his brown cob, and I feel convinced that he has just looked in to see how Mr. Thomas is going on; if I miss my sister for an hour in the twilight, I know that she is in the west wing talking to Mr. Thomas; but as nobody ever calls upon me to do any thing for the poor man, I think no more of the matter."

I felt these words almost a reproof to what might have appeared idle, or even impertinent, curiosity on my part. And yet the careless indifference of Laurence's manner seemed to jar upon my senses. Could it be that this glad and high-hearted being, whom I so tenderly loved, was selfish-heedless of the sufferings of others? No, it was surely not this that prompted his thoughtless words. It is a positive impossibility for one whose whole nature is life and motion, animation and vigour, to comprehend for one brief moment the terrors of the invalid's darkened rooms and solitary days.

I had been nearly a month at Fernwood, when, for the first time during our visit, Laurence left us. One of his old school-fellows, a lieutenant in the army, was quartered with his regiment at York, and Laurence had promised to dine at the mess. Though I had been most earnest in requesting him to accept this invitation, I could not help feeling dull and dispirited as I watched him drive away down the avenue, and felt that for the first time we were to spend the long autumn evening without him. Do what I would, the time hung heavily on my hands. The September sunset was beautiful, and Lucy and I walked up and down the terrace after dinner, while Mr. Wendale slept in his easy-chair, and my aunt and Lady Adela exchanged drowsy monosyllabic sentences on a couch near the fire, which was always lighted in the evening.

It was in vain that I tried to listen to Lucy's conversation. My thoughts wandered in spite of myself,-sometimes to Laurence in the brilliantly-lighted mess-room, enlivening a cluster of blasé officers with his boisterous gaiety; sometimes, as if in contrast to this, to the dark west rooms in which the invalid counted the long hours; sometimes to that dim future in whose shadowy years death was to claim our weary host, and Laurence and I were to be master and mistress at Fernwood. I had often tried to picture the place as it would be when it fell into Laurence's hands, and architects and landscape-gardeners came to work their wondrous transformations; but, do what I would, I could never imagine it otherwise than as it was,-with straggling ivy hanging forlornly about the moss-stained walls, and solitary pools of stagnant water hiding amongst the tangled brushwood.

Laurence and I were to be married in the following spring. He would come of age in February, and I should be twenty in March,-scarcely a year between our ages, and both a great deal too young to marry, my aunt said. After tea Lucy and I sang and played. Dreary music it seemed to me that night. I thought my voice and the piano were both out of tune, and I left Lucy very rudely in the middle of our favourite duet. I took up twenty books from the crowded drawing-room

VOL. III.

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table, only to throw them wearily down again. Never had Lady Adela's novels seemed so stupid as when I looked into them that night; never had my aunt's conversation sounded so tiresome. I looked from my watch to the old-fashioned time-piece upon the chimney half a dozen times, to find at last that it was scarcely ten o'clock. Laurence had promised to be home by eleven, and had begged Lucy and I to sit up for him.

Eleven struck at last; but Laurence had not kept his promise. My aunt and Lady Adela rose to light their candles. Mr. Wendale always retired a little after nine. I pleaded for half an hour longer, and Lucy was too kind not to comply readily.

"Isabel is right," she said; "Laurence is a spoilt boy, you know, mamma, and will feel himself very much ill-used if he finds no one up to hear his description of the mess-dinner."

"Only half an hour, then, mind, young ladies," said my aunt. "I cannot allow you to spoil your complexions on account of dissipated people who drive twenty miles to a military dinner. One half-hour; not a moment more, or I shall come down again to scold you both." We promised obedience, and my aunt left us. Lucy and I seated ourselves on each side of the low fire, which had burned dull and hollow. I was much too dispirited to talk, and I sat listening to the ticking of the clock, and the occasional falling of a cinder in the bright steel fender. Then that thought came to me which comes to all watchers. What if any thing had happened to Laurence? I went to one of the windows, and pulled back the heavy wooden shutters. It was a lovely night; clear, though not moonlight, and a myriad stars gleamed in the cloudless sky. I stood at the window for some time, listening for the wheels, and watching for the lights of the phaeton.

