Perhaps our meaning will be plainer after our book is read.






THE GOOD TIME COMING.

CHAPTER I.






THERE was not a cloud in all the bright blue sky, nor a shadow upon
the landscape that lay in beauty around the lovely home of Edward
Markland; a home where Love had folded her wings, and Peace sought a
perpetual abiding-place. The evening of a mild summer day came
slowly on, with its soft, cool airs, that just dimpled the shining
river, fluttered the elm and maple leaves, and gently swayed the
aspiring heads of the old poplars, which, though failing at the
root, still lifted, like virtuous manhood, their greenest branches
to heaven.

In the broad porch, around every chaste column of which twined
jessamine, rose, or honeysuckle, filling the air with a delicious
fragrance beyond the perfumer's art to imitate, moved to and fro,
with measured step and inverted thought, Edward Markland, the