Ravenshoe. By Henry Kingsley.

OUR HERO'S TROUBLES BEGIN. 19
"I have seen Mrs. Horton," said the doctor, " and I quite approve of the proposal. I think it, indeed, a most special providence that she should be able to undertake it. Had it been otherwise, we might have been undone."
"Let us go at once," said the impetuous Densil. "Where is
the nurse? where is the boy?" And, so saying, he hurried out
of the room, followed by the doctor and James.
Mackworth stood alone, looking out of the window, silent. He
stood so long, that one who watched him peered from his hidingplace more than once to see if he were gone. At length he raised
his arm, and struck his clenched hand against the rough, granite
window-sill so hard that he brought blood. Then he moodily
left the room.
As soon as the room was quiet, a child about five years old
crept stealthily from a dark corner where he had laid hidden, and
with a look of mingled shyness and curiosity on his face, departed
quietly by another door.
Meanwhile Densil, James, and the doctor, accompanied by the
nurse and baby, were holding their way across the court-yard
towards a cottage which lay in the wood beyond the stables.
James opened the door, and they passed into the inner room.
A beautiful woman was sitting propped up by pillows, nursing
a week-old child. The sunlight, admitted by a half-open shutter,
fell upon her, lighting up her delicate features, her pale, pure
complexion, and bringing a strange sheen on her long, loose black
hair. Her face was bent down gazing on the child which lay on
her breast, and at the entrance of the party she looked up, and
displayed a large, lustrous, dark-blue eye, which lighted up with
infinite tenderness as Densil, taking the wailing boy from the
nurse, placed it on her arm beside the other.
" Take care of that for me, Norah," said Densil. "It has no
mother but you, now."
"Acushla ma chree," she answered, "bless my little bird.
Come to your nest, alanna; come to your pretty brother, my
darlin'."
The child's wailing was stilled now, and the doctor remarked,
and remembered long afterwards, that the little waxen fingers,
clutching uneasily about, came in contact with the little hand of
the other child, and paused there. At this moment a beautiful
little girl, about five years old, got on the bed and nestled her
peachy cheek against her mother's. As they went out, he turned
and looked at the beautiful group once more, and then he followed
Densil back to the house of mourning.
Reader, before we have done with those three innocent little
faces, we shall see them distorted and changed by many passions,
and shall meet them in many strange places. Come, take my
hand, and we will follow them on to the end.