I too was a spoilt child; life had for me been bright and smooth, and the least thought of grief or danger to those I loved filled me with a wild panic. I turned suddenly round to Lucy, and cried out, Lucy! Lucy, I am getting frightened. Suppose any thing should have happened to Laurence. Those horses are wild and unmanageable sometimes. If he had taken a few glasses of wine,-if he trusted the groom to drive-if-"

She came over to me, and took me in her arms as if I had been indeed a little child.

"My darling," she said, "my darling Isabel, you must not distress yourself by such fancies as these. He is only half an hour later than he said, and as for danger, dearest, he is beneath the shelter of Providence, without whose safeguard those we love are never secure even for a moment."

Her quiet manner calmed my agitation. I left the window, and returned shivering to the expiring fire.

"It is nearly three-quarters of an hour now, Bella, dear," she said presently; "we must keep our promise, and as for Laurence, you will hear the phaeton drive in before you go to sleep, I dare say."

"I shall not go to sleep until I do hear it," I answered, as I bade her good night.

I could not help listening for the welcome sound of the carriagewheels as I crossed the hall and went up-stairs. I stopped in the corridor to look into my aunt's room; but she was fast asleep, and I closed the door as softly as I had opened it. It was as I left this room that, glancing down the corridor, I was surprised to see that there was a light in my own bed-chamber. I was prepared to find a fire there, but the light shining through the half-open door was something brighter than the red glow of a fire. I had joined Laurence in laughing at the ghoststory, but my first thought on seeing this light was of the shadow of the wretched Lady Sybil. What if I found her crouching over my hearth?

I had half a mind to go back to my aunt's room, awake her, and tell her my fears; but one moment's reflection made me ashamed of my cowardice. I went on, and pushed open the door of my room. There was no pale phantom shivering over the open hearth. There was an old-fashioned silver candlestick upon the table, and Laurence, my lover, was seated by the blazing fire; not dressed in the evening costume he had worn for the dinner-party, but wrapped in a loose gray woollen dressing gown, and wearing a black-velvet smoking-cap upon his chestnut hair.

Without stopping to think of the strangeness of his appearance in my room; without wondering at the fact of his having entered the house unknown to either Lucy or myself; without one thought but joy and relief of mind in seeing him once more,-I ran forward to him, crying out, "Laurence, Laurence, I am so glad you have come back!"

He-Laurence, my lover, as I thought, the man, the horrible shadow, the dreadful being-rose from his chair, and snatching up some papers that lay loosely on the table by his side, crumpled them into a ball with one fierce gesture of his strong hand, and flung them at my feet; then, with a harsh dissonant laugh that seemed a mocking echo of the joyous music I loved so well, he stalked out of the door opening on the gallery. I tried to scream, but my dry lips and throat could form no sound. The oak-paneling of the room spun round, the walls and ceiling contracted, as if they had been crushing in upon me to destroy me. I fell heavily to the floor; but as I fell I heard the phaeton-wheels upon the carriage-drive below, and Laurence Wendale's voice calling to the servants.

Notes on Flying.

DURING a solitary ramble one summer's day, I chanced, in sauntering leisurely through "a little and a lone green lane," to pick up a crowquill, which had evidently been but recently dropped by its sable owner. A stile at the end of the lane offering a comfortable seat and a pleasant look-out over a miniature "valley of sweet waters," I sat quietly musing and playing with the crow-quill, turning over in my mind associations and ideas about flying, till at last I made a few notes of my mental soliloquy on a fly-leaf in my pocket, and these pencillings were the germ of the present article.

