graceful form of a beautiful woman entered, her finely oval but pensive face made more expressive by the olive that shaded it, and those deep soul-like eyes that now sparkled in gentleness, and again flashed with apprehension.  Nervously she paused and set her eyes with intense stare on Montague; then vaulted into his arms and embraced him, crying, “Is not my Annette here?” as a tear stole down her cheeks.  Her quick eye detected trouble in his deportment; she grasped his left hand firmly in her right, and with quivering frame besought him to keep her no longer in the agony of suspense.  “Why thus suddenly have you come? ah!-you disclose a deep-rooted trouble in not forewarning me! tell me all and relieve my feelings!” she ejaculated, in broken accents.  “I was driven from that country because I loved nature and obeyed its laws.  My very soul loved its greatness, and would have done battle for its glories-yea, I loved it for the many blessings it hath for the favoured; but one dark stain on its bright escutcheon so betrayed justice, that no home was there for me-none for the wife I had married in lawful wedlock.”  Here the woman, in agonising throbs, interrupted him by enquiring why he said there was no home for the wife he had married in lawful wedlock-was not the land of the puritans free?  “Nay!” he answered, in a measured tone, shaking his head, “it is bestained not with their crimes-for dearly do they love justice and regard the rights of man-but with the dark deeds of the man-seller, who, heedless of their feelings, and despising their moral rectitude, would make solitary those happy homes that brighten in greatness over its soil.”  Again, frantic of anxiety, did the woman interrupt him:  “Heavens!-she is not dragged back into slavery?” she enquired, her emotions rising beyond her power of restraint, as she drew bitter pangs from painful truths.  With countenance bathed in trouble did Montague return her solicitous glance, and speak.  “Into slavery” he muttered, in half choked accents “was she hurled back.”  He had not finished the sentence ere anxiety burst its bounds, and the anxious woman shrieked, and fell swooning in his arms.  Even yet her olive face was beautefully pale.  The cheerful parlour now rung with confusion, servants bustled about in fright, the youthful family shrieked in fear, the father sought to restore the fond mother, as Montague chafed her right hand in his.  Let us leave to the reader’s conjecture a scene his fancy may depict better than we can describe, and pass to one more pleasant of results.  Some half an hour had transpired, when, as if in strange bewilderment, Clotilda opened her eyes and seemed conscious of her position.  A deep crimson shaded her olive cheeks, as in luxurious ease she lay upon the couch, her flushed face and her thick wavy hair, so prettily parted over her classic brow, curiously contrasting with the snow-white pillow on which it rested.  A pale and emaciated girl sat beside her, smoothing her brow with her left hand, laying the