- France. They cannot tell where to kindly adds a list of old ladies- & move to their right hand or to their few names with addresses, but most left. Zaidee may be almost within without which he heads, "Some hearing of them, or she may be a of Mrs. Lancaster's friends." It is thousand miles away. They reverse just possible-it may be one of all their plans on the instant, and be- these. gin to travel once more with an object, and with many inquiries-till winter has come only too sensibly till Margaret and Sophy call earnestly for their mother-and till Colonel Morton has more than once written peremptory letters, summoning home his son. Percy, too, loses time in those grave and valuable studies of his. They are obliged to submit, with heavy hearts; and in November, in boisterous weather, they at last set out for home. In all their journeys they cannot pass a figure like hers, but they are struck with the hope that it may be Zaidee; and many times, flying along at railway speed, Percy, who is fanciful and quick-sighted, catches a momentary glimpse of some dark face by the wayside, and, when they reach a haltingplace, would fain turn back to see. It is therefore with much dissatisfaction of mind, and with many doubts that they may have passed close by her present shelter, that they consent to return, with no further news of Zaidee. Their anxiety, which had been in a measure calmed by time and by the fruitlessness of all their exertions, has returned in tenfold strength. Renewed advertisements, renewed endeavours, keep the flame alive. Angelina's secret, in departing from herself, has come to overshadow them with a double cloud. Again they think of nothing but ZaideeZaidee is nowhere to be found. As these old ladies-all who have addresses-live in London, Percy must leave the Temple, aud his most important and weighty studies, to seek them out a task which Percy sets about with exemplary earnest ness. Some of the old ladies are interested-some a little affronted→ many astonished; they cannot tell why they should be applied to, of all the people in the world. One of them thinks she has heard Mrs. Lancaster speak of Miss Francis. Is not Miss Francis that interesting creature who was so sadly deformed? Some accident in her youth, the old lady believes she who wore spectacles, and worked cross-stitch like an angel? No?-then the old lady knows no other Miss Francis, and is quite convinced that Mrs. Lancaster knew no one whom she herself did not also know. Another is persuaded that the lady who went abroad must be Mrs. Cleaver, who settled in Florence. A young lady went with her, a pretty fair young creature-she married Antony Cleaver six months ago, and came home, and was very well settled indeed. Can that be the young lady? Percy Vivian, his face flushing with the pride of descent, says No, abruptly-it could not be Zaidee,-Zaidee was dark, and only fourteen years old and would never marry an Antony and Cleaver; whereupon the old lady makes him a curtsey, and says she cannot pretend to know. After a long delay, Mr. Edward Lancaster answers the letter of Mrs. Vivian. Mrs. Lancaster had a multitude of friends, writes Mr. Edwardhalf the old ladies in the kingdom, he believes, were acquainted with his stepmother-but he cannot tell, upon his honour, what particular old lady this may be. He had seen little of Mrs. Lancaster during the last year of her life; in fact, his wife and she did not pull well together, and they had little or no intercourse. He is extremely sorry; but the fact is, he has not the remotest idea who the old lady can be whom they are looking for. In his postscript, however, Mr. Edward Altogether it is a most unsuccessful business from first to last; and the little party who have been abroad are, each of them, persuaded that they have been in personal contact with the object of their search, and yet passed her by. Mrs. Vivian is certain that some one brushed past her in the very court-yard of the Hotel de Suède, with the flying step of Zaidee. Elizabeth is haunted with a vision of one slight figure standing apart at that midnight examination of baggage and passports on the French frontier. Percy is confident she was one of that English party with those ugly blue shades on, 66 who looked up at them from a very little obscure roadside station as they dashed by on the road to Calais; and Captain Bernard knows he saw her with some children and a bonne in the gardens of the Tuileries. When he followed them, the girl disappeared. "It was impossible to find her again," says Captain Bernard. And as they sit in the drawing-room of the Grange, Sophy, who is something matter-offact, wipes the tears from her cheeks, and asks, "Could they all be Zaidee? Could she be in so many different places? Are you sure it was our Zay, mamma?" At which name Sophy is once more overpowered, and weeps again. Angelina might have kept her secret to herself, for all the good it has done; and now that there is leisure to think of her, all these ladies fall upon Angelina with the bitterest contempt. And she has a baby!" says Mrs. Vivian. You would fancy Mrs. Vivian thought it some grand mistake in Providence, by the tone in which she speaks; and they