is poor in comparison, though all the king's banquets and metropolitan feasts in the world should vie together to make good the substitute. Claud's life had thus far been, in the main, a quiet and commonplace one; nothing having occurred to him to arouse those strong and over-mastering passions to which it is the lot of most of us, at some period of our lives, to become subjected. It had been checkered, however, by one bit of romance, which, to say the least, had greatly excited his imagination. About a year previous to the time of which we are now writing, and one day while he was walking the streets of Boston, a small, closely-enwrapped package was put in his hand by an unknown boy, who, with the simple announcement, "_For you, Sir_," turned quickly away, and made off with the air of one who has completed his mission, and would avoid being questioned. Glancing within the wrapper, and perceiving it inclosed a small encased picture, or likeness, of some female, which he thought must have been delivered to him through mistake, Claud looked hastily round for the messenger, and, not seeing him, he walked backward and forward along the street, and lingered some time in the vicinity, still expecting the boy would soon return to claim the package. But, being disappointed in this, he went home, and, retiring to his room, undid the wrapper, which he carefully but vainly examined for some name, mark, or other clue to the mystery; and then, with much interest, fell to inspecting the picture. It was, obviously, a well-painted miniature likeness of a fair, dark-eyed girl, but representing no remembered face, except in the peculiar expression of the strong and commanding countenance; which, he thought, either in man or woman, he must have somewhere before encountered. The whole likeness, indeed, together with the circumstances under which it came into his hands, made, at the time, a lively impression on his mind; and, keeping the affair wholly to himself, he often contemplated that fair face in private; and, for months afterwards, he never was in a public assembly, where the sex were present, without running his eye over it in search of the original. But, as he never found it, the impression gradually wore away, and, in the exciting changes that had occurred in the fortunes of his family, it had been nearly obliterated from his mind; when, that morning, while searching his trunk for some implement belonging to his gun, he came across the miniature, and put it in his pocket. And now, in the leisure that followed his repast, he bethought him of it; and, laying it before him on the bed of moss on which he was reclining, he contemplated it with renewed interest, and that sort of dreamy enthusiasm which the sudden revival of old associations in such solitudes is apt to awaken in the mind, especially when those associations are connected, as now, with a matter of mystery and romance.