A faculty or power which one part of animated creation possesses in such admirable perfection, and which the superior intelligence of man would fain emulate, but fails utterly in accomplishing, cannot but be an interesting subject for reflection. From the time when as children we chased the butterfly o'er the flowery meadow, and almost cried when it rose in the air and disappeared over the hedge we could not climb,-when we had secret hopes of some day catching the pretty redbreast by the aid of a pinch of salt, and were almost frightened out of our senses by a pheasant rising close to us out of the stubble,-we have watched with wonder and delight, and a little jealousy withal, the winged creatures of the earth. It is with a fond pleasure that we look back to the old farmyard where we used to play, and where we have often been delighted to frighten the pigeons from their boxes, and watch them circling round the homestead, with their white feathers flashing in the sunlight, as they turned with sudden sweep towards home after a wider range than usual. What a noise too (like a loud clapping of the hands) they would sometimes make with their wings, in flying back to their nests, after they had been at the pool to drink! It was always a matter of astonishment how the tumbler-pigeons recovered themselves on their wings, after turning backwards and rolling over and over so many times. One old bird did once go a little too far with his aerial somersaults, and fell right down into the straw-yard; and I well remember how ever after we were on the look-out for a similar catastrophe.

Every one almost must have noticed, when walking in the country on a quiet summer's evening, the wild wood-pigeon flying with a dropping and languid sort of motion in among the trees of the wood, where, if you are near enough, she may be just seen through the leafy cover settling on a branch and smoothing her plumes, reminding one of that beautiful image in one of Charlotte Brontë's poems

"When, soft as birds their pinions closing,

The heart's best feelings gather home."

If, on the other hand, they are a considerable distance from their nest or accustomed roosting-place, you may observe one or a pair of them,

with rapid flight, as though bent upon urgent business which could not be delayed, cleaving their way straight through the air like an arrow. There are few things so suggestive of calm quietude and peaceful content as the cooing of a dove, and especially when heard appropriately in the stillness of eventide, amid pacific scenes of rural beauty, and after watching perhaps the welcome return of the wanderer to its expectant mate. The same character of gentleness and peace must have been remarkable in the dove of Palestine; and we can readily fancy the royal Psalmist of Israel, after having undergone some of those reverses of fortune which so frequently overshadowed his happiness, watching the dove winging its homeward flight towards the forests of Carmel or the wooded banks of the Jordan, and exclaiming with a sorrowful yearning of heart, "Oh, that I had the wings of a dove, for then would I flee away and be at rest!"

It is but rarely now that we see a veritable old carrion-crow in the midland counties of England, so that when we do catch sight of one near to some lonely heath, and have made sure of its not being a rook by its superior expanse of wing and solitary dignity, we watch the dusky bird with curiosity. We should not have observed him, sitting alone on a dead branch of that old pine at the top of the fell-like eminence swelling up out of the common we are just skirting, only that a low croak, like a rook would make if he had got a bad cold, caused us to turn that way. After giving expression to his feelings, but whether of anticipation or discontent I cannot say, by another hoarse note or two, he dropped heavily from the bough, and with lazy motion of his dark wings heaved himself slowly over the heath, turning ominous glances from side to side as he went along. Those sable pinions, not serrated at the edges like those of a rook, but long and well-curved, looked equal to a far more ambitious style of flight, if it were not beneath his dignity to move them with a little more energy. The rook, which is another of the crow family, is more frequently seen on the wing than any of our large birds, and being always gregarious, and rather garrulous too, we cannot help having our attention continually attracted towards him. The crow-quill that I picked up in the lane was most probably dropped by him, for it is hardly long enough to have come from the wing of a real crow. Our supply of crow-quills for fine official drawing or writing would be rather limited did we not go to the rookery, where any reasonable quantity can be procured, either from those naturally dropped by the old birds, or from the vast quantity of young ones that are annually shot. The rook is a little more lively on the wing than the crow, and it is pleasant to watch him as, with his fine glossy coat shining in the sun, he sails along the last halfmile of his flight from the distant rookery to the field they are freshly ploughing, without visibly moving his wings, as though that kind of locomotion were the easiest thing in the world.

In the spring, when the young birds first begin to accompany the old ones, it is amusing to watch the pertinacity with which they fly after them to get the fat larvæ and grubs (which experience has not taught