NEARLY a mile from the small, straggling village of Chattanooga stood Aaron Hunt's shop, shaded by a grove of oak and chestnut trees, which grew upon the knoll, where two roads intersected. Like the majority of blacksmiths' shops at country cross-roads, it was a low, narrow shed, filled with dust and rubbish, with old wheels and new single-trees, broken plows and dilapidated wagons awaiting repairs, and at the rear of the shop stood a smaller shed, where an old gray horse quietly ate his corn and fodder, waiting to carry the master to his home, two miles distant, as soon as the sun had set beyond the neighboring mountain. Early in winter, having an unusual amount of work on hand, Mr. Hunt hurried away from home one morning, neglecting to take the bucket which contained his dinner, and Edna was sent to repair the oversight. Accustomed to ramble about the woods without companionship, she walked leisurely along the rocky road, swinging the tin bucket in one hand, and pausing now and then to watch the shy red-birds that flitted like flame-jets in and out of the trees as she passed. The unbroken repose of earth and sky, the cold still atmosphere and peaceful sunshine, touched her heart with a sense of quiet but pure happiness, and half unconsciously she began a hymn which her grandfather often sung over his anvil:“Lord, in the morning Thou shalt hearMy voice ascending high;To Thee will I direct my prayer,To Thee lift up mine eye.”

Ere the first verse was ended, the clatter of horse's hoofs hushed her song, and she glanced up as a harsh voice asked impatiently:

“Are you stone deaf? I say, is there a blacksmith's shop near?”

The rider reined in his horse, a spirited, beautiful animal, and waited for an answer.

“Yes, sir. There is a shop about half a mile ahead, on the right hand side, where the road forks.”

He just touched his hat with the end of his gloved fingers and galloped on. When Edna reached the shop she saw her grandfather examining the horse's shoes, while the stanger walked up and down the road before the forge. He was a very tall, strong man, with a gray shawl thrown over one shoulder, and a black fur hat drawn so far over his face that only the lower portion was visible; and this, swarthy and harsh, left a most disagreeable impression on the child's mind as she passed him and went up to the spot where Mr. Hunt was at work. Putting the bucket behind her, she stooped, kissed him on his furrowed forehead, and said:

“Grandpa, guess what brought me to see you to-day?”

“I forgot my dinner, and you have trudged over here to bring it. An't I right, Pearl? Stand back, honey, or this Satan of a horse may kick your brains out. I can hardly manage him.”

Here the stranger uttered an oath, and called out, “How much longer do you intend to keep me waiting?”

“No longer, sir, than I can help, as I like the company of polite people.”

“O grandpa!” whispered Edna deprecatingly, as she saw the traveller come rapidly forward and throw his shawl down on the grass. Mr. Hunt pushed back his old battered woolen hat, and looked steadily at the master of the horse—saying gravely and resolutely:

“I'll finish the job as soon as I can, and that is as much as any reasonable man would ask. Now, sir, if that doesn't suit you, you can take your horse and put out, and swear at somebody else, for I won't stand it.”

“It is a cursed nuisance to be detained here for such a trifle as one shoe, and you might hurry yourself.”

“Your horse is very restless and vicious, and I could shoe two gentle ones while I am trying to quiet him.”

The man muttered something indistinctly, and laying his hand heavily on the horse's mane, said very sternly a few words, which were utterly unintelligible to his human listeners, though they certainly exerted a magical influence over the fiery creature, who, savage as the pampered pets of Diomedes, soon stood tranquil and contented, rubbing his head against his master's shoulder. Repelled by the rude harshness of this man, Edna walked into the shop, and watched the silent group outside, until the work was finished and Mr. Hunt threw down his tools and wiped his face.

“What do I owe you?” said the impatient rider, springing to his saddle, and putting his hand into his vest pocket.

“I charge nothing for ‘such trifles’ as that.”

“But I am in the habit of paying for my work.”

“It is not worth talking about. Good day, sir.”

Mr. Hunt turned and walked into his shop.

“There is a dollar, it is the only small change I have.” He rode up to the door of the shed, threw the small gold coin toward the blacksmith, and was riding rapidly away, when Edna darted after him, exclaiming, “Stop, sir! you have left your shawl!”

He turned in the saddle, and even under the screen of her calico bonnet she felt the fiery gleam of his eyes, as he stooped to take the shawl from her hand. Once more his fingers touched his hat, he bowed and said hastily,

OF all that transpired during many ensuing weeks Edna knew little. She retained, in after years, only a vague, confused remembrance of keen anguish and utter prostration, and an abiding sense of irreparable loss. In delirious visions she saw her grandfather now struggling in the grasp of Phlegyas, and now writhing in the fiery tomb of Uberti, with jets of flame leaping through his white hair, and his shrunken hands stretched appealingly toward her, as she had seen those of the doomed Ghibelline leader, in the hideous Dante picture. All the appalling images evoked by the sombre and embittered imagination of the gloomy Tuscan had seized upon her fancy, even in happy hours, and were now reproduced by her disordered brain in multitudinous and aggravated forms. Her wails of agony, her passionate prayers to God to release the beloved spirit from the tortures which her delirium painted, were painful beyond expression to those who watched her ravings; and it was with a feeling of relief that they finally saw her sink into apathy—into a quiet mental stupor—from which nothing seemed to rouse her. She did not remark Mrs. Hunt's absence, or the presence of the neighbors at her bedside. And one morning, when she was wrapped up and placed by the fire, Mrs. Wood told her as gently as possible that her grandmother had died from a disease which was ravaging the country, and supposed to be cholera. The intelligence produced no emotion; she merely looked up an instant, glanced mournfully around the dreary room, and, shivering slightly, drooped her head again on her hand. Week after week went slowly by, and she was removed to Mrs. Wood's house, but no improvement was discernible, and the belief became general that the child's mind had sunk into hopeless imbecility. The kind-hearted miller and his wife endeavored to coax her out of her chair by the chimney-corner, but she crouched there, a wan, mute figure of woe, pitiable to contemplate; asking no questions, causing no trouble, receiving no consolation. One bright March morning she sat, as usual, with her face bowed on her thin hand, and her vacant gaze fixed on the blazing fire, when, through the open window, came the impatient lowing of a cow. Mrs. Wood saw a change pass swiftly over the girl's face, and a quiver cross the lips so long frozen. She lifted her head, rose, and followed the sound, and soon stood at the side of Brindle, who now furnished milk for the miller's family. As the gentle cow recognized and looked at her, with an expression almost human in the mild, liquid eyes, all the events of that last serene evening swept back to Edna's deadened memory, and, leaning her head on Brindle's horns, she shed the first tears that had flowed for her great loss, while sobs, thick and suffocating, shook her feeble, emaciated frame.

“Bless the poor little outcast, she will get well now. That is just exactly what she needs. I tell you, Peter, one good cry like that is worth a wagon-load of physic. Don't go near her; let her have her cry out. Poor thing! It an't often you see a child love her grand-daddy as she loves Aaron Hunt. Poor lamb!”

