It was not nine o'clock when the storm came down from Glen Scrae upon the Black-moss, and now in a pause of silence the clock struck twelve. Within these three hours William and Hannah had led a life of trouble and of joy, that had enlarged and kindled their hearts within them--and they felt that henceforth they were to live wholly for each other's sakes. His love was the proud and exulting love of a deliverer, who, under Providence, had saved from the frost and the snow the innocence and the beauty of which his young passionate heart had been so desperately enamoured--and he now thought of his own Hannah Lee ever more moving about in his father's house, not as a servant, but as a daughter--and when some few happy years had gone by, his own most beautiful and most loving wife. The innocent maiden still called him her young master--but was not ashamed of the holy affection which she now knew that she had long felt for the fearless youth on whose bosom she had thought herself dying in that cold and miserable moor. Her heart leapt within her when she heard her parents bless him by his name--and when he took her hand into his before them, and vowed before that Power who had that night saved them from the snow, that Hannah Lee should ere long be his wedded wife--she wept and sobbed as if her heart would break in a fit of strange and insupportable happiness. The young shepherd rose to bid them farewell--"my father will think I am lost," said he, with a grave smile, "and my Hannah's mother knows what it is to fear for a child." So nothing was said to detain him, and the family went with him to the door. The skies smiled serenely as if a storm had never swept before the stars--the moon was sinking from her meridian, but in cloudless splendour--and the hollow of the hills was hushed as that of heaven. Danger there was none over the placid night-scene--the happy youth soon crost the Black-moss, now perfectly still--and, perhaps, just as he was passing, with a shudder of gratitude, the very spot where his sweet Hannah Lee had so nearly perished, she was lying down to sleep in her innocence, or dreaming of one now dearer to her than all on earth but her parents. EREMUS. MY NEIGHBOUR EPHRAIM.