitious on your sneers against
the principles of my excellent friend.”

“Perhaps,” replied Erskine tartly, “his practise will be
equally immaculate in your eyes. And now, Jane, I beseech
you for once to forget that Mr. Lloyd is your excellent friend;
a man who bestowed some trifling favours on your childhood,
and remember the rights of one to whom you at least owe
your love—though he would neither accept that, nor your
gratitude, as a debt.”

Jane assured him she was ready to hear any thing and
every thing impartially that he would tell her. He replied,
that he detested stoical impartiality; that he wished her to
enter into his loves and his hates, without asking a reason for
them. “But since,” he continued, “you must have the reason,
I will not withhold it. As I told you, I submitted to a thousand
vexations, little impertinences: he is plausible and gentlemanly
in his manners, so there was nothing I could resent,
till after a contemptible affair between John and the old
basket-maker and the Woodhulls, in which I used my humble
professional skill to extricate my friends, who had been
perhaps a little hasty in revenging the impertinence of the
foolish old man. Lloyd was present at the trial before the
justice: I fancied, from the expression of his face, that he
wished my friends to be foiled, and this stung me, and stimulated
my faculties. I succeeded in winning my cause in spite
of law and equity, for they were both against me; and this
you know is rather flattering to one's talents. The Woodhull's
overwhelmed me with praises and gratitude. I felt
sorry for the silly old man, whom they had very unceremoniously
unhoused, and I proposed a small subscription to enable
him to pay the bill of costs, &c., which was his only receipt
from the prosecution. I headed it, and it was soon
made up; but the old fellow declined it with as much dignity
as if he had been a king in disguise. It was an affair of
no moment, and I should probably never have thought of it
again, if Lloyd had not the next day made it the text upon
which he preached as long a sermon as I would hear, upon
the characters of the Woodhulls; he even went so far as to
presume to remonstrate with me upon my connection with
them; painted their conduct on various occasions in the blackest
colours; spoke of their pulling down the old hovel, which

had in fact been a mere cumberer of the ground for twenty
years, as an act of oppression and cruelty; said their habits
were all bad; their pursuits all either foolish or dangerous.
I restrained myself as long as possible, and then I told him,
that I should not submit to hear any calumnies against my
friends; friends who were devoted to me, who would go to
perdition to serve me. If they had foibles, they were those
that belonged to open, generous natures; they were open-handed,
and open-hearted, and had not smothered their passions,
till they were quite extinguished. I told him they
were honourable young men, not governed by the fear that
`holds the wretch in order.' He might have known that I
meant to tell him they were what he was not; but he seemed
quite unmoved, and I spoke more plainly. I had never, I
told him, been accustomed to submit my conduct to the revision
of any one; that he had no right, and I knew not why
he presumed, to assume it, to haunt me like an external conscience;
that my `genius was not rebuked by his,' neither
would it be, if all the marvellous light of all his brethren was
concentrated in his luminous mind.”

“Oh, Erskine, Erskine!” exclaimed Jane, “was this your
return for his friendly warning?”

“Hear me through, Jane, before you condemn me. He
provoked me more than I have told you. He said that I
was responsible to you for my virtue; that I betrayed your
trust by exposing myself to be the companion, or the prey,
of the vices of others. Would you have had me borne
this, Jane? Would you thank me for allowing that he
was more careful of your happiness than I am?”—“Well,”
added he, after a moment's pause, “as you do not reply,
I presume you have not yet decided that point. We
separated, my indignation roused to the highest pitch,

and he cold and calm as ever. When we next met, there
was no difference in his manners to me that a stranger would
have observed; but I perceived his words were all weighed
and measured, as if he would not venture soon again to disturb
a lion spirit.”

“Is this all?” asked Jane.

“Not half,” replied Erskine; and after a little hesitation
he continued, “I perceive that it is impossible for you
to see things in the light I do. Your aunt with her everlasting
cant, your Methodist friend with her old maid notions,
and this precise Quaker, above all, have made you so
rigid, have so bound and stiffened every youthful indulgent
feeling, that I have little hope of a favourable judgment.”

“Then,” said Jane, rising, “it is as unnecessary as painful
for me to hear the rest.”

“No, you shall not go,” he replied; “I expect miracles
from the touch of love. I think I have an advocate in your
heart, that will plead for me against the whole `privileged
order' of professors—of every cast. Do not be shocked, my
dear Jane; do not, for your own sake, make mountains of
molehills, when I tell you, that the young men of the village
instituted a club, three or four months since, who meet once
a week socially, perhaps a little oftener, when we are all
about home: and”—he hesitated a moment, as one will when
he comes to a ditch, and is uncertain whether to spring over,
to retreat, or to find some other way; but he had too much
pride to conceal the fact, and though he feared a little to announce
it, yet he was determined to justify it. Jane was
still mute, and he went on—“We play cards; sometimes we
have played later and higher perhaps than we should if we
had all been in the leading-strings of prudence; all been bred
Quakers. Our club are men of honour and spirit, high-minded

gentlemen; a few disputes, misunderstandings, might
arise now and then, as they will among people who do
not weigh every word, lest they should chance to have an
idle one to account for; but, till the last evening, we have,
in the main, spent our time together as whole-souled fellows
should, in mirth and jollity. As I said, last evening unfortunately—”

“Tell me nothing more, Mr. Erskine; I have heard
enough,” interrupted Jane.

“What! you will not listen to friend Lloyd's reproaches;
not listen to what most roused his holy indignation?”

“I have no wish to hear any thing further,” replied Jane.
“I have heard enough to make my path plain before me. I
loved you, Edward; I confessed to you that I did.”

“And you do not any longer?”

“I cannot; the illusion has vanished. Neither do you
love me.” Edward would have interrupted her; but she
begged him to hear her, with a dignified composure, that convinced
him this was no sudden burst of resentment, no girlish
pique that he might soothe with flattery and professions.
“A most generous impulse, Edward, led you to protect an
oppressed orphan; and I thought the devotion of my heart
and my life were a small return to you. It is but a few
months since. Is not love an engrossing passion? But what
sacrifices have you made to it? Oh, Edward! if in the
youth and spring of your affection I have not had more
power over you, what can I hope from the future?”

“Hope!—believe every thing, Jane. I will be as plastic
as wax, in your hands. You shall mould me as you will.”

“No, Edward; I have tried my power over you, and
found you wanting. Broken confidence cannot be restored.”

“Jane, you are rash; you are giving up independence—

protection. If you reject me, who will defend you from your
aunt? Do you forget that you are still in her power?”

“No,” replied Jane; “but I have the defence of innocence,
and I do not fear her. It was not your protection, it
was not independence I sought, it was a refuge in your affection;—that
has failed me. Oh, Edward!” she continued,
rising, “examine your heart as I have examined mine, and
you will find the tie is dissolved that bound us; there can
be no enduring love without sympathy; our feelings, our pursuits,
our plans, our inclinations are all diverse.”

“You are unkind, ungrateful, Jane.”

“I must bear that reproach as I can; but I do not deserve
it, Mr. Erskine.”

Erskine imagined he perceived some relenting in the faltering
of her voice, and he said, “Do not be implacable,
Jane; you are too young, too beautiful, to treat the follies
of youth as if they were incurable; give me a few months'
probation, I will do any thing you require; abandon the
club, give up my associates.”

Jane paused for a moment, but there was no wavering in
her resolution—“No, Mr. Erskine; we must part now; if I
loved you, I could not resist the pleadings of my heart.”

Erskine entreated—promised every thing; till convinced
that Jane did not deceive him or herself, his vanity and
pride, mortified and wounded, came to his relief, and changed
his entreaties to sarcasms. He said the rigour that would
immolate every human feeling, would fit her to be the Elect
Lady of the Shaker society; he assured her that he would
emulate her stoicism.

“I am no stoic,” replied Jane; and the tears gushed
from her eyes. “Oh, Erskine! I would make any exertions,
any sacrifices to render you what I once thought you. I

would watch and toil to win you to virtue—to heaven. If I
believed you loved me, I could still hope, for I know that
affection is self-devoting, and may overcome all things. Edward,”
she continued, with trembling voice, “there is one subject,
and that nearest to my heart, on which I discovered
soon after our engagement we were at utter variance. When
I first heard you trifle with the obligations of religion, and
express a distrust of its truths, I felt my heart chill. I reproached
myself bitterly for having looked on your insensibility
on this subject as the common carelessness of a gay
young man, to be expected and forgiven, and easily cured.
These few short months have taught me much; have taught
me, Erskine, not that religion is the only sure foundation of
virtue—that I knew before—but they have taught me, that
religion alone can produce unity of spirit; alone can resist
the cares, the disappointments, the tempests of life; that it
is the only indissoluble bond—for when the silver chord is
loosed, this bond becomes immortal. I have felt that my
most sacred pleasures and hopes must be solitary.” Erskine
made no reply; he felt the presence of a sanctified spirit.
“You now know all, Erskine. The circumstances you have
told me this evening, I partly knew before.”

“From Lloyd?” said Edward. “He then knew, as he
insinuated, why your `colour had faded.”'

“You do him wrong. He has never mentioned your name
since the morning I left my aunt's. I heard them by accident,
from John.”

“It is, in truth, time we should part, when you can give
your ear to every idle rumour;” he snatched his hat, and
was going.

Jane laid her hand on his arm, “Yes, it is time,” she said,
“that we should part; but not in anger. Let us exchange

forgiveness, Edward.” Erskine turned, and wept bitterly.
For a few gracious moments his pride, his self-love, all melted
away, and he felt the value, the surpassing excellence of
the blessing he had forfeited. He pressed the hand Jane
had given him to his lips, fervently; “Oh, Jane,” he said,
“you are an angel; forget my follies, and think of me with
kindness.”

“I shall remember nothing of the past,” she said, with a
look that had `less of earth in it than heaven,' “but your
goodness to me—God bless you, Edward; God bless you!”
she repeated, and they separated—for ever!

