and flashing eye, the raven locks, the dazzling teeth, the
bronzed colour, and the low, slight, active form, were as strongly their
distinguishing characteristics as the tokens of all their tribe.

But to these, the appearance of the youth presented a striking and
beautiful contrast.

He had only just passed the stage of boyhood, perhaps he might have
seen eighteen summers, probably not so many. He had, in imitation of his
companion, and perhaps from mistaken courtesy to his new society, doffed
his hat; and the attitude which he had chosen fully developed the noble
and intellectual turn of his head and throat. His hair, as yet preserved
from the disfiguring fashions of the day, was of a deep auburn, which
was rapidly becoming of a more chestnut hue, and curled in short close
curls from the nape of the neck to the commencement of a forehead
singularly white and high. His brows finely and lightly pencilled, and
his long lashes of the darkest dye, gave a deeper and perhaps softer
shade than they otherwise would have worn to eyes quick and observant
in their expression and of a light hazel in their colour. His cheek
was very fair, and the red light of the fire cast an artificial tint of
increased glow upon a complexion that had naturally rather bloom than
colour; while a dark riding frock set off in their full beauty the fine
outline of his chest and the slender symmetry of his frame.

But it was neither his features nor his form, eminently handsome as they
were, which gave the principal charm to the young stranger's appearance:
it was the strikingly bold, buoyant, frank, and almost joyous expression
which presided over all. There seemed to dwell the first glow and life
of youth, undimmed by a single fear and unbaffled in a single hope.
There were the elastic spring, the inexhaustible wealth of energies
which defied in their exulting pride the heaviness of sorrow and the
harassments of time. It was a face that, while it filled you with some
melancholy foreboding of the changes and chances which must, in the
inevitable course of fate, cloud the openness of the unwrinkled brow,
and soberize the fire of the daring and restless eye, instilled also
within you some assurance of triumph, and some omen of success,--a vague
but powerful sympathy with the adventurous and cheerful spirit which
appeared literally to speak in its expression. It was a face you might
imagine in one born under a prosperous star; and you felt, as you gaze