ne of healthy substantial flesh, steeped in the
spirits of life. He had been long married, but marriage had wrought no
change upon him. They who suppose that wedlock transforms the lark into
an owl, offer an insult to the lovely beings who, brightening our
darkest hours with the smiles of affection, teach us that that only is
unbecoming in the husband which is disgraceful in the man. Nearly twenty
years had passed over them; but Janet was still as kind, and, in his
eyes, as beautiful as when, bestowing on him her hand, she blushed her
vows at the altar; and he was still as happy, as generous, and as free.
Nine fair children sat around their domestic hearth, and one, the
youngling of the flock, smiled upon its mother's knee. Peter had never
known sorrow; he was blest in his wife, in his children, in his flocks.
He had become richer than his fathers. He was beloved by his neighbours,
the tillers of his ground, and his herdsmen; yea, no man envied his
prosperity. But a blight passed over the harvest of his joys, and gall
was rained into the cup of his felicity.

It was Christmas-day, and a more melancholy-looking sun never rose on
the 25th of December. One vast, sable cloud, like a universal pall,
overspread the heavens. For weeks, the ground had been covered with
clear, dazzling snow; and as, throughout the day, the rain continued its
unwearied and monotonous drizzle, the earth assumed a character and
appearance melancholy and troubled as the heavens. Like a mastiff that
has lost its owner, the wind howled dolefully down the glens, and was
re-echoed from the caves of the mountains, as the lamentations of a
legion of invisible spirits. The frowning, snow-clad precipices were
instinct with motion, as avalanche upon avalanche, the larger burying
the less, crowded downward in their tremendous journey to the plain. The
simple mountain rills had assumed the majesty of rivers; the broader
streams were swollen into the wild torrent, and, gushing forth as
cataracts, in fury and in foam, enveloped the valleys in an angry flood.
But, at Marchlaw, the fire blazed blithely; the kitchen groaned beneath
the load of preparations for a joyful feast; and glad faces glided from
room to room.

Peter Elliot kept Christmas, not so much because it was Christmas, as in
honour of its being the birthday of Thomas, his first-born, who, that
day, entered his nineteenth year. With a father's love, his heart
yearned for all his children; but Thomas w