“Whenever such a Government shall arise,” wrote he, “the Ministry will find few refusals to the offers of employment, and men will alike consult their patriotism and their self-esteem in taking office under the Crown; nor will there be found, in the record of replies to a Ministerial proffer, one such letter as now bears the signature of your Lordship's “Very devoted and very obedient servant, “Davenport Dunn.” This history does not profess to say how Mr. Dunn's apology was received by his noble host. Perhaps, however, we are not unwarranted in supposing that Lord Glengariffs temper was sorely and severely tested; one thing is certain, the dinner passed off with scarcely a word uttered at the table, and a perfect stillness prevailed throughout the cottage. After some hours of hard labor, Dunn opened his window to enjoy the fresh air of the night, tempered slightly as it was with a gentle sea-breeze. If our western moonlights have not the silver lustre of Greece, of which old Homer himself sings, they have, in compensation, a mellow radiance of wondrous softness and beauty. Objects are less sharply defined and picked out, it is true, but the picture gains in warmth of color, and those blended effects where light and shadow alternate. The influences of Nature--the calm, still moonlight; the measured march of the long, sweeping waves upon the strand; those brilliant stars, “so still above, so restless in the water”--have a marvellous power over the hard-worked men of the world. They are amidst the few appeals to the heart which they can neither spurn nor reject. Half hidden by the trees, but still visible from where he sat, Dunn could mark the little window of his humble bedroom twenty years ago! Ay! there was the little den to which he crept at night, his heart full of many a sorrow; the “proud man's contumely” had eaten deep into him, and each day brought some new grievance, some new trial to be endured, while the sight of her he loved--the young and haughty girl--goaded him almost to madness. One after another came all the little incidents of that long-forgotten time crowding to his memory; and now he bethought him how noiselessly he used to glide down those stairs, and, stealing into the wood, meet her in her morning's walk, and how, as with uncovered head, he bowed to her, she would bestow upon him one of her own half-saucy smiles,--more mockery than kindness. He called to mind the day, too, he had climbed the mountain to gather a bouquet of the purple heath,--she said she liked it,--and how, after a great effort of courage, he ventured to offer it to her. She took it half laughingly from his hand, and then, turning to her pet goat beside her, gave it him to eat. He could have shot himself that morning, and yet there he was now, to smile over the incident!