LITERATURE.

Globe, Volume XXI, Issue 1778, 1 November 1879, Page 3

LITERATURE.

THE SNOW-DRIFT; A S-'ORY in Two Pasts, Past I. ( Continued.) ‘ “ In coarse, Mibb Lena, ’*• says I. “Sure and the justice will .forgive you when it’s a 1! over, and you are Mrs Captain Laurence ” And I tried my best ten comfort her, your worship ; but if I did not do it very well, it was all along of next door to crying myself, 1 We soon, got to the Hollow Pond, —you see it waa a pond in a hollow, your worship, that waa why it went by that name, —and sure enough there waa the captain with hia carriage—a sleigh—as he said ; and, bedad, it waa the rummeet thing I ever set my two eyes upon I It had no wheels at all, and I

wn» puzzled to see how it could go at any rate'. Sleigh, indade j I thought Miss Lena woulcf be slayed before she reached L«enside, your worship, trusting to such a skittish thing. And when l l begged her net to trust herself to such an unnatural coaoh, she laughed’ at me. Well, the captain put her in as tenderly as if she was wax, and wrapped her np in a fur sort of blanket, until she was as warm as a slice of toast. ‘“Gotd-bye, Pat,” says she, “do not forget me entirely. ” * Forget her! bedad, who could forget snch sunshine as rho was ? The captain, he shook hands with me, he did, indade, your worship, and asked me not to forgot to delay tbs chase, when he jumped in and drove off. I say drove off: but if I said flew off, I shonld be nearer the mark. Your worship, if I did not stand in the middle of the road staring like something crazy. * Bedad!’, says I to myself, as I bad nobody else to ray it to, ‘if those two go that Ipace all night, sure they will reach Australia in the morning.’ While I stood thunderstruck, the snow began to fall, and that put an idea into me ; I ran to the tool-house and took a spade, and walked knee-deep through the snow, about a half of the road to Leenside—then I worked. ‘Yon see, your wo r ship, the reads were uncommon narrow, and my notion was just to raise a barricade right across the roadway so as to put a stop to the justice’s following Mis 3 iLcna ; and I worked at| it till I was as hot as a baked potato. I threw the snow out of the fields on each side, and heaped it up so high that I knew it would delay some hours to send hick for men and get the way cleared. Ooh I hut it was a line snow-drift I and I laughed all the way back as I thought how I had stumped the justice. ‘At six o’clock the next morning Justice Morgan came tearing into the stables, and told me to put the horses in quick. ‘lndade, justice,’ I told him, ‘you’ll not get the horses along through the heavy snow,’

‘Silence, man!’ cried _he. ‘Do as Ibid yon, and no words,’ 1 And I did as I was told. The snow had fallen all through the night, and I knew that long ago the marks of a spade would have been covered over on my drift; so I got the carriage out, and the justice got in. and told me to drive like mad to Leenside Station. It was easier said than done, and we went like a hearse. After a time we came to the mighty drift, when I got down and touched my hat. ‘ Justice Morgan,’ says I, * it’s a drift right -across the road, and I can go no further,’ Then he swore, and stamped, and fumed ; hut the drift never minded it, and I was used to it. ‘ What shall I say to the earl 'when'he comes to-day?’ said he to himself. * Sure and it’s myself will drive him over to look at it, if you wish, your honor,’ says says I, ‘ The ould gentleman would not see a drift like that in a hnrry. ‘ Amd, oh how he swore at me ! and then ordered me to drive back, Ho sent men to clear tho way; but against we got to Leenside tho captain and my lady had time to have been married fifty times over. ‘Well, your worship, they wrote and wrote, but the justice would never forgive them ; and he has never set eyes on Miss Lena since i ‘ Sometimes I think I should have done batter to have let well alone, as the saying is. The future can only tell the result.’ * Well, but Pat, what became of the earl and Mrs Morgan ?-’ I asked. 1 The earl went away, out of sight entirely, I think, for he has not been near Mainowen since, and Mrs Morgan Is dead. She died when Miss May was born.’ ‘Miss May 5 1 ’ said L. ‘ls that "another daughter ?■’ ‘lt la, your worship ; it is nigh upon seventeen years now since my lady’s death.’ * The justice mast bo aa old man ? ' I said. * Getting near seventy, your worship, and as lonely and miserable a man as ever could be. Sure it’s his conscience which troubles him, I think. Indade, and it’s a long while to look back upon. I should think Miss Lena must be thirty-four; or thereabout, herself; maybe she has a family of olive shoots about her, as the parson says.’ ‘ Is Justice Morgan blind ? ’ I asked. ‘ Blind, your worship. ’Deed no. What for should he be ?’ ‘ You said something about [blind people not seeing sunshine.’ * Faith, and it’s because he won’t see it that he is blind. It is the worst to have your eyes open and not see, and that is what the old justice is given to.’ We talked a little more about Mainowen and Justice Morgan, and then I took up my candle and went to bed, after thanking mine host for having made one evening, at least, less dull than the rest.

