In a beautiful district of the "Old Dominion," bordering on the Rappahannock, there lived, just previous to the time of the opening of our story, a planter, who had once been wealthy, but whose princely fortune had become much reduced by indiscriminate kindness. Possessed of a noble heart, a generous disposition, and the finest sympathies, he could never find it in his heart to say "no" to an application for assistance. Thousands had thus gone to pay debts of security; and, at last, he resolved to move to the West, as a means of retrieving his affairs, as well as to cut loose from the associations which were rapidly diminishing the remains of his wealth. This planter, whom we shall call General Walton, (the last name assumed, the title one given him by common consent,) had one son, and an only daughter, the former twenty-one, the latter eighteen, at the time we wish to introduce them to the reader's notice. Both were worthy, the one as a man, the other as a woman. He was noble, intellectual, manly; she was beautiful, accomplished, intelligent; both possessed those higher and nobler qualities of mind and heart which dignify and ally it to divinity. Ellen Walton, an heiress, jointly with her brother, in prospective, and reputed the wealthiest fair one in all the district, (the world don't always know the true situation of a man's affairs,) was not left to pine away in solitude with the dismal prospect in view of becoming that dreaded personage--_an old maid_. No, she was _beset_ with admirers; some loving _her_, some her _wealth_, and some _both_. To all but one she turned a deaf ear; that one, though the least presuming of the many, and too diffident to urge his claim until impelled by the irresistable violence of his love, possessed, unknown to himself, a magnetic power over the heart of the fair being. Many were the doubts and fears of both--natural accompaniments of true, sincere, devoted, but unacknowledged, love--but all were dispelled by the mutual exchange of thoughts, and the mutual plighting of faith. Vows once made by the pure in heart, are seldom, if ever, broken, and then by some higher duty or demand.