BLANCHE DEARWOOD,

3

A Tale of Andern Life.

SECOND EDITION.

NEW YORK:

BUNCE & BROTHER, PUBLISHERS,

126 NASSAU STREET.

MDCCCLV.

ENTERED according to Act of Congress, in the year 1855, by

BUNCE & BROTHER,

In the Clerk's Office of the District Court for the Southern Dis

of New York.

W. H. TINSON, Stereotyper. TAWS, RUSSELL & Co. Printers.

G. W. ALEXANDER, Binder.

BLANCHE DEARWOOD.

CHAPTER I.

INITIATORY.

AMID the Highlands of that river, whose picturesque beauties are the pride of every American, there was situated, at the time of my story, a simple, old-fashioned house, with more years than the nation, and with a history quite as well. It stood in one of the most beautiful localities of the eastern shore, nestling at the foot of a towering Highland peak, with a rare panorama of mountain, river and meadow-land, spread out before it. It was an irregular, many-gabled structure, with bay windows opening upon terraces, and verandahs of modern construction filling up its angles. Some oaks and elms that had stood about the house in their youth, when it was in its newest freshness, and had put forth their tender branches then, with the ambitious but vain hope of sheltering it, had grown old, very old, by its side, and now extended their great huge limbs protectingly above it. One mighty yellow willow stood close to its eastern side, solemn, majestic, with a silvery hoariness of age, mingling its grey leaves amid the quaint clusters of chimneys, and dropping its yellow moss thickly