them happiness. As he compared their brevity with his long duration, he
smiled at their little fancies of loves, of which he seemed to see the
end; the flower of a brief summer, blooming beautifully enough, and
shedding its leaves, the fragrance of which would linger a little while in
his memory, and then be gone. He wondered how far in the coming centuries
he should remember this wedding of his sister Rose; perhaps he would meet,
five hundred years hence, some descendant of the marriage,--a fair girl,
bearing the traits of his sister's fresh beauty; a young man, recalling
the strength and manly comeliness of Robert Hagburn,--and could claim
acquaintance and kindred. He would be the guardian, from generation to
generation, of this race; their ever-reappearing friend at times of need;
and meeting them from age to age, would find traditions of himself growing
poetical in the lapse of time; so that he would smile at seeing his
features look so much more majestic in their fancies than in reality. So
all along their course, in the history of the family, he would trace
himself, and by his traditions he would make them acquainted with all
their ancestors, and so still be warmed by kindred blood.

And Robert Hagburn, full of the life of the moment, warm with generous
blood, came in a new uniform, looking fit to be the founder of a race who
should look back to a hero sire. He greeted Septimius as a brother. The
minister, too, came, of course, and mingled with the throng, with decorous
aspect, and greeted Septimius with more formality than he had been wont;
for Septimius had insensibly withdrawn himself from the minister's
intimacy, as he got deeper and deeper into the enthusiasm of his own
cause. Besides, the minister did not fail to see that his once devoted
scholar had contracted habits of study into the secrets of which he
himself was not admitted, and that he no longer alluded to studies for the
ministry; and he was inclined to suspect that Septimius had unfortunately
allowed infidel ideas to assail, at least, if not to overcome, that