Mrs. Wood wiped her own eyes, and went back to her weaving; and Edna turned away from the mill and walked to her deserted home, while the tears poured ceaselessly over her white cheeks. As she approached the old house she saw that it was shut up and neglected; but when she opened the gate, Grip, the fierce yellow terror of the whole neighborhood, sprang from the door-step, where he kept guard as tirelessly as Maida, and, with a dismal whine of welcome, leaped up and put his paws on her shoulders. This had been the blacksmith's pet, fed by his hand, chained when he went to the shop, and released at his return; and grim and repulsively ugly though he was, he was the only playmate Edna had ever known; had gamboled around her cradle, slept with her on the sheepskin, and frolicked with her through the woods, in many a long search for Brindle. He alone remained of all the happy past; and as precious memories crowded mournfully up, she sat upon the steps of the dreary homestead, with her arms around his neck, and wept bitterly. After an hour she left the house, and, followed by the dog, crossed the woods in the direction of the neighborhood graveyard. In order to reach it she was forced to pass by the spring and the green hillock where Mr. and Mrs. Dent slept side by side, but no nervous terror seized her now as formerly; the great present horror swallowed up all others, and, though she trembled from physical debility, she dragged herself on till the rude, rough paling of the burying-ground stood before her. O dreary desolation! thy name is country graveyard! Here no polished sculptured stela pointed to the Eternal Rest beyond; no classic marbles told, in gilded characters, the virtues of the dead; no flowery-fringed gravel-walks wound from murmuring waterfalls and rippling fountains to crystal lakes, where trailing willows threw their flickering shadows over silver-dusted lilies; no spicy perfume of purple heliotrope and starry jasmine burdened the silent air; none of the solemn beauties and soothing charms of Greenwood or Mount Auburn wooed the mourner from her weight of woe. But decaying head-boards, green with the lichen-fingered touch of time, leaned over neglected mounds, where last year's weeds shivered in the sighing breeze, and autumn winds and winter rains had drifted a brown shroud of shriveled leaves; while here and there meek-eyed sheep lay sunning themselves upon the trampled graves, and the slow-measured sound of a bell dirged now and then as cattle browsed on the scanty herbage in this most neglected of God's Acres. Could Charles Lamb have turned from the pompous epitaphs and high-flown panegyrics of that English cemetery, to the rudely-lettered boards which here briefly told the names and ages of the sleepers in these narrow beds, he had never asked the question which now stands as a melancholy epigram on family favoritism and human frailty. Gold gilds even the lineaments and haunts of Death, making Père la Chaise a favored spot for fêtes champêtres; while poverty hangs neither vail nor mask over the grinning ghoul, and flees, superstition-spurred, from the hideous precincts.

In one corner of the inclosure, where Edna's parents slept, she found the new mounds that covered the remains of those who had nurtured and guarded her young life; and on an unpainted board was written in large letters:

“To the memory of Aaron Hunt: an honest blacksmith, and true Christian; aged sixty-eight years and six months.”

Here, with her head on her grandfather's grave, and the faithful dog crouched at her feet, lay the orphan, wrestling with grief and loneliness, striving to face a future that loomed before her spectre-thronged; and here Mr. Wood found her when anxiety at her long absence induced his wife to institute a search for the missing invalid. The storm of sobs and tears had spent itself, fortitude took the measure of the burden imposed, shouldered the galling weight, and henceforth, with undimmed vision, walked steadily to the appointed goal. The miller was surprised to find her so calm, and as they went homeward she asked the particulars of all that had occurred, and thanked him gravely but cordially for all the kind care bestowed upon her, and for the last friendly offices performed for her grandfather.

Conscious of her complete helplessness and physical prostration, she ventured no allusion to the future, but waited patiently until renewed strength permitted the execution of designs now fully mapped out. Notwithstanding her feebleness, she rendered herself invaluable to Mrs. Wood, who praised her dexterity and neatness as a seamstress, and predicted that she would make a model housekeeper.

Late one Sunday evening in May, as the miller and his wife sat upon the steps of their humble and comfortless looking home, they saw Edna slowly approaching, and surmised where she had spent the afternoon. Instead of going into the house she seated herself beside them, and, removing her bonnet, traces of tears were visible on her sad but patient face.

“You ought not to go over yonder so often, child. It is not good for you,” said the miller, knocking the ashes from his pipe.

She shaded her countenance with her hand, and after a moment said, in a low but steady tone:

“I shall never go there again. I have said good by to every thing, and have nothing now to keep me here. You and Mrs. Wood have been very kind to me, and I thank you heartily; but you have a family of children, and have your hands full to support them without taking care of me. I know that our house must go to you to pay that old debt, and even the horse and cow; and there will be nothing left when you are paid. You are very good, indeed, to offer me a home here, and I never can forget your kindness; but I should not be willing to live on any body's charity; and besides, all the world is alike to me now, and I want to get out of sight of—of—what shows my sorrow to me every day. I don't love this place now; it won't let me forget, even for a minute, and—and—”

Here the voice faltered and she paused.

“But where could you go, and how could you make your bread, you poor little ailing thing?”

“I hear that in the town of Columbus, Georgia, even little children get wages to work in the factory, and I know I can earn enough to pay my board among the factory people.”

“But you are too young to be straying about in a strange place. If you will stay here, and help my wife about the house and the weaving, I will take good care of you, and clothe you till you are grown and married.”

“I would rather go away, because I want to be educated, and I can't be if I stay here.”

“Fiddlestick! you will know as much as the balance of us, and that's all you will ever have any use for. I notice you have a hankering after books, but the quicker you get that foolishness out of your head the better; for books won't put bread in your mouth and clothes on your back; and folks that want to be better than their neighbors generally turn out worse. The less book-learning you women have the better.”

“I don't see that it is any of your business, Peter Wood, how much learning we women choose to get, provided your bread is baked and your socks darned when you want 'em. A woman has as good a right as a man to get book-learning, if she wants it; and as for sense, I'll thank you, mine is as good as yours any day; and folks have said it was a blessed thing for the neighborhood when the rheumatiz laid Peter Wood up, and his wife, Dorothy Elmira Wood, run the mill. Now, it's of no earthly use to cut at us women over that child's shoulders; if she wants an education she has as much right to it as any body, if she can pay for it. My doctrine is, every body has a right to whatever they can pay for, whether it is schooling or a satin frock!”

Mrs Wood seized her snuff-bottle and plunged a stick vigorously into the contents, and, as the miller showed no disposition to skirmish, she continued:

“I take an interest in you, Edna Earl, because I loved your mother, who was the only sweet-tempered beauty that ever I knew. I think I never set my eyes on a prettier face, with big brown eyes as meek as a partridge's; and then her hands and feet were as small as a queen's. Now, as long as you are satisfied to stay here I shall be glad to have you, and I will do as well for you as for my own Tabitha; but, if you are bent on factory work and schooling, I have got no more to say; for I have no right to say where you shall go or where you shall stay. But one thing I do want to tell you: it is a serious thing for a poor, motherless girl to be all alone among strangers.”

There was a brief silence, and Edna answered slowly:

“Yes, Mrs. Wood, I know it is; but God can protect me there as well as here, and I have none now but Him. I have made up my mind to go, because I think it is the best for me, and I hope Mr. Wood will carry me to the Chattanooga depot to-morrow morning, as the train leaves early. I have a little money—seven dollars—that—that grandpa gave me at different times, and both Brindle's calves belong to me—he gave them to me—and I thought may be you would pay me a few dollars for them.”

“But you are not ready to start to-morrow.”

“Yes, sir, I washed and ironed my clothes yesterday, and what few I have are all packed in my box. Every thing is ready now, and, as I have to go, I might as well start to-morrow.”

“Don't you think you will get dreadfully home-sick in about a month, and write to me to come and fetch you back?”

“I have no home and nobody to love me, how then can I ever be home-sick? Grandpa's grave is all the home I have, and—and—God would not take me there when I was so sick, and—and—” The quiver of her face showed that she was losing her self-control, and turning away, she took the cedar piggin, and went out to milk Brindle for the last time.

Feeling that they had no right to dictate her future course, neither the miller nor his wife offered any further opposition, and very early the next morning, after Mrs. Wood had given the girl what she called “some good motherly advice,” and provided her with a basket containing food for the journey, she kissed her heartily several times and saw her stowed away in the miller's covered cart which was to convey her to the depot. The road ran by the old blacksmith's shop, and Mr. Wood's eyes filled as he noticed the wistful, lingering, loving gaze which the girl fixed upon it, until a grove of trees shut out the view; then the head bowed itself and a stifled moan reached his ears.

