, and it must come to us as a good fortune that our time
of probation is at an end. Bethink thee, could we leave our darling
Alice behind us, parted as if by the grave? Nay, could we rob her of the
life to which she is born--of her share in our lives? On the other hand,
could we take thee with us into relations where thee would always be a
stranger, and in which a nature like thine has no place? This is a case
where duty speaks clearly, though so hard, so very hard, to follow."

He spoke tenderly, but inflexibly, and Joel felt that his fate was
pronounced. When Alice had somewhat revived, and was taken to another
room, he stumbled blindly out of the house, made his way to the barn,
and there flung himself upon the harvest-sheaves which, three days
before, he had bound with such a timid, delicious hope working in his
arm.

The day which brought such great fortune had thus a sad and troubled
termination. It was proposed that the family should start for
Philadelphia on the morrow, leaving O'Neil to pack up and remove such
furniture as they wished to retain; but Susan, Lady Dunleigh, could not
forsake the neighborhood without a parting visit to the good friends who
had mourned with her over her firstborn; and Sylvia was with her in this
wish. So two more days elapsed, and then the Dunleighs passed down the
Street Road, and the plain farm-house was gone from their eyes
forever. Two grieved over the loss of their happy home; one was almost
broken-hearted; and the remaining two felt that the trouble of the
present clouded all their happiness in the return to rank and fortune.

They went, and they never came again. An account of the great festival
at Dunleigh Castle reached Londongrove two years later, through an Irish
laborer, who brought to Joel Bradbury a letter of recommendation signed
"Dunleigh." Joel kept the man upon his farm, and the two preserved the
memory of the family long after the neighborhood had ceased to speak
of it. Joel never married; he still lives in the house where the great
sorrow of his life befell.

His head is gray, and his face deeply wrinkled; but when he lifts the
shy lids of his soft brown eyes, I fancy I can see in their tremulous
depths the lingering memory of his love for Alice Dunleigh.

JACOB FLINT'S JOURNEY.

If there ever was a man crushed out of all courage, all self-reliance,
all comfort in life, it was Jacob Flint. Why this should have been,
neither he nor any one else could