"Well, devil take it!" he cried, at length, tearing the note to pieces, and then throwing the fragments into the basket under the table, "it will come, some how or other, I dare say. There is always something turns up--if not, the trees must go--can't be helped--improve the prospect--landscape gardening--ha! ha! ha!" And laughing heartily, he rolled off to bed. CHAPTER XVI. The Chance-Meeting in the Park. The morning sky was very gray. There was a thin film of vapour over the greater part of the heavens, retarding, as it were, the advance of dawn, as a mother keeps back her wayward child struggling forward too fast upon all the varied ways of life. Yet towards the east there was a bright streak of gold, which told that the star of light, and warmth, and genial influences, was coming up rapidly from below the round edge of the rolling ball. It was a line, defined and clear, marked out from the vapour, which ended there by an edge of lighter yellow; and as the strong golden tints became more, and more intense, the filmy cloud split and divided into fragments of strange shapes, while the beams streamed through, and, passing across the wide extent of air, tinted with purple the vapours above. Towards that glowing streak all things seemed to turn; the sunflower inclined her head thither; the lark bent his flight in that direction; towards it all the songsters of the wood seemed to pour the voices of their choir. It is a strange thing, the east; full of curious associations with all the marvellous history of man. Every good thing and almost every bright thing, has come from the east; religion, salvation's hope; daylight and the seeming movement of the stars and moon; summer and sunshine and Christianity have sprung thence, as if there were the fountain of all the best gifts to man. There have all nations risen, and still the progress is from the East towards the West; as if there were some law, by which all things on the earth followed the course of the great light-giver. Nevertheless, how have these blessings been mingled with many evils! The cutting winds of spring and winter, pestilence and destruction, earthquakes and wars, have there arisen, to sweep over the world, and blacken it with grief and mourning. It is a strange place, the east; and I can never look towards it and see the rising sun, without a strange feeling of awe and mystery, from the various associations which exist between it and the wonders of the past.