Must the little brooklet wonder if the heated traveller, passing fiercely on his dusty way beneath the noon-day summer sun, consumed with inward fever and parching thirst; should turn with grateful delight to kneel and bow his head over its cool and limpid waters, blessing unawares the source of such pure refreshment. But then, alas! he rises like a giant refreshed to pursue his course of ambition, pleasure, sin to whichever of these that course may tend; and what more does he think of that clear, pure stream, when quaffing freely of those turbid waters, from which at length the fevered votary is fain to slake his fiery thirst? And thou silly stream, to retain so long the softened shadow of that dark image, which for one brief minute had been reflected on thy limpid bosom! * * * * * It was then five years since the period of the little episode we have retrograded to relate, five years which had softly glided over Mary Seaham's head, in the almost uninterrupted retirement of her mountain home, and the simple enjoyments and pursuits this existence provided. Five years, which at her happy hopeful period of life, adds, oftener than detracts, from each charm either of mind or person--when, under such untried circumstances, the heart springs forward upon the wings of hope with freshness yet undiminished, and vigour unabated. It was then between five and six years after, that Mary Seaham, on a summer eve found herself approaching her cousin's house in ----, which place she had last visited with her sister, Lady Everingham, and from thence repaired to that fête which had proved no unimportant incident in her life. CHAPTER V. Then came the yearning of the exile's breast, The haunting sound of voices far away, And household steps. HEMANS. Silverton was a fine estate, and though the country in which it was situated was tame and unlovely in comparison with that to which she had been for so long accustomed, yet Mary Seaham was not so inveterate a mountaineer that she could look, as I know many do, upon the different aspect of the mother country, with the eye of utter aversion and distaste, and though she could not perhaps have gone so far as to agree with old Evelyn when he, asserts Salisbury plain to be in his opinion, the part of Great Britain most worthy of admiration, yet for the gaze to be able to stretch unbounded over a level tract of cultivated land after having been long imprisoned within the massive confines of a mountainous district, she was not ashamed to own, there may be a certain degree of pleasurable relief.