and, early as it was at that moment, we children, all six of us that then survived, were already abroad upon the lawn. There were two lawns at Greenhay in the shrubbery that invested three sides of the house: one of these, which ran along one side of the house, extended to a little bridge traversed by the gates of entrance. The central gate admitted carriages: on each side of this was a smaller gate for foot passengers; and, in a family containing so many as six children, it may be supposed that often enough one or other of the gates was open; which, most fortunately, on this day was not the case. Along the margin of this side lawn ran a little brook, which had been raised to a uniform level, and kept up by means of a wear at the point where it quitted the premises; after which it resumed its natural character of wildness, as it trotted on to the little hamlet of Greenhill. This brook my brother was at one time disposed to treat as Remus treated the infant walls of Rome; but, on maturer thoughts, having built a fleet of rafts, he treated it more respectfully; and this morning, as will be seen, the breadth of the little brook did us "yeoman's service." Me at one time he had meant to put on board this fleet, as his man Friday; and I had a fair prospect of first entering life in the respectable character of supercargo. But it happened that the current carried his rafts and himself over the wear; which, he assured us, was no accident, but a lesson by way of practice in the art of contending with the rapids of the St. Lawrence and other Canadian streams. However, as the danger had been considerable, he was prohibited from trying such experiments with me. On the centre of the lawn stood my eldest surviving sister, Mary, and my brother William. Round _him_, attracted (as ever) by his inexhaustible opulence of thought and fun, stood, laughing and dancing, my youngest sister, a second Jane, and my youngest brother Henry, a posthumous child, feeble, and in his nurse's arms, but on this morning showing signs of unusual animation and of sympathy with the glorious promise of the young June day. Whirling round on his heel, at a little distance, and utterly abstracted from all around him, my next brother, Richard, he that had caused so much affliction by his incorrigible morals to the Sultan Amurath, pursued his own solitary thoughts--whatever those might be. And, finally, as regards myself, it happened that I was standing close to the edge of the brook, looking back at intervals to the group of five children and two nurse maids who occupied the centre of the lawn; time, about an hour before _our_ breakfast, or about two hours before the world's breakfast,-- _i.e._, a little after seven,--when as yet in shady parts of the grounds the dazzling jewelry of the early dews had not entirely exhaled. So standing, and so occupied, suddenly we were alarmed by shouts as of some great mob manifestly in rapid motion, and probably, at this instant