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Such were the persons, such the dispositions of the fair
heiresses of Ingleborough at the time when they had attained the
ages I have specified; and certainly, although their spheres of
usefulness would have appeared at first sight, circumscribed,
and the range of their enjoyments very narrow, there rarely
have been seen two happier or more useful beings than Annabel
and Marian Hawkwood, in this wide world of sin and
sorrow.

The care of their bereaved and hapless parent occupied, it
is true, the greater portion of their time; yet they found many
leisure hours to devote to visiting the poor, aiding the wants
of the needy, consoling the sorrows of those who mourned, and
sympathizing with the pleasures of the happy, among their
humble neighbors. To them this might be truly termed a work
of love and pleasure; for it is questionable whether from any
other source the lovely girls derived a higher or more satisfactory
enjoyment, than from their hours of charity among their
village pensioners.

Next in the scale of happiness stood, doubtless, the society
of the old vicar of that pastoral parish; a man who had been
their father's friend and counsellor in those young days of college
friendship, when the fresh heart is uppermost in all, and
selfishness a dormant passion; a man old enough almost to
have been their grandsire, but with a heart as young and as
cheery as a boy's — an intellect accomplished in the deepest
lore of the schools, both classical and scientific, and skilled
thoroughly in all the niceties and graces of French, and Spanish,
and Italian literature — a man who had known courts and

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camps, too, for a short space in his youth; who had seen much
and suffered much, and yet enjoyed, not a little, in his acquaintance
with the world; and who, from sights, and sufferings, and
enjoyments, had learned that if there is much evil, there is yet
more of good, even in this world — had learned, while rigid to
his own faults, to be most lenient to his neighbor's failings —
had learned that charity should be the fruit of wisdom! — and
had learned all this only to practise it in all his daily walks, to
inculcate it in all his weekly lessons.

This aged man, and his scarce less aged wife, living hardly
a stone's throw from the hall, had grown almost to think themselves
a portion of the family; and surely no blood kindred
could have created stronger ties of kindness than had the familiarity
of long acquaintance, the confidence of old hereditary
love. Lower yet in the round of their enjoyments, but still
a constant source of blameless satisfaction, were their books,
their music, and their drawings; the management of their
household, the cultivation of their lovely garden, the ministering
to the wants of their loved birds and flowers. Thus, all
sequestered and secluded from the world, placed in the midst
of calm, unostentatious duties, and cares which to them were
no source of care, though they had never danced at a ball, nor
blushed at the praise of their own beauty flowing from eloquent
lips, nor listened to a lover's suit, queens might have envied
the felicity, the calm, pure, peaceful happiness of Annabel and
Marian.

They were, indeed, too happy! I do not mean too happy to
be virtuous, too happy to be mindful of and grateful to the Giver
of all joy — but, as the common phrase runs, too happy for
their happiness to be enduring. This is a strange belief — a
wondrous superstition! — and yet it has been common to all
ages. The Greeks, those wild poetical dreamers, imagined that
their vain gods, made up of moral attributes, envied the bliss of

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men, fearing that wretched earthlings should vie in happiness
with the possessors of Olympus. They sang in their dark
mystic choruses:


“That perfect bliss of men not childless dies,
But ended, leaves a progeny behind,
Of woes, that spring from fairest fortune blind —”
and, though their other doctrines of that insuperable destiny —
that absolute necessity, to resist which is needless labor — and
of ancestral guilt, through countless generations, would seem
to militate against it, there was no more established faith, and
no more prevalent opinion, than that unwonted fortunes were
necessarily followed by most unusual wo. Hence, perhaps,
the stern self-mortification of the middle ages — hence, certainly,
the vulgar terror prevalent more or less among all classes,
and in every time and country, that children are too beautiful,
too prematurely clever, too good to be long-lived — that happiness
is too great to be lasting — that mornings are too fine to
auger stormless days!

And we — aye! we ourselves — we of a better faith, and
purer dispensation — we half believe all this, and more than
half tremble at it, although, in truth, there is no cause for fear
in the belief — since, if there be aught of truth in the mysterious
creed, which facts do in a certain sense seem to bear out,
we can but think, we can not but perceive, that this is but a
varied form of care and misery, vouchsafed by the Great Allperfect
toward his frail creatures — that this is but a merciful
provision, to hinder us from laying up for ourselves “treasures
upon earth, where moth and rust do corrupt, and where thieves
break through and steal” — a provision to restrain us from forgetting,
in the small temporary bliss of the present, the boundless
and incomparable beatitude of the future — to warn us
against bartering, like Esau, our birthright, for a mess of pottage!

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But I am now called to follow out this train of thought, suggested
by the change in the fortunes of those to whom I am
performing the part of historian; by the change, I say, in their
fortunes — a change, too, arising from the very circumstances,
as is frequently the case, which seemed to promise the most
fairly for their improvement and their permanence. Oh! how
blind guides are we! even the most far-sighted of us all! —
how weak and senseless judges, even the most sagacious —
how false and erring prophets, even the wisest and the best!

