Filled with the exciting fancies engendered by the affair of the

last night, I commenced my journey. The day was a fine one; the

sun cheery and bright without being oppressive; and soon, gliding

through the broad avenues, lined with noblest trees, which conducted

us from the city to the forests, we had the pleasant carol of birds,

and the lively chirp of hopping insects.

I was always a lover of the woods; green shady dells, and winding

walks amidst crowding foliage. I cared little for mere flowers. A

garden was never a desire in my mind. I could be pleased to see and

to smell, but I had no passion for its objects. But the trees--the

big, venerable oaks, like patriarchs and priests; the lofty

and swaggering pines in their green helmets, like warriors of the

feudal ages--these were forms that I could worship. I may say, I

loved trees with a real passion. Flowers, and the taste for flowers

seemed to me always petty; but my instincts led me to behold a

sneaking and most impressive grandeur, in these old lords of the

forest, that had been the first, rising from the mighty mother

to attest the wondrous strength of her resources, and the teeming

glories of her womb.

Now, however, they did not fill my soul with earnest reachings,

as had ever been the case before. They soothed me somewhat, but

the eyes of my mind were turned within. They looked only at the

prostration of that miserable heart which was torturing itself with

vague, wild doubts--guessing and conjecturing with an agonizing

pain, and without the least hope of profit. I could not drive from

my thoughts, the vexing circumstances of the last night in the

city; and, for the first day of our journey, the hours moved with

oppressive slowness. Objects which I had formerly loved to contemplate

and always found sweet and refreshing, now gave me little pleasure

and exacted little of my attention; and I reached our stopping-place

for the night with a sense of weariness and stupor which no mere

fatigue of body, I well knew, could ever have occasioned.

But this could not last. The elasticity of my nature, joined with

the absence of that one person whom I had now learned to regard as

my evil genius, soon enabled me to shake off the oppressive doubts

and sadness which fettered and enfeebled me. Once more I began to

behold the forests with all the eyes of former delight and affection,

and I was conscious, after the progress of a day or two, of periods

in which I entirely lost sight of William Edgerton and all my

suspicions in the sweet warmth of a fresh and pleasing contemplation.

Something of this--nay, perhaps, the most of it, was due to my wife

herself. There was a change in her air and manner which sensibly

affected my heart. I had treated her coldly at first, but she had

not perceived it; at least she had not suffered it to influence

her conduct; and I was equally pleased and surprised to behold in

her language, looks, and deportment, a degree of life and buoyant

animation, which reminded me of the very champagne exuberance and

spirit of her youth. Her eyes flashed with a sense of freedom. Her

voice sounded with the silvery clearness of one, who, long pent up

in the limits of a dungeon, uses the first moment of escape into

the forests to delight himself with song. She seemed to have just

thrown off a miserable burden;--and, as for any grief--any sign of

regret at leaving home and tics from which she would not willingly

part--there was not the slightest appearance of any such feeling

in her mind, look, or manner. Kindly, considerately, and sweetly,

and with a cheery smile in her eyes, and a springing vigor in the

accents of her voice, she strove to enliven the way and to expel

the gloom which she soon perceived had fastened itself upon my soul.

Her own cares, if she had any, seemed to be very slight, and were

utterly lost in mine. She spoke of our new abiding-place with a

hearty confidence; that it would be at once a home of prosperity

and peace; and, altogether convinced me for the time that the

sacrifice must be comparatively very small, which she had made on

leaving her birth-place. I very soon wondered that I should have

fancied that William Edgerton was ever more to her than the friend

of her husband.




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