your hand, Eugene,--it is parched and dry. Come into
the house;--you must need rest and refreshment."

"I am better here, my Madeline,--the air and the sun revive me: let us
rest by the stile yonder. But you were going to Church? and the bell has
ceased."

"I could attend, I fear, little to the prayers now," said Madeline,
"unless you feel well enough and will come to Church with me."

"To Church!" said Aram, with a half shudder, "no; my thoughts are in no
mood for prayer."

"Then you shall give your thoughts to me and I, in return, will pray for
you before I rest."

And so saying, Madeline, with her usual innocent frankness of manner,
wound her arm in his, and they walked onward towards the stile Aram had
pointed out. It was a little rustic stile, with chesnut-trees hanging
over it on either side. It stands to this day, and I have pleased myself
with finding Walter Lester's initials, and Madeline's also, with the
date of the year, carved in half-worn letters on the wood, probably by
the hand of the former.

They now rested at this spot. All around them was still and solitary;
the groups of peasants had entered the Church, and nothing of life, save
the cattle grazing in the distant fields, or the thrush starting from
the wet bushes, was visible. The winds were lulled to rest, and, though
somewhat of the chill of autumn floated on the air, it only bore a
balm to the harassed brow and fevered veins of the Student; and
Madeline!--she felt nothing but his presence. It was exactly what we
picture to ourselves of a sabbath eve, unutterably serene and soft, and
borrowing from the very melancholy of the declining year an impressive,
yet a mild solemnity.

There are seasons, often in the most dark or turbulent periods of our
life, when, why we know not, we are suddenly called from ourselves,
by the remembrances of early childhood: something touches the electric
chain, and, lo! a host of shadowy and sweet recollections steal upon us.
The wheel rests, the oar is suspended, we are snatched from the labour
and travail of present life; we are born again, and live anew. As the
secret page in which the characters once written seem for ever effaced,
but which, if breathed upon, gives them again into view; so the memory
can revive the images invisible for years: but while we gaze, the breath
recedes from the surface, and all one moment so vivid, with the next
moment has become once more a blank!

"It is singular," said Aram, "