For a few hours Erskine thought only of the irreparable
loss of Jane's affections. Every pure, every virtuous feeling
he possessed, joined in a clamorous tribute to her excellence,
and in a sentence of self condemnation that could not
be silenced. But Edward was habitually under the dominion
of self-love, and every other emotion soon gave place to
the dread of being looked upon as a rejected man. He had
not courage to risk the laugh of his associates, or what would
be much more trying, their affected pity; and to escape it
all, he ordered his servant to pack his clothes, and make the
necessary preparations for leaving the village in the morning,
in the mail-stage for New-York. He was urged to this step
too, by another motive, arising from a disagreeable affair in
which he had been engaged—the affair which had induced Mr.
Lloyd to make a second attempt to withdraw him from his
vicious associates. At a recent meeting of the club, the
younger Woodhull had introduced a gentleman who pretended
to be a Mr. Rivington, from Virginia. Woodhull had
met him at Saratoga Springs. They were kindred spirits,
and, forming a sudden friendship, Rivington promised Woodhull
that, after he had exhausted the pleasures of Springs

he would come to —, and pass a few days with him before
his return to Virginia. Rivington was a fit companion for
his new friend; addicted to a score of vices; gambling high,
and out-drinking, out-swearing, and out-bullying his comrades.
Edward was certainly far better than any other
member of this precious association. He was, from the first,
disgusted with the stranger, with his gross manners, and not a
little with the manifest indisposition to pay to him the deference
he was accustomed to receive from the rest of the company.
The club sat later than usual. Rivington's passions
became inflamed by the liquor he had drank. A dispute
arose about the play. Erskine and John Woodhull were
partners. Rivington accused Woodhull of unfair play. Edward
defended his partner. A violent altercation ensued between
them. The lie was given and retorted in so direct a
form as to afford ample ground for an honourable adjustment
of the dispute.

“Rivington said, “If he had to deal with a Virginan—a
man of honour—the quarrel might be settled in a gentlemanly
way; but a sniveling cowardly Yankee had no honour to defend.”
Edward was provoked to challenge him; and arrangements
were made for the meeting at daylight in the morning,
in a neighbouring wood, which had never been disturbed by
harsher sound than a sportsman's gun. The brothers were to
act as seconds.

The parties were all punctual to their appointment. The
morning, of which they were going to make so unhallowed a
use, was a most beautiful one. The mist took a poet's liberty
and played with realities. The place of rendezvous was on
a hill-side. Below it the valley appeared a lake over which
floated a tremulous veil of vapor. Dotting it here and there
were green spires of Lombardy poplar, branches of sugar

maple with its massive foliage, and widely spreading boughs
of the drooping elm—that queen of beauty.

“Jocund day stood tip-toe on the summit of monument,”
brightened the green hill-tops, and shone all along the wavy
outline of the mountains. But this lovely aspect of nature
was unheeded and unnoticed by these rash young men. Her
sacred volume is a sealed book to those who are inflamed by
passion, or degraded by vice.

The ground was marked out, the usual distance prescribed
by the seconds, and the principals were just about to take
their stations, when they were interrupted by Mr. Lloyd,
who in returning from his morning walk, passed through this
wood, which was within a short distance of his house. On
emerging from the thick wood, into the open space selected
by the young men, they were directly before him, so that it
was impossible for him to mistake the design of their meeting.

“Confusion!” exclaimed Edward; mortified that Mr.
Lloyd, of all men living, should have witnessed this scene;
and then turning to him, “To what, sir,” said he haughtily,
“do we owe the favour of your company?”

“Purely to accident, Mr. Erskine, or, I should say, to
Providence, if I may be so happy as to prevent a rash violation
of the laws of God and man.”

“Stand off, sir!” said Edward, determined now to brave
Mr. Lloyd's opposition, “and witness, if you will, for you
shall not prevent, our brave encounter.”

Mr. Lloyd had interposed himself between Edward and
his adversary, and he did not move from his station. “A
brave encounter, truly!” he replied, pointing with a smile of
contempt at Rivington, who was shaking as if he had an
ague; “that young man's pale cheeks and trembling limbs

do not promise the merit of bravery to your encounter, Mr.
Erskine.”

“The devil take the impertinent fellow!” exclaimed the
elder Woodhull (Edward's second); “proceed to your business,
gentlemen.”

Erskine placed himself in an attitude to fire, and raised
his arm. Mr. Lloyd remained firm and immovable. “Do
you mean to take my fire, sir?” asked Erskine. “If you
continue to stand there, the peril be upon yourself; the fault
rests with you.”

“I shall risk taking the fire, if thou dare risk giving it,”
replied Mr. Lloyd, coolly.

“Curse him!” said Woodhull, “he thinks you are afraid
to fire.”

This speech had the intended effect upon Erskine. “Give
us the signal,” he said, hastily.

The signal was given, and Edward discharged his pistol.
The ball grazed Mr. Lloyd's arm, and passed off without any
other injury. “It was bravely done,” said he, with a contemptuous
coolness, that increased, if any thing could increase
the shame Erskine felt, the moment he had vented his
passion by the rash and violent act. “We have been singularly
fortunate,” he continued, “considering thou hast all the
firing to thyself, and two fair marks. Poor fellow!” he
added, turning to Rivington, “so broad a shield as I furnished
for thee, I should have hoped would have saved some of
this fright.”

John Woodhull had perceived that his friend's courage,
which, the preceding evening, had been stimulated by the
liquor, had vanished with the fog that clouded his reason;
and ever since they came on the battle-ground, he had been
vainly endeavouring to screw him up to the sticking point,

by suggesting, in low whispers, such motives as he thought
might operate upon him; but all his efforts were ineffectual.
Rivington was, to use a vulgar expression, literally `scared
out of his wits.' When the signal was given for firing, he
had essayed to raise his arm, but it was all unstrung by fear,
and he could not move it. The sound of Erskine's pistol
completed his dismay; he dropped his pistol, said he was
willing to own he was no gentleman; he would beg Mr.
Erskine's pardon, and all the gentlemen's pardon; he would
do any thing almost the gentlemen would say.

John Woodhull felt his own reputation implicated by his
principal's cowardice; and passionate and reckless, he seized
the pistol, and would have discharged the contents at Rivington;
but Mr. Lloyd seeing his intention, caught hold of his
arm, wrenched the pistol from him, fired it in the air, and
threw it from him. “Shame on thee, young man!” he exclaimed,
“does the spirit of murder so possess thee, that it
matters not whether thy arm is raised against friend or foe?”

“He is no friend of mine,” replied Woodhull, vainly endeavouring
to extricate himself from Mr. Lloyd's manly
grasp; he is a coward, and by my life and sacred honour!”—

“Oh, Mr. Woodhull! sir,” interrupted Rivington, “I am
your friend, sir, and all the gentlemen's friend, sir. I am
much obliged to you, sir,” turning to Mr. Lloyd, who could
not help laughing at the eagerness of his cowardice; “I am
sorry for the disturbance, gentlemen, and I wish you all a
good morning, gentlemen!” and so saying, he walked off the
ground as fast as his trembling limbs could take him.

Mr. Lloyd now released young Woodhull from his hold;
and winding his handkerchief around his arm, which was
slightly bleeding, he said, “I perceive there is no further
occasion for my interposition. I think the experience of this

morning will not tempt you to repeat this singular disturbance
of the peace of this community.”

The party were all too thoroughly mortified to attempt a
reply, and they separated. Erskine felt a most humiliating
consciousness of his disgrace; but he had not sufficient
magnanimity to confess it, nor even to express a regret that
he had wounded a man, who exposed his life to prevent him
from committing a crime. The Woodhulls were deprived of
the pitiful pleasure of sneering at Mr. Lloyd's want of courage.
The younger brother's arm still ached from his experience
of Mr. Lloyd's physical strength; and they all felt the
inferiority of their boastful, passionate, and reckless foolhardiness,
to the collected, disinterested courage of a peaceful
man, who had risked his life in their quarrel.

To fill up the measure of their mortification, Rivington
had not left the village two hours, before several persons
arrived there in pursuit of him. They informed his new
friends, that he was not a Virginian, a name that passes among
our northern bloods as synonymous with high-breeding, highmindedness,
noble daring, &c., &c., but that he was a countryman
of their own, a celebrated swindler, who had lived by
his wits, ascending by regular gradations through the professions
of hostler, dancing-master, and itinerate actor; and that
having lately, by cleverness in managing the arts of his vocation,
possessed himself of a large sum of money, he had made
his debût as gentleman at the Springs.

After the events of the morning, Mr. Lloyd felt more
anxiety than ever on Jane Elton's account; and never weary
in well-doing, he determined to make one more effort to rescue
Erskine from the pernicious society and influence of the
Woodhulls. He solicited an interview with him; and without
alluding to the events of the morning, he remonstrated

warmly and kindly against an intimacy, of which the degradation
and the danger were too evident to need pointing out.
He trusted himself to speak of Jane, of her innocence, her
purity, her trustful affection, her solitariness, her dependence.

At any other time, we cannot think Edward would have
been unmoved by the eloquence of his appeal; but now he
was exasperated by the mortifications of the morning; and
when Mr. Lloyd said, “Erskine, if Jane Elton knew all, would
she not withdraw her affections from thee?” he replied,
angrily, “She shall know all. I have a right to expect she
will overlook a few foibles; such as belong to every young man
of spirit. She owes me, at least, so much indulgence. She
is bound to me by ties that cannot be broken—that she certainly
cannot break.” He burst away from Mr. Lloyd, and
went precipitately to Mrs. Harvey's, where the explanation
we have related ensued, and put a final termination to their
unequal alliance.

The speculations of villagers are never at rest till they
know the wherefore of the slightest movements of the prominent
personages that figure on their theatre. Happily for
our heroine, who was solicitous for a little while to be sheltered
from the scrutiny and remarks of her neighbours, the
affair of the duel soon became public, and sufficiently accounted
for Erskine's abrupt departure.

