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Rh wind, amid the green leaves and the breathing flowers, goes its way in music; it is the sweet and mystic song of universal nature. But it enters into our dwellings, and it learns there the accent of pain; it breathes what it bears away—the sigh that tells, even in the midnight hours, of unrest, and the voice of lamentation, that speaks but in solitude. These echoes accumulate, and the house that has stood for years retains within its walls complaints long since lost in air: but the wind, that heard, recalls them; and there is a strange likeness to humanity in its murmurs, as it howls mournfully along the vaulted ceiling, or shrieks through the winding passages. Its dreary influence was on Norbourne, though he knew it not, and added to the disconsolate effect of the chamber. He knew that it was his mother's sitting-room, and yet there was not a single object that indicated feminine taste or presence. Chair and table alike were of deal; and, from the damp appearance of the grate, where the fire scarcely struggled into warmth, he surmised, and truly,