“Why should I delay telling the story of my love? Day after day found me at the cottage of Isabel, and day after day I grew more enraptured with her artlessness. Together we read in the mornings; and together we wandered out amidst the beautiful scenery around; and together we sat in the still evening twilight, when my greatest pleasure was to hear her sing some of those simple little lays of which her memory preserved such a store. Ah! those were happy hours,—hours, alas! which can never come again. From such meetings I would loiter home beneath the summer moon, with a thousand bright and joyous, yet undefined feelings, thrilling on every nerve of my frame. And often, as I turned to take a last look at the little white cottage, embowered in its trees, I thought I could detect the form of Isabel, standing where I left her as if she still followed me with her eye. “It was not long before I declared my love to Isabel, and found that it was returned with all the fervor and purity of her guileless heart. Oh! with what rapturous emotions did I hear the first confession of her sentiments—with what delight did I clasp her hand in mine, as her head lay upon my bosom—what tumultuous feelings thrilled my soul, as her dark eyes looked up into my own, with all that purity and depth of affection which tell that the soul of the gazer is in the look. “Well, we were married. It was that season of the year in which all nature puts on her autumn glory, and when hill and plain and valley are clothed with a garmenture as of a brighter world. The corn was yellowed for the harvest; the wild flowers were fading from the hill-sides; the grapes hung down in purple clusters from the old, twisted vines in the woods; and the birds, that had been used to sing for us, in every grove, were one by one disappearing, as they took flight for the sunny south. But could I miss their music while Isabel was by to whisper in her fairy voice, or cheer me with her low and witching minstrelsy? Was I not happy—wholly, supremely happy? It was as if I dwelt in an enchanted land. I forgot, almost, that I was a member of society; saw but little company; and spent the day with Isabel in rambling around the mountain, or when confined by the weather to the house, in a thousand little fireside amusements. We talked of the past, of our plans for the future, of the hollowness of the great world without, and of that mutual love for each other which we felt could not be eradicated by the power of a universe. Isabel was all I had imagined her in my fondest moments. Like myself, she turned away from the companionship of a selfish world, and sought only to spend life afar from human strife, secure in the possession of the one she loved. Alas! little did she think that the thunder-cloud was hanging, dark and lowering, above us, which would eventually burst, and bring ruin on our unsheltered heads.