Jane would have communicated to Mary, her kind, constant
friend Mary Hull, the issue of her engagement; but it so
happened, that she was at this time absent on a visit to her
blind sister. She felt it to be just, that she should acquaint
Mr. Lloyd with the result of an affair, in which he had manifested
so benevolent and vigilant a care for her happiness.
Perhaps she felt a natural wish, that he should know his
confidence in her had not been misplaced. She could not

speak to him on the subject, for their intercourse had been
suspended of late; and besides, she was habitually reserved
about speaking of herself. She sat down to address a note
to him; and, after writing a dozen, each of which offended
her in some point—either betrayed a want of delicacy towards
Erskine, or a sentiment of self-complacency—either expressed
too much, or two little—she threw them all into the fire, and
determined to leave the communication to accident.

14. CHAPTER XIV.

A few days after Erskine's departure, Mrs. Harvey entered
Jane's room hastily,—“Our village,” she exclaimed, “is the
most extraordinary place in the world; wonders cease to be
wonderful among us.”

“What has happened now?” inquired Jane, “I know not
from your face whether to expect good or evil.”

“Oh evil, my dear, evil enough to grieve and frighten
you. Your wretched cousin David Wilson has got himself
into a scrape at last, from which all the arts of all his family
cannot extricate him. You know,” she continued, “that we
saw an account in the New-York paper of last week, of a robbery
committed on the mail-stage: the robbers have been
detected and taken, and Wilson, who it seems had assumed
a feigned name, is among them.”

“And the punishment is death!” said Jane, in a tone of
sorrow and alarm.

“Yes; so Mr. Lloyd says, by the laws of the United
States, against which he has offended. Mr. Lloyd has been
here, to request that you, dear Jane, will go to your aunt
and say to her that he is ready to render her any services
in his power. You know he is acquainted in Philadelphia,
where David is imprisoned, and he may be of essential use to
him.”

“My poor aunt, and Elvira! what misery is this for
them?” said Jane, instinctively transfusing her own feelings
into their bosoms.

“For your aunt it may be,” replied Mrs. Harvey, “for I
think nothing can quite root out the mother; but as for Elvira,
I believe she is too much absorbed in her own affairs to
think of David's body or soul.”

“I will go immediately to my aunt; but what has happened
to Elvira?”

“Why Elvira, it seems, during her visit to the west, met
with an itinerant French dancing-master, who became violently
enamored of her, and who did not sigh or hope in vain.
She probably knew his vocation would be an insuperable
obstacle to her seeing him at home; and so between them
they concerted a scheme to obviate that difficulty, by introducing
him to Mrs. Wilson as a French physician, from Paris,
who should volunteer his services to cure her scrofula, which,
it is said, has lately become more troublesome than ever. By
way of a decoy, he was to go upon the usual quack practice of
“no cure no pay.”

“And this,” exclaimed Jane, “is the sick physician we
heard was at my aunt's?”

“Yes, poor fellow, and sick enough he has been. He
arrived just at twilight, last week on Monday, and having
tied his horse, he was tempted, by seeing the door of the

chaise-house half open, to go in there to arrange his dress
previous to making his appearance before Miss Wilson. He
had hardly entered before old Jacob coming along, saw the
door open, and giving the careless boys (whom he supposed
in fault) a reversed blessing, he shut and fastened it. It was
chilly weather, you know, but there the poor fellow was
obliged to stay the live-long night, and till Jacob, sallying
forth to do his morning chores, discovered him half-starved
and half-frozen. But,” said Mrs. Harvey, “you are prepared
to go to your aunt, and I am detaining you—you may ask the
sequel of Elvira.”

“Oh no, let me hear the rest of it; only be short, dear
Mrs. Harvey, for if any thing is to be done for that wretched
young man, not a moment should be lost.”

“My dear, I will be as short as possible; but my words
will not all run out of my mouth at once, as they melted out
of Munchausen's horn. Well, this poor French doctor, dancer,
or whatever he is, effected an interview with Elvira, before he
was seen by the mother; and though no doubt she was shocked
by his unsentimental involuntary vigil, she overlooked it, and
succeeded in palming him off on the old lady as a foreign
physician, who had performed sundry marvellous cures in his
western progress. Mrs. Wilson submitted her disease to his
prescription. In the meanwhile, he, poor wretch, as if a
judgment had come upon him for his sins, has been really and
seriously sick, in consequence of the exposure to the dampness
of a September night, in his nankins; and Elvira has
been watching and nursing him according to the best and
most approved precedents to be found in ballads and romances.”

“Is it possible,” asked Jane, “that aunt Wilson should be

imposed on for so long a time? Elvira is ingenious, and
ready, but she is not a match for her quick-sighted mother.”

“No, so it has proved in this case. The doctor became
better, and the patient worse; his prescriptions have had a
dreadful effect upon the scrofula; and as the pain increased,
your aunt became irritable and suspicious. Last evening,
she overhead a conversation between the hopeful lovers, which
revealed the whole truth to her.”

“And what has she done?”

“What could she do, my dear, but turn the good-for-nothing
fellow out of doors, and exhaust her wrath upon Elvira.
The dreadful news she received from David late last
evening, must have driven even this provoking affair out of
her troubled mind. But,” said Mrs. Harvey, rising and going
to the window, “who is that coming through our gate? Elvira,
as I live!—what can she be after here?”

“My aunt has probably sent for me,” replied Jane; and
she hastened to open the door for her cousin, who entered
evidently in a flutter. “I was just going to your mother's,”
said Jane.

“Stay a moment,” said Elvira; “I must speak with you.
Come into your room,” and she hastened forward to Jane's
apartment. She paused a moment on seeing Mrs. Harvey,
and then begged she would allow her to speak with her cousin
alone.

Mrs. Harvey left the apartment, and Elvira turned to
Jane, and was beginning with great eagerness to say something,
but she paused—unpinned her shawl, took it off, and
then put it on again—and then asked Jane, if she had heard
from Erskine; and, without waiting a reply, which did not
seem to be very ready, she continued, “How glad I was he
fought that duel; it was so spirited. I wish my lover would

fight a duel. It would have been delightful if he had only
been wounded.”

Jane stared at her cousin, as if she had been smitten with
distraction. “Elvira,” she said, with more displeasure than
was often extorted from her, “you are an incurable trifler!
How is it possible, that at this time you can waste a thought
upon Erskine or his duel?”

“Oh! my spirits run away with me, dear Jane; but I
do feel very miserable,” she replied, affecting to wipe away
the tears from her dry eyes. Poor David!—I am wretched
about him. He has disgraced us all. I suppose you have
heard, too, about Lavoisier. Every body has heard of
mother's cruelty to him and to me. Oh, Jane! he is the
sweetest creature—the most interesting being”—

“Elvira,” replied Jane, coldly, “I do not like to reproach
you in your present affliction; but you strangely forget all
that is due to your sex, by keeping up such an intercourse
with a stranger—by ranting in this way about a wandering
dancing-master—a foreigner.”

“A foreigner, indeed! as if that was against him. Why,
my dear, foreigners are much more genteel than Americans;
and besides, Lavoisier is a count in disguise. Oh! if you
could only hear him speak French; it is as soft as an æolian
harp. Now, Jane, darling, don't be angry with me. I am
sure there never was any body so persecuted and unfortunate
as I am. Nobody feels for me.”

“It is impossible, Elvira, to feel for those who have no
feeling for themselves.”

“Oh, Jane! you are very cruel,” replied Elvira, whimpering;
“I have been crying ever since I received poor
David's letter, and it was about that I came here; but you do

not seem to have any compassion for our sorrows, and I am
afraid to ask for what I came for.”

“I cannot afford to waste any compassion on unnecessary
or imaginary sorrows, Elvira. The real and most horrible
calamity that has fallen upon you, requires all the exertions
and feelings of your friends.”

“That's spoken like yourself, dear, blessed Jane,” said
Elvira, brightening; “now I am sure you will not refuse me
—you are always so generous and kind.”

“I have small means to be generous,” replied Jane; “but
let me know, at once, what it is you want, for I am in haste
to go to your mother.”

“You are a darling, Jane—you always was.”

“What is it you wish, Elvira?” inquired Jane again,
aware that Elvira's endearments were always to be interpreted
as a prelude to the asking of a favour.

“I wish, dear Jane,” she replied, summoning all her resolution
to her aid; “I wish you to lend me twenty dollars.
If you had seen David's piteous letter to me, you could not
refuse. It is enough to make any body's heart ache; he is
down in a dark disagreeable dungeon, with nothing to eat
from morning to night, but bread and water. He petitions
for a little money so earnestly, it would make your heart
bleed to read his letter. Mother declares she will not send
him a dollar.”

“How do you intend sending the money to him?” asked
Jane, rising and going to her bureau.

“Oh!” replied Elvira, watching Jane's movements, “you
are a dear soul. It is easy enough getting the money to
him. I heard, this morning, that Mr. Harris is going on to
the south; he starts this afternoon. I shall not mind walking
to his house, though it is four miles from here. I shall

go immediately, and I shall charge him to deliver the money
himself. It will be such a relief and comfort to my unfortunate
brother.”

There seemed to be something in Elvira's eagerness to
serve her brother, and in her newly awakened tenderness for
him, that excited Jane's suspicions; for she paused in the
midst of counting the money, turned round, and fixed a
penetrating look upon her cousin. Elvira, without appearing
to notice any thing peculiar in her expression, said (advancing
towards her), “Do be quick, dear Jane; it is a great way
to Mr. Harris's; I am afraid I shall be late.”

Jane had finished counting the money.

“Twenty dollars, is it, dear?” said Elvira, hastily and
with a flutter of joy seizing it. “There are five dollars
more,” she continued, looking at a single bill Jane had laid
aside; “let me have that too, dear, it will not be too much
for David.”

“I cannot,” replied Jane; “that is all I have in the world,
and that I owe to Mrs. Harvey.”