are all extremely compassionate of poor Mr. Green. The sympathy into which Angelina deluded them for her imaginary "decline," comes in now to swell their wrath; and the young Curate of Briarford, who is one of the fireside party, cannot but conclude this Vicaress of Newton Magna to be by no means a creditable representative of the Church Establishinent, for the honour of which this very young gentleman is jealous above measure. And it is very well for Mrs. Green that she is no longer solicitous about the favour of the Grange. The lady of the Manor could have inflicted a due and satisfactory punishment upon the curate's wife of her own parish, but it is not easy to reach the snug retirement of Newton Magna, where Angelina dresses her baby in extraordinary frocks of her own making, and the reverend John smiles upon her with unfailing indulgence, and thinks the said frocks astonishing works of art. It is a small consolation to be indignant-a very small consolation to express one's opinion of Mrs. Green, however terse and pithy the terms of this opinion may be; and the family heart, awakened from its resignation, longs for Zaidee, and will not be comforted concerning its lost child. In those winter nights they seem to hear footsteps climbing the hilly pathway through the storm and wind;—they seem to hear some wandering irresolute stranger coming and going about the doors and windows, as if afraid, and yet anxious to seek admittance; but when they hurry out on a hundred messages of search, there is no Zaidee - there is nothing but the falling leaves swept up in gusts, and rustling as they fly past like a flight of winter birds. Her life in Mrs. Disbrowe's is the constant theme of conversation among them, and they are all familiar with the drab-coloured drawing-room with Mrs. Disbrowe's pink ribbons and comely face. Zaidee has met with friends at least--that is a consolation. She has not been harshly treated by the world, nor cast abroad altogether out of its homes. Safe and honourable shelter is a great thing to be certain of, and this she has had from the very day of her departure. If they had but known then!-if they could but have found her!-and Mrs. Vivian and Margaret, and Sophy, end their fireside conversation with again a notice of Angelina, very true if not very flattering. For "fools are never harmless," says Mrs. Vivian bitterly. And when they go to rest, it is still with many thoughts, of Zaidec, doubts and fears, and speculations of restless uncertainty; for all their inquiries have come to no result: the lost is more entirely lost than ever, and the hearts of her friends are sick with this second failing of all their hopes. CHAPTER XXXV.-THE FAMILY FORTUNES. The family circle of the Grange is grievously broken now. Instead of the young Squire and his projected improvements, those works which were to quicken the blood in the rural veins of Briarford, to stimulate the whole county, and double the rental of the estate, Mrs. Vivian governs these small domains, as Squire Percy's wife might be expected to govern them though not without a trace that Squire Philip's mother is also here, not disposed to reject with utter prejudice the innovations sanctioned by her absent boy. The estate goes on disappointment. She is consoled, but very well under her careful superin- she is sad. An imaginative and tendence; and now and then, with thoughtful melancholy wraps heaven a flash of feminine daring, from and earth for Margaret Vivian. She which she retreats hastily in feminine has found out the discord in our cowardice, Mrs Vivian dashes at a mortal music-the jar among all its morsel of improvement too, and has harmonies; and though she does not it done before she has time to repent. favour poetry which treats of blights There is no large young family now, and desolations, and is rather less uncontrolled, and without any neces- than more sentimental, Margaret, sity for controlling themselves, to whose young life has come to its first make the Grange an expensive house- pause, does make a pause at it, and hold; there are more rooms shut up stays to consider. It is already well in the family dwelling-place than it for her fanciful mind that this curb is pleasant to reckon, and a great has come, and by-and-by it will be many expenses curtailed; for the better; so she stands at the window family of the Grange consists only of in the twilight, and no one reproves Margaret and Sophy, who find it very her; the discipline of Providence is hard not to be dreary in that great working its own way. drawing-room, once so well ten uted. The young ladies' room, once the brightest corner of the house, is dull now, with its fireless hearth, and with its sweet presiding genius gone; the library, cold and vacant, cries aloud for Philip; the house echoes only to those dull sounds which are lightened no longer by Percy's voice of frolic and youthful impetuous footstep; and Zaidee, whom Sermo seeks continually as he stalks about through the hall, and up an i down the great staircase, accosting every one with his wistful eyes-Zaidee, whose voice was heard but seldom in the household, is the most sadly missed of all. The servants even pine for the old