Hast tidings of a maiden, sweet of mien,
With dewy bluebells in her kirtle green,
Wedding, by some sweet magic Heaven has taught her,
In one rich sleep the summer earth and water?

The yellow moonlight steams on snowy mountains,
While Dian in the misty brightness bathes;
I watch, with motions of the Soul's felt fountains,
The woolly clouds a-svvim in silver swathes.
The stars take kindred with my eager blood,
And in my heart of hearts a sweet sense grows,
Still and imperfect as the yellow bud,
Hush'd in the centre of a full-blown rose.

A DAY'S RIDE: A LIFE'S ROMANCE.

CHAPTER XXX.

I GIVE the old man's story, as nearly as I can,
the way he told it.

"There is a little village on the Lago di
Guarda called Caprini. My family had lived
there for some generations. We had a little
wine-shop, and though not a very pretentious
one, it was the best in the place, and much
frequented by the inhabitants. My father was in
considerable repute while he lived; he was twice
named Syndic of Caprini, and I myself once
held that dignity. You may not know, perhaps,
that the office is one filled at the choice of the
townsfolk, and not nominated by the government.
Still the crown has its influence in the
selection, and likes well to see one of its own
partisans in power, and, when a popular candidate
does succeed against their will, the government
officials take good care to make his berth
as uncomfortable as they can. These are small
questions of politics to ask you to follow, but
they were our great ones; and we were as ardent
and excited and eager about the choice of our
little local governor as though he wielded real
power in a great state.

When I obtained the syndicate, my great
ambition was to tread in the footsteps of my
father, old Gustave Gamerra, who had left
behind him a great name as the assertor of popular
rights, and who had never bated the very
least privilege that pertained to his native
village. I did my best—not very discreetly,
perhaps—for my own sake, but I held my head high
against all imperial and royal officials, and I
taught them to feel that there was at least one
popular institution in the land that no exercise
of tyranny could assail. I was over-zealous
about all our rights. I raked up out of old
archives traces of privileges that we once possessed
and had never formally surrendered; I
discovered concessions that had been made to us
of which we had never reaped the profit; and
I was, so to say, ever at war with the
authorities, who were frank enough to say, that when
my two years of office expired, they meant to
give me some wholesome lessons about
obedience.

"They were as good as their word. I had no
sooner descended to a private station than I
was made to feel all the severities of their
displeasure. They took away my license to sell
salt and tobacco, and thereby fully one half of
my little income; they tried to withdraw my
privilege to sell wine, but this came from the
municipality, and they could not touch it.
Upon information that they had suborned they
twice visited my house to search for seditious
papers, and, finally, they made me such a mark
of their enmity that the timid of the townsfolk
were afraid to be seen with me, and gradually
dropped my acquaintance. This preyed upon
me most of all. I was all my life of a social
habit; I delighted to gather my friends around
me, or to go and visit them, and to find myself, as
I was growing old, growing friendless too, was a
great blow.

"I was a widower, and had none but an only
daughter."

When he had reached thus far, his voice
failed him, and, after an effort or two, he could
not continue, and turned away his head and
buried it in his hands. Full ten minutes elapsed
before he resumed, which he did with a hard,
firm tone, as though resolved not to be
conquered by his emotion.

"The cholera was dreadfully severe all
through the Italian Tyrol; it swept from
Venice to Milan, and never missed even the
mountain villages, far away up the Alps. In our
little hamlet we lost one hundred and eighteen
souls, and my Gretchen was one of them.

"We had all grown to be very hard-hearted
to each other; misfortune was at each man's
door, and he had no heart to spare for a
neighbour's grief; and yet such was the sorrow for
her that they came, in all this suffering and
desolation, to try and comfort and keep me up, and
though it was a time when all such cares were
forgotten, the young people went and laid fresh
flowers over her grave every morning. Well,
that was very kind of them, and made me weep
heartily, and, in weeping, my heart softened, and
I got to feel that God knew what was best for
all of us, and that mayhap he had taken her
away to spare her greater sorrow hereafter, and
left me to learn that I should pray to go to
her. She had only been in the earth eight
days, and I was sitting alone in my solitary
house, for I could not bear to open the shop,
and began to think that I'd never have the
courage to do so again, but would go away and try
some other place and some other means of
livelihood it was while thinking thus, a sharp,
loud knock came to the door, and I arose, rather
angrily, to answer it.

"It was a sergeant of an infantry regiment,
whose detachment was on march for Peschiera:
there were troubles down there, and the government
had to send off three regiments in all
haste from Vienna to suppress them. The
sergeant was a Bohemian, and his regiment the
Kinsky. He was a rough, coarse fellow, very full of
his authority, despising all villagers, and holding
Italians in especial contempt. He came to
order me to prepare rations and room for six
soldiers, who were to arrive that evening. I
answered, boldly, that I would not. I had