“La, Jane! what matter is that; you can have as much
money as you want of Erskine; and besides, you need not be
afraid of losing it; I shall soon be of age, and then I shall
pay you, for mother can't keep my portion from me one day
after that. Then I will have a cottage. Lavoisier says, we
can have no idea, in this country, how beautiful a cottage is,
á la Française. Do, dearest, let me have the other five.”

“No,” said Jane, disgusted with Elvira's importunity and
levity, and replacing the note in her drawer; “I have given
you all I possess in the world, and you must be content
with it.”

Elvira saw that she should obtain no more. She hastily
kissed Jane; and after saying, “Good-bye, my dear, go to

mother's, and stay till I come,” she flew out of the house, exulting
that her false pretences had won so much from her
cousin. At a short distance from Mrs. Harvey's she joined
her lover, according to a previous arrangement between
them.

Lavoisier had procured a chaise from a neighbouring
farmer, which was principally devoted to the transportation
of its worthy proprietor and the partner of his joys to and
from the meeting-house on Sundays and lecture days, but
was occasionally hired out to oblige such persons as might
stand in need of such an accommodation, and could afford to
pay what was “consistent” for it.

“Allons—marche done!” said the dancing philosopher to
his horse, after seating Elvira; and turning to her, he pressed
one of her hands to his lips, saying, “Pardonnez-moi,”—adding
as he dropt it, “tout nous sourit dans la nature.”

Elvira pointed out the road leading to the dwelling of a
justice of the peace, a few miles below the line which divides
the State of Massachusetts from that of New-York. They
arrived at this temple of Hymen, and of petty legislation
about eleven in the morning. The justice was at work on
his farm; a messenger was dispatched for him, with whom
he returned in about thirty minutes, which seemed as many
hours to our anxious lovers.

“Dey say,” said Lavoisier, “l'amour fait passer le temps,
but in l'Amerique it is very differente.”

The justice took Lavoisier aside, and inquired whether
there were any objections to the marriage, on the part of the
lady's friends.

“Objection!” said Lavoisier, “it is the most grand
félicité to every body. You cannot conceive.”

On being further interrogated, Lavoisier confessed that

they came from Massachusetts; and being asked why they
were not married at the place of the lady's residence, he
said that “some personnes without sensibilité may wait, but
for mademoiselle and me, it is impossible.”

Elvira being examined apart, in like manner, declared
that her intended husband's impatience and her own dislike
to the formality of a publishment, had led them to avoid the
usual mode and forms of marriage.

The justice, who derived the chief profits of his office
from clandestine matches, and who had made these inquiries
more because it was a common custom, than from any scruples
of conscience, or sense of official duty, was perfectly satisfied;
and after requiring from the bridegroom the usual
promise to love and cherish; and from the bride, to love,
cherish, and obey; pronounced them man and wife, and recorded
the marriage in a book containing a record of similar
official acts, and of divers suits and the proceedings therein.

The bride and bridegroom immediately set out for the
North River, intending to embark there for New-York.

“These things do manage themselves better in France,”
said Lavoisier. “Les nôces qui se font ici—the marriages
you make here—are as solemn que la sepulture—as to bury.
Le Cupidon ici a l'air bien sauvage; if de little god was
paint here, they would make him work as de justice. Eh
bien!” said he, after a pause, “chacun a son métier; without
some fermiers there should not be some maitres-de-danse,
some professeurs of de elegant arts: et sans les justices, you
would not be mon ange—you would not be Madame Lavoisier.”

Elvira was so occupied with the change in her condition,
and the prospect before her, that she did not observe the
direction in which they were travelling; and by mistake they

took the road leading back through a cleft in the mountain
towards a village in the vicinity of the one they had left.

As they ascended the top of a hill, their steed began to
prick his ears at the distant sound of a drum and fife, which
the fugitives soon perceived to be part of the pride, pomp, and
circumstance of a militia training. The village tavern was in
full view, and within a short distance, and the company was
performing some marching evolution a little beyond. An
election of captain had just taken place; and the suffrages of
the citizen soldiers had fallen upon a popular favourite, who
had taken his station as commanding officer, and was showing
his familiarity with the marches and counter-marches of
Eaton's Manual. He had been just promoted from the rank
of first lieutenant; and previous to the dismissal of his men,
which was about to take place, he drew them up in front of
the village store, when according to custom, and with due regard
to economy, which made the store a more eligible place
for his purposes than the tavern, he testified his gratitude for
the honour which had been done him by copious libations of
cherry rum, and of St. Croix, which was diluted or not, according
to the taste of each individual. The men soon began
to grow merry; and some of them swore that they would not
scruple to vote for the captain for major-general, if they had
the choosing of that officer. The venders of gingerbread felt
the influence of the good fellowship and generosity which the
captain had set in motion. A market for a considerable portion
of their commodity was soon furnished by the stimulated
appetites of the men, and a portion was distributed by the
more gallant among them, to some spectators of the softer
sex, who were collected upon the occasion.

The happy pair in the mean time had arrived at the tavern.
Elvira's attention had not been sufficiently awakened

by any thing but the conversation of her husband, to notice
where she was, until she was called to a sense of her embarrassing
situation by the landlord's sign, as it was gently
swinging in the wind between two high posts, and exhibited
a successful specimen of village sign-painting, the distinguished
name of the host, and the age of his establishment.

Elvira directed the Frenchman to stop and turn his
horse, which he did immediately, without understanding the
object.

“Eh bien!” said he, his eyes still fixed on the young
soldiers; “Il me vient une idée. I shall tell you.” He
went on to signify that he would immediately offer to teach
the art of fencing and of using the broad-sword; that he would
instruct them “dans l'art militaire, à la mode de Napoleon;”
and that, after giving a few lessons, he would make a tournament,
in which he would let them see, among other things,
how Bonaparte conquered the world; how the cavalry could
trample down flying infantry; and how the infantry, in such
circumstances, could defend themselves; and that he would,
in this way, make himself “bien riche.”

During all this time Elvira was collecting her wits to
know what the emergency required; and as soon as Lavoisier's
volley ceased, she begged him to return again, thinking
she might best avoid observation by seeking shelter in the
tavern till dark.

They immediately alighted, and Lavoisier, after showing
his bride to her apartment, descended to give some orders
about his horse; when, to his astonishment, he was accosted
by the jolly landlord, whose name was Thomas, “Ha, mounsheer!
I guess you are the man who staid with me a fortnight
two years ago, when I kept house in York State, and
borrowed my chaise to go a jaunting, and told me to take care

of your trunk, that had nothing but a big stone in it, till you
came back. I got my horse and chaise again,” continued he,
seizing the astounded professor of the dancing and military
arts by the collar, “and now I'll take my reck'nin' out of your
skin, if I can't get it any other way.”

At this moment the new captain and a considerable number
of his merry men entered the house. After they had
learned the circumstances of the case, from what passed between
monsieur and the landlord, one of them cried out,
“Ride him on a rail—let him take his steps in the air!”

“He ought to dance on nothing, with a rope round his
neck,” said Thomas.

“No, no,” said a third, “he has taken steps enough; that
flashy jacket had better be swapped for one of tar and feathers.”

“Messieurs, messieurs,” said Lavoisier, “je suis bien malheureux.
I am very sorry. Il etoit mon malheur—it was
my misère to not pay monsieur Thomas, and it was his malheur
not to be paid. I shall show you my honneur, when I
shall get de l'argent. Il faut se soumettre aux circonstances.
De honesty of every body depend upon what dey can do. I
am sure, every body is gentleman in dis country. C'est un
beau pays.”

By this time one of the corporals had set a skillet of tar
on the fire, and another, by the direction of the lieutenant,
who seemed to take upon himself the command of the party,
had brought a pillow from a bed in an adjoining room. The
pillow was very expeditiously uncased, and a sufficient rent
made in the ticking. The astonished Français stood aghast,
as his bewildered mind caught a faint notion of the purpose
of these preparations. He changed his tones of supplication
to those of anger. “Vous êtes des sauvages!” he exclaimed.

“You are monstres, diables! You do not merit to have
some gentiman to teach la belle danse in dis country.”

“He'll cackle like a blue-jay,” said the corporal, “by the
time we get the feathers on him.”

“They are hen's feathers,” said the lieutenant, “but
they'll do. Now ensign Sacket get on to the table, and corporal
you hand him the skillet of tar. You Mr. Le Vosher, or
whatever your name is, stand alongside of the table.”

Monsieur believed his destiny to be fixed—“Oh, mon
Dieu!” he exclaimed; “le diable! qu'est que c'est que ça?
Vat you do—vat is dat?”

“Tar, tar, nothing but tar—stand up to the table,” was
the reply.

“Sacristie! put dat sur ma tête—on my head et sur mes
habits—my clothes; mes beaux habits de noces—my fine
clothes for de marriage! Oh, messieurs, de grace, pardonnezmoi;
vous gaterez—you will spoil all my clothes.”

“Blast your clothes!” said the corporal; “pull them off.”

“Je vous remercie, tank you, gentlemen;” and he very
deliberately divested himself of a superfine light-blue broad-cloath
coat, and embroidered silk vest, a laced cravat and an
under cravat of coarser fabric. He prolonged the operation
as much as possible, making continued efforts to conciliate
the compassion of his persecutors, which only added to their
merriment.

At last all pretences for delay were over; every voice was
hushed. The ensign began to uplift the fatal skillet, when
all composure of mind forsook the affrighted bridegroom, and
he uttered a loud shriek. Favoured by the general stillness,
Elvira distinctly heard his voice, and knew at once that it
betokened the extremity of distress. She rushed to the rescue,
screaming for mercy. The men fell back, leaving their

trembling victim in the centre of the room. “Ah! ma chère,
quels bêtes!” he exclaimed, with a grimace that produced a
peal of laughter. One of the men threw him his coat,
another his vest; while the corporal set down the skillet,
saying, “If it had not been for his gal, I'd have given him a
wedding suit.”