The engine whistled as they approached the depot, and Edna was hurried aboard the train, while her companion busied himself in transferring her box of clothing to the baggage-car. She had insisted on taking her grandfather's dog with her, and, notwithstanding the horrified looks of the passengers and the scowl of the conductor, he followed her into the car and threw himself under the seat, glaring at all who passed and looking as hideously savage as the Norse Managarmar.

“You can't have a whole seat to yourself, and nobody wants to sit near that ugly brute,” said the surly conductor.

Edna glanced down the aisle, and saw two young gentlemen stretched at full length on separate seats, eyeing her curiously.

Observing that the small seat next to the door was partially filled with the baggage of the parties who sat in front of it, she rose and called the dog, saying to the conductor as she did so;

“I will take that half of a seat yonder, where I will be in nobody's way.”

Here Mr. Wood came forward, thrust her ticket into her fingers, and shook her hand warmly, saying hurriedly:

“Hold on to your ticket, and don't put your head out of the window. I told the conductor he must look after you and your box when you left the cars; said he would. Good-by, Edna; take care of yourself, and may God bless you, child.”

The locomotive whistled, the train moved slowly on, and the miller hastened back to his cart.

As the engine got fully under way, and dashed around a curve, the small, straggling village disappeared, trees and hills seemed to the orphan to fly past the window; and when she leaned out and looked back, only the mist-mantled rocks of Lookout, and the dim purplish outline of the Sequatchie heights were familiar.

In the shadow of that solitary sentinel peak her life had been passed; she had gathered chestnuts and chincapins among its wooded clefts, and clambered over its gray boulders as fearlessly as the young llamas of the Parimé; and now, as it rapidly receded and finally vanished, she felt as if the last link that bound her to the past had suddenly snapped; the last friendly face which had daily looked down on her for twelve years was shut out forever, and she and Grip were indeed alone, in a great struggling world of selfishness and sin. The sun shone dazzlingly over wide fields of grain, whose green billows swelled and surged under the freshening breeze; golden butterflies fluttered over the pink and blue morning-glories that festooned the rail-fences; a brakeman whistled merrily on the platform, and children inside the car prattled and played, while at one end a slender little girlish figure, in homespun dress and pink calico bonnet, crouched in a corner of the seat, staring back in the direction of hooded Lookout, feeling that each instant bore her farther from the dear graves of her dead; and oppressed with an intolerable sense of desolation and utter isolation in the midst of hundreds of her own race, who were too entirely absorbed in their individual speculations, fears, and aims, to spare even a glance at that solitary young mariner, who saw the last headland fade from view and found herself, with no pilot but ambition, drifting rapidly out on the great, unknown, treacherous Sea of Life, strewn with mournful human wrecks, whom the charts and buoys of six thousand years of navigation could not guide to a haven of usefulness and peace. Interminable seemed the dreary day, which finally drew to a close, and Edna, who was weary of her cramped position, laid her aching head on the window-sill, and watched the red light of day die in the west, where a young moon hung her silvery crescent among the dusky tree-tops, and the stars flashed out thick and fast. Far away among strangers, uncared for and unnoticed, come what might, she felt that God's changeless stars smiled down as lovingly upon her face as on her grandfather's grave; and that the cosmopolitan language of nature knew neither the modifications of time and space, the distinctions of social caste, nor the limitations of national dialects.

As the night wore on, she opened the cherished copy of Dante and tried to read, but the print was too fine for the dim lamp which hung at some distance from her corner. Her head ached violently, and, as sleep was impossible, she put the book back in her pocket, and watched the flitting trees and fences, rocky banks, and occasional houses, which seemed weird in the darkness. As silence deepened in the car, her sense of loneliness became more and more painful, and finally she turned and pressed her cheek against the fair chubby hand of a baby, who slept with its curly head on its mother's shoulder, and its little dimpled arm and hand hanging over the back of the seat. There was comfort and a soothing sensation of human companionship in the touch of that baby's hand; it seemed a link in the electric chain of sympathy, and, after a time, the orphan's eyes closed—fatigue conquered memory and sorrow, and she fell asleep, with her lips pressed to those mesmeric baby fingers, and Grip's head resting against her knee.

Diamond-powdered “lilies of the field” folded their perfumed petals under the Syrian dew, wherewith God nightly baptized them in token of His ceaseless guardianship, and the sinless world of birds, the “fowls of the air,” those secure and blithe, yet improvident, little gleaners in God's granary, nestled serenely under the shadow of the Almighty wing; but was the all-seeing, all-directing Eye likewise upon that desolate and destitute young mourner who sank to rest with “Our Father which art in heaven” upon her trembling lips? Was it a decree in the will and wisdom of our God, or a fiat from the blind fumbling of Atheistic Chance, or was it in accordance with the rigid edict of Pantheistic Necessity, that at that instant the cherubim of death swooped down on the sleeping passengers, and silver cords and golden bowls were rudely snapped and crushed, amid the crash of timbers, the screams of women and children, and the groans of tortured men, that made night hideous? Over the holy hills of Judea, out of crumbling Jerusalem, the message of Messiah has floated on the wings of eighteen centuries: “What I do thou knowest not now, but thou shalt know hereafter.”

Edna was awakened by a succession of shrill sounds, which indicated that the engineer was either frightened or frantic; the conductor rushed bare-headed through the car; people sprang to their feet; there was a scramble on the platform; then a shock and crash as if the day of doom had dawned—and all was chaos!

VIEWED by the aid of lanterns and the lurid, flickering light of torches, the scene of disaster presented a ghastly debris of dead and dying, of crushed cars and wounded men and women, who writhed and groaned among the shattered timbers from which they found it impossible to extricate themselves. The cries of those who recognized relatives in the mutilated corpses that were dragged out from the wreck increased the horrors of the occasion; and when Edna opened her eyes amid the flaring of torches and the piercing wails of the bereaved passengers, her first impression was, that she had died and gone to Dante's “Hell;” but the pangs that seized her when she attempted to move soon dispelled this frightful illusion, and by degrees the truth presented itself to her blunted faculties. She was held fast between timbers, one of which seemed to have fallen across her feet and crushed them, as she was unable to move them, and was conscious of a horrible sensation of numbness; one arm, too, was pinioned at her side, and something heavy and cold lay upon her throat and chest. Lifting this weight with her uninjured hand, she uttered an exclamation of horror as the white face of the little baby whose fingers she had clasped now met her astonished gaze; and she saw that the sweet coral lips were pinched and purple, the waxen lids lay rigid over the blue eyes, and the dimpled hand was stiff and icy. The confusion increased as day broke and a large crowd collected to offer assistance, and Edna watched her approaching deliverers as they cut their way through the wreck and lifted out the wretched sufferers. Finally two men, with axes in their hands, bent down and looked into her face.

“Here is a live child and a dead baby wedged in between these beams! Are you much hurt, little one?”

“Yes, I believe I am. Please take this log off my feet.”

It was a difficult matter, but at length strong arms raised her, carried her some distance from the ruins, and placed her on the grass, where several other persons were writhing and groaning. The collision, which precipitated the train from trestle-work over a deep ravine, had occurred near a village depot, and two physicians were busily engaged in examining the wounded. The sun had risen, and shone full on Edna's pale suffering face, when one of the surgeons, with a countenance that indexed earnest sympathy and compassion, came to investigate the extent of her injuries, and sat down on the grass beside her. Very tenderly he handled her, and after a few moments said gently:

“I am obliged to hurt you a little, my child, for your shoulder is dislocated, and some of the bones are broken in your feet; but I will be as tender as possible. Here, Lennox! help me.”

The pain was so intense that she fainted, and after a short time, when she recovered her consciousness, her feet and ankles were tightly bandaged, and the doctor was chafing her hands and bathing her face with some powerful extract. Smoothing back her hair, he said:

“Were your parents on the cars? Do you know whether they are hurt?”

“They both died when I was a baby.”

“Who was with you?”

“Nobody but Grip—my dog.”

