the friend, through whose interference alone he had ever believed it possible his father's consent to their being so could be obtained, he thought the sooner they ceased to have any communication with one another the better.

In his resolution of avoiding her he persevered for some time, when one afternoon, as he was returning, heated, fatigued, and covered with dust, from a solitary excursion he had taken to some mountains in the neighbourhood, for the purpose of amusing himself with his gun, he came suddenly upon a large party of ladies and gentlemen on horseback, amongst whom he soon discovered his fair Spaniard and the friends she resided with. The delight which these latter testified at seeing him, the kind reproaches they made him for so long absenting himself from their society, and the earnest manner in which they pressed him to come again amongst them, overcame his honourable, his prudential resolutions. The consequence of his again becoming a visitor at their cheerful, hospitable mansion was, the renewal of his love for the beautiful Spaniard, which absence from her had begun a little to weaken. How he told his soft tale, or she replied to it, is not necessary to mention; suffice, one fine moonlight night, but whether tempted by Cinthia, by Cupid, or by both together, cannot, here at least, be determined, she suffered him to hand her into a chaise-and-four, which stood most conveniently, at the moment, near the garden of her guardian, stept in himself after her, and bid the postillions face to the North. Ere their matrimonial fet. ters were well rivetted, intelligence of this step was received by Mr. Munro, owing to the vigilant eye which his new helpmate kept upon his son, under the hope of being able to detect him in some act, which should give her an opportunity of completely ruining him with his father, and thus of gratifying the malice his refusing to notice her had engendered in her heart against him; as also of quieting her fears of his yet regaining his wonted ascendancy at home, than which nothing she knew could be more inimical to the designs she entertained upon the fortune he had so long been considered undoubted heir to. Had she been as well acquainted with the disposition of her husband as her predecessor was, she would have spar

ed herself half the pains she took to aggravate his resentment against his son, as she would then have known he wanted no stimulus to render him cruel and severe to those who in the least offended him. But though this imprudent marriage of his son's galled him, by disappointing the ambitious projects he had formed for him, he still could scarcely regret it, since it furnished him with a plausible pretext for exiling him from his society, and thus freeing himself from a person whose presence, from being a reproach, was hateful to him.

The young Captain, accordingly, in reply to the letter he wrote to acquaint him with his marriage, and deprecate the resentment he knew it calculated to excite, received one couched in the most violent and virulent terms, informing him his notification on the subject was totally unnecessary, that no entreaty, no supplication should ever obtain from him the forgiveness he required, nor any share again of his favour or fortune. Munro expected him to be violent in the first instance, and was not, therefore, much disappointed by this letter; notwithstanding it and his preceding conduct, however, he could not, when he took a retrospective view of things, divest himself of a hope that time might yet bring about a reconciliation between them. In the mean while, his wife made a similar application to her father, but to as little purpose....he was not only as national and bigotted as old Munro, but ten times more proud and ambitious, looking forward to nothing less than matching his daughter with some great hidalgo. If therefore the Squire was irritated here, the Don was irritated there, and, in terms scarcely more civil than Munro had expressed himself in to his son, declared his total and solemn renunciation of her. She endeavoured to obtain the merchant's interference with him, but he was so exasperated at what he styled the slippery trick she had played him, the bad example he conceived she had set his daughters, and the suspicious light in which she had made his character appear to her father, whom he had many reasons for wishing to stand well with, that he positively refused either to aid her in this instance, or to have any further communication with her.

Time, at length, that great dispeller of illusions, began to convince Captain Munro, that the hopes with which he had hitherto buoyed himself up, of yet obtaining his father's forgiveness, were completely fallacious. He was no sooner convinced of this, than he made up his mind to leave the army, for some situation that might give him a chance of being able to provide for the family there was a probability of his having. After some little consultation with himself and his fair partner, a country life was decided on, as both were partial to Nature in her rural walks, and he besides had, he conceived, a sufficient knowledge of agriculture to undertake the management of a farm.

These plans for the future, once formed, no time was lost in carrying them into effect. Munro retired from the service on half-pay, taking a difference, with which, and his bond for three hundred pounds, payable in the course of some years, he purchased a small farm, about twenty miles from the place of his nativity, for which he had still something of that kind of attachment some believe the disembodied spirit to have for its deserted mansion of clay.

