As the rattling stage neared my home, my heart leaped within me, and every fibre of it trembled with emotion. I could have hugged and kissed each familiar sturdy old tree, looking so grand and natural. My soul warmed and yearned toward the well remembered scene; and as I thought upon my fond, doting mother and my loving, lovely sisters, and my ever-indulgent father, I could have wept in the intensity of my joy at finding myself so near them, and breathing the same free, pure, health-giving air that had nurtured my childhood. But was there not sitting directly opposite to me one of the most exquisitely beautiful of God's lovely women; and did not her saucy, demure eyes seem to read my very soul? I therefore restrained a display of my feelings, for it would not have appeared in the least dignified or proper in a fine-looking young man (such as I imagined myself to be) of four-and-twenty, to be seen with eyes streaming like a young girl. More than once, during our short stage-coach ride had our eyes met; and hers had revealed to me a living well of spiritual beauty; and although they were withdrawn as soon as they encountered mine--not coquettishly, but with true feminine modesty--still they were not turned away until our mutual eyes had flashed one electrical spark of mutual understanding and mutual sympathy, that whole volumes of dull words could never express either as vividly or as truly. What a heaven-born mystery is contained in the glance of an eye: it can kill and can make alive; it can fill the heart with a sudden and delicious ecstasy, and it can plunge it into the deepest, darkest despair. I gave her one last look as the stage stopped before my father's door, and if it expressed one tithe of what I felt, it told her of my warm admiration of her glorious beauty, and of my sorrow at leaving her, perhaps forever, without knowing more of her. For the time the matchless image of my stage-coach companion was lost in the loving embraces and tender greetings of my family. I felt it truly refreshing, after six years of exile from my own kith and kin, to be caressed and made much of; to be told by three deliciously beautiful, exquisitely graceful sisters, hanging around one, and kissing one every other word, to be told how much the few last years had improved one, how handsome, &c. one was grown; was it not enough to somewhat turn one's brain, and make one a little vain and considerably happy.