When their little treat was over, the servants withdrew for the
night, and Fardorougha himself, still laboring under an excitement so
complicated and novel, retired rather to shape his mind to some definite
tone of feeling than to seek repose.

How strange is life, and how mysteriously connected is the woe or the
weal of a single family with the great mass of human society! We beg the
reader to stand with us upon a low, sloping hill, a little to the left
of Fardorougha's house, and, after having solemnized his heart by a
glance at the starry gospel of the skies, to cast his eye upon the long,
white-washed dwelling, as it shines faintly in the visionary distance of
a moonlight night. How full of tranquil beauty is the hour, and how
deep the silence, except when it is broken by the loud baying of the
watch-dog, as he barks in sullen fierceness at his own echo! Or perhaps
there is nothing heard but the sugh of the mountain river, as with
booming sound it rises and falls in the distance, filling the ear of
midnight with its wild and continuous melody. Look around, and observe
the spirit of repose which sleeps on the face of nature; think upon the
dream of human life, and of all the inexplicable wonders which are read
from day to day in that miraculous page--the heart of man. Neither your
eye nor imagination need pass beyond that humble roof before you, in
which it is easy to perceive, by the lights passing at this unusual hour
across the windows, that there is something added either to their joy or
to their sorrow. There is the mother, in whose heart was accumulated
the unwasted tenderness of years, forgetting all the past in the first
intoxicating influence of an unknown ecstasy, and looking to the future
with the eager aspirations of affection. There is the husband, too, for
whose heart the lank devil of the avaricious--the famine-struck god
of the miser--is even now contending with the almost extinguished love
which springs up in a father's bosom on the sight of his first-born.