eader, as yet, only
imperfectly suspects.

Two years previous to the time when our story commences, Edmund
Dunning, a landholder and gentleman of consideration, in the county of
Devon, in England, having recently adopted the creed and practice of
the Puritans, (as a sect dissenting from the Church of England,
somewhat in doctrine, and wholly in outward observances, was called;
from asserting, as it was thought, pretentions to superior purity of
belief and strictness of living,) left the shores of his native island
with an only child, a daughter, then between seventeen and eighteen
years of age, to seek that freedom for his faith in the new world,
which, as he conceived, was denied him in the old. His whole family
consisted of this daughter, Eveline, his wife having deceased several
years previously. His departure was hastened by a circumstance which
had for some time occasioned him no little uneasiness, and the evil
consequences of which he could think of no other means so effectually
to avoid. This circumstance was an intimacy between the beautiful
Eveline and a young gentleman in the neighboring town more tender than
the father approved, who looked upon the hopes of the suitor as
presumptuous, and was, besides, opposed to an union, on account of a
diversity of religious sentiment betwixt himself and the aspirant.

This young man was Miles Arundel. A year before Master Dunning and his
daughter left England, he had come to the town of Exeter, near to
which the Dunnings lived on their estate, and opened a studio as a
landscape painter. It was not, however, until a month after his
arrival, that he seemed at all decided as to his intentions, the time
being spent in wandering over the beautiful country, and making
occasionally a sketch; nor after he had offered his services to the
public in a professional capacity did he work very diligently. Yet was
it remarked that he was never in want of money; and the citizens of
Exeter thought that he must get high prices for his pictures in London
to warrant his expenditure.

Among the families to which he was introduced as an artist, was that
of Edmund Dunning. Eveline was no indifferent sketcher herself, and
accompanied her father one day on a visit to the rooms of Master
Arundel. It is said that the young people blushed at the meeting, but
however that may be, the blush was unobserved by Master Dunning.

So agreeable did the young artist make himself, that one visit led on
to