It is twenty-five years since this incident occurred. In less than half of that time, all the members of the family of the host of that day, were in another world. Neither the strength of manhood; the smiles of childhood; or the glad buoyancy of female courage and affection, sufficed to prolong lives, amidst much wealth and worldly good. They were an undutiful family-characteristically so, and they were early swept from society, root and branch. Phemie only in her last days, while tending with compunctuous assiduity her imbecile father's death-bed, sought, and found, repentance for her early errors; and was heard feelingly to revert to the reproof her cousin had given her, which indeed she never forgot.

"But the orphan stranger of that little party?" enquire my readers. They shall hear. After having soothed, by her unremitting attentions, the declining years of her grandfather, she received, in rapid succession, the last blessings of more than one aged relative besides. She had been early taught the loveliness and paramount obligation of filial duties; and she believed in the promise of the God of her fathers, and looked for its accomplishment. She has now a promising family of her own; and she has often been heard to say, that from the babe on her knee, to the almost grown-up son, she never received from one of them an undutiful expression, an unsubmissive look or act. Her days do indeed promise to be long, in the midst of the children and the comforts the Lord has given her.

E.

AGNES SHAW.

THE scene of the following incidents, is one of the secluded glens which abound in the south-west of Scotland. The hills rise high on either side, and are variegated with heather and whins, with here and there a dark brown patch of barren ground. At the bottom of this glen murmurs a mountainstream, which dances playfully along the bed it has formed, at one time moving straight along, at another capriciously darting off into fantastic windings-now lost among the heath and brushwood, and then suddenly issuing out into the open sunlight.

Towards the close of the seventeenth century, there stood in

this romantic glen an humble cottage, and its inmates were Agnes Shaw, her mother, and grandfather. The old man followed the occupation of a shepherd, and his well-regulated life was rewarded by a hale and hearty old age. His widowed daughter, and fatherless grandchild, were the objects of his devoted love; and the sacred bonds of piety made the attachment all the stronger and more inviolable. The Bible was the constant companion of the old shepherd as he daily tended his flock among the hills, and he drank deep into its hallowed spirit.

Mrs. Shaw had been a widow for many years, and although there was a tinge of melancholy on her countenance, which told that she was no stranger to trial and affliction, yet the cheerful smile of Christian contentment made it nearly imperceptible. The great desire of the mother's heart was, that Agnes should love her Creator in the days of her youth, and lead a pious life, and often while inculcating the precepts of the Bible, she would teach her daughter that religion's ways were ways of pleasantness.

Agnes was now in her nineteenth year, and was blooming with health and happiness. She possessed those amiable and graceful qualities which never fail to excite love and admiration. Her cheerful song and merry laugh lightened the long hours in the quiet cottage, and Mrs. Shaw was gladdened when she saw her daughter following in the paths of piety, and manifesting a sacred regard for religion.

At the period to which we refer, the fires of persecution in Scotland raged fiercely, and the dark subject engrossed universal attention. The secluded glen in which our friends resided had, as yet, escaped their fury. The sad scenes of intolerance and cruelty which were enacted around them, excited in their breasts the most compassionate sympathy, and filled with virtuous patriotism, they prayed that God would release their country from the dreadful calamity.

One fine July afternoon, Agnes was sitting at the door of the cottage, busy at her spinning wheel, and humming over one of her country's sweet melodies. Her grandfather was among the hills with the sheep, and her mother had gone into the neighbouring village to purchase household provisions.

Agnes was an admirer of nature, and she sat gazing on the landscape as it lay steeped in sunshine, and listening to the birds as they sang their song. Her attention was suddenly aroused by a strange sound. She listened more attentively; the noise was heard again, and she thought she could distinguish the tramp of horses, and the shouts of men. It could not be the soldiers? Agnes trembled, her breathing became more rapid, and her heart beat quickly. She had never seen soldiers, and had heard how dreadfully cruel and unmerciful they were.

Hush! the noise again!—and round the hill, about a dozen of horsemen came on at a smart pace. The troopers speedily rode up to the cottage. The leader of the party, a coarse, illlooking man, gave orders to dismount, and addressing Agnes, demanded to be accommodated with provisions instantly. Some of the men were left in charge of the horses, while the rest, with their leader followed the trembling girl into the cottage. Agnes was so agitated she hardly knew what she did. Anxious that the soldiers should quit the place before her mother and grandfather arrived, she speedily placed the homely provisions of the cottage before the men, and retired.

