A Bride from the Bush

There was consternation in the domestic camp of Mr. Justice Bligh on the banks of theThames. It was a Sunday morning in early summer. Three-fourths of the family sat inominous silence before the mockery of a well-spread breakfast-table: Sir James and LadyBligh and their second son, Granville. The eldest son-the missing complement of thisfamily of four-was abroad. For many months back, and, in fact, down to this very minute, it had been pretty confidently believed that the young man was somewhere in the wilds ofAustralia; no one had quite known where, for the young man, like most vagabond youngmen, was a terribly meagre corespondent; nor had it ever been clear why any one withleisure and money, and of no very romantic turn, should have left the beaten track ofglobe-trotters, penetrated to the wilderness, and stayed there-as Alfred Bligh had done.Now, however, all was plain. A letter from Brindisi, just received, explained everything;Alfred's movements, so long obscure, were at last revealed, and in a lurid light-that, as itwere, of the bombshell that had fallen and burst upon the Judge's breakfast-table. ForAlfred was on his way to England with an Australian wife; and this letter from Brindisi, wasthe first that his people had heard of it, or of her