forth an unfettered warrior against his country's enemies. But what took Lorraine three weeks to learn, may be told in three minutes.

Margaretta Fortescue was the very sweetest little sylph that ever was spoiled by being a beauty and an only child. The last of one of our noblest Norman families, who, from professing the Catholic faith, lived much to themselves a whole household seemed made but for her pleasure. The first suspicion that even a wish could exist contrary to her own, was when she fell in love with the handsome and stately Spaniard Don Henriquez de los Zoridos, who had made their house his home during his visit to England. The high birth, splendid fortune, and answering creed of her lover, overcame even the objection to his being a foreigner.

Margaretta was married; her parents accompanied her abroad; and for four years more her life was like a fairy tale. Its first sorrow was the death of her father. From her great to her small scale Fate repeats her revolutions. Families, as well as nations, would seem to have their epochs of calamity. Thus it proved with the Zoridos. The sunny cycle of their years was past, and the shadows fell the darker for their former brightness.

The French invaded Spain, and their path was as that of some terrible disease, sweeping to death and desolation all before it. Don Henriquez' house was attacked one night; the French were beaten off for a time, but not without much bloodshed. A chance ball laid Mrs. Fortescue a corpse at her daughter's side. Beatrice was wounded, though but slightly, in her very arms; and when daylight dawned on the anxious household, to one half of them it dawned in vain. Zoridos saw that no time must be lost; the enemy would soon be down upon them in overwhelming numbers. A summer-house near, which had been fired, served as a funeral pile-any thing rather than leave even the dead to the barbarity of the invader. Henriquez himself was obliged to force his wife from the body of her mother. A few necessaries were hastily collected-for valuables they had neither thought nor time. Zoridos placed the insensible Margaretta before him on his horse, and rode off, without daring to look back on the happy home they were deserting for ever. Beatrice's nurse followed, with her husband and the child. In better days, a daughter of the nurse had married a young mountaineer, whose remote cottage owed every comfort to their master's fair English bride.

There they re

solved to seek for shelter. A few days saw them in, at least, safety. But Zoridos was not the man to remain inactive and secure at a time

when it was so imperative on who wore a sword to use it.

every Spaniard His plans were

soon formed-his wife's frantic entreaties were in vain and he descended into the plain at the head of a gallant band of guerillas.

Soon after his departure, it became evident, not only to the nurse, but to every individual in the cottage, that the lady's mind had received a shock, not her health. For days together she did not know them—spoke only in English-addressed her nurse, Marcela, as her mother—and played with the little Beatrice as if she were herself a child, and were delighted with such a living plaything.

The first interval he could snatch, Don Henriquez hastened to the cottage. His wife did not know him, shrunk away in pitiable terror from the arms that he wore, and, as if all late events had passed from her memory, only seemed to know that she was spoken to when addressed as Miss Fortescue-by which name she invariably called herself. That night the dark. and lonely rocks, where he wandered for hours, were the only witnesses of Zoridos' agony. The next day he was at the British camp. A

week's intended halt permitting such an absence, he prevailed on an English surgeon to accompany him to the mountains. His opinion was only too decisive. Quiet and kindness might ameliorate, but never restore. The only chance he held out was, that when circumstances enabled them to return to their house, familiar scenes, and accustomed dress, might awaken some touch of memory—though nothing could ever recall the whole mind.

To such a blow as this, death had been merciful. Similar tastes, similar pursuits, had bound Zoridos to his young English wife-his mind had been accustomed to see itself mirrored in hers, only with a softer shadow. He had been used to that greatest of mental pleasures to have his thoughts often divinedalways entered into. And now the intelligent and accomplished woman was a weak, and even worse, a merry child. The affectionate wife looked in her husband's face as in that of a stranger, from whom she shrank with fear. The past with no memory, the future with no hope.

The bitterest cup has its one drop of honey; and the feeling of reciprocal affection was roused in Zoridos by the almost frantic delight of his

infant girl at seeing him again; she clung to him-hid her little face in his bosom-sat still and silent, with that singular sympathy which children often shew to the grief of their elders -and only when overpowered with sleep could she be removed from his knee.

Months passed on. The unfortunate Margaretta was taught to consider Zoridos as her husband, and Beatrice as her child, and gradually to feel for them the affection of habit. But her mind seemed to have gone back to her childhood: all her recollections, her amusements, her sorrows, and her joys, belonged to that period. And once when Zoridos brought home for Beatrice a large doll he had obtained from the family of an English officer, her mother seized it with a scream of delight, and made dressing it a favourite employment.

Months grew into years before they dared return to their home; and it was not till after the battle of the Pyrenees that Henriquez and his family again took possession of their mansion. No trace was left of either its beauty or luxury. His embarrassed affairs quite precluded Don Henriquez' plan of taking his wife and daughter to England. A few rooms were made habitable; and Zoridos gave his time and