After long hours her body awoke to life, but her brain was gone.
Heartbroken, mind gone, in very sooth mad, what remained for sweet Betty
now.

Travellers passing by would point to the parsonage wall, and
sorrowfully tell her story. Some more curious than the rest would
perhaps stop to look through the gate.

A strange sight met their eyes.

As beautiful as ever, with a strange fearful beauty, stood Betty, her
hands hanging clasped before her, and she sang to herself softly,
dreamily:

"Call him, call him over the lea,
Aye, well and well-a-day;
Lover will never come back to thee
Who loves and gallops away."

Then she put her hands to her mouth as men do who wish that their voices
should carry far, and called over and over again slowly, "John
Johnstone! John Johnstone!"--the last syllable rising loud on a long
high note.

Then she would hold up her finger, and bend her head listening,
listening, listening, till she heard the sound of the galloping hoofs
come nearer and nearer, passing and fading away.

Those who watched with her in the dark evenings in the walled garden
swore that they also heard the sound, and their hair bristled with cold
fear.

VIRGINIA.

PART I.

"He is a very strange mixture."

"I really do not think you ought to ask him to the house. An atheist, a
man of disreputable life, a----."

"Come, come, my dear, don't give him such a character, before Virginia."

This fragment of dialogue takes place over a cheery breakfast table in a
house not very far from Park Lane.

The first speaker is a pleasant-looking man of between fifty and sixty,
and his interlocutor is a rather prim lady, who appears older, but is,
in reality, his junior by two years. They are Mr. Hamilton Hayward and
his sister, Miss Susan.

The party has a third member--the Virginia alluded to by Mr. Hayward.
She is tall, handsome, bright-looking; evidently she possesses
character, but with it the grace and charm of manner which prevent a
woman of character from falling into that disagreeable being, a
strong-minded woman.

"What are Mr. Vansittart's good points?" she says, smiling at her
uncle.

"He has the kindest heart in the world," Mr. Hayward replies, warmly,
"and he would never do a shabby thing. One of the few men who really
practice not letting their left hand know the good their right does. He
certainly is a looseish fish; but he does not parade his irregularities
befor