us into relations where thee would always be a stranger, and in

which a nature like thine has no place? This is a case where duty
speaks clearly, though so hard, so very hard, to follow."

He spoke tenderly, but inflexibly, and Joel felt that his fate was
pronounced. When Alice had somewhat revived, and was taken to

another room, he stumbled blindly out of the house, made his way to
the barn, and there flung himself upon the harvest-sheaves which,

three days before, he had bound with such a timid, delicious
hope working in his arm.

The day which brought such great fortune had thus a sad and
troubled termination. It was proposed that the family should start

for Philadelphia on the morrow, leaving O'Neil to pack up and
remove such furniture as they wished to retain; but Susan, Lady

Dunleigh, could not forsake the neighborhood without a parting
visit to the good friends who had mourned with her over her

firstborn; and Sylvia was with her in this wish. So two more days
elapsed, and then the Dunleighs passed down the Street Road, and

the plain farm-house was gone from their eyes forever. Two grieved
over the loss of their happy home; one was almost broken-hearted;

and the remaining two felt that the trouble of the present clouded
all their happiness in the return to rank and fortune.

They went, and they never came again. An account of the great
festival at Dunleigh Castle reached Londongrove two years later,

through an Irish laborer, who brought to Joel Bradbury a letter of
recommendation signed "Dunleigh." Joel kept the man upon his farm,

and the two preserved the memory of the family long after the
neighborhood had ceased to speak of it. Joel never married; he

still lives in the house where the great sorrow of his life befell.
His head is gray, and his face deeply wrinkled; but when he lifts

the shy lids of his soft brown eyes, I fancy I can see in their
tremulous depths the lingering memory of his love for Alice

Dunleigh.
JACOB FLINT'S JOURNEY.

If there ever was a man crushed out of all courage, all self-
reliance, all comfort in life, it was Jacob Flint. Why this should

have been, neither he nor any one else could have explained; but so
it was. On the day that he first went to school, his shy,

frightened face marked him as fair game for the rougher and
stronger boys, and they subjected him to all those exquisite

refinements of torture which boys seem to get by the direct
inspiration of the Devil. There was no form of their bullying

meanness or the cowardice of their brutal strength which he did not
experience. He was born under a fading or falling star,--the

inheritor of some anxious or unhappy mood of his parents, which
gave its fast color to the threads out of which his innocent being

was woven.
Even the good people of the neighborhood, never accustomed to look

below the externals of appearance and manner, saw in his shrinking
face and awkward motions only the signs of a cringing, abject soul.

"You'll be no more of a man than Jake Flint!" was the reproach
which many a farmer addressed to his dilatory boy; and thus the

parents, one and all, came to repeat the sins of the children.
If, therefore, at school and "before folks," Jacob's position was

always uncomfortable and depressing, it was little more cheering at
home. His parents, as all the neighbors believed, had been

unhappily married, and, though the mother died in his early
childhood, his father remained a moody, unsocial man, who rarely

left his farm except on the 1st of April every year, when he went
to the county town for the purpose of paying the interest upon a

mortgage. The farm lay in a hollow between two hills, separated
from the road by a thick wood, and the chimneys of the lonely old

house looked in vain for a neighbor-smoke when they began to grow
warm of a morning.

Beyond the barn and under the northern hill there was a log tenant-
house, in which dwelt a negro couple, who, in the course of years

had become fixtures on the place and almost partners in it. Harry,
the man, was the medium by which Samuel Flint kept up his necessary

intercourse with the world beyond the valley; he took the horses to
the blacksmith, the grain to the mill, the turkeys to market, and

through his hands passed all the incomings and outgoings of the
farm, except the annual interest on the mortgage. Sally, his wife,

took care of the household, which, indeed, was a light and
comfortable task, since the table was well supplied for her own

sake, and there was no sharp eye to criticise her sweeping,
dusting, and bed-making. The place had a forlorn, tumble-down

aspect, quite in keeping with its lonely situation; but perhaps
this very circumstance flattered the mood of its silent, melancholy

owner and his unhappy son.
In all the neighborhood there was but one person with whom Jacob

felt completely at ease--but one who never joined in the general
habit of making his name the butt of ridicule or contempt. This

was Mrs. Ann Pardon, the hearty, active wife of Farmer Robert
Pardon, who lived nearly a mile farther down the brook. Jacob had

won her good-will by some neighborly services, something so
trifling, indeed, that the thought of a favor conferred never

entered his mind. Ann Pardon saw that it did not; she detected a
streak of most unconsciousgoodness under his uncouth, embarrassed

ways, and she determined to cultivate it. No little tact was
required, however, to coax the wild, forlorn creature into so much

confidence as she desired to establish; but tact is a native
quality of the heart no less than a social acquirement, and so she

did the very thing necessary without thinking much about it.
Robert Pardon discovered by and by that Jacob was a steady,

faithful hand in the harvest-field at husking-time, or whenever any
extra labor was required, and Jacob's father made no objection to

his earning a penny in this way; and so he fell into the habit of
spending his Saturday evenings at the Pardon farm-house, at first

to talk over matters of work, and finally because it had become a
welcome relief from his dreary life at home.

Now it happened that on a Saturday in the beginning of haying-time,
the village tailor sent home by Harry a new suit of light summer

clothes, for which Jacob had been measured a month before. After
supper he tried them on, the day's work being over, and Sally's

admiration was so loud and emphatic that he felt himself growing
red even to the small of his back.

"Now, don't go for to take 'em off, Mr. Jake," said she. "I spec'
you're gwine down to Pardon's, and so you jist keep 'em on to show

'em all how nice you KIN look."
The same thought had already entered Jacob's mind. Poor fellow!

It was the highest form of pleasure of which he had ever allowed
himself to conceive. If he had been called upon to pass through

the village on first assuming the new clothes, every stitch would
have pricked him as if the needle remained in it; but a quiet walk

down the brookside, by the pleasant path through the thickets and
over the fragrantmeadows, with a consciousness of his own neatness

and freshness at every step, and with kind Ann Pardon's
commendation at the close, and the flatteringcuriosity of the

children,--the only ones who never made fun of him,--all that was
a delightfulprospect. He could never, NEVER forget himself, as

he had seen other young fellows do; but to remember himself
agreeably was certainly the next best thing.

Jacob was already a well-grown man of twenty-three, and would have
made a good enough appearance but for the stoop in his shoulders,

and the drooping, uneasy way in which he carried his head. Many a
time when he was alone in the fields or woods he had

straightened himself, and looked courageously at the buts of the
oak-trees or in the very eyes of the indifferent oxen; but, when a

human face drew near, some spring in his neck seemed to snap, some
buckle around his shoulders to be drawn three holes tighter, and he

found himself in the old posture. The ever-present thought of this