lonely, gloomy tarn, which no traveller ever
passed without awe; and away past the
roaring chasm of the Linn Brig, up to its
wild source in the perfectly silent hills. On
many of these occasions Ellen Mowbray as a
little girl had accompanied them, and the
remembrance of the deeply brooding silence
of the summer's day by the Halystane Well,
or in the heathery wastes of Barra Burn,
only broken by the wild cry of the curlew,
the rushing sound of the upspringing black
game, or the sight of the stately heron
watching by the stream for its prey came
frequently across her in the hours of town
study. Was it any wonder if the image of
their boy-companion, George Widdrington,
came also amongst all these pleasant pictures
not the less pleasantly? Especially as at
later holiday times they had rambled together
through all the neighbouring haunts of the
dale, and were familiar with all its traditions.
George could repeat by heart the whole of
the ballad of the Hermit of Warkworth, and
often, as children, had they spent whole afternoons
in its ruined chapel and little enclosure,
playing at the young banished lord and the
fair Emily Neville; whose visit to the hermit
has charmed the youthful imaginations of
thousands besides themselves.

So much had George Widdrington won the
regard of Mr. Mowbray, that he had
volunteered the cost of an education for him far
beyond the means and aspirations of his own
parents; and had augmented his kindness
by having him articled to an eminent solicitor
in Newcastle.

As George spent his brief snatches of
holiday at home, he continued to pass a
good portion of these bright days at
Kidland Grange, and to manifest all his ancient
predilection for his fair playfellow. As they
both grew—the one into a tall handsome,
and active young man; the other into one
of the most graceful and beautiful
maidens that ever bloomed on the Border—
the same unclouded frankness of intercourse
still prevailed, as if they were indeed brother
and sister. Worldly-wise people saw it, and
asked what the wealthy Mr. Mowbray meant
by giving this unobstructed opportunity
to the son of the poor farmer Widdrington,
to engross the affections of a daughter
whose beauty and fortune might claim for
her the noblest hand in the county? Mr.
Mowbray saw it just as clearly as they did,
and felt that he would rather call his favourite
George Widdrington his son-in-law, than any
man he knew or expected to know.

And it was, no doubt, with this settled
purpose in his mind, that, on George completing
the term for which he was articled,
he took a wider view for him, and one more
suitable to the future husband of Ellen. He
sent him to London, and entered him at
Lincoln's Inn, as a student for the bar. He
was the more readily induced to do this from
the zealous praises of his old master, who
declared that his talents were of too high an
order to be wasted in the obscurity of an
attorney's office, and would certainly do
honour to his native county if introduced to a
nobler field of exercise.

George had not only eaten his commons;
but had studied hard under an eminent counsel
for more than two years. When he paid his
annual autumnal visit, he was observed to be
as gay and agreeable as ever, and wonderfully
improved by the more extended area of
society, and the opportunities for amassing
knowledge, both of books and life, which he
had enjoyed. A finer or more intelligent
young man it was declared, even by the most
aristocratic people of the neighbourhood, was
not to be found in the north. This was all
very gratifying both to Mr. Mowbray and to
his daughter. The union of the families, so
long allied in friendship, was now considered
a settled thing. All around them looked
bright and calm.

Yet there sprung up, slightly at first,
a spirit of uneasiness. During the last
visit of George, Ellen thought she perceived
a falling off of George's attachment; not
to her, but to the ancient usages and faith
of their ancient church. There was a tone
in his observations when she ventured to
question him on the subject which jarred
painfully, though confusedly on her feelings,
and the further she pressed the subject, the
more her anxiety and alarm grew. She, as
her family had ever been, and as her father
was now, was most devotedly and conscientiously
attached to the established faith.
Without any illiberal prejudice—with a
more ample and generous spirit of toleration,
than prevailed around her—she was yet terrified
at the bare idea of the man, to whom she
had given her heart and soul in the glow of
the tenderest affection and with whom she
contemplated spending her life, being infested
with sceptical ideas. But George had fallen
in in London, with a knob of very highly
learned and brilliant men, who had adopted
many of the rationalistic tenets of Strauss
and Paulus; and while they accepted the
doctrines of Christianity as the corpus of a
sublime and philanthropic philosophy, a
philosophy essential to the progress of civilisation,
rejected the miraculous history of the
Bible as a congeries of myths.

Pressed by Ellen with an uneasy importunity
on the subject, George did not hesitate
to open all his views to her, trusting to her
liberal education, and her undoubted affection
for him, for at least a patient tolerance of his
conscientious belief. But he had not calculated
truly on the effect which such a revolution
must have upon her deeply-rooted sentiments,
and on the old, hereditary faith of her
family. She shrunk in consternation from
the divided faith which the future seemed to
menace, instead of the spiritual as well as
affectionate union which she had relied upon.
She saw with equal consternation the terror