424 RED LEAVES.
his garments about him, and he had to pick his
way carefully among the graves; but there was
something in the bearing of the form, something in the mere step itself, that made Elsie's
pulse beat quick and fast.
It was a path by which no one, except the old rector, ever approached the castle, for it led to a private postern, at the angle where the ruined part of the edifice joined on to the portion which was still inhabited. But the person approaching was not the rector, as Lady Shafton also saw, even with her dim sight.
"It is Percy, is it not?" she gasped, breathlessly, clinging to Elsie's arm. "Percy! Percy! Oh! my son——”
Her voice rose high and piercing, in a wild scream, and the stranger, looking up, saw the two figures for a moment in the moonlight; but only for a moment, for Lady Shafton had sunk down in a swoon, and Elsie was bending over her.
What more have we to tell ? For it was Percy, as the reader has discovered, and who was soon at his mother's side. Half an hour later he was sitting, with Elsie's hand in his, narrating the story of his return to Lady Shafton, who lay on a sofa, in the warm, bright drawing room, holding his other hand between both of hers. He told how he had been captured at Delhi; how he had been nursed by one of the rebel Sepoys, whom, in former times, he had favored; and how, months afterward, assisted by the same hand, he had made his escape, and reached the British lines in safety. He told how, on arriving at Calcutta, invalided, he had found the letters dispatched for him, and how he had taken the next steamer and landed at Southampton only the night before. It was a tale interrupted many times by breathless inquiries from his mother, and by anxious, loving looks from Elsie.
"I thought to send our old friend, the rector, on ahead, to break the news," he said, "but he had been summoned to the bedside of a dying parishioner, and so I came alone : not as quickly as I would have come, in former days, for my wounded leg is still painful and weak : but when I recognized you, dear mother, and Elsie here beside you, I believe I almost ran. Thank God! I find you both alive!"
Bronzed and bearded as he was, grown manlier and older-looking, the two women hardly recognized him, when he came down to breakfast the next morning. Elsie, blooming with joy and love, seemed, he thought, lovelier than ever, as she greeted him.
Lady Shafton joined their bands, as she entered, saying, "God bless you, my children, and make all your lives as happy as this New Year's day! I shall not die now; I shall live, I feel, for many a long year; but, if you would show that you both forgive me, let this dear child become, soon, my daughter in name as she is already my daughter in heart."
Her wish was carried out.
A quiet, sweet-faced bride, with shy, brown eyes, Elsie herself, looking more beautiful than ever, was married, within a fortnight, at the old church, by the old rector himself. A more fitting countess, everybody said, had never entered Shafton Castle as its mistress. The Lady Alice, however, it was noticed, did not appear at the wedding, but went suddenly to Italy, to stay for some years, it was said.
With the advent of its mistress, and with the ring restored to its rightful owner, the old castle flowered out into a second bloom, richer and more royal than the best of its by-gone splendors. Ever after, too, in memory of its lord's return, high festival was always kept on the LAST NIGHT OF THE OLD YEAR.
RED LEAVES.
BY ROBERT HANNAY.
THE year is on the wane,
Red leaves are scant on the trees,
The fields are vacant of grain,
A chill is over the seas.
Young was she and fair,
With health in her sweet eyes;
have sore need of prayer,
We
For beauty sickens and dies.
There are solemn memories
'Twas a sorrowful season of sighs,
Haunting the heart and brain;
When we missed the gleam of her hair;
List to the wind on the roof, the plash of the dreary rain. List to the wind on the roof, the rush of rain from the skies.
The year is wearing away,
The year will soon be dead,
Desolate are the leas;
There's a crystal over the rills :
The swallows long have fled
Dead are the lilies of May,
Summer climes and seas.
To
The purple beath of the hills.
Pitiless blows the breeze,
The little maiden chills,
Pitiless are the skies;
Amid shadows long and gray ;
List to the rain on the roof, the breeze on the window-sills. Did love forsake the world when death closed those fond eyes?