“Had you no relatives or friends on the train?”

“I have none. I am all alone in the world.”

“Where did you come from?”

AT length, by the aid of crutches, Edna was able to leave the room where she had been so long confined, and explore the house in which every day discovered some new charm. The parlors and sitting-room opened on a long, arched verandah, which extended around two sides of the building, and was paved with variegated tiles; while the stained glass doors of the dining-room, with its lofty frescoed ceiling and deep bow-windows, led by two white marble steps out on the terrace, whence two more steps showed the beginning of a serpentine gravel walk winding down to an octagonal hot-house, surmounted by a richly carved pagoda-roof. Two sentinel statues—a Bacchus and Bacchante—placed on the terrace, guarded the entrance to the dining-room; and in front of the house, where a sculptured Triton threw jets of water into a gleaming circular basin, a pair of crouching monsters glared from the steps. When Edna first found herself before these grim doorkeepers, she started back in unfeigned terror, and could scarcely repress a cry of alarm, for the howling rage and despair of the distorted hideous heads seemed fearfully real, and years elapsed before she comprehended their significance, or the sombre mood which impelled their creation. They were imitations of that monumental lion's head, raised on the battle-field of Chæroneia, to commemorate the Bœotians slain. In the rear of and adjoining the library, a narrow, vaulted passage with high Gothic windows of stained glass, opened into a beautifully proportioned rotunda; and beyond this circular apartment with its ruby-tinted sky-light and Moresque frescoes, extended two other rooms, of whose shape or contents Edna knew nothing, save the tall arched windows that looked down on the terrace. The door of the rotunda was generally closed, but accidentally it stood open one morning, and she caught a glimpse of the circular form and the springing dome. Evidently this portion of the mansion had been recently built, while the remainder of the house had been constructed many years earlier; but all desire to explore it was extinguished when Mrs. Murray remarked one day:

“That passage leads to my son's apartments, and he dislikes noise or intrusion.”

Thenceforth Edna avoided it as if the plagues of Pharaoh were pent therein. To her dazzled eyes this luxurious home was a fairy palace, an enchanted region, and, with eager curiosity and boundless admiration, she gazed upon beautiful articles whose use she could not even conjecture. The furniture throughout the mansion was elegant and costly; pictures, statues, bronzes, marble, silver, rosewood, ebony, mosaics, satin, velvet—naught that the most fastidious and cultivated taste or dilettanteism could suggest, or lavish expenditure supply, was wanting; while the elaborate and beautiful arrangement of the extensive grounds showed with how prodigal a hand the owner squandered a princely fortune. The flower-garden and lawn comprised fifteen acres, and the subdivisions were formed entirely by hedges, save that portion of the park, surrounded by a tall iron railing, where congregated a motley menagerie of deer, bison, a Lapland reindeer, a Peruvian llama, some Cashmere goats, a chamois, wounded and caught on the Jungfrau, and a large white cow from Ava. This part of the inclosure was thickly studded with large oaks, groups of beech and elm, and a few enormous cedars which would not have shamed their sacred prototypes sighing in Syrian breezes along the rocky gorges of Lebanon. The branches were low and spreading, and even at mid-day the sunshine barely freckled the cool, mossy knolls where the animals sought refuge from the summer heat of the open and smoothly-shaven lawn. Here and there, on the soft, green sward, was presented that vegetable antithesis, a circlet of martinet poplars standing vis-a-vis to a clump of willows whose long hair threw quivering, fringy shadows when the slanting rays of dying sunlight burnished the white and purple petals nestling among the clover tufts. Rustic seats of bark, cane, and metal were scattered through the grounds, and where the well-trimmed numerous hedges divided the parterre, china, marble, and iron vases of varied mould held rare creepers and lovely exotics; and rich masses of roses swung their fragrant chalices of crimson and gold, rivaling the glory of Pæstum and of Bendemcer. The elevation upon which the house was placed commanded an extensive view of the surrounding country. Far away to the north-east purplish gray waves along the sky showed the range of lofty hills, whose rocky battlements were not yet scarred and branded by the red hand of fratricidal war; and in an easterly direction, scarcely two miles distant, glittering spires told where the village clung to the railroad, and to a deep rushing creek, whose sinuous course was distinctly marked by the dense growth that clothed its steep banks. Now and then luxuriant fields of corn covered the level lands with an emerald mantle, while sheep and cattle roamed through the adjacent champaign; and in the calm, cool morning air, a black smoke-serpent crawled above the tree-tops, mapping out the track over which the long train of cars darted and thundered. Mr. Paul Murray, the first proprietor of the estate, and father of the present owner, had early in life spent much time in France, where, espousing the royalist cause, his sympathies were fully enlisted by the desperate daring of Charette, Stofflet and Cathelineau. On his return to his native land his admiration of the heroism of those who dwelt upon the Loire, found expression in one of their sobriquets, “Le Bocage,” which he gave to his country residence; and certainly the venerable groves that surrounded it justified the application. While his own fortune was handsome and abundant, he married the orphan of a rich banker, who survived her father only a short time, and died leaving Mr. Murray childless. After a few years, when the frosts of age fell upon his head, he married a handsome and very wealthy widow; but, unfortunately, having lost their first child, a daughter, he lived only long enough to hear the infantile prattle of his son, St. Elmo, to whom he bequeathed an immense fortune, which many succeeding years of reckless expenditure had failed to materially impair. Such was “Le Bocage,” naturally a beautiful situation, improved and embellished with every thing which refined taste and world-wide travel could suggest to the fastidious owner. But notwithstanding the countless charms of the home so benevolently offered to her, the blacksmith's granddaughter was conscious of a great need, scarcely to be explained, yet fully felt—the dreary lack of that which she had yet to learn could not be purchased by the treasures of Oude—the priceless peace and genial glow which only the contented, happy hearts of its inmates can diffuse over even a palatial homestead. She also realized, without analyzing the fact, that the majestic repose and boundless spontaneity of nature yielded a sense of companionship almost of tender, dumb sympathy, which all the polished artificialities and recherché arrangements of man utterly failed to furnish. While dazzled by the glitter and splendor of “Le Bocage,” she shivered in its silent dreariness, its cold, aristocratic formalism, and she yearned for the soft, musical babble of the spring-branch, where, standing ankle-deep in water under the friendly shadow of Lookout, she had spent long, blissful July days in striving to build a wall of rounded pebbles down which the crystal ripples would fall, a miniature Talulah or Tuccoa. The chrism of nature had anointed her early life and consecrated her heart, but fate brought her to the vestibule of the temple of Mammon, and its defiling incense floated about her. How long would the consecration last? As she slowly limped about the house and grounds, acquainting herself with the details, she was impressed with the belief that happiness had once held her court here, had been dethroned, exiled, and now waited beyond the confines of the park, anxious but unable to renew her reign and expel usurping gloom. For some weeks after her arrival she took her meals in her own room, and having learned to recognize the hasty, heavy tread of the dreaded master of the house, she invariably fled from the sound of his steps as she would have shunned an ogre; consequently her knowledge of him was limited to the brief inspection and uncomplimentary conversation which introduced him to her acquaintance on the day of his return. Her habitual avoidance and desire of continued concealment was, however, summarily thwarted when Mrs. Murray came into her room late one night, and asked:

“Did not I see you walking this afternoon without your crutches?”

“Yes, ma'am, I was trying to see if I could not do without them entirely.”

“Did the experiment cause you any pain?”

“No pain exactly, but I find my ankle still weak.”

“Be careful not to overstrain it; by degrees it will strengthen, if you use it moderately. By the by, you are now well enough to come to the table; and from breakfast to-morrow you will take your meals with us in the dining-room.”

A shiver of apprehension seized Edna, and in a frightened tone she ejaculated:

“Ma'am!”

“I say, in future you will eat at the table instead of here in this room.”

