“Oh!” said she, turning back, “if any stranger should arrive during my absence, mamma, send for me immediately; or stay do not—­let him meet me at the place appointed; I will be there.”

She then took Agnes’s arm, for Agnes it was who attended her in all her ramblings, and both proceeded on their every-day saunter through the adjoining fields.

A little time, indeed, proved how very accurate had been the opinion of Dr. M’Cormick; for although Jane was affected by no particular bodily complaint, yet it appeared by every day’s observation that she was gradually sinking.  In the meantime, three or four months elapsed without bringing about any symptom whatsoever of improvement.  Her derangement flashed out into no extraordinary paroxysm, but on the contrary assumed a wild and graceful character, sometimes light and unsettled as the glancing of sunbeams on a disturbed current, and occasionally pensive and beautiful as the beams of an autumnal moon.  In all the habits of the family she was most exact.  Her devotional composure at prayer appeared to be fraught with the humblest piety; her attendance at Meeting was remarkably punctual, and her deportment edifying to an extreme degree.  The history, too, of her insanity and its cause had gone far and wide, as did the sympathy which it excited.  In all her innocent ramblings with Agnes around her father’s house, and through the adjoining fields, no rude observation or unmannered gaze ever offended the gentle creature; but on the contrary, the delicate-minded peasant of the north would often turn aside from an apprehension of disturbing her, as well perhaps as out of reverence for the calamity of a creature so very young and beautiful.

Indeed, many affecting observations were made, which, could her friends have heard them, would have fallen like balm upon their broken spirits.  Full of compassion they were for her sore misfortune, and of profound sympathy for the sorrows of her family.

“Alas the day, my bonnie lady!  My Heart is sair to see sae lovely a thing gliding about sae unhappy.  Black be his gate that had the heart to leave you, for rank and wealth, my winsome lassie.  Weary on him, and little good may his wealth and rank do him!  Oh wha would a thocht that the peerless young blossom wad hae been withered so soon, or that the Fawn o’ Springvale wad hae ever come to the like o’ this.  Alas! the day, too, for the friends that nurst you, Ay bonnie bairn!” and then the kind-hearted matron would wipe her eyes on seeing the far-loved Fawn of Springvale passing by, unconscious that the fatal arrow which had first struck her was still quivering in her side.  The fourth month had now elapsed, and Jane’s malady neither exhibited any change nor the slightest symptom of improvement.  William, who had watched her closely all along, saw that no hope of any such consummation existed.  He remarked, too, with a bitter sense of the unprincipled injury inflicted on the confiding