letters from England. I must go;
and the sea will soon be between us.'

He paused, and she was silent.

'There is one request, one entreaty I have to make,' he continued; 'I
would, when I am far away, have something to look at which belonged
to you. Will you give me--do not refuse it--one little lock of your
beautiful hair?'

With artless alacrity, but with trembling hand, she took the scissors,
which in simple fashion hung by her side, and detached one of the long
and beautiful locks which parted over her forehead. She placed it in his
hand.

Again he took her hand, and twice he attempted to speak in vain; at
length he said:

'Ellen, when I am gone--when I am away--will you sometimes remember,
sometimes think of me?'

Ellen Heathcote had as much, perhaps more, of what is noble in pride
than the haughtiest beauty that ever trod a court; but the effort was
useless; the honest struggle was in vain; and she burst into floods of
tears, bitterer than she had ever shed before.

I cannot tell how passions rise and fall; I cannot describe the
impetuous words of the young lover, as pressing again and again to his
lips the cold, passive hand, which had been resigned to him, prudence,
caution, doubts, resolutions, all vanished from his view, and melted
into nothing. 'Tis for me to tell the simple fact, that from that brief
interview they both departed promised and pledged to each other for
ever.

Through the rest of this story events follow one another rapidly.

A few nights after that which I have just mentioned, Ellen Heathcote
disappeared; but her father was not left long in suspense as to her
fate, for Dwyer, accompanied by one of those mendicant friars who
traversed the country then even more commonly than they now do, called
upon Heathcote before he had had time to take any active measures for
the recovery of his child, and put him in possession of a document
which appeared to contain satisfactory evidence of the marriage of Ellen
Heathcote with Richard O'Mara, executed upon the evening previous, as
the date went to show; and signed by both parties, as well as by Dwyer
and a servant of young O'Mara's, both these having acted as witnesses;
and further supported by the signature of Peter Nicholls, a brother of
the order of St. Francis, by whom the ceremony had been performed, and
whom Heathcote had no difficulty in recognising in the person of his
visitant.

This document, and the prompt personal visit of the tw