But we rather think monsieur would have been released
without the interposition of his distressed bride, for a Yankey
mob is proverbially good-natured, and the merry men had
enlisted in the landlord's cause, for the sake of a joke, rather
than with the intention of inflicting pain. After the ludicrous
adventure was over—ludicrous to the jolly trainers,
but sad enough to the fugitive pair—Elvira deemed it expedient
to press their retreat. Monsieur brought the chaise to
the door, and they drove away amidst the loud huzzas and
merry clappings of the jovial company.

15. CHAPTER XV.

David Wilson, not long after the affair of the robbery of his
mother's desk, went to New-York, in order to see his comrades,
who were imprisoned there, and, if possible, to abate
ther demands on his purse. He succeeded in doing this;
but having fallen in (attracted doubtless by natural affinities)
with other companions as wicked, and more desperate,
he soon spent in that city, which affords remarkable facilities
for ridding men of their money, all that remained of the five
hundred dollars. He preyed on others for a little time, as
he had been their prey; and, finally reduced to extreme
want, he joined two of his new associates in an attempt on
the southern mail, which ended in his detection and commitment
to jail in Philadelphia, where he was now awaiting a
capital trial. A particular account of the whole affair, accompanied
with letters from her son, was transmitted to Mrs.
Wilson, who seemed now to be visited on every side with
the natural and terrible retribution of her maternal sins.

After Elvira's departure, with all the profits of her little

school, Jane did not delay another moment to go to her
aunt's, in order to communicate to her Mr. Lloyd's kind offer
of assistance, and to extend to her any aid or consolation in
her own power.

She found Mrs. Wilson alone, but not in a frame of mind
that indicated any just feelings. She received her niece
coldly. After a silence of a few moments, which Jane wished
but knew not how to break, she inquired of Mrs. Wilson,
whether she had any more information respecting David than
was public?

Her aunt replied, she had not. She understood the particulars
were all in the paper, even to his name; she thought
that might have been omitted; but people always seemed to
delight in publishing every one's misfortunes.

Jane asked if the letters expressed any doubt that David
would be convicted?

“None,” Mrs. Wilson said. “To be sure,” she added,
“I have a letter from David, in which he begs me to employ
counsel for him: so I suppose he thinks it possible that he
might be cleared: but a drowning man catches at straws.”

“Do you know,” inquired Jane, “the names of the eminent
lawyers in Philadelphia? Mr. Lloyd will be best able
to inform you whom to select among them. I will go to him
immediately.”

“No, no, child; I have made up my mind upon that subject.
It would be a great expense. There is no conscience
in city lawyers; they would devour all my substance, and do
me no good after all. No, no—I shall leave David entirely
in the hands of Providence.”

“And can you, aunt,” said Jane, “acquiesce in your son's
being cut off in the spring of life, without an effort to save

him—without an effort to procure him a space for repentance
and reformation?”

“Do not presume, Jane Elton,” replied Mrs. Wilson, “to
instruct me in my duties. A space for repentance! A day
—an hour—a moment is as good as an eternity for the operations
of the Spirit. Many, at the foot of the gallows, have
repented, and have died exulting in their pardon and new-born
hope.”

“Yes,” replied Jane; “and there have been many who
have thus repented and rejoiced, and then been reprieved;
and have they then shown the only unquestionable proof of
genuine penitence—a renewed spirit? Have they kept the
commandments, for by this shall ye know that they are the
disciples of Christ? No: they have returned to their old
sins, and been tenfold worse than at first.”

“I tell you,” said Mrs. Wilson, impatiently, “you are
ignorant, child; you are still in the bond of iniquity; you
cannot spiritually discern. There is more hope, and that is
the opinion of some of our greatest divines, of an open outrageous
transgressor, than of one of a moral life.”

“Then,” replied Jane, “there is more hope of a harvest
from a hard-bound, neglected field, than from that which the
owner has carefully ploughed and sowed, and prepared for
the sun and the rains of heaven.”

“The kingdom of grace is very different from the kingdom
of nature,” answered Mrs. Wilson. “The natural man
can do nothing towards his own salvation. Every act he
performs, and every prayer he offers, but provokes more and
more the wrath of the Almighty.”

Jane made no reply; but she raised her hands and eyes
as if she deprecated so impious a doctrine, and Mrs. Wilson
went on: “Do not think my children are worse than others;

you, Jane, are as much a child of wrath, and so is every son
and daughter of Adam, as he is—all totally depraved—totally
corrupt. You may have been under more restraint, and
not acted out your sins; but no thanks to you;” and she
continued, fixing her large gray eyes steadfastly on Jane,
“there are beside my son who would not seem better, if
they had not friends to keep their secrets for them.” Mrs.
Wilson had, for very good reasons, never before alluded to
the robbery of her desk, since the morning it was committed;
but she was now provoked to foul means to support her
argument, tottering under the assault of facts.

Jane did not condescend to notice the insinuation; she
felt too sincere a pity for the miserable self-deluded woman;
but, still anxious that some effort should be made for
David, she said to Mrs. Wilson, “Is there, then, nothing to
be done for your unhappy son?”

“Nothing, child, nothing; he has gone out from me, and
he is not of me; his blood be upon his own head; I am clear
of it; my `foot standeth on an even place.' My case is not
an uncommon one,” she continued, as if she would by this
vain babbling, silence the voice within. “The saints of old
—David, and Samuel, and Eli, were afflicted as I am, with
rebellious children. I have planted and I have watered, and
if it is the Lord's will to withhold the increase, I must
submit.”

“Oh, aunt!” exclaimed Jane, interrupting and advancing
towards her, “do not—do not, for your soul's sake, indulge
any longer this horrible delusion. You have more
children,” she continued, falling on her knees, and taking one
of her aunt's hands in both hers, and looking like a rebuking
messenger from Heaven, “be pitiful to them; be merciful to

your own soul. You deceive yourself. You may deceive
others; but God is not mocked.”

Mrs. Wilson was conscience stricken. She sat as motionless
aa a statue; and Jane went on with the courage of
an Apostle to depicture, in their true colours, her character
and conduct. She made her realize, for a few moments at
least, the peril of her soul. She made her feel, that her
sound faith, her prayers, her pretences, her meeting-goings,
were nothing—far worse than nothing in the sight of Him,
who cannot be deceived by the daring hypocrisies, the self-delusions,
the refugies of lies, of his creatures. She described
the spiritual disciple of Jesus; and then presented
to Mrs. Wilson so true an image of her selfishness, her pride,
her domestic tyranny, and her love of money, that she could
not but see that it was her very self. There was that in
Jane's looks, and voice, and words, that was not to be resisted
by the wretched woman; and like the guilty king, when he
saw the record on the wall, her “countenance was changed,
her thoughts were troubled, and her knees smote one against
the other.”

At this moment they were interrupted by the entrance of
Mr. Lloyd. Jane rose, embarrassed for her aunt and herself,
and walked to the window. Mrs. Wilson attempted to
speak, to rise; she could do neither, and she sunk back on
her chair, convulsed with misery and passion. Mr. Lloyd
mistook her agitation for the natural wailings of a mother
and with instinctive benevolence he advanced to her, and
said, “Be composed, I pray; I have intelligence that will
comfort thee.”

“What is it?” inquired Jane, eager to allay the storm
she had raised.

Mrs. Wilson was unable to speak.

“Thy son has escaped, Mrs. Wilson, and is, before this,
beyond the reach of his country's laws. Here is a letter addressed
to thee, which came inclosed in one to me.” Mr.
Lloyd laid the letter on Mrs. Wilson's lap, but she was unable
to open it or even to hold it. Her eyes were fixed, her
hands firmly closed, and she continued to shiver with uncontrollable
emotion. “She is quite unconscious,” he said, “she
does not hear a word I say to her.”

Jane flew to her assistance, spoke to her, entreated her to
answer, bathed her temples and her hands—but all without
effect. “Oh!” she exclaimed, terrified and dismayed, “I
have killed her.”

“Do not be so alarmed,” said Mr. Lloyd, “there is no
occasion for it; the violence of her emotion has overcome
her, it is the voice of nature; let us convey her to her bed.”

Jane called assistance, and they removed her to her own
room, and placed her on her bed.

“See,” whispered Mr. Lloyd to Jane, after a few moments,
“she is becoming composed already; leave her for a
little time with this domestic—I have much to say to
thee.”

Jane followed him to the parlour. He took both her
hands, and said, his face radiant with joy, “Jane, many
daughters have done virtuously, but thou excellest them all.
Nay, do not tremble, unless it be for the sin of having kept
from me so long the blessed intelligence of this morning.”

Poor Jane tried to stammer out an apology for her reserve,
but Mr. Lloyd interrupted her by saying playfully, “I
understand it all; I am too old, too stern, too—Quakerish,
to be a young lady's confidant.”

