THE SETTLERS OF LONG ARROW.
A Canadian Romance in Thirty-one Chapters.
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CHAPTER XXIX.
Every poet who has ever sung of love tells us that while the passion lasts it reigns paramount in the heart, banishing all thoughts and emotions but such as it can make its own; but if this be so, seldom, indeed, in these latter days, does it condescend to appear, for that fickle, light, and compound emotion which bears it name, so far from holding sway over the other passions, is often but a poor dependent on the meanest and lowest among them. Yet, even still, in secret and secluded comers of the earth, the divine Eros sometimes lingers; and if ever a heart was emptied of all other idols, that it might be the sacred temple of one pure worship, it was that of Coral. Hers was a love, such as Shakspere’s loveliest heroines might have recognised as kindred to their own. The flowers, the stars, the clouds, the waters, all that is fairest and most tuneful on earth, in air, in wave, had taught her their poetry; heaven had gifted her with a purity, fervour, and truth which neither fate, nor time, nor change could ever alter. And all this wealth of feeling. imagination, and faithfulness had been concentrated in Keefe. Trusting in him with the most perfect and confiding reliance, that “perfect love which casteth out fear,” Coral had come to tell him that she was once more free, that death had broken the bonds which had kept her from him, and that she was the heiress of wealth, which she only valued if she might give it to him. If he loved her, as her father had said, and her heart fondly hoped, he would claim her as his wife; if not, heaven, she trusted, would take her out of a world in which there could no longer be any good for her; her body would sleep in the woods where she had once been happy with Keefe, and her spirit watch over him from its place among the angels. It seemed to her that years, ages, had passed since she had last seen him, that an eternity of regrets and longings had been summed up in that short space. Often the only voice of her heart had been, “Let me see him, even if it be only to see him, and die.”
Then came hope, and as she drew near Long Arrow she could scarcely have borne the keen