Bright, transitory moments of bliss! lightning flashes that illumine the dark and stormy path of life, though momentary in your duration, how mighty in your power, how lasting in your effects! Sometimes imparting a rapturous glow and kindling an unceasing heat that death itself cannot extinguish, and sometimes under a star of evil destiny searing and withering the heart rendered desolate by your scorching flame! It is not necessary to inform the gentle reader how long the _tête–à–tête_ on the fallen tree continued; suffice it to say, that Prairie–bird forgot her fright, and Reginald his wounds; and when they returned to the village, each sought to enjoy in solitude those delicious reveries which deserve certainly the second place in love’s catalogue of happiness. CHAPTER VI. ETHELSTON PREPARES TO LEAVE MOOSHANNE.—MAHÉGA APPEARS AS AN ORATOR, IN WHICH CHARACTER HE SUCCEEDS BETTER THAN IN THAT OF A LOVER.—A STORM SUCCEEDED BY A CALM. While the events described in the last chapter were in progress, the hours sped smoothly onward at Mooshanne. Lucy and Ethelston thought themselves justly entitled to a liberal compensation for the trials of their long separation; and, as the spring advanced, morning and evening generally found them strolling together, in the enjoyment of its opening beauties. Sometimes Aunt Mary encountered them during the busy round of her visits to the poultry, the piggery, or to the cottage of some neighbour, whither sorrow or sickness called her. The mate frequently came over from Marietta to see his captain, and to inquire whether there was no early prospect of another voyage, for he already began to find that time travelled slowly ashore; and although he consoled himself, now and then, with a pipe and social glass in David Muir’s back parlour, he longed to be afloat again, and told the worthy merchant that he would rather have made the fresh–water trip in the canoe, than be laid up in dock, while he felt his old hull still stout and seaworthy. His son Henry continued to advance in the good graces of Jessie Muir; but unfortunately for the youth his father had discovered his attachment, and lost no opportunity of bantering him in the presence of the young lady, accompanying his jokes with sundry grins, and severe pokes in the ribs, which caused sometimes a disagreeable alternation of vexation and confusion: nevertheless David Muir remained habitually blind to the state of his daughter’s affections, and Dame Christie was a great deal too much occupied with the cares of domestic government (including the occasional lectures and reproofs administered to David) to admit of her troubling her head with what she would have termed their childish fancies.