g gone, he was alone
with his grief. He drew the rein half mechanically, and from a spirited
canter declined to a walk.

And the slower he went, the chillier grew his heart, till it lay half
ice, half lead, in his bosom.

Parted! oh, word pregnant with misery!

Never to see those heavenly eyes again, nor hear that silver voice!
Never again to watch that peerless form walk the minuet; nor see it lift
the gray horse over a fence with the grace and spirit that seemed
inseparable from it!

Desolation streamed over him at the thought. And next his forlorn mind
began to cling even to the inanimate objects that were dotted about the
place which held her. He passed a little farm-house into which Kate and
he had once been driven by a storm, and had sat together by the kitchen
fire; and the farmer's wife had smiled on them for sweethearts, and made
them drink rum and milk and stay till the sun was fairly out.

"Ah! good-bye, little farm!" he sighed; "when shall I ever see you
again?"

He passed a brook where they had often stopped together and given their
panting horses just a mouthful after a run with the harriers.

"Good-bye, little brook!" said he; "you will ripple on as before, and
warble as you go; but I shall never drink at your water more, nor hear
your pleasant murmur with her I love."

He sighed and crept away, still making for the sea.

In the icy depression of his heart his body and his senses were half
paralyzed, and none would have known the accomplished huntsman in this
broken man, who hung anyhow over his mare's neck and went to and fro in
the saddle.

When he had gone about five miles, he came to the crest of a hill; he
remembered, that, once past that brow, he could see Peyton Hall no more.
He turned slowly and cast a sorrowful look at it.

It was winter, but the afternoon sun had come out bright. The horizontal
beams struck full upon the house, and all the western panes shone like
burnished gold. Her very abode, how glorious it looked! And he was to
see it no more.

He gazed and gazed at the bright house till love and sorrow dimmed his
eyes, and he could see the beloved place no more. Then his dogged will
prevailed and carried him away towards the sea, but crying like a woman
now, and hanging all dislocated over his horse's mane.

Now about half a mile farther on, as he crept along on a vile and narrow
road, all woebegone and broken, he heard a mighty scurry of horse's feet
in the field to his l