THE OLD VICARAGE. A NOVEL. BY MRS. HUBBACK, AUTHORESS OF “THE WIFE’S SISTER,” “MAY AND DECEMBER,” ETC. ETC. NEW YORK: W. P. FETRIDGE & CO., PUBLISHERS, FRANKLIN SQUARE. BOSTON: FETRIDGE & CO., 100 WASHINGTON ST. 1856. STEREOTYPED BY THOMAS B. SMITH, 82 & 84 Beekman Street. PRINTED BY GROSSMAN AND WILLETT, 82 & 84 Beekman St. THE OLD VICARAGE. CHAPTER I. “Children’s voices should be dear (Call once more) to a mother’s ear; Children’s voices wild with pain, Surely she will come again; Call her once, and come away!” THE FORSAKEN MERMAN. It was a summer’s evening. The yellow sunshine streamed through the boles of the forest trees, tinting them with purple, vermilion, gold, or the richest brown. It gave a metallic luster to the tops of the giant oaks, and lighted up with a silvery gleam the long feathery sprays of the graceful beech-trees, waving gently and slowly as the soft breeze passed rustling among them. The same slanting sunbeams fell on the dark glossy foliage of the tall groups of holly, and twinkled like stars upon their stiff-pointed leaves. Beneath these ancient and hoary trees, on a natural terrace clothed with soft mossy turf, and commanding, along the glade in the forest, a full view of the glowing west, there walked, with slow and lingering step, two persons, who seemed too deeply engrossed in conversation to heed the loveliness of the evening. One of these was a woman, who might perhaps be half way between thirty and forty, but still possessing a large share of personal beauty; tall, dark, glowing, with bright black eyes, and hair as black as jet, parted off her forehead in rich braids, and as she carried her bonnet in her hand, they caught the gleaming sunshine, and seemed to turn purple in its splendor. Her companion was a young girl, slender, fair, and rather pale, except that as she listened to the earnest discourse of the matron, the flitting color dyed her cheek for a moment, and then left it pale again. Her slim figure, and girlish proportions, gave a notion of extreme youth and delicacy, and yet her face was of that kind which brings a feeling of trust and repose as you gaze upon it; an idea that, young as she was, there was steadiness and principle to be read there. “But, dear mamma,” said the girl, “why do you talk in this way? You will soon be about again, and able to see all these things yourself.” And she gazed with earnest, anxious fondness at the face of her companion, unable to realize that danger could lurk near, or death invade a countenance so healthy, and so invariably cheerful.