fell:  my cramped existence all at once spread out to a plain without bounds —­ my powers heard a call from heaven to rise, gather their full strength, spread their wings, and mount beyond ken.  God had an errand for me; to bear which afar, to deliver it well, skill and strength, courage and eloquence, the best qualifications of soldier, statesman, and orator, were all needed:  for these all centre in the good missionary.

“A missionary I resolved to be.  From that moment my state of mind changed; the fetters dissolved and dropped from every faculty, leaving nothing of bondage but its galling soreness —­ which time only can heal.  My father, indeed, imposed the determination, but since his death, I have not a legitimate obstacle to contend with; some affairs settled, a successor for Morton provided, an entanglement or two of the feelings broken through or cut asunder —­ a last conflict with human weakness, in which I know I shall overcome, because I have vowed that I will overcome —­ and I leave Europe for the East.”

He said this, in his peculiar, subdued, yet emphatic voice; looking, when he had ceased speaking, not at me, but at the setting sun, at which I looked too.  Both he and I had our backs towards the path leading up the field to the wicket.  We had heard no step on that grass-grown track; the water running in the vale was the one lulling sound of the hour and scene; we might well then start when a gay voice, sweet as a silver bell, exclaimed —

“Good evening, Mr. Rivers.  And good evening, old Carlo.  Your dog is quicker to recognise his friends than you are, sir; he pricked his ears and wagged his tail when I was at the bottom of the field, and you have your back towards me now.”

It was true.  Though Mr. Rivers had started at the first of those musical accents, as if a thunderbolt had split a cloud over his head, he stood yet, at the close of the sentence, in the same attitude in which the speaker had surprised him —­ his arm resting on the gate, his face directed towards the west.  He turned at last, with measured deliberation.  A vision, as it seemed to me, had risen at his side.  There appeared, within three feet of him, a form clad in pure white —­ a youthful, graceful form:  full, yet fine in contour; and when, after bending to caress Carlo, it lifted up its head, and threw back a long veil, there bloomed under his glance a face of perfect beauty.  Perfect beauty is a strong expression; but I do not retrace or qualify it:  as sweet features as ever the temperate clime of Albion moulded; as pure hues of rose and lily as ever her humid gales and vapoury skies generated and screened, justified, in this instance, the term.  No charm was wanting, no defect was perceptible; the young girl had regular and delicate lineaments; eyes shaped and coloured as we see them in lovely pictures, large, and dark, and full; the long and shadowy eyelash which encircles a fine eye with so soft a fascination; the