When Isabella was eighteen.  Madcap Hal again offered his hand to her, supposing she had forgotten her former prejudice, but although she married again she was so far faithful to the memory of her English husband that she would not accept the son of his murderer.  Some years later, when Prince Hal was king, he married her beautiful sister Katherine.

Isabella’s second husband was her cousin, the Duke of Orleans, whose beautiful poems are considered classic in France.  Again she was the joy of her family and the pride of France, but all her happiness was destined to be fleeting, for she survived her marriage only one year.  Her husband, who loved her fondly, wrote after her death: 

    “Alas! 
  Death, who made thee so bold,
  To take from me my lovely princess,
  Who was my comfort, my life,
  My good, my pleasure, my riches? 
  Alas!  I am lonely, bereft of my mate—­
  Adieu! my lady, my lily! 
  Our loves are forever severed.”

And in another poem, full of expressions that show how very devoted was his affection for her, he says: 

  “Above her lieth spread a tomb
    Of gold and sapphires blue,
  The gold doth show her blessedness,
    The sapphires mark her true.

  “And round about, in quaintest guise,
    Was carved—­’Within this tomb there lies
  The fairest thing to mortal eyes.’”

Farewell, sweet Isabella!—­a wife at eight, a widow at twelve, and dead at twenty-two,—­your life was indeed short, and, though not without happy days, sorrow blended largely with its joy!

CHASED BY WOLVES

By George Dudley Lawson.

Some forty years ago the northern part of the State of New York was very sparsely settled.  In one of the remote counties, which for a name’s sake we will call Macy County, a stout-hearted settler, named Devins, posted himself beyond the borders of civilization, and hewed for his little family a home in the heart of a forest that extended all the way from Lake Champlain to Lake Ontario.  His nearest neighbor was six miles away, and the nearest town nearly twenty; but the Devinses were so happy and contented that the absence of company gave them no concern.

It was a splendid place to live in.  In summer the eye ranged from the slope where the sturdy pioneer had built his house over miles and miles of waving beech and maple woods, away to the dark line of pines on the high ground that formed the horizon.  In the valley below, Otter Creek, a tributary of the St. Lawrence, wound its sparkling way northward.  When Autumn painted the scene in brilliant hues, and it lay glowing under the crimson light of October sunsets, the dullest observer could not restrain bursts of admiration.