Part 11, I was destlnedfto know more of Mainowen before I was many days older, and in a way that bad so little [of the human will in it, that 1 always think of it as one of those events in life upon which hinge so mnch for the hand of the Future to unravel. How often it happens—how often it has happened to us—that the most trivial event or circumstance has changed the whole current of a life ! Truly it has been said—- “ There are no trifles in this'world of oilrs.” A few days afterwards, while the snow was still deep, and the clouds heavy, I had out my horse, and took a ride |in the direction of Mainowen. I can never account to myself satisfactorily why it was that I turned my horse’s head in that direction ; suffice it to say that I did so, and that some little time afterwards I found myself quietly riding through- the grounds, as if they belonged to me. When I awoke*|from a sort of dream Into which I had fallen, it came to me that perhaps the justice might not be inclined favorably towards strangers taking a winter's view of his domain, pretty, though it was—and I was just turning the old “Marquis” round to make my retreat, when there was a stumble, a rapid view of all the colors of the rainbow, all the fireworks that gunpowder ever made —and I remember no more. When I regained my consciousness, and could open my eyes, I saw at once that I was not lying in my small homely room at Pat Doolan’s Blue Boar; and the effort to move myself made me groan with [intense pain. ‘Are ye afther cornin’ to yoursel’, poor man ?’■ asked the harshest of voices, aa an old witch (I beg her pardon, but that was my first impression) stooped over me, and tickled my face with the gigantic frills of her stiff white cap, in her endeavor to see me. In fact, as she told me in the broadest of brogues, I was at Mainowen, and likely to be for a long time to come, with a broken leg and dislocated shoulder. It seems that tho “ Marquis ” put his foot upon a fox’s hole or some hollow place of the sort, and fell, throwing me; and in the frantic endeavors to regain his feet he must have kicked my shoulder, for it was greatly injured. Oh, those first weary days of pain at Mainowen, with no one to speak to except my witch 1 She used to try to amuse me in her way by telling me how * Biddy Cregan ’ was bringing home the ‘wash * when she found me lying in the snow ; and how they brought me in and laid mo there, and how she had * tended ’ mo ever since. After the first few days it grew pleasanter for me, for the justice would come and sit with me every day ; and though ho did not talk much, yet it was a relief to have something else to look at besides tho white starched cap of the witch. It was one of those short afternoons at the beginning of December ; —I was feeling very weary,—and lying propped up with pillows for days is not calculated to add to the flow cf one’s spirits in any way—l had been tracing the dying sun’s light as it slowly moved round the darkening room, until it sank. Othello’s occupation gone, I closed my eyes so that my witch might not talk to me, when Siveei-, lon-, and soft there fell upon the still air the sound cf distant music. The instrument was an organ, touched by a master hand; but the voice that rang out In clear, sweet tones, was that of a child ; and I—who had lingered speli-bound in the dim aisles of St. E'eter’a at Rome—lay entranced. ‘ Comfort ye 1. comfort ye ’ It sounded like no mortal voice to me in my weariness ; and I could have almost imagined that ‘some seraph strayed 1 to fill one earthly heart with heaven’s own music. Regret for my wasted years, sorrow for ray lonely life, seemedto awake at the sound of the sweet childish voice. Weeks passed before my gray-haired old doctor would allow mo to go out of my bedroom. At last, one morning in February, I

was permitted to go into a sort of cosy little snuggery on the same floor, assisted by Justice Morgan on the one side, and the doctor himself on tho other. ‘ Turk, do stand still I—it is only papa/ And before the owner of the voice had time ito move, I saw tho picture which long year* hove not effaced from the tablet of my memory. Kneeling before a gigantic Newfoundland dog, on the hearthrug; was a young girl ; her occupation consisted in weaving a collar of immortelles round the huge throat of her canine companion, who fa return regarded her with eyes of the deepest affection. Upon seeing me tho lady rose, scattering a shower of the flowers over the floor, and advanced towards us. ‘I am so glad you are better,’ she said to me, while a faint blush tinged her cheeks. (To he continued.)