THE narrow, vaulted passage leading to Mr. Murray's suit of rooms was dim and gloomy when Edna approached the partially opened door of the rotunda, whence issued a stream of light. Timidly she crossed the threshold and stood within on the checkered floor, whose polished tiles glistened under the glare of gas from bronze brackets representing Telamones, that stood at regular intervals around the apartment. The walls were painted in Saracenic style, and here and there hung specimens of Oriental armor—Turcoman cimeters Damascus swords, Bedouin lances, and a crimson silk flag, with heavy gold fringe, surmounted by a crescent. The cornice of the lofty arched ceiling was elaborately arabesque, and as Edna looked up she saw through the glass roof the flickering of stars in the summer sky. In the centre of the room, immediately under the dome, stretched a billiard-table, and near it was a circular one of black marble, inlaid with red onyx and lapis lazuli, which formed a miniature zodiac similar to that at Denderah, while in the middle of this table sat a small Murano hour-glass, filled with sand from the dreary valley of El Ghor. A huge plaster Trimurti stood close to the wall, on a triangular pedestal of black rock, and the Siva-face and the writhing cobra confronted all who entered. Just opposite grinned a red granite slab with a quaint basso-relievo taken from the ruins of Elora. Near the door were two silken divans, and a richly carved urn, three feet high, which had once ornamented the façade of a tomb in the royal days of Petra, ere the curse fell on Edom, now stood an in memoriam of the original Necropolis. For what purpose this room was designed or used Edna could not imagine, and after a hasty survey of its singular furniture, she crossed the rotundo, and knocked at the door that stood slightly ajar. All was silent; but the smell of a cigar told her that the owner was within, and she knocked once more.

“Come in.”

“I don't wish to come in; I only want to hand you something.”

“Oh! the deuce you don't! But I never meet people even half-way, so come in you must, if you have any thing to say to me. I have neither blue blazes nor pitchforks about me, and you will be safe inside. I give you my word there are no small devils shut up here, to fly away with whomsoever peeps in! Either enter, I say, or be off.”

The temptation was powerful to accept the alternative; but as he had evidently recognized her voice, she pushed open the door and reluctantly entered. It was a long room, and at the end were two beautiful fluted white marble pillars, supporting a handsome arch, where hung heavy curtains of crimson Persian silk, that were now partially looped back, showing the furniture of the sleeping apartment beyond the richly carved arch. For a moment the bright light dazzled the orphan, and she shaded her eyes; but the next instant Mr. Murray rose from a sofa near the window, and advanced a step or two, taking the cigar from his lips.

“Come to the window and take a seat.”

He pointed to the sofa; but she shook her head, and said quickly:

“I have something which belongs to you, Mr. Murray, which I think you must value very much, and therefore I wanted to see it safe in your own hands.”

Without raising her eyes she held the book toward him.

MRS. MURRAY had informed Edna that the gentleman whom she had engaged to instruct her resided in the neighboring town of —, and one Monday morning in August she carried her to see him, telling her, as they drove along, that he was the minister of the largest church in the country, was an old friend of her family, and that she considered herself exceedingly fortunate in having prevailed upon him to consent to undertake her education. The parsonage stood on the skirts of the village, in a square immediately opposite the church, and was separated from it by a wide handsome street, lined on either side with elm trees. The old-fashioned house was of brick, with a wooden portico jutting out over the front door, and around the slender pillars twined honeysuckle and clematis tendrils, purple with clustering bells; while the brick walls were draped with luxuriant ivy, that hung in festoons from the eaves, and clambered up the chimneys and in at the windows. The daily-swept walk leading to the gate was bordered with white and purple lilies—“flags,” as the villagers dubbed them—and over the little gate sprang an arch of lattice-work loaded with Belgian and English honeysuckle, whose fragrant wreaths drooped till they touched the heads of all who entered. When Mrs. Murray and Edna ascended the steps and knocked at the open door, bearing the name “Allan Hammond,” no living thing was visible, save a thrush that looked out shyly from the clematis vines; and after waiting a moment, Mrs. Murray entered unannounced. They looked into the parlor, with its cool matting and white curtains and polished old-fashioned mahogany furniture, but the room was unoccupied; then passing on to the library or study, where tiers of books rose to the ceiling, they saw, through the open window, the form of the pastor, who was stooping to gather the violets blooming in the little shaded garden at the rear of the house. A large white cat sunned herself on the strawberry bed, and a mocking-bird sang in the myrtle-tree that overshadowed the study-window. Mrs. Murray called to the minister, and taking off his straw hat he bowed, and came to meet them.

“Mr. Hammond, I hope I do not interrupt you?”

“No, Ellen, you never interrupt me. I was merely gathering some violets to strew in a child's coffin. Susan Archer, poor thing! lost her little Winnie last night, and I knew she would like some flowers to sprinkle over her baby.”

He shook hands with Mrs. Murray, and turning to her companion offered his hand, saying kindly:

“This is my pupil, Edna, I presume? I expected you several days ago, and am very glad to see you at last. Come into the house and let us become acquainted at once.”

As he led the way to the library, talking the while to Mrs. Murray, Edna's eyes followed him with an expression of intense veneration, for he appeared to her a living original of the pictured prophets—the Samuel, Isaiah, and Ezekiel, whose faces she had studied in the large illustrated Bible that lay on a satin cushion in the sitting-room at Le Bocage. Sixty-five years of wrestling and conquests on the “Quarantina” of life had set upon his noble and benignant countenance the seal of holiness, and shed over his placid features the mild, sweet light of a pure, serene heart, of a lofty, trusting, sanctified soul. His white hair and beard had the silvery sheen which seems peculiar to prematurely gray heads, and the snowy mass wonderfully softened the outline of the face; while the pleasant smile on his lips, the warm, cheering light in his bright blue eyes, won the perfect trust, the profound respect, the lasting love and veneration of those who entered the charmed circle of his influence. Learned without pedantry, dignified but not pompous, genial and urbane; never forgetting the sanctity of his mission, though never thrusting its credentials into notice; judging the actions of all with a leniency which he denied to his own; zealous without bigotry, charitable yet rigidly just, as free from austerity as levity, his heart throbbed with warm, tender sympathy for his race; and while none felt his or her happiness complete until his cordial congratulations sealed it, every sad mourner realized that her burden of woe was lightened when poured into his sympathizing ears. The sage counselor of the aged among his flock, he was the loved companion of the younger members, in whose juvenile sports and sorrows he was never too busy to interest himself; and it was not surprising that over all classes and denominations he wielded an influence incalculable for good. The limits of one church could not contain his great heart, which went forth in yearning love and fellowship to his Christian brethren and co-laborers throughout the world, while the refrain of his daily work was, “Bear ye one another's burdens.” So in the evening of a life blessed with the bounteous fruitage of good deeds, he walked to and fro, in the wide vineyard of God, with the light of peace, of faith, and hope, and ballowed resignation shining over his worn and aged face.

Drawing Edna to a seat beside him on the sofa, Mr. Hammond said:

“Mrs. Murray has intrusted your education entirely to me; but before I decide positively what books you will require I should like to know what particular branches of study you love best. Do you feel disposed to take up Latin?”

