f hard labor, Dunn opened his window to enjoy the
fresh air of the night, tempered slightly as it was with a gentle
sea-breeze. If our western moonlights have not the silver lustre of
Greece, of which old Homer himself sings, they have, in compensation,
a mellow radiance of wondrous softness and beauty. Objects are less
sharply defined and picked out, it is true, but the picture gains
in warmth of color, and those blended effects where light and shadow
alternate. The influences of Nature--the calm, still moonlight; the
measured march of the long, sweeping waves upon the strand; those
brilliant stars, "so still above, so restless in the water"--have a
marvellous power over the hard-worked men of the world. They are amidst
the few appeals to the heart which they can neither spurn nor reject.

Half hidden by the trees, but still visible from where he sat, Dunn
could mark the little window of his humble bedroom twenty years ago! Ay!
there was the little den to which he crept at night, his heart full of
many a sorrow; the "proud man's contumely" had eaten deep into him, and
each day brought some new grievance, some new trial to be endured, while
the sight of her he loved--the young and haughty girl--goaded him almost
to madness.

One after another came all the little incidents of that long-forgotten
time crowding to his memory; and now he bethought him how noiselessly he
used to glide down those stairs, and, stealing into the wood, meet her
in her morning's walk, and how, as with uncovered head, he bowed to
her, she would bestow upon him one of her own half-saucy smiles,--more
mockery than kindness. He called to mind the day, too, he had climbed
the mountain to gather a bouquet of the purple heath,--she said she
liked it,--and how, after a great effort of courage, he ventured to
offer it to her. She took it half laughingly from his hand, and then,
turning to her pet goat beside her, gave it him to eat. He could have
shot himself that morning, and yet there he was now, to smile over the
incident!

As he sat, the sounds of music floated up from the open window of the
room beneath. It was the piano, the same he used to hear long ago, when
the Poet himself of the Melodies came down to pass a few days at the
Hermitage. A low, soft voice was now singing, and as he bent down he
could hear the words of poor Griffin's beautiful song:--

"A place in thy memory, dearest,
Is all that I claim;
To pause and look ba