The day had brightened up into more perfect beauty, and showers were sporting with sunshine on the blue air of Spring. The sky showed something like a rainbow--and the Lake, in some parts quite still, and in some breezy, contained at once shadowy fragments of wood and rock, and waves that would have murmured round the prow of pleasure-boat suddenly hoisting a sail. And such a very boat appeared round a promontory that stretched no great way into the water, and formed with a crescent of low meadow-land a bay that was the first to feel the wind coming down Glencoin. The boatman was rowing heedlessly along, when a sudden squall struck the sail, and in an instant the skiff was upset and went down. No shrieks were heard--and the boatman swam ashore; but a figure was seen struggling where the sail disappeared--and starting from his knees, he who knew not fear plunged into the Lake, and after desperate exertions brought the drowned creature to the side--a female meanly attired--seemingly a stranger--and so attenuated that it was plain she must have been in a dying state, and had she not thus perished, would have had but few days to live. The hair was grey--but the face, though withered, was not old--and as she lay on the greensward, the features were beautiful as well as calm in the sunshine.
He stood over her awhile--as if struck motionless--and then kneeling beside the body, kissed its lips and eyes--and said only, "It is Lucy!"
The old man was close by--and so was that child. They too knelt--and the passion of the mourner held him dumb, with his face close to the face of death--ghastly its glare beside the sleep that knows no waking, and is forsaken by all dreams. He opened the bosom--wasted to the bone--in the idle thought that she might yet breathe--and a paper dropt out into his hand, which he read aloud to himself--unconscious that any one was near. "I am fast dying--and desire to die at your feet. Perhaps you will spurn me--it is right you should; but you will see how sorrow has killed the wicked wretch who was once your wife. I have lived in humble servitude for five years, and have suffered great hardships. I think I am a penitent--and have been told by religious persons that I may hope for pardon from Heaven! Oh! that you would forgive me too! and let me have one look at our Lucy. I will linger about the Field of Flowers--perhaps you will come there, and see me lie down and die on the very spot where we passed a summer day the week of our marriage."