CRUIKSHANK AT HOME. MARY OGILVIE. A TALE OF THE SQUIRE'S EXPERIENCE. CHAPTER I. Come, Jacques, and I will show thee faithfully, 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 smote me with a conviction of the instability of our dearest enjoyments. I passed on, somewhat sadly, listening to the cold breeze sighing through the firs, until I came to a small rude bridge, and I stopped in the midst of it, and, looking down the stream, contemplated the little rushy linn, or pool, wherein I used to fish, and where Mary used to watch by my side; and it was her delight to take the speckled trout gently off the hook, and to throw them back into the linn, for she said, "To kill the pretty fluttering fish would teach me to be cruel," and she could not bear to see them gasping in agony on the grass, while we ourselves were so happy. Long ago, I now remembered, when Mary and I used to wade, barefooted, in that lovely stream, the sun gleaming like gold on the surface; and we were wont to watch the little waves as they formed running shadows on the clear sandy bottom; but many a sea and stream |