or, sobbing out the sorrows of years. Her eyes have
been long dry. The heart is at last opened."

"Too good a sight for me to lose," replied her friend. "For twenty years
I have only known the tears of penitence: I will now experience those
that flow from the happiness of others."

And, with these words, he hurried up stairs. We would follow, but that
we are aware of the danger of treading ground almost forbidden to
inspiration. Within two hours afterwards, Hector Hayston and Alice Scott
were again among the glens of Whitecraigs, seeking out those places
where, before, they used to breathe the accents of a first affection.
The one had been true to the end; and the other had been false only to
learn the beauty of truth. We have given these details from a true
record, and have derived pleasure from the recollections they have
awakened; but we fairly admit, that we would yield one half of what we
have experienced of the good, to have marked that day the workings of
the retrieved spirit in the eyes, and speech, and manners of Alice
Scott. These are nature's true magic. The drooping flower that is all
but dead in the dry, parched soil, raises its head, takes on fresh
colours, and gives forth fresh odours, as the spring showers fall on its
withered leaves. Oh! there is a magic there that escapes not even the
eye of dull labour, retiring home sick of all but the repose he needs.
But the process in the frame that is the temple of beauty, worth,
intelligence, sensibility, rearing all in loveliness afresh, out of what
was deemed the ruins only of what is the greatest and best of God's
works--to see this, and to feel it, is to rejoice that we are placed in
a world that, with all its elements of vice and sorrow, is yet a place
where the good and the virtuous may find something analogous to that for
which the spirit pants in other worlds.

Yet, though we saw it not, we have enough of the conception, through
fancy, to be thankful for the gift even of the _ideal_ of the good; and
here we are satisfied that we have more. Hector Hayston and Alice Scott
were married. David Wallace's history was long concealed, but curiosity
finally triumphed; yet with no effect calculated to impair the
equanimity of a mind which repentance, and a reliance on God's grace,
had long rendered independent of the opinions of men. He had wrought for
evil, and good came of it; and he lived long to see, in the house of
Whitecraigs, its master, mistress, and chi