peaks by the temples
(Cumberland air, too, is famous for the growth of the cheekbone!),--if
all that should happen, and it very well might, then, O Blanche, I wish
thou hadst never written me those letters; and I might have done wiser
things than steel my heart so obdurately to pretty Ellen Bolding's
blue eyes and silk shoes. Now, combining together all these doubts and
apprehensions, wonder not, O reader, why I stole so stealthily through
the ruined court-yard, crept round to the other side of the tower, gazed
wistfully on the sun setting slant, on the high casements of the hall
(too high, alas! to look within), and shrank yet to enter,--doing
battle, as it were, with my heart.

Steps--one's sense of hearing grows so quick in the Bushland!--steps,
though as light as ever brushed the dew from the harebell! I crept under
the shadow of the huge buttress mantled with ivy. A form comes from the
little door at an angle in the ruins,--a woman's form. Is it my mother?
It is too tall, and the step is more bounding. It winds round the
building, it turns to look back, and a sweet voice--a voice strange, yet
familiar--calls, tender but chiding, to a truant that lags behind. Poor
Juba! he is trailing his long ears on the ground; he is evidently much
disturbed in his mind: now he stands still, his nose in the air. Poor
Juba! I left thee so slim and so nimble,--

"Thy form, that was fashioned as light as a fay's,
Has assumed a proportion more round;"

years have sobered thee strangely, and made thee obese and
Primmins-like. They have taken too good care of thy creature-comforts, O
sensual Mauritanian! Still, in that mystic intelligence we call instinct
thou art chasing something that years have not swept from thy memory.
Thou art deaf to thy lady's voice, however tender and chiding. That's
right! Come near,--nearer,--my cousin Blanche; let me have a fair look
at thee. Plague take the dog! he flies off from her; he has found the
scent; he is making up to the buttress! Now--pounce--he is caught,
whining ungallant discontent! Shall I not yet see the face? It is buried
in Juba's black curls! Kisses too! Wicked Blanche, to waste on a dumb
animal what, I heartily hope, many a good Christian would be exceedingly
glad of! Juba struggles in vain, and is borne off! I don't think that
those eyes can have taken the fierce turn, and Roland's eagle nose can
never go with that voice, which has the coo of the dove.

I leave my hiding-