LET the reader imagine for himself what might be the natural effects of this lonely life of penitence and labour, persisted in, without deviation, during a period of ten long years—and then come with me to the conclusion of this story.

By this time Sarah Blair had ripened into womanhood, and was the most beautiful girl in that part of the country. She was seldom seen beyond the little valley in which her father's cottage was situated, and almost never apart from her father, to whom she was evidently devoted in the whole depth of her affections. It has already been said, that she was his only hand-maid: throughout all this course of years she had performed the humblest offices about his humble habitation: nevertheless, her mind had been cultivated and improved, it is not improbable, much beyond what it might have been, had she lived in the midst of the society of which she seemed to have been born to form the ornament; and her demeanour, amidst an excess of bashfulness, betrayed abundantly the elegance of her mind. She was extremely shy and reserved, if, at any time, she was thrown under the observation of strangers; but at home, when alone with her father, a sober maiden-like cheerfulness sat on her brow. In solitude she was a melancholy girl—and no wonder—for, by slow, very slow degrees, as her understanding opened with her years, and the power of observation grew along with the capacity of feeling, Sarah, pure and innocent as she was, had divined something of the cause of her father's altered condition in life. One of the first discoveries she had made, and indeed she had made this long before she ceased to be a child, was, that the mention of a certain name never failed to produce a momentary shudder in Mr Blair's bodily frame, and she had very soon desisted from doing what she found to be invariably connected with this painful consequence. Her father's own broken and mysterious expressions of humility had, by some accident, come to be linked in her mind with the idea of that forbidden name; and, perhaps, in the course of so many years, she might casually have heard something drop in conversation from some of the neighbouring peasantry, sufficient, if aught was wanting, to supply the defect in her own train of associations.