“Oh, say not so,” exclaimed Jane, gathering courage from
his kindness; “you have been my benefactor, my guardian,

my kindest friend; forgive my silence—I feel it all—I have
always felt it; perhaps most, when I seemed most insensible.”
Mr. Lloyd looked gratified beyond expression; it cost him an
effort to interrupt her. But he said, “Nay, my sweet friend,
it will be my turn next, if thou dost not stop, and I too shall
be, as the French name my brethren, a Trembleur. I have
a great deal to tell thee; our joys have clustered. What
sayest thou, Jane, to another walk to old John's, with as
strange, and a more welcome guide, than crazy Bet. I have
no time to lose in enigmas: our dispatches were brought by
a sailor, a fine good-natured, hardy-looking fellow, who came
to my house this morning. I was wondering what he could
be doing so far from his element, when Mary, who returned
to us yesterday, opened the door for him, and exclaimed, with
a ludicrous mixture of terror and joy, `The Lord have mercy
on us! is it you, or your ghost, Jemmy?' The sailor gave
her a truly professional, and most unghostly, smack, and replied
between crying and laughing, `I am no ghost, Mary, as
you may see; but excuse me, Mary, (for Mary had stepped
back, a little embarrassed by the involuntary freedom of her
friend,) I was so glad, I could not help it. No, no, Mary, I
am no ghost, but a prodigal that's come back, thanks to the
Lord! a little better than I went.' James, who is indeed
the long lost son of our good friend John of the Mountain,
went on to detail his experiences to Mary, who by turns raised
her hands and eyes in wonder and devout thankfulness. The
amount of it is, for their joy overflowed all barriers of reserve,
he left this place ten years ago in despair, because Mary would
not marry him, and sailed to the Mediterranean; the poor
fellow was taken by the Algerines, and after suffering almost
incredibly for six years, he was so happy as to procure his
freedom along with some English captives. After his release,
he said he could not endure the thought of coming to his
father and mother quite destitute; for, as he said to Mary,
though he was a wild lad, and had a fancy to follow the sea,
her cruelty would not have driven him to leave them, if he
had not hoped to get something to comfort their old age with.
He wrote them an account of his sufferings, and of an engagement
he had made to go to Calcutta in the service of an English
merchantman. The letters it seems never reached them.
He went to India; many circumstances occurred to advance
him in the favour of his employer; his integrity, which, he
said, the tears streaming from his eyes, was `all owing to the
teachings and examples of his good old parents;' and his intelligence,
`thanks to his country, which took care to give the
poor man learning,' occasioned his being employed in the Company's
service, and sent with some others into the interior of
India on business of great hazard and importance, the success
of which his employers attributed to him, and rewarded him
most liberally. All these facts came out inevitably in the
course of his narrative, for he spoke not boastfully, but with
simplicity and gratitude. He has returned with enough to
purchase a farm, and give to his parents all that they want
of this world; and, what our friend Mary thinks best of all,
he has come home a Methodist, having been made one by a
missionary of that zealous sect in India. If I have not misinterpreted
Mary's glistening eye, this fact will cost me my
housekeeper.”

“Dear, dear Mary!” exclaimed Jane, brushing away the
tears of sympathy and joy that Mr. Lloyd's narrative had
brought to her eyes, “and John, and old Sarah. Oh, it is as
beautiful a conclusion of their lives, as if it had been conjured
up by a poet.”

“Ah, Jane,” replied Mr. Lloyd, “there are realities in the

kind dispositions of Providence more blessed than a poet can
dream of; and there are virtues in real life,” he continued,
smiling, “that might lend a persuasive grace to the page of a
moralist; it is of those I must now speak.”

“Not now,” said Jane, hastily rising, “I must go to my
aunt.”

“At least then, take these letters with thee; the levity of
one will give thee some pain; in the other, the wretched Wilson
has done thee late justice. Now go, my blessed friend, to
thy aunt; would that thou couldst minister to her mind, distracted
by these terrible events. Oh, that power might be
given to thy voice to awaken her conscience from its deep,
oblivious sleep!”

It was a remarkable proof of Mr. Lloyd's habitual grace,
that he did not forget, at this moment, that Jane could not
work miracles without supernatural assistance.

There is not a happier moment of existence than that
which a benevolent being enjoys, when he knows that the object
of his solicitude and love has passed safely through trial,
is victorious over temptation, and has overcome the world.
This was the joy that now a thousand fold required Mr. Lloyd
for all his sufferings in the cause of our heroine. Would Mr.
Lloyd have been equally happy in the proved virtue of his
favourite, if hope had not brightened his dim future with her
sweetest visions? Certainly not. He who hath wonderfully
made us, hath, in wisdom, implanted the principle of self-love
in our bosoms; and let the enthusiast rave as he will, it is
neither the work of grace nor of discipline to eradicate it;
but it may, and if we would be good, it must be modified, controlled,
and made subservient to the benefit and happiness of
others.

Mr. Lloyd had no very definite plans for the future; but

his horizon was brightening with a coming day; and without
vanity or presumption, he trusted all would be well.

Jane returned to her aunt's apartment, and found her in
a sullen stupor. She did not seem to notice; at any rate,
she made no reply to Jane's kind inquiries, and she, after
drawing the curtains and dismissing the attendant, sat down
to the perusal of the letters Mr. Lloyd had given to her. The
first she read was from Erskine to Mr. Lloyd, and as it was
not long, and was rather characteristic, we shall take the
liberty to transcribe it for the benefit of our readers.

“And is this the man,” thought Jane, as she folded the
letter, “that I have loved—that I fancied loved me?”—and
her heart rose in devout thankfulness for the escape she had
made from an utter wreck of her happiness.

She next read Wilson's letter to Mr. Lloyd. It began
with the particulars of his late escape, which seemed to possess
his mind more than any thing else. He then said, that
being about to enter on a new voyage, he wished to lighten
his soul of as much of its present cargo as possible. He stated,
and we believe with sincerity, that he had intended, if it ever
became necessary, to assert Jane's innocence; but that, as
long as no one believed her guilty, he had thought it fair to
slip his neck out of the yoke; and now, that every body might
know how good she was, he wished Mr. Lloyd to make known
all the particulars of the transaction. He then went on to
detail as much as he knew of her visit to the mountain, which
had led to her subsequent involvement. He expressed no
remorse for the past, no hope of the future. His wish to exculpate
Jane had arisen from a deep feeling of her excellence,

and seemed to be the last ray of just or kindly feeling that
his dark, guilty spirit emitted.

Jane had scarcely finished reading the letters, when her
attention was called to her aunt, who had been thrown into a
state of agitation almost amounting to frenzy, by the perusal
of her son's farewell letter to herself, which Mr. Lloyd had
placed on the pillow beside her, believing that it merely contained
such account of David's escape and plans, as would
have a tendency to allay the anguish of her mind, which he
still supposed arose solely from her apprehensions for her
son's life. But Mr. Lloyd was too good even to conceive of
the bitterness of a malignant, exasperated spirit, wrought to
madness, as Wilson's was, by his mother's absolute refusal to
make any effort to save his life.

The letter was filled with execrations. “If I have a
soul,” he said, “eternity will be spent in cursing her who has
ruined it;” but he did not fear the future—hell was a bug-dear
to frighten children. “You,” he continued, “neither
fear it, nor believe it; for if you did, your religion would be
something besides a cloak to hide your hard, cruel heart.
Religion! what is it but a dream, a pretence? I might have
believed it, if I had seen more like Jane Elton—whom you
have trodden on, wrongfully accused, when you knew her innocent.
Mother, mother! oh, that I must call you so!—as I
do it, I howl a curse with every breath—you have destroyed
me. You it was that taught me, when I scarcely knew my
right hand from my left, that there was no difference between
doing right and doing wrong, in the sight of the God you
worship; you taught me, that I could do nothing acceptable
to him. If you taught me truly, I have only acted out the
nature totally depraved, (your own words,) that he gave to
me, and I am not to blame for it. I could do nothing to

save my own soul; and according to your own doctrine, I
stand now a better chance than my moral cousin, Jane. If
you have taught me falsely, I was not to blame; the peril be
on your own soul. My mind was a blank, and you put your
own impressions on it; God (if there be a God) reward you
according to your deeds!”

This horrible letter, of which we have given a brief specimen;
and subtracted from that the curses that pointed every
sentence, seemed for a little while to swell the clamours of
Mrs. Wilson's newly awakened conscience. But, alas! the
impression was transient; the chains of systematic delusion
were too firmly riveted—the habits of self-deception too strong,
to be overcome.

Jane, fearful that the violence of her aunt's passion would
destroy her reason, sought only, for the remainder of the day
and the following night, to soothe and quiet her. She remained
by her bedside, and silently watched, and prayed.
Mrs. Wilson's sleep was disturbed, but she awoke somewhat
refreshed, and quite composed. Her first action was to tear
David's letter into a thousand fragments. She was never
known afterwards to allude to its contents, nor to her conversation
with Jane. There was a restlessness through the remainder
of her life, which betrayed the secret gnawings of
conscience. Still it is believed, she quelled her convictions
as Cromwell is reported to have done, when, as his historian
says, he asked Goodwin, one of his preachers, if the doctrine
were true, that the elect should never fall, nor suffer a final
reprobation?—“Nothing more certain,” replied the preacher.
“Then I am safe,” said the Protector; “for I am sure I was
once in a state of grace.”

Mrs. Wilson survived these events but a few years. She
was finally carried off by scrofula, a disease from which she

had suffered all her life, and which had probably increased
the natural asperity of her temper; as all evils, physical as
well as moral, certainly make us worse, if they do not make
us better. Elvira was summoned to her death-bed; but she
arrived too late to receive either the reproaches or forgiveness
of her mother. Jane faithfully attended her through her last
illness, and most kindly ministered to the diseases of her
body. Her mind no human comfort could reach; no earthly
skill touch is secret springs. The disease was attended with
delirium; and she had no rational communication with any
one from the beginning of her illness. This Jane afterwards
sincerely deplored to Mr. Lloyd, who replied, “I would not
sit like the Egyptians in judgment on the dead. Thy aunt
has gone with her record to Him who alone knows the secrets
of the heart, and therefore is alone qualified to judge His
creatures; but for our own benefit, Jane, and for the sake of
those whose probation is not past, let us ever remember the
wise saying of William Penn, `a man cannot be the better
for that religion for which his neighbour is the worse.' I have
no doubt thy aunt has suffered some natural compunctions
for her gross failure in the performance of her duties; but
she felt safe in a sound faith. It is reported, that one of the
Popes said of himself, that `as Eneas Sylvius, he was a damnable
heretic, but as Pius II. an orthodox Pope.”'

“Then you believe,” replied Jane, “that my unhappy
aunt deceived herself by her clamorous profession?”

