"You are very gay," the stranger said with a melancholy smile to his landlady, when she came to attend him that day; and the remark was answered by the ready information, that the bells were this day ringing on occasion of a marriage which that morning had taken place in the neighbourhood, the bride being a young lady of a family of long standing in these parts. The gentleman, a widower and a Scotchman, &c. But all this her listener heeded not.
"Bells thou soundest merrily When the bridal party To the church doth hie; Bells thou soundest solemnly, When on Sabbath mornings, Fields deserted lie."
It was Sunday morning, and all the people of the place were flocking to the Welsh service of the church; but the English stranger mingled not with these. No--rather as he had turned wearily away from the mad music of the marriage-bell, did his languid footsteps turn aside, when now in more solemn cadence it sounded in his ear.
Not as yet was his soul attuned to enter that house of God, and offer up prayers and praises with a thankful heart. To that lonely man, it would have been indeed requiring a song, a melody, in his heaviness--to "sing the Lord's song in a strange land."
He left the quiet town--crossed the bridge above the swift-flowing river, and wandered far away, slowly, as his partially-renewed strength alone would admit, and resting often, but still as if he breathed more freely the farther and farther he felt himself proceeding from the haunts of men; whilst at every step he took, beauty and magnificence, decking that bright spring morning in their best array, met his enchanted view; and the sense of enjoyment seemed to return, and that of loneliness to be--removed.
For the young man's mood was one of those most sensitively to realise the idea, that "high mountains are a feeling, but the hum of human cities torture."
Thus he wandered on, till a hamlet, crowned by the woods of one or two gentlemen's seats, came in view; and he was forced by his weakness to stop, and crave a cup of milk at a quiet farm in its outskirts, its simple inmates also inviting him to sit down and rest; and then he found that time had passed much swifter than he thought, for it was long past noon.