ne followed them,
looking as if he had gathered up all the gloom of the deserted spot
and was bearing it as a burden of inestimable treasure. But still they
rambled on, and soon found themselves in a rocky dell through the
midst of which ran a streamlet with ripple and foam and a continual
voice of inarticulate joy. It was a wild retreat walled on either side
with gray precipices which would have frowned somewhat too sternly had
not a profusion of green shrubbery rooted itself into their crevices
and wreathed gladsome foliage around their solemn brows. But the chief
joy of the dell was in the little stream which seemed like the
presence of a blissful child with nothing earthly to do save to babble
merrily and disport itself, and make every living soul its playfellow,
and throw the sunny gleams of its spirit upon all.

"Here, here is the spot!" cried the two lovers, with one voice, as
they reached a level space on the brink of a small cascade. "This glen
was made on purpose for our temple."

"And the glad song of the brook will be always in our ears," said
Lilias Fay.

"And its long melody shall sing the bliss of our lifetime," said Adam
Forrester.

"Ye must build no temple here," murmured their dismal companion.

And there again was the old lunatic standing just on the spot where
they meant to rear their lightsome dome, and looking like the embodied
symbol of some great woe that in forgotten days had happened there.
And, alas! there had been woe, nor that alone. A young man more than a
hundred years before had lured hither a girl that loved him, and on
this spot had murdered her and washed his bloody hands in the stream
which sang so merrily, and ever since the victim's death-shrieks were
often heard to echo between the cliffs.

"And see!" cried old Gascoigne; "is the stream yet pure from the stain
of the murderer's hands?"

"Methinks it has a tinge of blood," faintly answered the Lily; and,
being as slight as the gossamer, she trembled and clung to her lover's
arm, whispering, "Let us flee from this dreadful vale."

"Come, then," said Adam Forrester as cheerily as he could; "we shall
soon find a happier spot."

They set forth again, young pilgrims on that quest which
millions--which every child of earth--has tried in turn.

And were the Lily and her lover to be more fortunate than all those
millions? For a long time it seemed not so. The dismal shape of the
old lunatic still glided behind them, and for eve