She trembled as she heard the coarse jest, the profane oath, and boisterous mirth of these men of blood pollute her quiet dwelling, with which she associated everything gentle and pious.

When these rude revellers had finished their repast, their leader interrupted the loud mirth by enquiring in a low whisper whether the girl they had just seen did not very much resemble the old man whom they had so nearly captured in the moor that morning. They all acknowledged the striking resemblance, and the trooper, looking slily at the company, hoped they might have a little entertainment before they left.

Here, girl!" roared the man, in a stern voice; and Agnes came timidly into the apartment.

"Your old father is a shepherd, is he not?" inquired the ruffian.

Agnes answered that her father was dead, but that her grandfather followed that occupation.

"Well, well, its all the same," returned the soldier, "

we had

the good fortune to meet him this morning, and a the matter with the woman?"

Agnes had startled, and grown pale.

what's

"It's a pity he belonged to these fanatic rebels," continued the trooper cooly, "or his old age might have been more respected; but it happens as the wretches deserve-old and young of them must be put down.”

"Oh! sir, tell me the worst," cried Agnes, as the darkest pictures now rose before her. "What have you done to my grandfather; he was a poor old man, and would do no harm. Oh! tell me what you have done? Where, oh! where, is he?"

The cold-hearted man glanced a look of diabolical triumph from the poor girl to the relentless soldiers, whose conduct testified their admiration of the proceedings.

Tampering so basely with the tenderest feelings of woman's nature, these cowardly villains at length rose to depart.

Agnes with her face covered with her hands wept piteously. With all the force of passionate entreaty, she threw herself at the feet of the cruel leader, and besought him in an agony of grief to tell her what they had done to her grandfather, and where she would find him. The base miscreant bade her compose herself, for her grandfather was shot dead on the moor.

Agnes swooned as she heard this announcement, and the company, as if troubled at the sight, mounted, rode off and disappeared in the glen.

Agnes was recovering from a succession of fainting fits, when Mrs. Shaw arrived at the cottage. The disorder which prevailed, and the distressing state of her daughter, filled her with the greatest alarm. With that presence of mind which always distinguished her in trying circumstances, Mrs. Shaw laid her daughter in bed, and breathing a prayer for Heaven's support, applied every gentle restorative which a mother's love and solicitude could suggest.

As consciousness returned, Agnes gazed round the humble apartment, and whispering, "Grandfather, dear grandfather," burst into tears. New objects of alarm now presented themselves to the distracted mind of Mrs. Shaw. What could those incoherent expressions mean? As the excited state of her daughter prevented any enquiry, she calmly left her circum

stances in the hands of God, and patiently watched by the bedside of her child.

Three long hours passed, and the uneasy tossing of the sufferer, and the burning heat told that she was in the first stage of a dangerous fever. The anxiety of Mrs. Shaw was extreme; the child she had left in the morning in all the radiance of health and vigour, was now wasting under the most dreadful of diseases; and the old shepherd had not yet returned from the hills. Some time elapsed, and Mrs. Shaw observed her father wending his way up the glen. She prudently acquainted him with the melancholy circumstances before he entered the cottage, and he in turn briefly told her of his providential escape from the troopers. Stunned as he was by the startling intelligence, he bore the trial with Christian fortitude, and when the sight of the pale and feverish sufferer met his eye, the tears streamed downs his cheeks, and laying aside his shepherd's bonnet, the venerable old man knelt by the humble bedside, and poured out a prayer to God for support and comfort in the hour of need.

During midnight Agnes became delirious, and often starting, she would exclaim, "Don't go near them, mother, they are cruel, bloody men;-they have killed grandfather, and they'll kill you too." It was in vain the good old shepherd clasped her burning hand, and tried to soothe her; she neither saw nor heard him. From the confused disorder of the cottage, and from the incoherent expressions of the patient, they gleaned the truth, that the soldiers had been there; and that, discovering the relationship which existed between Agnes and the old shepherd, whose escape had enraged them so much, they had vented their wicked malice on the innocent girl, by declaring that they had put to death her grandfather, whom she loved so much.

Morning came, and Agnes was still in the same precarious state. The day passed slowly, and the cottage was quiet and solemn. Mrs. Shaw and the old man never left the bedside of the gentle patient. Another morning came, and although the sun shone brightly in the glen, and the birds sang sweetly, yet a death-like stillness rested over the cottage.

In the afternoon, as the sun was setting behind the hills, and