“Undoubtedly. Ought we to wonder that she effected
that imposition on herself, by the aid of self-love, (of all love
the most blinding,) since we have heard, in her funeral sermon,
her religious experiences detailed as the triumphs of a saint;
her strict attention on religious ordinances commended, as if
they were the end and not the means of a religious life; since

we (who cannot remember a single gracious act of humility
in her whole life) have been told, as a proof of her gracious
state, that the last rational words she pronounced were, that
she `was of sinners the chief?' There seems to be a curious
spiritual alchymy in the utterance of these words; for we
cannot say, that those who use them mean to `palter in a
double sense,' but they are too often spoken and received as
the evidence of a hopeful state. Professions and declarations
have crept in among the Protestants, to take the place of the
mortifications and penances of the ancient church; so prone
are men to find some easier way to heaven than the toilsome
path of obedience.”

16. CHAPTER XVI.

We have anticipated our story, tempted by a natural desire
to conclude the history of Mrs. Wilson, that its deep shade
might not interfere with the bright lights that are falling on
the destiny of our heroine. After the dissolution of her engagement
with Erskine, Jane continued her humble vocation
of schoolmistress for some months. Rebecca Lloyd had
from the beginning been one of her pupils, and a favourite
among them; and so devotedly did the child love her instructress,
that Mr. Lloyd often thought impulse was as sure a
guide for her affections as reason for his. Jane's care of his
child furnished him occasion, and an excuse when he needed
it, for frequent intercourse with her, and in this intercourse
there were none of those mysterious embarrassments (mysterious,
because inexplicable to all but the parties) that so
often check the progress of affection. Jane, released from
the thraldom in which she had been bound to Erskine, was as
happy as a liberated captive. Her tastes and her views were
similar to Mr. Lloyd's, and she found in his society a delightful

exchange, and a rich compensation for the solitude to
which her mind and affections had been condemned.

We are ignorant, perhaps Jane was, of the precise moment
when gratitude melted into love, and friendship resigned
the reins to his more fervid dominion. But it was not
long after this, nor quite “a year and a day” (the period of
mourning usually allotted to a faithful husband) after her
separation from Erskine, that, as she was sitting with Mrs.
Harvey in her little parlour, Mr. Lloyd entered with his
child. After the customary greetings, Mrs. Harvey suddenly
recollected that some domestic duties demanded her presence,
and saying with an arch smile to Mr. Lloyd that she
“hoped he would overlook her absence,” she left the room.
Little Rebecca was sitting on her father's knee; she took
from his bosom a miniature of her mother, which he always
wore there, and seemed intently studying the lovely face
which the artist had truly delineated. “Do the angels look
like my mother?” she asked.

“Why, my child?”

“I thought, father, they might look like her, she looks so
bright and so good.” She kissed the picture, and after a
moment's pause, added, “Jane looks like mother, all but the
cap; dost not thee think, father, Jane would look pretty in a
Quaker cap?” Mr Lloyd kissed his little girl, and said
nothing. Rebecca's eyes followed the direction of her father's:
“Oh, Jane!” she exclaimed, “thou dost not look like
mother now, thy cheeks are as red as my new doll's.”

The child's observation of her treacherous cheek had certainly
no tendency to lessen poor Jane's colour. She would
have been glad to hide her face any where, but it was broad
daylight, and there was now no escape from the declaration
which had been hovering on Mr. Lloyd's lips for some weeks,

and which was now made in spite of Rebecca's presence. It
cannot be denied, in deference to the opinion of some very
fastidious ladies, that Jane was prepared for it; for though
the marks of love are not quite as obvious, as the lively Rosalind
describes them, yet we believe that, except in the case
of very wary lovers—cautious veterans—they are first observed
by the objects of the passion.

We are warned from attempting to describe the scene to
which our little pioneer had led the way, by the fine remark
of a sentimentalist, who compares the language of lovers to
the most delicate fruits of a warm climate—very delicious
where they grow, but not capable of transportation.

The result of the interview was perfectly satisfactory to
both parties; and as this was one of the occasions when all
the sands of time are “diamond sparks,” it is impossible to
say when it would have come to a conclusion, had it not been
for little Rebecca, who seemed to preside over the destinies
of that day.

Her father had interpreted his conversation with Jane to
his child, and had succeeded in rendering the object and the
result of it level to her comprehension, and she had lavished
her joy in loud exclamations and tender caresses; till finding
she was no longer noticed, she had withdrawn to a window,
and was amusing herself with gazing at the passengers in the
street, when she suddenly turned to Jane, and raising the
window at the same moment, she said, “Oh, there goes Mary
to lecture, may I call her and tell her?”

At this moment the sweet child might have asked any
thing without the chance of a refusal, and ready assent was
no sooner granted, than she screamed and beckoned to Mary,
who immediately obeyed the summons.

Mary entered, and Rebecca closing the door after her,

said, “I guess thee will not want to go to lecture to-day,
Mary, for I have a most beautiful secret to tell thee; hold
down thy ear, and promise never to tell as long as thy name
is Mary Hull;” and then, unable any longer to subdue her
voice to a whisper, she jumped up and clapped her hands, and
shouted, “Joy, joy, joy! Mary, Jane Elton is coming to live
with us all the days of her life, and is going to be my own
mother.”

Mary looked to Mr. Lloyd, and then to Jane, and read in
their faces the confirmation of the happy tidings; and to
Rebecca's utter amazement, the tears streamed from her
eyes. “Oh, Mary!” said she, turning disappointed away,
“now I am ashamed of thee, I thought thee would be as glad
as I am.”

But Mr. Lloyd and Jane knew how to understand this
expression of her feelings; they advanced to her and gave
her their hands; she joined them: “the Lord hath heard my
prayer,” she said.

“I thank thee, Mary,” replied Mr. Lloyd; “God grant I
may deserve thy confidence.”

“If she has prayed for it, what then does she cry for?”
said Rebecca, who stood beside her father, watching Mary's
inexplicable emotion, and vainly trying to get some clue
to it.

“Come with me, my child, and I will tell thee,” replied
her father, and he very discreetly led out the child, and left
Jane with her faithful friend.

The moment he had closed the door, Mary said, smiling
through her tears of joy, “It has taken me by surprise at
last, but for all that I am not quite so blind as you may
think. Do you remember, Jane, telling me one day when
you laid your book down to listen to Mr. Lloyd, who was

talking to Rebecca, that since your mother's voice had been
silent, you had never heard one so sweet as Mr. Lloyd's. I
thought to myself then you seemed to feel just as I do when
I hear the sound of James's voice; not that I mean to compare
myself to you, or James to Mr. Lloyd, but it is the nature
of the feeling—it is the same in the high and the low,
the rich and the poor.”

“Was that all the ground of your suspicion?” asked Jane,
smiling at her friend's boasted sagacity.

“No, not quite all; James has been very impatient for
our marriage; and from time to time I have told Mr. Lloyd
I wished he would look out for some one to take charge of his
house, and I advised him not to get a very young person, for,
says I, they are apt to be flighty. I never saw one that was
not, but Jane Elton. He smiled and blushed, and asked me
what made me think that you were so much above the rest of
your sex, and so I told him, and he never seemed to weary
with talking about you.”

“I am rejoiced,” replied Jane, “that your partiality to
me reconciles you to the disparity in our ages.”

“Oh, that is nothing; that is, in your case it is nothing.
Let us see, eleven years. In most cases it would be too
much, to be sure; there is just four years between James
and I, that is just right, I think; and then, dear Jane, you
are so different from other people, you need not go by common
rules.”

The overflowing of Mary's heart was checked by the entrance
of some company. As she parted with Jane, she
whispered, “I shall not think of leaving Mr. Lloyd till you
are married, be it sooner or later; when I see you in your
own home, it will be time enough to think of my affairs.”

There still remained a delicate point to adjust: Mr.

Lloyd had been brought up a Quaker, and he had seen no
reason to depart from the faith or mode of worship which
had come down to him from his ancestors, and for which he
felt on that account (as who does not?) an attachment and
veneration. He rarely, if ever, entered into discussion upon
religious subjects, and probably did not feel much zeal for
some of the peculiarities of his sect. He was not disposed
to question their utility in their ordinary operation upon common
character. He knew how salutary were the restraints
of discipline upon the mass of men, and he considered the
discipline of habits and opinions infinitely more salutary
than the direct and coarse interference of power. He perceived,
or thought he perceived, that as a body of men, the
“Friends” were upon the whole more happy and prosperous
than any other. No litigious contentions ever came among
them. This circumstance Mr. Lloyd ascribed in a considerable
degree to the uniformity of their opinions, habits, and
lives, and to their custom of restricting their family alliances
within the limits of their own sect. Mr. Lloyd regarded
with complacency most of the characteristics of his own religious
society; and those which he could not wholly approve,
he was yet disposed to regard in the most favourable light;
but he was no sectarian: his understanding was too much
elevated, and his affections were too diffused to be confined
within the bounds of sect. Such ties could not bind such a
spirit. If any sectarian peculiarities had interfered to restrain
him in the exercise of his duty, or while acting under
the strong impulses of his generous nature, he would have
shaken them off “like dew-drops from a lion's mane.” Exclusion
from the society would have been painful to him for
many reasons, but the fear of it could not occasion a moment's
hesitation in his offering his hand to a woman whom
he loved and valued, and whose whole life he saw animated
by the essential spirit of Christianity. He determined now
to inform his society of his choice, and to submit to the censure
and exclusion from membership that must follow. But
Mr. Lloyd was saved the painful necessity of breaking ties
which were so strong that they might be called natural
bonds.

Jane had been early led to inquire into the particular
modification of religion professed by her benefactor, and respect
for him had probably lent additional weight to every
argument in its favour. This was natural; and it was natural
too, that after her matured judgment sanctioned her
early preference, she should from motives of delicacy have
hesitated to declare it. If it cannot be denied that this proselyte
was won by the virtues of Mr. Lloyd, it is to be presumed
that no Christian will deny the rightful power of such
an argument.

If the reader is not disposed to allow that Jane's choice of
the religion of her friend was the result of the purity and
simplicity of her character, the preference she always gave to
the spirit over the letter, to the practice over the profession,
she must call to her aid the decision of the poet, who says
that

Not a word had passed between Mr. Lloyd and Jane on
the subject of the mental deliberations and resolves of each,
when a few days after their engagement, Jane said to him,
“I have a mind to improve the fatal hint of my little mischievous
friend, and see how becoming I can make a “Quaker
cap.”

