derers moved slowly on. Presently they came to a place where the
street had been mended, and the stones lay scattered about. Here the
woman no longer trusted to the dog's guidance, but anxiously hastened
to the musician, and led him with evident tenderness and minute
watchfulness over the rugged way. When they had passed the danger, the
man stopped; and before he released the hand which had guided him, he
pressed it gratefully, and then both the husband and the wife stooped
down and caressed the dog. This little scene--one of those rough copies
of the loveliness of human affections, of which so many are scattered
about the highways of the world--both the lovers had involuntarily
watched; and now as they withdrew their eyes,--those eyes settled on
each other,--Lucy's swam in tears.

"To be loved and tended by the one I love," said Clifford, in a low
voice, "I would walk blind and barefoot over the whole earth!"

Lucy sighed very gently; and placing her pretty hands (the one clasped
over the other) upon her knee, looked down wistfully on them, but made
no answer. Clifford drew his chair nearer, and gazed on her, as she
sat; the long dark eyelashes drooping over her eyes, and contrasting the
ivory lids; her delicate profile half turned from him, and borrowing
a more touching beauty from the soft light that dwelt upon it; and her
full yet still scarcely developed bosom heaving at thoughts which she
did not analyze, but was content to feel at once vague and delicious. He
gazed, and his lips trembled; he longed to speak; he longed to say but
those words which convey what volumes have endeavoured to express and
have only weakened by detail,--"I love." How he resisted the yearnings
of his heart, we know not,--but he did resist; and Lucy, after a
confused and embarrassed pause, took up one of the poems on the table,
and asked him some questions about a particular passage in an old ballad
which he had once pointed to her notice. The passage related to a border
chief, one of the Armstrongs of old, who, having been seized by the
English and condemned to death, vented his last feelings in a passionate
address to his own home--his rude tower--and his newly wedded bride. "Do
you believe," said Lucy, as their conversation began to flow, "that
one so lawless and eager for bloodshed and strife as this robber is
described to be, could be so capable of soft affections?"

"I do," said Clifford, "because he was not sensible that he was as