LICTION--ADAM HOME'S RETURN.

Nelly recovered, at first slowly but cheeringly, latterly with a doubt
and apprehension creeping over her brightening prospect--until, all too
certainly and hopelessly, her noon, that had been disturbed with
thunder-claps and dashing rain, was shrouded in grey twilight.

Nelly would live, but her limbs would never more obey her active spirit,
for she had been attacked by a relentless malady. The little feet that
had slid in courtly measure, and twinkled in blithe strathspeys, and
wandered restlessly over moor and brae, were stretched out in leaden
helplessness. When she was young, she "had girded herself and gone
whither she would;" but now, ere she was old, while there was not one
silver thread in those chestnut locks, "another would gird her and carry
her whither she would not." And oh! to think how the young mother's
heart, ready to bud and bloom anew, was doomed to drag out a protracted
existence, linked to the corpse-like frame of threescore and ten, until
the angel of death freed it from its tabernacle of clay.

Nelly never spoke of her affliction--never parted from her baby.
Travelling with difficulty, she removed to Edinburgh, to the aspiring
tenement in the busy Canongate, which she had quitted in her
distraction. Lady Carnegie, in her rustling silk and with her clicking
ivory shuttle, received her into her little household, but did not care
to conceal that she did so on account of the aliment Staneholme had
secured to his forsaken wife and heir. She did not endure the occasional
sight of her daughter's infirmities without beshrewing them, as a
reflection on her own dignity. She even sneered and scoffed at them,
until Nanny Swinton began to fear that the judgment of God might strike
her lady--a venerable grandame still without one weakness of bodily
decay or human affection.

And did Nelly fret and moan over the invalid condition for which there
was neither palliation nor remedy? Nay, a blessing upon her at last; she
began to witness a good testimony to the original mettle and bravery of
her nature. She accepted the tangible evil direct from God's hand,
sighingly, submissively, and with a noble meekness of resignation. She
rose above her hapless lot--the old Nelly Carnegie, though subdued and
chastened, was in a degree restored.

"Nanny! Nanny Swinton!" called Nelly from her couch, as she managed to
hold up, almost exultingly, the big crowing baby, in its quaintest of
mantles