life, and tell each other how dull it is now in the Grange. And Margaret works very hard at her landscapes, and makes portraits of Briarford; also, having note of a new school of painting, begins to study a bit of greensward so closely that you can count its blades, and puts in every leaf upon her dwarfed and knotted oaks There is a morsel of ground ivy in one of her sketches, which you would say must have been studied with a microscope, or painted by some fairy whose eyes were nearer to it than the eyes of common mortals are wont to be. But in spite of this, Margaret cannot get over Zaidee's criticism It is quite impossible to tell what sort of a day it is from that placid canvass. It is Briarford, but it is not nature; and Margaret is as far as ever from knowing how people contrive to paint those invisible realities-the air and wind. Sophy, in the meanwhile, is busy with her own avocations Sophy is greater than ever in Briarford school And Margaret Vivian watches at those far-seeing windows, no longer looking for the approach of any one, but, with a sad indefinite wistfulness, tracing those solitary roads as they disappear far away into the stormy a contriver of holidays and manager heaven-watching those great masses of feasts. Mrs. Wyburgh, who is of cloud swept hither and thither always glad to share her afternoon before the wind, the light leaves that cup of coffee with her young visitor, rustle through the air in swarms, and admires the activity which she is not that stouter foliage which stiffens able to emulate, and with her rich on the dwarf oaks in every hedgerow. Irish voice, calls Sophy "honey," and No, it is not the Rector of Woodchurch declares she must be a clergyman's with whom Margaret's thoughts are wife. The young Curate of Briarford, busy. They are not busy with any- who is a Rev. Reginald Burlington, thing; they are drooping with the as old of blood and pure of race as meditative sadness which marks, like Mr. Powis himself, was somewhat a mental dress of mourning, where the inclined to extreme High Churchism heartbreak has been, and how it when he came to succeed Mr. Green, wears away. She is much too young, and had conscientious doubts on the too fresh and human-hearted, to flatter subject of clergymen's wives. But Mr. Powis's vanity by inconsolable the young gentleman has seen cause to alter his sentiments singularly to come home a nabob; and even within the last few months, Nobody whiles he prays them to send out a is known to have argued the question with him, yet his views are much ameliorated, and he too strongly coincides with Mrs. Wyburgh as to the special vocation of Sophy Vivian. But the Rev. Reginald has no prospects to speak of, and Miss Sophy is not known to admire love in a cottage; so the young curate makes the best of his time by perpetual visits, and establishes himself, as a necessity, at the fireside of the Grange, where Sophy, in spite of herself, begins to look for him, and to wonder if any chance keeps him away; and thus the youthful churchman bides his time. And Percy is in the Temple, a law student, burning his midnight oil not unfrequently, but seldom over the mystic authorities of his profession. Percy knows an editor, and writes verses. Percy, once extremely economical, begins to unbend a little in his severity, and intends to make a brilliant debut as an author. The youngest son is full of life, of spirit, of frolic, and affectionateness when he goes home. It is as if some one from another sphere had lighted among them, when Percy makes a flying visit to the Grange. Mrs. Vivian says it is a certain thing that he cannot be an idle student, for he is never happy without occupation; for this good mother does not know what a restless, brilliant, busy mode of idleness her son is proficient in. They wonder at his hosts of friends; they wonder at his bright and happy animation, and the fulness of his undaunted hope. Yes, though Percy Vivian is a whole year older--though he has actually begun life-though he has known a great family reverse, and will have but a small portion of worldly goods falling to his share-Percy, still undismayed, spurns at the subject world in his proud, young, triumphant vigor, and knows no difficulty which was not made to be conquered. And Philip is in India. The young Squire is no ascetic either; he has his pleasures, as they find, by these manly open-hearted letters of his. He tells them of his Indian Prince with a merry humour, and laughs at the habits of luxury he is acquiring, and threatens Cheshire gale, or one fresh day of the climate of Briarford, the young man in his honourable labours enjoys his life. He is working to make an independence for himself. Philip, the head of the house, will not consent to have the Grange. If Zaidee is lost, his mother and sisters may remain in it, and its revenues accumulate, says the brave young man; but Percy and he have their own way to make, and must establish themselves. When he says this, Philip sends part of his first year's allowance to Percy, to enable him to prosecute his studies; and Percy sends out to him a batch of magazines, with poems in them, in return. Elizabeth is in Morton Hall, a beautiful young