A STORY OF NANCY'S BROOK.

Daily Telegraph (Napier), Issue 3185, 13 September 1881, Page 4

A STORY OF NANCY'S BROOK.

In the latter part of the last century, a maiden, whose Christian name of Nancy is all that has come down to us, was living in the little hamlet of Jefferson. She loved and was betrothed to a young man of the farm. The wedding day was fixed, and the young couple were on the eve of setting out for Portsmouth, where their happiness was to be consummated at the altar. In her simple trustfulness, the young girl confided the small sum which constituted all her marriage portion to her lover. Thia man repaid her with the basest treachery. Seizing his opportunity, he lift the hamlet, without a word of explanation or adieu. The deserted girl was one of those natures which cannot sit quietly down under calamity. She resolved to pursue her faithless lover. She was young, vigorous, intrepid. In vain her friends tried to turn her from her pupose. At nightfall she spt out. A hundred years ago the route taken by this brave girl was not, as to-day, a thoroughfare which one may follow with his eyes shnt. Tt was only an obscure path, little travelled by day, deserted by night. Tfor thirty miles there was not a human habitation. It was midwinter. The forests were filled with wild beasts. But nothing could daunt the heroic spirit which animated poor Nancy. The girl's hope was to overtake her lover at the usual camping place in the Notch. She found the camp deserted and the embers extinguished. Spurred on by hope or despnir, she pushed on down the tremendous dffile, fording the turbulent and frozen Paco, toiling; through snowdrifts and over rocks and fallen trees, until she sank exhausted on the margin of the brook, which seems perpetually bemoaning her snd fate. Here, cold nnd rigid as marble, under a canopy of evergreen, which the snow tenderly drooped over, they found her. £he was wrapped in her cloak, and in the same attitude of repose as when she fell asl°pp on her nuptial couch of snow.— Harper's Monthly.