Just on the outskirts of our village there slept a silent, secluded little nook, which the thickly-growing trees quite enclosed, only permitting the bright sun to glance glimmeringly through their interwoven leaves and look upon the blue-eyed violets that held their mute confabulations--each and all perking up their pretty heads to receive the diurnal kiss of their god-father Sol--in little lowly knots at their feet. Kind reader, I am sure I cannot make you know how very lovely it was, unless you yourself have peeped into this sheltered spot--seen the cool, dark shadows stretching across the velvet turf, and making the bright patches of sunlight look brighter still--have stood by the murmuring brook on which the sun-bright leaves overhead are mirrored tremulously, and upon whose brink there grows so many a lovely "denizen of the wild"--gazed admiringly upon the beautiful white rose Dame Nature hath set in the heart of this hidden sanctuary, as a seal of purity and innocence--and more than this, have turned from all these to watch the fairy form flitting from flower to flower, with so light a step that one might mistake it for some bright fay sent on a love-mission to this actual world of ours--if one did not know that this was Fanny Layton's dream-dell--that in this lovely spot she would spend hours during the long, warm summer days, poring over the pages of some favorite author, or twining the sweet wild flowers in fragrant wreaths to bedeck her invalid mother's room--or, perchance, staying for awhile those busy fingers, to indulge in those dreamy, delicious reveries with which the scene and hour so harmonized.