CRUIKSHANK AT HOME.

MARY OGILVIE.

A TALE OF THE SQUIRE'S EXPERIENCE.

CHAPTER I.

Come, Jacques, and I will show thee faithfully,
How, 'mid the sottish circles of this world,

Still there are heads that think, and hearts that feel
And love; who find love's warm requiting answer
Strike to their inmost core. How
With joyaunce at the thought!

my heart glows

Scrap Stanzas.

"So, this is my sweet Lillybrae at last!" I said to myself, as I mounted the height, and glanced round upon the quiet dwelling, and all that I so well remembered.

"There is certainly nothing remarkable about it after all," was the chilling exclamation which my near approach to the domicile and its rural appurtenances, which my imagination had so often pictured to me, when far distant, as one of the most interesting spots on earth, called forth. The time of the day when I had arrived was late; it was towards evening-and it was the autumn period of the year. I thought the farm had a bare, cold, look; and seemed now, from its mean exterior and sequestered situation, the very seat of an exiled and insipid retirement; of an existence without variety, and almost without enjoyment. How could my imagination have dwelt upon such a common-place object ! It was nothing but a plain farm-house, with its roomy kitchen, its little parlour, and its inner spence.its barns and outhouses, with a small garden at one end, and a clump of corn-stacks in the

rear.

The wind blew chill in my face as I turned up the hill towards it. I thought it looked bleak and barren; and I had just learned at the inn, on my way, that “bonnie Mary Ogilvie,” its only interesting inmate, was on the eve of marriage with a young farmer in the neighbourhood; and of course it was folly in me to concern myself about the

house or her.

But I looked to the right as I went musing onward, and there still remained the identical Lillyburn wood, where Mary and I used to wander, and to pick cowslips and gather blackberries, when we were children; and there was still the little green broomy hill, behind which I used to watch for her, when she grew tall and modest, and would not look at me when any one was by. But the hill seemed, after all, only a bare and withered knoll; I thought the wood looked now diminutive and scattered, as the trees whistled mournfully in the wind; and my heart