SELDOM has the earth held a couple of human beings so happy in each other as were Mr Adam Blair and his wife. They had been united very early in love, and early in wedlock. Ten years had passed over their heads since their hands were joined together; and during all that time their heart-strings had never once vibrated in discord. Their pleasures had been the same, and these innocent; their sorrows had been all in common; and their hours of affliction had, even more than their hours of enjoyment, tended to knit them together. Of four children whom God had given them, three had been taken speedily away;—one girl only, the first pledge of their love, had been spared to them. She was now a beautiful fair-haired creature, of eight years old. In her rested the tenderness and the living delight of both; yet, often at the fall of evening would they walk out hand in hand with their bright-eyed child, and shed together tears, to her mysterious, over the small grassy mounds in the adjoining village cemetery, beneath which the lost blossoms of their affection had been buried.

Adam Blair had had his share of human suffering; but hitherto the bitter cup had always contained sweetness at the close of the draught. The oil and the balm had flowed plentifully for every wound, and his spirit was not only unbroken, but composed, happy, cheerful, “with sober cheer.” The afflictions that had been sent to him had kept him calm; and all men said that he was an humble, but none that he was a dejected Christian. What the secret errors of his spirit might have been, it is not for us to guess. But he was destined to undergo severer chastenings; and who shall doubt that there was cause enough for the uplifting of the rod of love?

After the death of the last of these three infants, Mrs Blair dried her tears, and endeavoured to attend as usual to all the duties of her household. But the serenity of her temper had been tinged with a shade of grief which she could not dispel; and although she smiled upon her husband, it was with pale lips and melancholy eyes that she did so.