“What dost thou mean, Jane?” inquired Mr. Lloyd, who
seemed a little puzzled by the gravity of her face, which was
not quite in keeping with the playfulness of her words.

“Seriously,” she replied, “with your consent and approbation,
I mean to be a `member by request' of your society
of Friends.”

“Shall my people be thy people?” exclaimed Mr. Lloyd
with great animation. “This, indeed, converts to pure gold
the only circumstance that alloyed my happiness; but do not
imagine, dear Jane, that I think it of the least consequence,
by what name the different members of the Christian family
are called.”

“But you think it right and orderly,” she replied, smiling,
“that the wife should take the name of the husband.”

“I think it most happy, certainly.”

There remained now no reason for deferring the marriage
longer than was rendered necessary by the delays attending
the admission of a new member into the Friends' society.

It was a beautiful morning in the beginning of May—the
mist had rolled away from the valley, and wreathed with silvery
clouds the sides and summits of the mountains—the air
was sweet with the `herald blossoms' of spring—and nature,
rising from her wintry bed, was throwing on her woods and
fields her drapery of tender green—when a carriage, containing
Mr. Lloyd, Mary Hull, and little Rebecca, stopped at
Mrs. Harvey's door; Jane, arrayed for a journey, stood awaiting
it on the piazza; old John, the basket-maker, was beside
her, leaning on his cane, and good Mrs. Harvey was giving
Jane's baggage to James, who carried it to the carriage.
“Farewell, dear Jane,” said Mrs. Harvey, affectionately kissing
her;—“now go, but do not forget there are other
`friends' in the world, beside Quakers. Return to us soon;

we are all impatient to see you the happy mistress of the
house in which you was born.”

John followed her to the carriage, and respectfully taking
her hand and Mr. Lloyd's—“You've been my best friends,”
said he; “take an old man's blessing, whose sun, thanks to
the Lord who brought Jemmy back! is setting without a
cloud. God grant you both,” he added, joining their hands,
“a long and a happy day. Truly says the good book, `light
is sown for the righteous, and joy for the upright in heart.”'

James was the only person that did not seem to have his
portion of the common gladness. He had, with a poor grace,
consented to defer his nuptials till Mary's return from Philadelphia.
He did not mind the time, he said, “five or six
weeks would not break his heart, though he had waited almost
as long as Jacob now; and he was not of a distrustful make;
but it was a long way to Philadelphia, and the Lord only
knew what might happen.” But nothing did happen; at least
nothing to justify our constant lover's forebodings.

Jane was received with cordiality into the Friends' society,
and their hands were joined, whose hearts were `knit together.'

The travellers returned, in a few weeks, to —, happy in
each other, and devoting themselves to the good and happiness
of the human family. Their good works shone before
men; and “they seeing them, glorified their Father in
heaven.” We dare not presume upon the good nature of our
readers so far, as to give the detail of Mary's wedding; at
which our little friend Rebecca was the happy mistress of
ceremonies.

There yet remains something to be told of one of the persons
of our humble history, whom our readers may have forgotten,
but to whom Mr. Lloyd extended his kind regards—

the poor lunatic, crazy Bet. He believed that her reason
might be restored by skilful management—by confinement to
one place, and one set of objects, and by the sedative influence
of gentle manners, and regular habits in her attendants.
He induced Mary, in whose judiciousness and zeal he placed
implicit confidence, to undertake the execution of his plan;
but after a faithful experiment of a few months, they were
obliged to relinquish all hope of restoring the mind to its
right balance. Mary said, when the weather was dull, she
was as quiet as any body; but if the sun shone out suddenly,
it seemed as if its bright beams touched her brain. A thunder-storm,
or a clear moonlight, would throw her back into
her wild ways. “The poor thing,” Mary added, “had such
a tender heart, that there seemed to be no way to harden it.
If she sees a lamb die, or hears a mournful note from a bird,
when she has her low feelings, she'll weep more than some
mothers at the loss of a child.”

No cure could be effected; but Mary's house continued to
be the favourite resort of the interesting vagrant. Her visits
there became more frequent and longer protracted. Mary
observed, that the excitement of her mind was exhausting
her life, without Bet's seeming conscious of decay of strength,
or any species of suffering.

The last time Mary saw her, was a brilliant night during
the full harvest moon; she came to her house late in the evening;
the wildness of her eye was tempered with an affecting
softness; her cheek was brightened with the hectic flush that
looks like `mockery of the tomb'—Mary observed her to
tremble, and perceived that there was an alarming fluttering
in her pulse. “You are not well,” said she.

“No, I am not well,” Bet replied, in a low plaintive tone;

“but I shall be soon—here,” said she, placing Mary's hand on
her heart—“do not you feel it struggling to be free?”

Mary was startled—the beating was so irregular, it
seemed that every pulsation must be the last. “Oh!” she
exclaimed, “poor creature, let me put you in bed; you are
not fit to be sitting here.”

“Oh, no!” Bet replied, in the same feeble, mournful tone;
`I cannot stay here. The spirits are out by the light of the
blessed moon. Hark! do you not hear them, Mary?”—and
she sung so low that her voice sounded like distant music:

“And do you not see their white robes?” she added, pointing
through the window to the vapour that curled along the margin
of the river, and floated on the bosom of the meadow.

Mary called to her husband, and whispered, “The poor
thing is near death; let us get her on the bed.”

Bet overheard her. “No, do not touch me,” she exclaimed;
“the spirit cannot rise here.” She suddenly sprang
on her feet, as if she had caught a new inspiration, and darted
towards the door. Mary's infant, sleeping in the cradle, arrested
her eye; she knelt for a moment beside it, and folded
her hands on her breast. Then rising, she said to Mary,
“The prayer of the dying sanctifies.” The door was open,
and she passed through it so suddenly that they hardly suspected
her intention before she was gone. The next morning
she was discovered in the church-yard, her head resting on
the grassy mound that covered the remains of her lover. Her
spirit had passed to its eternal rest!

NOTE TO PAGE 126.

“For the story had come that Shay's men would cover their front with
the captives.”

The exhaustion occasioned in Massachusetts by her struggles to support
the revolutionary contest, in which her efforts were, at least, equal to
those of any other State, and the taxes, which, at the close of the war,
were necessarily imposed upon the citizens by the State government,
were the principal causes of the disturbances in 1786-7, which are now
talked of by some of the older inhabitants, and particularly in the western
part of the commonwealth, as the “Shays war.” It was so called from
Daniel Shays, one of the principal insurgents, and now (1822) a peaceable
citizen and revolutionary pensioner in the western part of the State
of New-York.

This rebellion is certainly a stain upon the character of Massachusetts
—almost the only one. It may, nevertheless, serve to exhibit in a favourable
light the humane and orderly character of her inhabitants. If there
were no wrongs to be redressed, there were heavy sufferings and privations
to be borne. The stimulus of the revolutionary war had not wholly
subsided, and the vague and fanciful anticipations of all the blessings to
be conferred by “glorious liberty,” had passed away. The people found
that they had liberty indeed, but it was not what they had painted to
their fancies. They enjoyed a republican government, but with it came
increased taxation, poverty, and toil. Their means were rather straitened
than enlarged. From the embarrassment and confusion of the
times, debts had multiplied and accumulated; courts were established,
and the laws were enforced.

The organization of courts and the collection of debts, formed one of
the principal grounds of discontent. The court-houses were attacked and
their session sometimes prevented. The party in favour of the State government,
and, of course, of the support of the laws, was commonly called
the court party. An Englishman might smile at such an application of
the term.

The insurrectionary spirit was very general throughout the commonwealth;
and it might be said that the western counties were in the possession
of the rebels against republicanism. It endured, however, but
for a few months, and was chiefly put down by the voluntary and spirited
exertions of the peaceable inhabitants. While it lasted, there was,
of course, a considerable degree of license, and occasional pilfering, for
it could hardly be called plunder: but there was little destruction of
property, and no cruelty. Sometimes a few individuals of the court
party, and sometimes a few Shaysites were made prisoners; and in such
cases they were shut up in rooms during the stay of the conquering party,
and occasionally marched off with them on their retreat.

It is probable that about fifteen or twenty indivituals perished in
battle during the Shays war. Not one suffered by the sentence of a civil
magistrate.

The most severe engagement which occurred during the contest, took
place in Sheffield, on the 27th of February, 1787. The government
party was composed of militia from Sheffield and Barrington; in number
about eighty men, and commanded by Colonel John Ashley, of Sheffield.
This party, hearing that the rebels had appeared in force, in Stockbridge,
where they had committed some depredations, and taken several prisoners,
pursued them for some time without success, and did not fall in with
them until their return to Sheffield, to which place the rebels had marched
by a different route. The insurgents were more numerous, but possessed
less confidence than the government party. This circumstance
was every where observable during the contest. Upon this occasion, as
the most effectual protection, they placed their prisoners in front of their
line, and between themselves and their assailants. They probably expected
a parley, and that the parties would separate without bloodshed.
This had sometimes happened before, from the great reluctance which
all felt to proceed to extremities against their neighbours and acquaintances.
But Colonel Ashley was a man of determined spirit, and fully

convinced that energetic measures had besome necessary, he ordered his
men to fire. They knew their friends, and remonstrated. The Colonel
exclaimed, “God have marcy on their souls, but pour in your fire!”
They did so, and after an engagement of about six minutes, the rebels
fled. Their loss was two men killed, and about thirty, including their
captain, wounded. The loss of the government party was two men
killed, and one wounded. Of the former number, one was a prisoner
who had been forced into the front of the rebel line.

If the remembrance of this commotion had not been preserved by the
classical pen of Minot, its tradition would, probably, expire in one or
two generations.

This is the only civil war which has ever been waged in our country,
unless the war of the revolution can be so called.