you before I rest."

And so saying, Madeline, with her usual innocent frankness of manner,
wound her arm in his, and they walked onward towards the stile Aram had
pointed out. It was a little rustic stile, with chesnut-trees hanging
over it on either side. It stands to this day, and I have pleased myself
with finding Walter Lester's initials, and Madeline's also, with the date
of the year, carved in half-worn letters on the wood, probably by the
hand of the former.

They now rested at this spot. All around them was still and solitary; the
groups of peasants had entered the Church, and nothing of life, save the
cattle grazing in the distant fields, or the thrush starting from the wet
bushes, was visible. The winds were lulled to rest, and, though somewhat
of the chill of autumn floated on the air, it only bore a balm to the
harassed brow and fevered veins of the Student; and Madeline!--she felt
nothing but his presence. It was exactly what we picture to ourselves of
a sabbath eve, unutterably serene and soft, and borrowing from the very
melancholy of the declining year an impressive, yet a mild solemnity.

There are seasons, often in the most dark or turbulent periods of our
life, when, why we know not, we are suddenly called from ourselves, by
the remembrances of early childhood: something touches the electric
chain, and, lo! a host of shadowy and sweet recollections steal upon us.
The wheel rests, the oar is suspended, we are snatched from the labour
and travail of present life; we are born again, and live anew. As the
secret page in which the characters once written seem for ever effaced,
but which, if breathed upon, gives them again into view; so the memory
can revive the images invisible for years: but while we gaze, the breath
recedes from the surface, and all one moment so vivid, with the next