CHAPTER II.

DEATH. THE FUNERAL. THE CONSE

QUENCES.

Upon his brow

The damps of death are settling—and his eyes

Grow fixed and meaningless. She marks the change

With desperate earnestness, and staying even
Her breath, that nothing may disturb the hush,
Lays her wan cheek still closer to his heart,
And listens as its varying pulses move-
Haply to catch a sound betokening life.

It beats-again--another--and another-
And now hath ceased for ever!

ALARIC A. WATTS.

SUCH was the happy situation of Elm Grove and its amiable rectory, for nearly three years after the period when Captain Hartwell returned from India, and removed with his mother to

the Isle of Wight. For some months after the departure of the old lady, Frank and Emily had felt lonely and dejected in the absence of their grandmamma; but their spirits soon returned, and Frank found new sources of amusement and occupation in the business of a public school, to which he was shortly after sent by his father. Mr. Hartwell had long perceived with regret the continued growth of that obstinacy which had at so early a period displayed itself in his manner; at home, the fondness of his mother, and the natural gentleness of his father, were but weak correctives of a foible which required the most summary management, and he at length resolved, that even at the expense of his own feelings, the vice should be eradicated. For this purpose he spoke with the village-schoolmaster, who had under his charge the children of a few of the gentry in the immediate vicinity of Elm Grove, and Frank was, without delay, removed from the affectionate instructions of his father, to the

more stern tutorage of a stranger, where his every look was guarded, and his every passion kept in due subjection, by the frown of one whose will was law, and whose law was never transgressed with impunity. By this arrangement Emily was now left almost without a playmate in the morning, when her brother was starting for school, she would follow him to the wicket-gate of the lawn, part from him with a wistful smile, and return again to the side of her mother; and in the evening, at the hour when Frank was accustomed to come back, she would tie on her little silken bonnet, wander down the village-road to meet him, and walk home with her arm round his neck.

Frank was now in his twelfth summer, when one sultry day he was hastening from school as quickly as the heat of the setting sun would permit him, he was that evening to have walked with his father to wait on Mr. Avonmore, who

had arrived the day before at the Manor-house,

on one of his rare visits to his Wiltshire estate. He was pondering over the splendour of one who possessed a retinue so brilliant as that which had last night passed through the village, and longing for the time when his education should be so far advanced, that he should go to London, and see every day equipages, which his father had told him were much more magnificent than even that of the Lord of the Manor,-when, in one of the shady lanes, he was met by Emily, at a much greater distance from home than she was accustomed to come for him; he was surprised, too, to find her eyes inflamed with weeping; and, on inquiring the cause, she told him, that Mr. Hartwell was ill; that he had been out all the morning in the heat, and had returned some hours before from seeing a sick parishioner, feverish and faint, and had retired to bed before she left the rectory, and that mamma was now sitting by him, alarmed and unhappy. They hurried home, but not with that glad hope that had a mo

ment before filled Frank's imagination; they reached their father's chamber, but he was too weak to speak to them; and having gently given them his wonted blessing, he desired that they might be sent to rest. The following morning, Mr. Hartwell was worse, his pulse was hurrying like a torrent, and his brow was burning with the dry fierce flame of a fever.

That day Frank and his sister sat with their afflicted parents: alarm and anxiety had, in some measure, paralyzed the exertions of their mother, and their services were requisite at the bed of their father. From morn till evening, his illness continued unabated, and when night was closing in, and Mrs. Hartwell returned after a momentary absence, she found that delirium was added to disease; her husband knew her not; he no longer recognised her children, who hung terrified and weeping around him; and those eyes that so lately beamed with tenderness and affection, now glared wildly and fixedly upon