ed; he jumped off, and, calling to me to stop,
he examined his foot; and finding, or pretending to find, a
stone in it, he set about vainly endeavouring to knock it out.

"I cannot go on any further, Ellen: all I shall be able to
manage will be to get home without laming this horse; so pray
turn back now;--you can take this message some other day."

"Sit down on that bank, 'that mossy bank where the violets
grow,' my dear Henry, and muse there in sober sadness, while I
face the dragon in her den." And saying these words, I
galloped off without further discussion. I had not gone far
before he overtook me; and quoting the words of Andrew
Fairservice in "Rob Roy," which we had been reading lately, he
cried out:

"Well, a wilful man maun have his way: he who will to Curragh,
must to Curragh!" and we proceeded on our road.

On passing the gates of Bridman Manor, we skirted the edge of
the woods till we came to a terrace, where the ground was laid
out in quaint patterns; and vases, some broken, some in
tolerable preservation, were still ranged with some sort of
symmetry. By the side of what had once been a fountain sat a
group which attracted my attention by the picturesque effect
which it afforded. On the back of one of those nondescript
semihuman monsters, whose yawning mouths once formed the
spouts of the fountain, sat a girl whose features struck me as
perfectly faultless, and delicate almost beyond what one could
have fancied possible in a living creature of real flesh and
blood. She resembled the _ideal_ of a sculptor; her little
hand was laid on the moss-stained marble, and though not very
white, its shape was so perfect that it was pleasant to gaze
upon it--as it is upon any rare work of art. Near her was a
little boy, apparently about three years old, who was standing
on tiptoe, and thrusting his curly head into the cavity of the
sphinx's mouth; another boy, who might have been ten or twelve
years of age, had climbed up to the vaulted top of the
fountain, and was looking down from that position at a little
trickling thread of water, which still found its way into the
basin below, though its passage was nearly choked by the moss
and the creeping plants that intercepted its course.

As we were passing them the girl looked up, and, suddenly
rising, curtseyed; and, taking hold of the little boy's hand,
said, "Mr. Henry."

Henry stopped his horse, and, bowing to her in a manner that
rather surprised me, in a vo