He little knew what deadliness of thoughts, almost of purpose, had produced that long abstracted fit. The most exemplary prudence (the result of a sound mind and heart) had characterised this young woman till now. While yet at home, her bodily activity surprised her parents. Their means having been long but low, they had little help in their dairy and small farming concerns. She often surprised her mother with the sight of the butter already churned, the ewes already milked, or the cheeses pressed, when she arose. She was abroad in the heavy dews of morning, when the sun at midsummer rises in what is properly the night, regarded as the hour of rest--abroad, happy and cheerful, calling the few cows in the misty meadows. Nor did this habit of early rising prevent her indulging at night her _one_ unhappy habit--romance-reading; a pleasure which she enjoyed through the kindness of many ladies of the town of Cardigan, who afterwards established her in her school at K----. They supplied her with these dangerous volumes that exalted passion--love in excess--above all the aims and pursuits of life: represented her who loves most madly as most worthy of sympathy; and even, too often, crowned the heroine with the palm of self-martyrdom--making suicide itself no longer a crime or folly, but almost a virtue, under certain contingencies. When poverty increased, the activity of her powerful intellect was brought into display, as much as her personal activity had been, in devising resources. She had acquired some skill in drawing, through the kindness of the neighbouring gentry, and she improved herself so far as to execute very respectable drawings of the ruins of Kilgerran Castle, on her own river, and other fine scenes of Wales; and these were sold for her (or rather for her parents) by others, at fairs and wakes, where she never appeared herself. When residing at the village, her wheel was heard in the morning before others were stirring, and at late night, after every other one was still. Her little light, gleaming in the lofty village, espied between the hanging trees, was the guiding star of the belated fisher up the narrow goat's-path which led to the village, who could always obtain light for his pipe at "_Miss Bevan's_, the school," when not a casement had exhibited a taper for hours. But the evil of all this wear and tear of mind and body was, that it maintained an unnatural state of excitement in the one, and of weakness (disguised by that fever of imagination) in the other. Sleep, the preserver of health and tranquillity of mind, was exchanged for lonely emotions excited by night reading. She was weeping over the dramatist's fifth act of tragedy, or the romancist's more morbid appeals to the passions, while nature demanded rest. Then an accidental meeting with the young harper--he recovering a book she had dropped into the Tivy out of her hand, from having fallen asleep through exertion, and restoring it with a grace