“You should have seen her thank an old farmer, the other day, for clearing the road that she might pass. He shaded his eyes with his hand when she swept by, as if he had been dazzled by a sudden flash of sunlight, and muttered to himself, as he looked after her--‘Won’t she make somebody’s heart ache?’ Well, she has; but it is because from among all her lovers she could marry but one, and (God save us!) that her choice should have fallen upon Walter May. If he don’t quench out the love-light in those blue eyes, my name is not John Morrison. I’ve seen his eyes flash when things didn’t suit him; I’ve seen him nurse his wrath to keep it warm till the smouldering embers were ready for a conflagration. He’s as vindictive as an Indian. I’d as soon mate a dove with a tiger, as give him ‘our Nelly.’ There’s a dozen noble fellows, this hour, ready to lay down their lives for her, and yet out of the whole crowd she must choose Walter May! Oh, I have no patience to think of it. Well-a-day! mark my words, he will break her heart before a twelvemonth! He’s a pocket edition of Napoleon.” * * * * * A year had passed by, and amid the hurry of business and the din of the great city, I had quite forgotten Glenburn and its fairy queen. It was a time to recall her to mind, that lovely June morning--with its soft fleecy clouds, its glad sunlight, its song of birds, and its breath of roses; and so I threw the reins on Romeo’s neck, that he might choose his own pace down the sweet-briar path, to John Morrison’s cottage. And there sat John, in the doorway, smoking his pipe, with Towser crouched at his feet, in the same old spot, just as if the sun had never gone down behind the hills since I parted with him. “And ‘our Nelly?’” said I, taking up the thread of his year-old narrative as though it had never been broken--“and ‘our Nelly?’” “Under the sod,” said the old man, with a dark frown; “under the sod. He broke her heart, just as I told you he would. Such a bridal as it was! I’d as lief have gone to a funeral. And then Walter carried her off to the city, where she was as much out of her element as a humming-bird in a meeting-house; and tried to make a fine lady of her, with stiff, city airs, and stiff, city manners. It was like trying to fetter the soft west wind, which comes and goes at its own sweet will; and Nelly--who was only another name for _Nature_--pined and drooped like a bird in a darkened cage. “One by one her old friends dropped off, wearied with repeated and rude repulses from her moody husband, till he was left, as he desired, master of the field. It was astonishing the ascendency he gained over his sweet wife, contemptible as he was. She made no objection to his most absurd requirements; but her step lost its spring, her eye its sparkle; and one might listen long for her merry-ringing laugh. Slowly, sadly to Nelly came that terrible conviction from which a wife has no appeal.