DURING the months of September and October Mrs. Murray filled the house with company, and parties of gentlemen came from time to time to enjoy the game season and take part in the hunts to which St. Elmo devoted himself. There were elegant dinners and petits soupers that would not have disgraced Tusculum, or made Lucullus blush when Pompey and Cicero sought to surprise him in the “Apollo;” there were billiard-matches and horse-races, and merry gatherings at the ten-pin alley; and laughter, and music, and dancing usurped the dominions where silence and gloom had so long reigned. Naturally shy and unaccustomed to companionship, Edna felt no desire to participate in these festivities, but became more and more absorbed in her studies, and her knowledge of the company was limited to the brief intercourse of the table, where she observed the deference yielded to the opinions of the master of the house, and the dread that all manifested lest they should fall under the lash of his merciless sarcasm. An Ishmael in society, his uplifted hand smote all conventionalities and shams, spared neither age nor sex, nor sanctuaries, and acknowledged sanctity nowhere. The punctilious courtesy of his manner polished and pointed his satire, and when a personal application of his remarks was possible, he would bow gracefully to the lady indicated, and fill her glass with wine, while he filled her heart with chagrin and rankling hate. Since the restoration of the Dante, not a word had passed between him and Edna, who regarded him with increasing detestation; but on one occasion, when the conversation was general, and he sat silent at the foot of the table, she looked up at him and found his eyes fixed on her face. Inclining his head slightly to arrest her attention, he handed a decanter of sherry to one of the servants, with some brief direction, and a moment after her glass was filled, and the waiter said:

“Mr. Murray's compliments to Aaron Hunt's granddaughter.” Observation had taught her what was customary on such occasions, and she knew that he had once noticed her taking wine with the gentleman who sat next to her; but now repugnance conquered politeness, the mention of her grandfather's name seemed an insult from his lips, and putting her hand over her glass, she looked him full in the face and shook her head. Nevertheless he lifted his wine, bowed, and drank the last drop in the crystal goblet; then turned to a gentleman on his right hand, and instantly entered into a learned discussion on the superiority of the wines of the Levant over those of Germany, quoting triumphantly the lines of M. de Nevers:“Sur la membrane de leur sens,Font des sillons charmans.”

When the ladies withdrew to the parlor he rose, as was his custom, and held the door open for them. Edna was the last of the party, and as she passed him he smiled mockingly and said:

“It was unfortunate that my mother omitted to enumerate etiquette in the catalogue of studies prosecuted at the parsonage.”

Instantly the answer sprang to her lips:

“She knew I had a teacher for that branch, nearer home;” but her conscience smote her, she repressed the words, and said gravely:

“My reason was, that I think only good friends should take wine together.’

DURING the first year of Mr. Murray's absence, his brief letters to his mother were written at long intervals; in the second, they were rarer and briefer still; but toward the close of the third he wrote more frequently, and announced his intention of revisiting Egypt before his return to the land of his birth. Although no allusion was ever made to Edna, Mrs. Murray sometimes read aloud descriptions of beautiful scenery, written now among the scoriæ of Mauna Roa or Mauna Kea, and now from the pinnacle of Mount Ophir, whence, through waving forests of nutmeg and clove, flashed the blue waters of the Indian Ocean, or the silver ripples of Malacca; and, on such occasions, the orphan listened eagerly, entranced by the tropical luxuriance and grandeur of his imagery, by his gorgeous word-painting, which to her charmed ears seemed scarcely inferior to the wonderful pen-portraits of Ruskin. Those letters seemed flecked with the purple and gold, the amber and rose, the opaline and beryline tints, of which he spoke in telling the glories of Polynesian and Malaysian skies, and the matchless verdure and floral splendors of their serene spicy dells. For many days after the receipt of each, Mrs. Murray was graver and sadder, but the spectre that had disquieted Edna was thoroughly exorcised, and only when the cold touch of the golden key startled her was she conscious of a vague dread of some far-off but slowly and surely approaching evil. In the fourth year of her pupilage she was possessed by an unconquerable desire to read the Talmud, and in order to penetrate the mysteries and seize the treasures hidden in that exhaustless mine of Oriental myths, legends, and symbolisms, she prevailed upon Mr. Hammond to teach her Hebrew and the rudiments of Chaldee. Very reluctantly and disapprovingly he consented, and subsequently informed her that, as he had another pupil who was also commencing Hebrew, he would class them, and hear their recitations together. This new student was Mr. Gordon Leigh, a lawyer in the town, and a gentleman of wealth and high social position. Although quite young, he gave promise of eminence in his profession, and was a great favorite of the minister, who pronounced him the most upright and exemplary young man of his acquaintance. Edna had seen him several times at Mrs. Murray's dinners, but while she thought him exceedingly handsome, polite, and agreeable, she regarded him as a stranger, until the lessons at the Parsonage brought them every two days around the little table in the study. They began the language simultaneously; but Edna, knowing the flattering estimation in which he was held, could not resist the temptation to measure her intellect with his, and soon threatened to outrun him in the Talmud race. Piqued pride and a manly resolution to conquer spurred him on, and the venerable instructor looked on and laughed at the generous emulation thus excited. He saw an earnest friendship daily strengthening between the rivals, and knew that in Gordon Leigh's magnanimous nature there was no element which could cause an objection to the companionship to which he had paved the way.

Four months after the commencement of the new study, Edna rose at daylight to complete some exercises, which she had neglected to write out on the previous evening, and as soon as she concluded the task, went down stairs to gather the flowers. It was the cloudless morning of her seventeenth birthday and as she stood clipping geraniums and jasmine and verbena, memory flew back to the tender years in which the grisly blacksmith had watched her career with such fond pride and loving words of encouragement, and painted the white-haired old man smoking on the porch that fronted Lookout, while from his lips, tremulous with a tender smile, seemed to float the last words he had spoken to her on that calm afternoon when, in the fiery light of a dying day, he was gathered to his forefathers:

“You will make me proud of you, my little Pearl, when you are smart enough to teach a school and take care of me, for I shall be too old to work by that time.”

Now, after the lapse of years, when her educational course was almost finished, she recalled every word and look and gesture; even the thrill of horror that shook her limbs when she kissed the lips that death had sealed an hour before. Mournfully vivid was her recollection of her tenth birthday, for then he had bought her a blue ribbon for her hair, and a little china cup and saucer; and now tears sprang to her eyes as she murmured: “I have studied hard, and the triumph is at hand, but I have nobody to be proud of me now! Ah Grandpa! if you could only come back to me, your little Pearl! It is so desolate to be alone in this great world; so hard to have to know that nobody cares specially whether I live or die, whether I succeed or fail ignominiously. I have only myself to live for; only my own heart and will to sustain and stimulate me.”

Through the fringy acacias that waved their long hair across the hothouse windows, the golden sunshine flickered over the graceful, rounded, lithe figure of the orphan—over the fair young face with its delicate cameo features, warm, healthful coloring, and brave, hopeful expression. Four years had developed the pretty, sad-eyed child into a lovely woman, with a pure heart filled with humble, unostentatious piety, and a clear, vigorous intellect inured to study, and ambitious of every honorable eminence within the grasp of true womanhood.

WHEN Mr. Hammond mentioned Edna's determination to discontinue Hebrew, Mr. Leigh expressed no surprise, asked no explanation, but the minister noticed that he bit his lip, and beat a hurried tattoo with the heel of his boot on the stony hearth; and as he studiously avoided all allusion to her, he felt assured that the conversation which she had overheard must have reached the ears of her partner also, and supplied him with a satisfactory solution of her change of purpose. For several weeks Edna saw nothing of her quondam schoolmate; and fixing her thoughts more firmly than ever on her studies, the painful recollection of the birthday fête was slowly fading from her mind, when one morning, as she was returning from the parsonage, Mr. Leigh joined her, and asked permission to attend her home. The sound of his voice, the touch of his hand, brought back all the embarrassment and constraint, and called up the flush of confusion so often attributed to other sources than that from which it really springs.

After a few commonplace remarks, he asked:

“When is Mr. Murray coming home?”

“I have no idea. Even his mother is ignorant of his plans.”

“How long has he been absent?”

“Four years to-day.”

“Indeed! so long? Where is he?”

ONE afternoon, about a week after Mr. Leigh's last visit, as Edna returned from the parsonage, where she had been detained beyond the usual time, Mrs. Murray placed in her hand a note from Mrs. Inge, inviting both to dine with her that day, and meet some distinguished friends from a distant State. Mrs. Murray had already completed an elaborate toilet, and desired Edna to lose no time in making the requisite changes in her own dress. The latter took off her hat, laid her books down on a table, and said:

“Please offer my excuses to Mrs. Inge. I can not accept the invitation, and hope you will not urge me.”

