The brightest beauty, the deepest interest, however, is not for strangers, but for those who return to a region like this after years of absence, like two travellers who were hastening, one fine January day, to reach their long-left home,—a plantation in Demerara. Alfred Bruce and his sister Mary had been sent to England for their education when they were, the one seven, the other six years of age. They had spent fourteen years without seeing their parents, except that their father paid one short visit to England about the middle of the time. Of him, they had, of course, a very vivid recollection, as they believed they had of their mother, of their nurse, of the localities of the plantation, and the general appearance of the country. They now, however, found themselves so much mistaken in the last particular, that they began to doubt the accuracy of their memories about the rest. On landing, they had been full of delight at the contrast between an English and a Guiana winter. When they had gone on board, in the Thames, a thick fog had hung over London, and concealed every object from them but the houses on the banks, which looked all the more dingy for the snow which lay upon their roofs. When they landed, their native shores reposed in the serene beauty of an evening sunshine. By as bright a sunshine they were lighted on the next day; and it still shone upon them as they approached their father’s estate; but it no longer seemed to gladden them, for they became more and more silent, only now and then uttering an exclamation. “How altered every place looks!” said Mary. “The birds seem the only living things.” A servant, who had come to meet the travellers with the carriage, reminded her that it was now the time of dinner, and that in an hour or so the slaves would be seen in the fields again. “It is not only that we see no people,” said Alfred; “but the country, cultivated as it is, looks uninhabited. No villages, no farm-houses! Only a mansion here and there, seemingly going to decay, with a crowd of hovels near it. I remembered nothing of this. Did you, Mary?” No. Mary thought the face of the country must have changed very considerably; but the old servant said it was much the same as it had always been in his time. “Something must have befallen the cattle, surely?” observed Mary. “I never saw such wretched, starved-looking cows in England.” The servant, who had never beheld any better, smiled at his young mistress’s prejudices, and only answered that these were her father’s cattle, and that yonder mansion was his house.