No fairer morning ever dawned than that on which Ellen arose very early, and stole out to find that refreshment in the open air which she was not disposed to seek in more sleep. She had rested well for a few hours, but the first rays of the sun finding their way into her chamber, (which was more like a clean loft than an English bedroom), roused her to thoughts that prevented her sleeping again. It was too soon to be looking after her cows; so she took her knitting, and sat on the bench outside the house, whence she could look over a vast tract of country, and where she was pretty sure of an hour’s quiet. She had some thoughts to spare for her old Kentish neighbours; and began to fancy how her grandmother would be getting up three hours after, when it would be scarcely dawning, to make the room tidy, and light the fire to boil the kettle; and how the old couple would put on their best, and draw over the hearth with their Christmas breakfast. Then she thought of the many boys and girls she knew who would be going to church, with red noses, and shivering in their scanty clothing. Then she sighed when she remembered that she might never more hear psalms sung in a church; and again she smiled while fancying Mr. Fellowes’s great dinner to half the parish,—a dinner of roast beef and ale and plum puddings, and Mr. Jackson there to say grace, and the clerk to sing a Christmas carol, and every old man giving a toast by turns, and some one perhaps to propose the healths of their friends far away. She blushed, all alone as she was, when she wondered what they would say if they knew she was to be married so soon, especially if they could see Harry. It was strange, while her mind was thus full of pictures of a frosty day, of a smoking table, of a roaring fire, lamps, and a steaming punch-bowl, to look up and observe what was before her eyes. The scene was not even like a midsummer morning in Kent. It was not dotted with villages: there were no hop-grounds, and all the apples grown within five miles would hardly have made an orchard. There were no spires among the trees; nor did the morning mists rise from the dells or hover over the meadows. All was clear and dry and verdant under the deep blue sky. No haze hung over the running streams that found their way among the grassy hillocks. Neither oak nor beech grew on the hill side, nor pines on the ridges of the mountains behind; but trees to whose strange foliage her eye was yet unaccustomed reared their lofty stems where it did not appear that the hand of man was likely to have planted them; and myrtles and geraniums grew up roof-high, like the finest monthly roses in England. Instead of the little white butterflies flitting over the daisied turf, there were splendid ones alighting here and there in the neighbouring garden, larger and gayer than the finest of the flowers they fed upon. Instead of the lark rising from her dewy nest into the pink morning cloud, there