“Nonsense! Let me hear no more such childish stuff, and get ready at once; we shall be too late, I am afraid.”

The orphan leaned against the mantel-piece and shook her head.

Mrs. Murray colored angrily and drew herself up haughtily.

“Edna Earl, did you hear what I said?”

“Yes, madam, but this time I can not obey you. Allow me to give you my reasons, and I am sure you will forgive what may now seem mere obstinacy. On the night of the party given by Mrs. Inge I determined, under no circumstances, to accept any future invitations to her house, for I overheard a conversation between Mrs. Hill and Mrs. Montgomery which I believe was intended to reach my ears, and consequently wounded and mortified me very much. I was ridiculed and denounced as a ‘poor upstart and interloper,’ who was being smuggled into society far above my position in life, and pronounced an avaricious schemer, intent on thrusting myself upon Mr. Leigh's notice, and ambitious of marrying him for his fortune. They sneered at the idea that we should study Hebrew with Mr. Hammond, and declared it a mere trap to catch Mr. Leigh. Now, Mrs. Murray, you know that I never had such a thought, and the bare mention of a motive so sordid, contemptible, and unwomanly surprised and disgusted me; but I resolved to study Hebrew by myself, and to avoid meeting Mr. Leigh at the parsonage; for if his sister's friends entertain such an opinion of me, I know not what other people, and even Mrs. Inge, may think. Those two ladies added some other things equally unpleasant and untrue, and as I see that they are also invited to dine to-day, it would be very disagreeable for me to meet them in Mr. Leigh's presence.”

Mrs. Murray frowned, and her lips curled, as she clasped a diamond bracelet on her arm.

“I have long since ceased to be surprised by any manifestation of Mrs. Montgomery's insolence. She doubtless judges your motives by those of her snub-nosed and excruciatingly fashionable daughter, Maud, who, rumor says, is paying most devoted attention to that same fortune of Gordon's. I shall avail myself of the first suitable occasion to suggest to her that it is rather unbecoming in persons whose fathers were convicted of forgery, and hunted out of the State, to lay such stress on the mere poverty of young aspirants for admission into society. I have always noticed that people (women especially) whose lineage is enveloped in a certain twilight haze, constitute themselves guardians of the inviolability of their pretentious cliques, and fly at the throats of those who, they imagine, desire to enter their fashionable set—their ‘mutual admiration association.’ As for Mrs. Hill, whose parents were positively respectable, even genteel, I expected less nervousness from her on the subject of genealogy, and should have given her credit for more courtesy and less malice; but, poor thing, nature denied her any individuality, and she serves ‘her circle’ in the same capacity as one of those tin reflectors fastened on locomotives. All that you heard was excessively ill-bred, and in really good society ill-breeding is more iniquitous than ill-nature; but, however annoying, it is beneath your notice, and unworthy of consideration. I would not gratify them by withdrawing from a position which you can so gracefully occupy.”

“It is no privation to me to stay at home; on the contrary, I prefer it, for I would not exchange the companionship of the books in this house for all the dinners that ever were given.”

“There is no necessity for you to make a recluse of yourself simply because two rude, silly gossips disgrace themselves. You have time enough to read and study, and still go out with me when I consider it advisable.”

“But, my dear Mrs. Murray, my position in your family, as an unknown dependent on your charity, subjects me to—”

“Is a matter which does not concern Mesdames Hill and Montgomery, as I shall most unequivocally intimate to them. I insist upon the dismissal of the whole affair from your mind. How much longer do you intend to keep me waiting?”

“I am very sorry you can not view the subject from my standpoint, but hereafter I can not accompany you to dinners and parties. Whenever you desire me to see company in your own house, I shall be glad to comply with your wishes and commands; but my self-respect will not permit me to go out to meet people who barely tolerate me through fear of offending you. It is exceedingly painful, dear Mrs. Murray, for me to have to appear disrespectful and stubborn toward you, but in this instance I can not comply with your wishes.”

I DO not wish to interrupt you. There is certainly room enough in this library for both, and my entrance need not prove the signal for your departure.”

Mr. Murray closed the door as he came in, and walking up to the bookcases, stood carefully examining the titles of the numerous volumes. It was a cold, dismal morning, and sobbing wintry winds and the ceaseless pattering of rain made the outer world seem dreary in comparison with the genial atmosphere and the ruddy glow of the cosy, luxurious library, where choice exotics breathed their fragrance and early hyacinths exhaled their rich perfume. In the centre of the morocco-covered table stood a tall glass bowl, filled with white camellias, and from its scalloped edges drooped a fringe of scarlet fuchsias; while near the window was a china statuette, in whose daily adornment Edna took unwearied interest. It was a lovely Flora, whose slender fingers held aloft small tulip-shaped vases, into which fresh blossoms were inserted every morning. The head was so arranged as to contain water, and thus preserve the wreath of natural flowers which crowned the goddess. To-day golden crocuses nestled down on the streaming hair, and purple pansies filled the fairy hands, while the tiny, rosy feet sank deep in the cushion of fine, green mosses, studded with double violets.

Edna had risen to leave the room when the master of the house entered, but at his request resumed her seat and continued reading.

After searching the shelves unavailingly, he glanced over his shoulder and asked:

“Have you seen my copy of De Guérin's Centaur anywhere about the house? I had it a week ago.”

“I beg your pardon, sir, for causing such a fruitless search; here is the book. I picked it up on the front steps, where you were reading a few afternoons since, and it opened at a passage that attracted my attention.”

She closed the volume and held it toward him, but he waved it back.

“Keep it if it interests you. I have read it once, and merely wished to refer to a particular passage. Can you guess what sentence most frequently recurs to me? If so, read it to me.”

He drew a chair close to the hearth and lighted his cigar.

Hesitatingly Edna turned the leaves.

“I am afraid, sir, that my selection would displease you.”

“I will risk it, as, notwithstanding your flattering opinion to the contrary, I am not altogether so unreasonable as to take offense at a compliance with my own request.”

Still she shrank from the task he imposed, and her fingers toyed with the scarlet fuchsias; but after eyeing her for a while, he leaned forward and pushed the glass bowl beyond her reach.

“Edna, I am waiting.”

“Well then, Mr. Murray, I should think that these two passages would impress you with peculiar force.”

Raising the book she read with much emphasis:

“Thou pursuest after wisdom, O Melampus! which is the science of the will of the gods; and thou roamest from people to people, like a mortal driven by the destinies. In the times when I kept my night-watches before the caverns, I have sometimes believed that I was about to surprise the thoughts of the sleeping Cybele, and that the mother of the gods, betrayed by her dreams, would let fall some of her secrets. But I have never yet made out more than sounds which faded away in the murmur of night, or words inarticulate as the bubbling of the rivers.

THE daring scheme of authorship had seized upon Edna's mind with a tenacity that conquered and expelled all other purposes, and though timidity and a haunting dread of the failure of the experiment prompted her to conceal the matter, even from her beloved pastor, she pondered it in secret, and bent every faculty to its successful accomplishment. Her veneration for books—the great eleemosynary granaries of human knowledge to which the world resorts—extended to those who created them; and her imagination invested authors with peculiar sanctity, as the real hierophants anointed with the chrism of truth. The glittering pinnacle of consecrated and successful authorship seemed to her longing gaze as sublime, and well-nigh as inaccessible, as the everlasting and untrodden Himalayan solitudes appear to some curious child of Thibet or Nepaul; who, gamboling among pheasants and rhododendrons, shades her dazzled eyes with her hand, and looks up awe-stricken and wondering at the ice-domes and snow-minarets of lonely Deodunga, earth's loftiest and purest altar, nimbused with the dawning and the dying light of the day. There were times when the thought of presenting herself as a candidate for admission into the band of literary exoterics seemed to Edna unpardonably presumptuous, almost sacrilegious, and she shrank back, humbled and abashed; for writers were teachers, interpreters, expounders, discoverers, or creators— and what could she, just stumbling through the alphabet of science and art, hope to donate to her race that would ennoble human motives or elevate aspirations? Was she, an unknown and inexperienced girl, worthy to be girded with the ephod that draped so royally the Levites of literature? Had God's own hand set the Urim and Thummim of Genius in her soul? Above all, was she mitred with the plate of pure gold—“Holiness unto the Lord?”

