s on the surging tide of life and of the delusion of those
who imagine they are aught but bubbles, breaking now this moment, now
that, according to a predetermined order.

CHAPTER XXXIX.

We receive but what we give
And in our life alone does nature live.

COLERIDGE.

Mr. Armstrong was disposed to gratify his daughter, and to follow the
advice of Holden. That very morning, soon after the departure of the
Solitary, he accepted an invitation from Judge Bernard, to take a
drive with him to one of his farms in the afternoon. Accordingly,
the one-horse chaise, which was the usual vehicle in those days,
of gentlemen who drove themselves, stopped, late in the day, at
Armstrong's door.

"Anne hopes," said the Judge, as they were about to start, "that in
retaliation for my capture of your father, Faith, you will come and
take possession of her. For my own part, if I can bring him back with
a little more color in his cheeks, I shall expect a kiss or two."

"You shall have three, dear Judge, for every smile you can win from
father," exclaimed Faith.

The road which the gentlemen took, led, at first, after leaving
the table-land on which their houses were situated, through the
thickly-settled and business part of the town, at the head of the
Severn, the whole of which it traversed, and then approaching the
banks of the Wootuppocut, followed its windings in a direction towards
its source. The country through which the river flowed presented an
appearance of soft and varied beauty, the view of which, while the
cool breeze across the stream fanned the fevered brain of Armstrong,
ought, if anything could, to have soothed his jarring nerves, and
breathed a portion of its own tranquillity into his heart. Is it not
true what the sweet poet sings of Nature and her lover, that

"She glides
Into his darker musings with a mild
And gentle sympathy, that steals away
Their sharpness ere he is aware?"

The river, for the greater part of the drive, flowed through a valley,
which it divided into two very unequal portions, skirting occasionally
with its left bank the woods that ran quite down the sides of the
hills to the water, and then winding away to the right, leaving
considerable intervals of level land betwixt itself and the woods
above mentioned, but, almost invariably, having still wider expanses
of champaign, that gradually ascended from the stream, until it met
the forest-c