It was, as I have said already, late in the summer, wherefrom
Annabel reckoned her twentieth and Marian her nineteenth
year — very late in the last month of summer, an hour or two
before the sunset of as beautiful an evening as ever smiled upon
the face of the green earth. The sky was nearly cloudless,
though a thin gauze-like haze had floated up from the horizon,
and so far veiled the orb of the great sun, that the eye could
gaze undazzled on his glories; and the whole air was full of a
rich golden light, which flooded the level meadows with its
lustre, except where they were checkered by the long cool
blue shadows projected from the massive clumps of noble forest-trees,
which, singly or in groups, diversified the lonely vale,
and gilded the tall, slender steeple of the old village-church,
and glanced in living fire from the broad oriel windows of the
hall.

Such was the evening, and so beautiful the prospect, with
every sound and sight in perfect harmony — the sharp squeak
of the rapid swifts, wheeling their airy circles around the distant
spire, the full and liquid melodies of thrush and blackbird
from out the thorn-bushes upon the lawn, the lowing of the
cows, returning from their pasture to pay the evening tribute,
the very cawing of the homeward rooks, blended by distance
into a continuous and soothing murmur, the rippling music of
the stream, the low sound of the west wind in the foliage of

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the sycamores, the far shout of the children, happy at their release
from school, the carol of a solitary milkmaid, combining
to make up a music as sweet as can be heard or dreamed of by
the sleeping poet. That lovely picture was surveyed, and that
delicious melody was listened to, by eyes and ears well fitted
to appreciate their loveliness: for, at an open casement of a great
parlor in the hall, with furniture all covered with those elegant
appliances of female industry — well-executed drawings, and
books, and instruments of music, and work-baskets, and frames
for embroidery — which show so pleasantly that the apartment
is one not of show, but of calm home-enjoyment — at an open
casement sat Annabel, alone — for the presence of the frail paralytic
being, who dozed in her arm-chair, at the further end of
the room, can not be held to constitute society. Marian, for
the first time in her life, was absent from her home, on a visit,
which had already endured nearly six weeks, to the only near
relative of the family who was yet living — a younger sister of
her mother, who had married many years ago a clergyman,
whose piety and talents had raised him to a stall in the cathedral
church of York, where he resided with his wife — a childless
couple.

This worthy pair had passed a portion of the summer at the
hall, and when returning to the metropolis of the county, had
prevailed on their younger niece, not altogether without difficulty,
to go with them for a few weeks, and see a little society
on a scale something more extended than that which her native
vales could offer. It was the first time in their lives that the
sisters had been parted for more than a few days, and now the
hours were beginning to appear very long to Annabel; as
weeks were running into months, and the gorgeous suns of
summer were fast preparing to give place to the cold dews and
frosty winds of autumn. The evening meal was over, and a
solitary thing was that meal now, which used to be the most

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delightful of the day; and hastily did the lonely sister hurry
it over, thinking all the while what might be Marian's occupation
at the moment, and whether she too was engaged in
thoughts concerning her far friends, and the fair home of her
childhood.

It was, then, in a mood half-melancholy and half-listless, that
Annabel was gazing from her window, down the broad valley
to the eastward, marvelling at the beauty of the scenery, though
she had noted every changing hue that flitted over the far purple
hills a thousand times before. She listened to every sweet
familiar sound; and yet, at the same time, pondered, as if she
were quite unconscious of all that met her senses, about things
which she fancied might be happening at York, when on a
sudden, her attention was aroused by a dense cloud of dust,
rising beyond the river, upon the line of the high road, and
sweeping up the valley, with a progress so unusually rapid as
to indicate that the objects, which it veiled from view, must be
in more than commonly quick motion. For a few moments
she watched this little marvel narrowly, but without any apprehension
or even any solicitude; until, as it drew nearer, she
could at times see bright flashes, as if of polished metal, gleaming
out through the murky wreaths, and feathers waving in
the air.

The year was that, in which the hapless Charles, all hopes
of reconciliation with his parliament being decidedly frustrated,
displayed the banner of civil war, and drew the sword against
his subjects. The rumors of the coming strife had circulated,
like the dread subterraneous rumblings which harbinger the
earthquake, through all the country far and near; sad omens of
approaching evil! and more distinctly were they bruited through
Yorkshire, in consequence of the attempt which had been made
by the royal party to secure Hull, with all its magazines and
shipping — frustrated by the energy and spirit of the Hothams

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— so that, as soon as she perceived that the dust was beyond
all doubt stirred up by a small party of well-appointed horse,
Annabel entertained no doubts as to the meaning, but many serious
apprehensions as to the cause of the present visitation.