hat her rare beauty and fortune combined would
procure her a good match, little thinking that her heart was already
given to one whose position he would never recognise. It so happened,
however, that the young people, through force of circumstances, were
separated, neither seeing nor hearing of each other for some years.

At last, by chance, they were thrown together, when the active service
in which James was employed had given his fine manly form an
appearance which was at once imposing and captivating. Matilda, too,
was improved in every eye, and never had James seen so lovely a maid
as his former playmate. Their youthful hearts were disengaged, and
they soon resolved to render their attachment as binding and as
permanent as it was pure and undivided. The period had arrived, also,
when James must again go to sea, and leave Matilda to have her
fidelity tried by other suitors. Both, therefore, were willing to bind
themselves by some solemn pledge to live but for each other. For this
purpose they repaired, on the evening before James's departure, to the
ruins of Furness Abbey. It was a fine autumnal evening; the sun had
set in the greatest beauty, and the moon was hastening up the eastern
sky; and in the roofless choir they knelt, near where the altar
formerly stood, and repeated, in the presence of Heaven, their vows of
deathless love.

They parted. But the fate of the betrothed lovers was a melancholy
one. James returned to his ship for foreign service, and was killed by
the first broadside of a French privateer, with which the captain had
injudiciously ventured to engage. As for Matilda, she regularly went
to the abbey to visit the spot where she had knelt with her lover; and
there, it is said, "she would stand for hours, with clasped hands,
gazing on that heaven which alone had been witness to their mutual
vows."

Another momentous vow, but one of a terribly tragic nature, relates to
Samlesbury Hall, which stands about midway between Preston and
Blackburn, and has long been famous for its apparition of "The Lady in
White." The story generally told is that one of the daughters of Sir
John Southworth, a former owner, formed an attachment with the heir of
a neighbouring house, and nothing was wanting to complete their
happiness except the consent of the lady's father. Sir John was
accordingly consulted by the youthful couple, but the tale of their
love for each other only increased his rage, and he dismissed them
w