hot had pierced through his heart, beside the remains of
that father whom he had thus mysteriously discovered.

BOOK V.

Surely the man that plotteth ill against his
neighbor perpetrateth ill against himself,
and the evil design is most evil to him that
deviseth it.
--Hesiod

CHAPTER I.

GRASSDALE.--THE MORNING OF THE MARRIAGE.--THE CRONES GOSSIP.--THE BRIDE
AT HER TOILET.--THE ARRIVAL.

JAM veniet virgo, jam dicetur Hymenaeus,
Hymen, O Hymenae! Hymen ades, O Hymenae!
CATULLUS: Carmen Nuptiale.

It was now the morning in which Eugene Aram was to be married to
Madeline Lester. The student's house had been set in order for the
arrival of the bride; and though it was yet early morn, two old women,
whom his domestic (now not the only one, for a buxom lass of eighteen
had been transplanted from Lester's household to meet the additional
cares that the change of circumstances brought to Aram's) had invited to
assist her in arranging what was already arranged, were bustling about
the lower apartments and making matters, as they call it, "tidy."

"Them flowers look but poor things, after all," muttered an old crone,
whom our readers will recognize as Dame Darkmans, placing a bowl of
exotics on the table. "They does not look nigh so cheerful as them as
grows in the open air."

"Tush! Goody Darkmans," said the second gossip. "They be much prettier
and finer, to my mind; and so said Miss Nelly when she plucked them
last night and sent me down with them. They says there is not a blade o'
grass that the master does not know. He must be a good man to love the
things of the field so."

"Ho!" said Dame Darkmans, "ho! When Joe Wrench was hanged for shooting
the lord's keeper, and he mounted the scaffold wid a nosegay in his
hand, he said, in a peevish voice, says he: 'Why does not they give me a
tarnation? I always loved them sort o' flowers,--I wore them when I went
a courting Bess Lucas,--an' I would like to die with one in my hand!' So
a man may like flowers, and be but a hempen dog after all!"

"Now don't you, Goody; be still, can't you? What a tale for a marriage
day!"

"Tally vally!" returned the grim hag, "many a blessing carries a curse
in its arms, as the new moon carries the old. This won't be one of your
happy weddings, I tell ye."

"And why d' ye say that?"

"Did you ever see a man with a look like that make a hap