beneath which they had sought shelter.
It seemed as if Nature herself smiled pityingly on their young sorrow,
and said to them, "Grieve not for the dead: I, who live for ever, I will
be your mother!"

They crept, as the night deepened, into the warmer sleeping-place
afforded by stacks of hay, mown that summer and still fragrant. And
the next morning the birds woke them betimes, to feel that Liberty, at
least, was with them, and to wander with her at will.

Who in his boyhood has not felt the delight of freedom and adventure? to
have the world of woods and sward before him--to escape restriction--to
lean, for the first time, on his own resources--to rejoice in the wild
but manly luxury of independence--to act the Crusoe--and to fancy a
Friday in every footprint--an island of his own in every field? Yes, in
spite of their desolation, their loss, of the melancholy past, of the
friendless future, the orphans were happy--happy in their youth--their
freedom--their love--their wanderings in the delicious air of the
glorious August. Sometimes they came upon knots of reapers lingering in
the shade of the hedge-rows over their noonday meal; and, grown sociable
by travel, and bold by safety, they joined and partook of the rude fare
with the zest of fatigue and youth. Sometimes, too, at night, they saw,
gleam afar and red by the woodside, the fires of gipsy tents. But these,
with the superstition derived from old nursery-tales, they scrupulously
shunned, eying them with a mysterious awe! What heavenly twilights
belong to that golden month!--the air so lucidly serene, as the purple
of the clouds fades gradually away, and up soars, broad, round, intense,
and luminous, the full moon which belongs to the joyous season! The
fields then are greener than in the heats of July and June,--they have
got back the luxury of a second spring. And still, beside the paths of
the travellers, lingered on the hedges the clustering honeysuckle--the
convolvulus glittered in the tangles of the brake--the hardy heathflower
smiled on the green waste.

And ever, at evening, they came, field after field, upon those circles
which recall to children so many charmed legends, and are fresh and
frequent in that month--the Fairy Rings! They thought, poor boys! that
it was a good omen, and half fancied that the Fairies protected them, as
in the old time they had often protected the desolate and outcast.

They avoided the main roads, and all towns, with suspiciou