matron, doing all her duties with the simplicity which gives an almost royal dignity to her beauty, and Captain Bernard's dark face glows with the sober certainty of his great happiness. The Grange looks thankfully, but sadly, on its distant sons and its transplanted daughter. Life is brighter for those who have gone away than for those who remain. Nobody thinks of Zaidee, nor of the other losses of the family, as they do who are left at home; and those women, who are sometimes cast down in their wrestle, look abroad with wistfulness, and would almost envy, if they were not grateful for the lighter burden of the others. Their affection knows where to find Philip and Percy and Elizabeth to rejoice and give thanks for their young abundant lives-but where is Zaidee, the lost child? Zaidee is in her new home, growing as few have ever expected to see her grow-a pleasant life rising before her, a loving companion, friends who care for her. Zaidee's mind is alive and awake: she has thrown off her burden. If she longs for home, she is no longer desolate, and life rises before this voluntary exile fresh and fair as life should ever rise; for Hope has taken her hand again; she has far outgrown the pool of Briar ford, and Zaidee's thoughts travel forth undaunted. There is no possibility so glad or so lofty but she is ready to accept it now. NOTES ON CANADA AND THE NORTH-WEST STATES OF AMERICA, PART IV. WISCONSIN. WHEN that inestimable character, Mr. Mark Tapley, arrived at the city of "Eden," the first conviction which forced itself upon his mind was, that he had never in the course of his previous experience felt called upon to be "jolly" under more "creditable circumstances" than when locating himself in that dismal swamp. Without being quite so discouraging as Eden, there was nothing inviting in the first aspect of the extreme western point of Lake Superior, as a spot upon which to take up one's permanent abode. It was a raw, bleak morning; black clouds gathered behind the range to the north, and swept eastward across the broad lake, as if they meant mischief. The wind whistled over the narrow sandy spit of land on which we stood, curling up the corners of the bark upon the Indian wigwams, ominously flapping the curtain at the doorway, and sending the smoke eddying back into the eyes of the occupants, with a force which rendered them anything but agreeable habitations. A little schooner came dancing over the white waves of the lake, close hauled, and gunwale under; but there was a sea on the bar which frightened her away; and, standing off again on the other tack, she shortened sail, and prepared herself for the coming storm. There was another craft riding uneasily at her anchors in the Lagoon, and we heard afterwards that in the course of the night she had a narrow escape, and dragged almost ashore. Even the Sam seemed anxious to get away, and avoid the possibility of leaving her old timbers upon the shores of the St. Louis, as materials for the first houses of the city of Superior. Meantime, we were becoming not a little desirous to reach the said city; and I could not help feeling grateful that fate had not destined me to be one of the original settlers. Indeed, I had no cause for complaint, as one of a party of four, determined to make the best of everything, and before many months were over, to wind up our travels with a white-bait dinner at Greenwich (this is an event still to come off, by the way); so that good fellowship and the prospects of home enabled us to regard discomforts and inconveniences in the light of adventures. It is when they become matters of everyday routine that they lose their character of romance; and it would require a good deal of faith in the future prosperity of an embryo town in the Far West, to induce one to live in it through the first stages of its existence. I therefore felt some commisseration for our fellow-passengers in the little boat which at last came to ferry us across to the "City." One was a German, with the usual roll of bedding, on the outside of which were strapped an axe, a gridiron, and kettle; his companion was an Irishman, with nothing but never-flagging spirits and gigantic muscle to trust to in the western world before him; and the third was a Yankee, in a swallowtailed coat, with a revolver, a bundle in a yellow silk pocket handkerchief, and unfathomable "'cuteness" as his stock-in-trade. Our boatman was a well-educated and intelligent young Englishman, who had forced his way to this distant region early in the day, and had been the first to ply regularly upon the river; he charged high fares accordingly, but we did not grudge him the due reward of his enterprise. He told us that he was already worth more than his most sanguine expectations led him to anticipate, considering the short period of his stay; and, as a small clearing in the woods opened up to view, he showed us the timber walls of a bowling-saloon in the process of erection, the first of which Superior could boast. Indeed, that celebrated city now burst upon us in all its magnificence, and one lofty barn-like shed, surrounded by an acre of stumps, represented the future emporium of the resources of the fer |
