Among these last was pretty Ellen Kingsbury, who had agreed to personate the Queen of Scots, in the garden scene from Schiller’s tragedy of Mary Stuart; and this circumstance accidentally afforded Master Horner the opportunity he had so long desired, of seeing his fascinating correspondent without the presence of peering eyes.  A dress-rehearsal occupied the afternoon before the day of days, and the pathetic expostulations of the lovely Mary—­

  Mine all doth hang—­my life—­my destiny—­
  Upon my words—­upon the force of tears!—­

aided by the long veil, and the emotion which sympathy brought into Ellen’s countenance, proved too much for the enforced prudence of Master Horner.  When the rehearsal was over, and the heroes and heroines were to return home, it was found that, by a stroke of witty invention not new in the country, the harness of Mr. Kingsbury’s horses had been cut in several places, his whip hidden, his buffalo-skins spread on the ground, and the sleigh turned bottom upwards on them.  This afforded an excuse for the master’s borrowing a horse and sleigh of somebody, and claiming the privilege of taking Miss Ellen home, while her father returned with only Aunt Sally and a great bag of bran from the mill—­companions about equally interesting.

Here, then, was the golden opportunity so long wished for!  Here was the power of ascertaining at once what is never quite certain until we have heard it from warm, living lips, whose testimony is strengthened by glances in which the whole soul speaks or—­seems to speak.  The time was short, for the sleighing was but too fine; and Father Kingsbury, having tied up his harness, and collected his scattered equipment, was driving so close behind that there was no possibility of lingering for a moment.  Yet many moments were lost before Mr. Horner, very much in earnest, and all unhackneyed in matters of this sort, could find a word in which to clothe his new-found feelings.  The horse seemed to fly—­the distance was half past—­and at length, in absolute despair of anything better, he blurted out at once what he had determined to avoid—­a direct reference to the correspondence.

A game at cross-purposes ensued; exclamations and explanations, and denials and apologies filled up the time which was to have made Master Horner so blest.  The light from Mr. Kingsbury’s windows shone upon the path, and the whole result of this conference so longed for, was a burst of tears from the perplexed and mortified Ellen, who sprang from Mr. Horner’s attempts to detain her, rushed into the house without vouchsafing him a word of adieu, and left him standing, no bad personification of Orpheus, after the last hopeless flitting of his Eurydice.

“Won’t you ’light, Master?” said Mr. Kingsbury.

“Yes—­no—­thank you—­good evening,” stammered poor Master Horner, so stupefied that even Aunt Sally called him “a dummy.”

The horse took the sleigh against the fence, going home, and threw out the master, who scarcely recollected the accident; while to Ellen the issue of this unfortunate drive was a sleepless night and so high a fever in the morning that our village doctor was called to Mr. Kingsbury’s before breakfast.