the idea of piquing Llewellyn's feelings in her turn, she set off for the country.

The next morning a new trial awaited him. He was or dered to join that day a detachment of the regiment, at a town about five miles distant, and Fanny was not to return till late the next day; and this overwhelming idea made him insensible to the loud lamentations of his parents at the idea of parting with him, and to the silent grief of Mary. But at length the feelings of natural affection resumed their sway over him, and he could not blame either Mary or his father, while they deplored the day when a regiment of soldiers first entered their quiet town, and led its peaceful inhabitants into new dangers and new temptations.

On his arrival at the place of rendezvous his hopes were revived, and his inquietude calmed, by the welcome information, that in two days time the detachment would be marched into: his native town, and he, in full regimentals, appear before his delighted mistress.

Fanny, in the meanwhile, returned home; and being informed by her aunt that it was reported that Llewellyn had. enlisted, and was gone to join his regiment at some distant town, her pride yielded to apprehensive attachment, and she ran over to his father's house to know the truth of the report; but the moment she saw Mary's countenance, her fortitude forsook her, and she was unable to ask a single "I see it is but too true question, and faintly articulating, then," she sunk into a chair, and burst into tears. "What do you cry for, girl?" said the father; "you do not pretend to be sorry, I hope, for what is all your doing??? "My doing!" exclaimed Fanny; "what do you mean?" "Why, you must know," replied the mother," that my son is gone for a soldier, merely to please you."

1

"To please me!" cried Fanny, "I solemnly declare that this rash deed was wholly without my knowledge, and quite contrary to my wishes."

"Indeed!" cried both the parents.

"Indeed-I most solemnly assure you!"

"Then you are willing," said Mary, "no doubt to use all your influence to prevail on him to let us buy his discharge?"

"I am I am!" returned Fanny, in a hurried manner; and the poor old people folded her fondly to their bosoms. Fanny now found her voice again, and began to ask sewhich veral questions concerning the hasty ill-advised step her lover had taken. She enquired the name of the regi

ment, and being told, she eagerly exclaimed, "What! in that regiment! The uniform is scarlet turned up with deep blue and gold. Oh, how handsome he will look in his regimentals!" she added, wiping her eyes, and smiling as she spoke.

The poor old man frowned and turned away, and Mary shook her head: but the mother, with all a mother's vanity, observed; "True child, he will look handsome indeed, and more like a captain, 1 warrant, than many an one that's there" and Fanny, in the thought of her lover's improved beauty, forgot his absence, and all sense of the danger to which his new profession would expose him.

The next day it was known that the detachment from the town of would march in to join the rest of the regiment the next evening; and Fanny, with a beating heart, resolved to go out to meet it. But it was some time before she could prevail on Mary to accompany her; however, at last she consented, and her pale cheek and sunk eye, indicative of secret anxiety, formed a striking contrast to the animated countenance and glowing cheek of her beautiful companion.

"You do not look like yourself to-day, Mary," said Fanny, as they walked along.

"I have not been myself at all, lately," replied Mary, "I am so sorry for Llewellya's having enlisted.'

"So am I," said Fanny, coldly.

"I wish you were really sorry," replied Mary, "for if you were, Llewellyn would not be a soldier; but he supposed, I know he did, as he is acquainted with your passion for red coats, that the only way to make sure of you was by becoming a soldier."

"Are you sure of this?" asked Fanny, her fine eyes glistening at this proof of her lover's attachment.

"Yes, and I see but too well that your pride is more gratified by it than your feelings are affected," replied Mary, mournfully, "and that when you see him in his regimentals"

"Oh dear, how well they will become him!" cried the thoughtless Fanny, quickening her pace in order to hasten the moment of seeing her lover, while Mary slowly and tearfully followed.

Soon after they heard the sound of the drum and fife, and ascending a hill, they beheld the expected detachment rapidly approaching.

Come, Mary, let us run and meet them," cried Fanny,

joyfully, but Mary languidly exclaimed, "I can go no further!" and sat down on the ground, and Fanny consoled herself by reflecting that from the hill she could see them pass better than by standing on the level road.

At length Fanny beheld Llewellyn, and in a transport of joy she exclaimed, "Dear Mary, there he is, there he is! Oh, how handsome he looks! but I knew he would."

The meeting of the lovers after this, their first separation, was a moment of such true joy to both, that alive only to the pleasures of affection, they thought not of its pains; Fanny forgot her anger, and Llewellyn his jealousy, while both seemed unconscious that the will of government might in a few hours doom them to a long, if not an eternal separation.

These fears, however, though strangers to them, were only too present to the minds of the unhappy parents and Mary; when Fanny and Llewellyn, not liking to have their joy damped by the sight of melancholy faces, went out to take a walk, and Fanny, leaning on the arm of her now military lover, led him in triumph, as it were, through the

streets of his native town.

