d broad chests
are not always requisite. Ho! ho!"--he shouted, as the horse on the
right did not know what to do with himself in his wanton caracoles. He
made the beautiful animals walk for some distance, standing erect as he
watched their pace with the eye of a connoisseur. When they had grown
more quiet and yielded to his firm hand, he resumed his seat beside
Edwin, and allowed them to trot.

Field after field, and forest after forest, tiny villages and lonely
huts flitted past them; the air grew no cooler, but the earth grew
darker, and the sky lighter. The horses dashed onward with their silent
load; the deep stillness of the summer night enwrapped them; over the
black tree tops hung the tender crescent of the moon, and now and then
a flash of light lit up the firmament, as if from a distant thunder
cloud; a dreamy, quiet mood stole over our friend, the subdued
happiness of a half dormant soul; in such a state we do not take either
joys or sorrows seriously and are scarcely surprised at the occurrence
of the most fabulous things. For years he had not uttered Toinette's
name; her image had become as dim in his memory as if she were no more
real than a character in some book of fiction; and now he was driving
toward her, who doubtless had as little expectation of such a meeting
as he himself had entertained an hour ago. He wondered if he should
find her so changed and why they fancied he would perform a miracle by
acting upon her strange moods, he who felt that all the ties that had
once bound him to her, were so utterly sundered.

He was surprised at the entire absence of anxiety with which he looked
forward to the moment when he was to see her again. He rejoiced in this
calmness. "If it had been an elementary power, to which I submitted in
those days," he thought, "the poison would now seethe in my blood again.
Though the iron be separated from the magnet a hundred years, it
quickly becomes conscious of its approach. True, happiness has changed
me much since then, so far as a man's nature can be changed and I am
calmed and strengthened. What will Leah say, when I tell her about it!"

He could not forbare to wonder at the singular circumstances, which had
decreed that the most unprejudiced witness of those past events, should
be the very one to recognize him and thereby restore to his mistress
her old friend. The old question of the connection between earthly
destinies once more rose before his mind. "Is this an in