ark shadow, where
all had been but brightness and beauty before! Oh, why must the
night-time of sorrow come to thee, thou gentle and pure-hearted one?
Thou for whom such fervent and fond prayers have ascended, as should,
methinks, have warded off from, thee each poisoned shaft, and proved
an amulet to guard thee from all life's ills! Thy sixteenth summer,
was it not a very, very happy one to thee, sweet Fanny Layton? But
happiness, alas! in this cold world of ours, is never an unfading
flower; and although so coveted and so sought, still will droop in the
eager hands which grasped it, and die while yet the longing eyes are
watching its frail brightness with dim and shadowful foreboding!

Just on the outskirts of our village there slept a silent, secluded
little nook, which the thickly-growing trees quite enclosed, only
permitting the bright sun to glance glimmeringly through their
interwoven leaves and look upon the blue-eyed violets that held their
mute confabulations--each and all perking up their pretty heads to
receive the diurnal kiss of their god-father Sol--in little lowly
knots at their feet. Kind reader, I am sure I cannot make you know how
very lovely it was, unless you yourself have peeped into this
sheltered spot--seen the cool, dark shadows stretching across the
velvet turf, and making the bright patches of sunlight look brighter
still--have stood by the murmuring brook on which the sun-bright
leaves overhead are mirrored tremulously, and upon whose brink there
grows so many a lovely "denizen of the wild"--gazed admiringly upon
the beautiful white rose Dame Nature hath set in the heart of this
hidden sanctuary, as a seal of purity and innocence--and more than
this, have turned from all these to watch the fairy form flitting from
flower to flower, with so light a step that one might mistake it for
some bright fay sent on a love-mission to this actual world of
ours--if one did not know that this was Fanny Layton's dream-dell--that
in this lovely spot she would spend hours during the long, warm summer
days, poring over the pages of some favorite author, or twining the
sweet wild flowers in fragrant wreaths to bedeck her invalid mother's
room--or, perchance, staying for awhile those busy fingers, to indulge
in those dreamy, delicious reveries with which the scene and hour so
harmonized.

One day--and that day was an era in poor Fanny's life which was never
afterward to be forgotten--our lovely heroine might h