taken by the
hand and trusted--and of the singular character of that young girl whom
she had observed so much and known so little, and to whose efforts
seemed to be owing all this happiness budding and blossoming out of the
ashes of past misery.

An hour restored the equanimity of Richard Crawford, though several
would be needed before he could recover all the strength of which he had
been temporarily deprived by the shock. But joy does not kill, like
grief; nor does it even enervate for any long period. Only a little time
elapsed before the steadfast lover, to whom the promise of joy was again
open after so long an obscuration, decided that he must and would be
strong enough to ride to Utica that night and to West Falls on Sunday
morning. He could not be allowed to go alone, and of course Bell, who
would not dissuade him, had no alternative but to accompany him With a
few words of apology to Walter Harding, for thus making a last break
into what would otherwise have been a pleasant sojourn of some days at
the Falls, and leaving him entirely alone,--but with the explanation
that family affairs of the gravest importance demanded their presence in
the neighborhood of Utica,--they left Niagara on Saturday afternoon,
slept a portion of the night at Utica, and reached West Falls on Sunday
morning, the Twelfth--a week from that eventful Sunday on which the
destinies of the whole Crawford family seemed to have been played for,
lost and won, in the little parlor of Aunt Betsey Halstead.

It is an old story which can never be told over half so well as it can
be acted--that of the meeting of lovers who have been once estranged by
wrong or misunderstanding. It was a trying moment when Mary Crawford,
altogether ignorant of the time of his coming, even if he would ever
again come at all,--was called to meet the man whom she had so wronged
and misunderstood. But how to perform the rites of reconciliation, is
one of the sublime mysteries which Nature teaches when she gives us the
other holy lessons of love; and who doubts that the cousin-lovers
clasped each other more fondly, and with a better knowledge of what each
was worth to the other, in the meeting embrace of that Sunday morning,
than they might ever have done during their whole lives if the tongue of
slander and the hand of injustice had not come temporarily between
them?

Their connection with this narration closes here. Poor old John Crawford
is yet living, though dying da