When they returned, the father and Mary took Fanny on one side, and asked her whether she had begun to persuade Llewellyn to leave the army again, and Fanny, blushing deeply, replied, "No, but that it was time enough yet;' and again she was alive only to the satisfaction of the moment.

Another day passed, and still she was too proud of her lover's appearance as a soldier to endeavour to persuade bim to be one no longer; and when spoken to on the subject, she replied, that it would be time enough for him to try to get discharged when he was ordered to a distance, or to go abroad.

"No!" cried Mary indignantly; "should he be ordered to go abroad, I should despise him if he wished then to be discharged; for though I value Llewellyn's life, I value his honour more- no, he must gain his discharge now, or never.”

Before the next evening came, the regiment was ordered to Holland; and the unthinking improvident Fanny saw herself on the eve of parting with her lover with the consciousness that he was ordered on a service of the most imminent danger.

In vain did she now try to prevail on him to let them purchase his discharge. He was wretched, but he was fixed to go, and not even Mary now urged him to endea

vour to stay at home. His lot was cast; and while he gazed on the miserable looks of his parents, and listened to their lamentations for his loss, and prayers for his safety, he owned that the anguish of his feelings was a just retribution for disregarding the suggestions of filial piety.

At the moment of his leaving the parental roof, and when his parents, convinced that they should see him no more, had just folded him, in speechless agony, in a last embrace, he wrung Mary's cold hand, and said, pointing to his father and mother, "I bequeath them to your care, Mary."

"That was quite unnecessary," she replied, half reproachfully.

"And Fanny, too," he added, in a fainter voice.

"There was no need of that neither," she returned; "you love her, that's enough!"

Mary, dear Mary!" cried Llewelyn; but she had left the room.

After Llewellyn had been gone a day or two, Fanny. ceased to grieve, except by fits and starts; and left off pro-testing that she had now no enjoyment except in the company of Mary, with whom she could talk incessantly of her absent lover; nay, on the contrary, she seemed to avoid Mary, as the sight of her mournful countenance recalled ideas from which she wished to fly and while Mary, by the most kind and constant attention, endeavoured to supply to Llewellyn's parents the loss of their son, Fanny was displaying her fine person at parades, reviews, and public walks; and though she loved the absent Llewellyn, she could not bear to forego the ineense offered to her beauty by the admirers who were present.

At length they received a letter from Llewellyn. He had been in two engagements, and had escaped unhurt. Again and again he wrote; but at last months and months elapsed, and no intelligence was received of him; and there seemed little doubt that he had either fallen in the field, or perished during the horrible march of our troops in the winter of 1794.

.. Still his mother and Mary entertained à hope that he would return; but his father gave him up for lost, and in a short time breathed his last, pronouncing Llewellyn's name, and blessing him in a tone of agony that almost broke the heart of poor Mary.

His wife continued to exist; but her suspense and fearful hope ended in a sort of harmless insanity; whenever any one knocked at the door, she had for some months

fancied it was Llewellyn, and in every one who had passed the window she had seen a resemblance of her son.

But nature at length sunk under the pressure of disease. On her death-bed she recovered her senses, and every epithet and every blessing that grateful affection could dictate, she bestowed on the kind and attentive Mary. Mary's heart enjoyed this proof that she had done her duty; but it enjoyed far more the oft repeated blessings and the ardent prayer which, to the last, the dying, but still hoping parent breathed for Llewellyn.

One evening after Llewellyn's parents had been dead some months, and when Mary had, as usual visited their graves to strew them with fresh flowers (as is customary in many parts of Wales) and weed the little garden which she had planted on them-instead of returning home she sat herself down on a wooden bench, at the entrance of the churchyard, which commanded a view of the town; and as she listened to the distant and varied sounds which reached her ear from the barracks, and a crowded fair about a mile distant, time insensibly stole away, and, lost in her own thoughts, she was not conscious of the approach of a strauger, till he had reached the bench, and was preparing to sit down on it.

- Mary started ;-but, with that untaught courtesy which the benevolent always possess, she made room for the intruder to sit down, by removing to the other side of the seat. Neither of them spoke; and Mary insensibly renewed her meditations. But at length the evident agitation and loud though suppressed sobs of the stranger attracted her attention to him, and excited her compassion. "Poor man!" thought Mary, "perhaps he has been visiting the new made grave of some dear friend :" and insensibly she turned towards the unhappy stranger, expecting to see him in deep mourning; but he was wrapped up in a great coat that looked like a regimental one. This made Mary's pity even greater than before: for, ever since Llewellyn had enlisted, she had lost her boasted insensibility to soldiers and their concerns.

"He is a soldier, too," said Mary to herself; "who knows but" Here the train of her ideas was suddenly broken; for an audible and violent renewal of the stranger's distress so overset her feelings, already softened by her visit to the grave of her relations, and the recollections in which she had been indulging, that she could keep her seat no longer, besides, conscious that true sorrow loves