For some years, during which he became the father of two fine children, a boy and a girl, he went on, perfectly satisfied at having, like Cincinnatus, turned his sword into a ploughshare, when a bad harvest, and the failure of some expensive speculative experiments in agriculture, which he had been induced to make by the example of others in the neighbourhood, so embarrassed him, as to make him resolve on another effort for a reconciliation with his father. To resolve and to execute were almost the same thing with him; he accordingly, after very little deliberation on the subject, set off early one morning for the ancient mansion of his forefathers.

Various and affecting were the feelings and reflections which arose in his mind, as he drew near it. He could not, without the liveliest emotion, review the haunts of his youth, or think of those halcyon days, in which no cloud rested on his prospects, no care dwelt on his heart, that they brought to his remembrance; nevertheless, he alighted at the castle with tolerable composure, but which

the sight, or rather the emotion they evinced at seeing him, of some of the old domestics who had lived there during the lifetime of his mother, and whom her successor, partly for the sake of appearances, partly for the sake of gratifying her pride, by being served by those with whom she had served, had been induced to retain, nearly overcame him.

He imagined he should have found it a difficult matter to gain access to his father, but in this he was mistaken; since he had found the way to the castle again, the old gentleman doubted not his persisting in visiting it until he had seen him; he, therefore, conceived it better at once to give him an interview, in which opinion his lady and oracle, as with reason she might be styled, since he appealed to her judgment in every instance, perfectly coincided, a coincidence for which he was indebted to her having no longer any apprehension of his son's regaining any influence over him, as also to a wish of beholding him (the younger Munro) mortified and disappointed.... he was accordingly admitted. To detail the particulars of the interview were superfluous; suffice, after much argument on one side, much altercation and invective on the other, Mr. Munro agreed to take his son again into favour, provided he endeavoured to repudiate his wife, or, at all events, consented to send her and her children to Spain. This inhuman, as well as infamous proposal, was received with the indignation it merited by the person to whom it was addressed....an indignation which nothing but its having come from the lips of a parent could possibly have restrained.

"I am answered, Sir," said he, with forced calmness, but an ashy and quivering lip; " and that I may not forget what, from the connexion which subsists between us, I still wish to feel for you, I will endeavour to forget - what you have said."

He hurried to the hall....the old servants still lingered there, conjecturing and conversing....the pleasing expectations in which they had been rather indulging, from judging a little of the heart of his father by their own, vanished the moment he appeared, as his countenance was a faithful index to the volume within. He pressed

forward to the door, but there was a mist in the air, and a mist in his eyes, at the moment, which prevented his immediately seeing his horse was not there. The poor animal, indeed, had met with a much better reception than he had, having been taken into the stable and well fed. Munro, the instant he missed him, requested he might be brought to him. He was obeyed; but as the old groom (Munro's first instructor in the exercise of riding) held the stirrup for him to mount, he could not forbear saying, he was sure there was a more perilous storm coming on than just then prevailed.

Aye, and so am I too, Andrew," cried the housekeeper, eargerly coming forward, though at the risk of having the fine crimson-coloured ribbon with which her cap was bedecked, and on which she set no small store, in consequence of thinking it vastly becoming, completely spoiled by the rain...." so am I too; it would be madness, therefore, for any one who could get shelter to go on.

Munro, as he settled himself in his saddle, looked earnestly in her face, and "but, my friend, I can get no shelter here," nearly escaped him; but though he could prevent his tongue from speaking, he could not his looks.

"I have got a snug fire in my room," resumed the housekeeper, who read his countenance quite as well as Lavater himself could have done, " and....and........”

"God bless you all, my good friends!" cried Munro, in a broken and not very articulate voice, his swimming eyes glancing hastily round; "God bless you all!" he repeated more collectedly, and more emphatically, as, kissing and waving his hand, he rode off, leaving them, in defiance of the rain that fell, the wind that howled, rivetted to the spot on which he had parted from them, till he was out of sight.

"Ah, weel, weel!" cried old Andrew, shaking his grey locks, when he could no longer see him, "all in God's own good time....I dare to say you'll be comforted for all this."

"Oh, the savage! the barbarian!" exclaimed the housekeeper, with a kind of wild stare, as if just awaking