There sat upon the linden tree A bird, and sang its strain; So sweet it sang, that, as I heard, My heart went back again; It went to one remembered spot, It saw the rose-trees grow, And thought again the thoughts of love There cherished long ago. A thousand years to me it seems Since by my love I sate, Yet thus to have been a stranger long, Was not my choice, but fate; Since then I have not seen the flowers, Nor heard the bird’s sweet song, My joys have all too briefly passed, My griefs have been too long! Ladies were setting forth to join the army of the East as nurses! An idea occurred to her, and then she shrank from it, for Cora was not one of our strong-minded British females but a good and kind-hearted, earnest and high-souled Scottish girl; and it is a peculiarity of the women of Scotland ever to shrink from publicity; and, somehow, public life seems neither their _forte_ nor their _rôle_. "Ah, oh!" thought Cora; "what if this is not merely a separation, but a loss for ever!" No battle had yet been fought; but already many men had perished at Varna, at Scutari, and elsewhere, of fever and cholera. And so, often as she wandered alone in the garden walks, by the old Battle Stone in the woods, by the Adder’s Craig, or King James’s Well, she wept, as she thought of the lively young lancer whom she had last seen marching for the East, and still more for her early playmate and cousin, who in boyhood so petted her at home. And when Cora would say, or old Willie Pitblado would read, that the lancers had embarked, that they had touched at Gibraltar, at Malta—that they were at Varna or elsewhere—he would pause, and look up wistfully, saying—"Nae word yet o’ my Willie?" "But the papers don’t mention Captain Norcliff either." "Ay, ay, true, Miss Cora," the old man would mutter, and shake his head at omissions so strange. Anxiety, love, and fear injured the poor girl’s health. She was alternately resigned and gentle, or short-tempered and irritable. Though frequently self-absorbed and pre-occupied, she strove, by affected gaiety, to prove to those about her that she was neither. By turns she was grateful for sympathy or irritated by it, while her craving for news about the army of the East became a source of speculation—shall we call it friendly?—among such sharp-witted visitors as the Mesdames Spittal and Rammerscales, the wife of the parish minister, or the slavishly suave Mrs. Wheedleton, the rib of the village lawyer.