tations to Edgar to spend Christmas with them. He thought of the loneliness which at that time especially the young man otherwise would feel with no home to go to; and was pleased to think he could offer some substitute. Moreover, his Lordship fancied the quiet, gentlemanly, yet always cheerful manners of my young hero. Between the departing guest and Miss Fairfort the last clasp of the hands seemed warmer and the last adieu more sad than they had been as yet before. The traveller wrapped himself in his rug, looked a final farewell, leaned back, and the carriage started down the long winding avenue. Fairfort Park was soon left in the far distance, and Edgar Huntingdon to his own thoughts.

As for the fair young denizen of those now all but deserted halls, she had never passed so stupid a morning. Shelley was

uninteresting, Tennyson tiresome, Rogers was a bore; Byron appealed more powerfully, but even he was soon laid aside for that little private volume which we sometimes take out secretly and read,-the unbound book, with the melancholy tear-blotted pages-the pages of the heart!

K 2

CHAPTER VII.

"Tell this soul, with sorrow laden, if, within the

distant Aidenn,

It shall clasp a sainted maiden."

EDGAR ALLAN POE.

THE following day Edgar called at King's Bench Walk. He found Cooper sitting over

his books, just as when he had left him nearly three months before. It seemed as if he had never stirred from that spot, from that position, the whole time. The figure was perhaps more bent, the face thinner, the voice more subdued, even than before.

"You surely have not been in London all

'the Long?" "

"Yes!" he replied. "I have been here every day I am an accomplished lawyer

now."

"Is there no hope, Horace ?" inquired Edgar tenderly.

"I have never looked for it. Oblivion, not hope, is my research; and yet one is as vain as the other." Then a smile half played about his mouth, in a sickly, doubtful "I must strive for a judgeship,

manner.

or" he paused a little-" a grave!"

"Strive for the former rather. The same Providence that has chastised may relent."

Cooper made no answer, but again bent

over his books, as if he had told his friend all that there was to tell after so long a separation. This, then, was the epitome of twelve. weeks' solitude!

On the mantelpiece was a copy of Longfellow's "Hyperion." Edgar took it up. It was blotted with tears; and the page whereon Paul Flemming transcribes the words he found written in a village chapel, was almost illegible from the scalding drops which had fallen upon the imaginary, from the depths of the real, sorrow. When strong men weep, and forget, or care not to hide, the traces of such a weakness, broken must be the heart, and unnerved the will indeed!

When the afternoons were bright, Edgar would get him away from chambers. At first he manifested great reluctance; and when at last he yielded, it was as though he had forfeited all volition. They would go into the Park, which, though comparatively deserted, was by reason of Parliament being this autumn assembled, more frequented than is usual at that period of the year. Cooper