ry spot that looked
lovely in their eyes he had some legend of human wrong or suffering so
miserably sad that his auditors could never afterward connect the idea
of joy with the place where it had happened. Here a heartbroken woman
kneeling to her child had been spurned from his feet; here a desolate
old creature had prayed to the evil one, and had received a fiendish
malignity of soul in answer to her prayer; here a new-born infant,
sweet blossom of life, had been found dead with the impress of its
mother's fingers round its throat; and here, under a shattered oak,
two lovers had been stricken by lightning and fell blackened corpses
in each other's arms. The dreary Gascoigne had a gift to know whatever
evil and lamentable thing had stained the bosom of Mother Earth; and
when his funereal voice had told the tale, it appeared like a prophecy
of future woe as well as a tradition of the past. And now, by their
sad demeanor, you would have fancied that the pilgrim-lovers were
seeking, not a temple of earthly joy, but a tomb for themselves and
their posterity.

"Where in this world," exclaimed Adam Forrester, despondingly, "shall
we build our temple of happiness?"

"Where in this world, indeed?" repeated Lilias Fay; and, being faint
and weary--the more so by the heaviness of her heart--the Lily drooped
her head and sat down on the summit of a knoll, repeating, "Where in
this world shall we build our temple?"

"Ah! have you already asked yourselves that question?" said their
companion, his shaded features growing even gloomier with the smile
that dwelt on them. "Yet there is a place even in this world where ye
may build it."

While the old man spoke Adam Forrester and Lilias had carelessly
thrown their eyes around, and perceived that the spot where they had
chanced to pause possessed a quiet charm which was well enough adapted
to their present mood of mind. It was a small rise of ground with a
certain regularity of shape that had perhaps been bestowed by art, and
a group of trees which almost surrounded it threw their pensive
shadows across and far beyond, although some softened glory of the
sunshine found its way there. The ancestral mansion wherein the lovers
would dwell together appeared on one side, and the ivied church where
they were to worship on another. Happening to cast their eyes on the
ground, they smiled, yet with a sense of wonder, to see that a pale
lily was growing at their feet.

"We will build our tem