the tempest, she
came upon us in the midst of that dreary moss; and at the sound of our
voice, fell down with clasped hands at our feet--"My father's dead!" Had
the hut put already on the strange, dim, desolate look of mortality? For
people came walking fast down the braes, and in a little while there was
a group round us, and we bore her back again to her dwelling in our
arms. As for us, we had been on our way to bid the fair creature and her
father farewell. How could she have lived--an utter orphan--in such a
world! The holy power that is in Innocence would for ever have remained
with her; but Innocence longs to be away, when her sister Joy has
departed; and 'tis sorrowful to see the one on earth, when the other has
gone to Heaven! This sorrow none of us had long to see; for though a
flower, when withered at the root, and doomed ere eve to perish, may yet
look to the careless eye the same as when it blossomed in its
pride--yet its leaves, still green, are not as once they were--its
bloom, though fair, is faded--and at set of sun, the dews shall find it
in decay, and fall unfelt on its petals. Ere Sabbath came, the orphan
child was dead. Methinks we see now her little funeral. Her birth had
been the humblest of the humble; and though all in life had loved her,
it was thought best that none should be asked to the funeral of her and
her father, but two or three friends; the old clergyman himself walked
at the head of the father's coffin--we at the head of the
daughter's--for this was granted unto our exceeding love;--and thus
passed away for ever the Blind Beauty of the Moor!

Yet sometimes to a more desperate passion than had ever before driven us
over the wilds, did we deliver up ourselves entire, and pursue our
pastime like one doomed to be a wild huntsman under some spell of magic.
Let us, ere we go away from these high haunts and be no more seen--let
us away far up the Great Glen, beyond the Echo-cliff, and with our
rifle--'twas once the rifle of Emilius Godfrey--let us stalk the
red-deer. In that chase or forest the antlers lay not thick, as now they
lie on the Atholl Braes; they were still a rare sight--and often and
often had Godfrey and we gone up and down the Glen, without a single
glimpse of buck or doe rising up from among the heather. But as the true
angler will try every cast on the river, miles up and down, if he has
reason to know that but one single fish has run up from the sea--so we,
a true hunter, n