Who, in that far distant and strange land of Italy, could comfort his darling with that silent sympathy, at such times far better than words, which she so sorely needed when that strange, mysterious shadow crept, as it was wont at long intervals, over her bright young spirit--a shadow unconfessed to any one but himself, and between the times of its unwelcome and sudden visitation as completely forgotten by the girl herself as if it had never existed? Who could tell what depth of loneliness and isolation her childish heart might suffer, when there was no one at her side to understand this curious and mysterious form of suffering which she seemed called upon to bear for a season? Often had Jack wondered whether to confess this unknown shadow of evil, which, whether a mental or physical disturbance, was none the less an actual source of occasional very real suffering, to the sagacious Black Horseman, or even to the girl's mother herself; but he always returned to the conclusion that it would perhaps be soonest forgotten and outgrown the less it was talked of or dwelt upon by any of those around her, and since after all it came but very seldom, and passed so utterly away between whiles, he shrank from any recognition of it which might in the slightest degree emphasise its existence upon her mind. And daily, during the few remaining summer weeks before the coming confirmation, did the good old man pray that the Holy Spirit of God might then so fully overshadow her sweet girlish soul, that no designs of the Evil One might ever have power to harm her. It was on a fair September forenoon that Primrose, to his fond eyes the very picture, in her soft white robe, of unconscious loveliness and girlish purity and innocence, responded with brave, unfaltering voice to her new name, "Shanno," in the fine old church of Caer Cynau, and knelt before the good Bishop of St. David's to receive the blessing she had long humbly desired. And many who were present in the congregation remembered for many a long day afterwards the wonderful beauty of expression on the sweet face of the boatman's mysterious foster-daughter, in whose deep grey eyes the very light of Heaven itself seemed to shine, and on whose wondrous wealth of golden hair the bright sun shone till her head seemed verily surrounded with an angelic halo. For as in the days of her early childhood, the superstitious country folk still looked upon Primrose as a being scarce of earth, not indeed from any want on her part of truly human delight in all the joys, or of tears in all the sorrows, of earth, but that they had many of them such lingering belief in wood-nymphs and water-sprites, and in fairyland in general, that her mysterious committal to the old boatman's charge was to their minds easiest to be accounted for in some such romantic fashion; and more than one old village crone had aroused Jack's ire by venturing to prophesy that ere many more years should pass, the