in the centre of a stone tank, with a dead wall of some fifteen
or twenty feet rising squarely on every side of him!" (The young man
smiled bitterly as he said this, and shuddered once or twice before
he went on musingly.) "The last time I had noted the planet with any
emotion she was on the wane. Mary was with me; I had brought her out
here one morning to look at the view from the top of the Reservoir. She
said little of the scene, but as we talked of our old childish loves,
I saw that its fresh features were incorporating themselves with tender
memories of the past, and I was content.

"There was a rich golden haze upon the landscape, and as my own spirits
rose amid the voluptuous atmosphere, she pointed to the waning planet,
discernible like a faint gash in the welkin, and wondered how long it
would be before the leaves would fall. Strange girl! did she mean to
rebuke my joyous mood, as if we had no right to be happy while Nature,
withering in her pomp, and the sickly moon, wasting in the blaze of
noontide, were there to remind us of 'the-gone-forever'? 'They will all
renew themselves, dear Mary,' said I, encouragingly, 'and there is
one that will ever keep tryst alike with thee and nature through all
seasons, if thou wilt but be true to one of us, and remain as now a
child of nature.'

"A tear sprang to her eye, and then searching her pocket for her
card-case, she remembered an engagement to be present at Miss Lawson's
opening of fall bonnets at two o'clock!

"And yet, dear, wild, wayward Mary, I thought of her now. You have
probably outlived this sort of thing, sir; but I, looking at the moon,
as I floated there upturned to her yellow light, thought of the loved
being whose tears I knew would flow when she heard of my singular fate,
at once so grotesque, yet melancholy to awfulness.

"And how often we have talked, too, of that Carian shepherd who spent
his damp nights upon the hills, gazing as I do on the lustrous planet!
Who will revel with her amid those old superstitions? Who, from our own
unlegended woods, will evoke their yet undetected, haunting spirits? Who
peer with her in prying scrutiny into nature's laws, and challenge
the whispers of poetry from the voiceless throat of matter? Who laugh
merrily over the stupid guesswork of pedants, that never mingled with
the infinitude of nature, through love exhaustless and all-embracing, as
we have? Poor girl! she will be companionless.

"Alas! companionless for