Solemnly and prayerfully she weighed the subject, and having finally resolved to make one attempt, she looked trustingly to heaven for aid, and went vigorously to work.

To write currente calamo for the mere pastime of author and readers, without aiming to inculcate some regenerative principle, or to photograph some valuable phase of protean truth, was in her estimation ignoble; for her high standard demanded that all books should be to a certain extent didactic, wandering like evangels among the people, and making some man, woman, or child happier, or wiser, or better—more patient or more hopeful—by their utterances. Believing that every earnest author's mind should prove a mint, where all valuable ores are collected from the rich veins of a universe — are cautiously coined, and thence munificently circulated—she applied herself diligently to the task of gathering from various sources the data required for her projected work: a vindication of the unity of mythologies. The vastness of the cosmic field she was now compelled to traverse, the innumerable ramifications of polytheistic and monotheistic creeds, necessitated unwearied research, as she rent asunder the superstitious vails which various nations and successive epochs had woven before the shining features of truth. To-day peering into the golden Gardens of the Sun at Cuzco; to-morrow clambering over Thibet glaciers, to find the mystic lake of Yamuna; now delighted to recognize in Teoyamiqui (the wife of the Aztec God of War) the unmistakable features of Scandinavian Valkyrias; and now surprised to discover the Greek Fates sitting under the Norse tree Ygdrasil, deciding the destinies of mortals, and calling themselves Nornas; she spent her days in pilgrimages to mouldering shrines, and midnight often found her groping in the classic dust of extinct systems. Having once grappled with her theme, she wrestled as obstinately as Jacob for the blessing of a successful solution, and in order to popularize a subject bristling with recondite archaisms and philologic problems, she cast it in the mould of fiction. The information and pleasure which she had derived from the perusal of Vaughan's delightful Hours with the Mystics, suggested the idea of adopting a similar plan for her own book, and investing it with the additional interest of a complicated plot and more numerous characters. To avoid anachronisms, she endeavored to treat the religions of the world in their chronologic sequence, and resorted to the expedient of introducing pagan personages. A fair young priestess of the temple of Neith, in the sacred city of Sais—where people of all climes collected to witness the festival of lamps—becoming skeptical of the miraculous attributes of the statues she had been trained to serve and worship, and impelled by an earnest love of truth to seek a faith that would satisfy her reason and purify her heart, is induced to question minutely the religious tenets of travellers who visited the temple, and thus familiarized herself with all existing creeds and hierarchies. The lore so carefully garnered is finally analyzed, classified, and inscribed on papyrus. The delineation of scenes and sanctuaries in different latitudes, from Lhasa to Copan, gave full exercise to Edna's descriptive power, but imposed much labor in the departments of physical geography and architecture.

Verily! an ambitious literary programme for a girl over whose head scarcely eighteen years had hung their dripping drab wintry skies, and pearly summer clouds.

One March morning, as Edna entered the breakfast-room, she saw unusual gravity printed on Mrs. Murray's face; and observing an open letter on the table, conjectured the cause of her changed countenance. A moment after the master came in, and as he seated himself his mother said:

“St Elmo, your cousin Estelle's letter contains bad news. Her father is dead; the estate is wretchedly insolvent; and she is coming to reside with us.”

“Then I am off for Hammerfest and the midnight sun! Who the deuce invited her I should like to know?”

“Remember she is my sister's child; she has no other home, and I am sure it is very natural that she should come to me, her nearest relative, for sympathy and protection.”

“Write to her by return mail that you will gladly allow her three thousand a year, provided she ensconces herself under some other roof than this.”

“Impossible! I could not wound her so deeply.”

“You imagine that she entertains a most tender and profound regard for both of us?”

“Certainly, my son; we have every reason to believe that she does.”

Leaning back in his chair, St. Elmo laughed derisively.

“I should really enjoy stumbling upon something that would overtax your most marvellous and indefinitely extensible credulity! When Estelle Harding becomes an inmate of this house I shall pack my valise, and start to Tromso! She approaches like Discord, uninvited, armed with an apple or a dagger. I am perfectly willing to share my fortune with her, but I'll swear I would rather prowl for a month through the plague-stricken district of Constantinople than see her domesticated here! You tried the experiment when she was a child, and we fought and scratched as indefatigably as those two amiable young Theban bullies, who are so often cited as scarecrows for quarrelsome juveniles. Of course we shall renew the battle at sight.”

“But my dear son, there are claims urged by natural affection which it is impossible to ignore. Poor Estelle is very desolate, and has a right to our sympathy and love.”

“Poor Estelle! Hæredipetæ! The frailties of old Rome survive her virtues and her ruins!”

Mr. Murray laughed again, beat a tattoo with his fork on the edge of his plate, and, rising, left the room.

Mrs. Murray looked puzzled and said:

“Edna, do you know what he meant? He often amuses himself by mystifying me, and I will not gratify him by asking an explanation.”

“Hæredipetæ were legacy-hunters in Rome, where their sycophantic devotion to people of wealth furnished a constant theme for satire.”

Mrs. Murray sighed heavily, and the orphan asked:

“When do you expect your niece?”

“Day after to-morrow. I have not seen her for many years, but report says she is very fascinating, and even St. Elmo, who met her in Europe, admits that she is handsome. As you heard him say just now, they formerly quarrelled most outrageously and shamefully, and he took an unaccountable aversion to her; but I trust all juvenile reminiscences will vanish when they know each other better. My dear, I have several engagements for to-day, and I must rely upon you to superintend the arrangement of Estelle's room. She will occupy the one next to yours. See that every thing is in order. You know Hagar is sick, and the other servants are careless.”

Sympathy for Miss Harding's recent and severe affliction prepared Edna's heart to receive her cordially, and the fact that an irreconcilable feud existed between the stranger and St. Elmo, induced the orphan to hope that she might find a congenial companion in the expected visitor.

On the afternoon of her arrival Edna leaned eagerly forward to catch a glimpse of her countenance, and as she threw back her long mourning-vail and received her aunt's affectionate greeting, the first impression was, “How exceedingly handsome—how commanding she is!” But a few minutes later, when Mrs. Murray introduced them, and the stranger's keen, bright, restless eyes fell upon the orphan's face, the latter drew back, involuntarily repelled, and a slight shiver crept over her, for an unerring instinctive repulsion told her they could never be friends.

Estelle Harding was no longer young; years had hardened the outline of her features, and imparted a certain staidness or fixedness to her calm countenance, where strong feeling or passionate impulse was never permitted to slip the elegant mask of polished suavity. She was surprisingly like Mrs. Murray, but not one line of her face resembled her cousin's. Fixing her eyes on Edna, with a cold, almost stern scrutiny more searching than courteous, she said:

“I was not aware, Aunt Ellen, that you had company in the house.”

“I have no company at present, my dear. Edna resides here. Do you not remember one of my letters in which I mentioned the child, who was injured by the railroad accident?”

“True. I expected to see a child, certainly not a woman.”

“She seems merely a child to me. But come up to your room; you must be very much fatigued by your journey.”

When they left the sitting-room Edna sat down in one corner of the sofa, disappointed and perplexed.

“She does not like me, that is patent; and I certainly do not like her. She is handsome and very graceful, and quite heartless. There is no inner light from her soul shining in her eyes; nothing tender and loving and kind in their clear depths; they are cold, bright eyes, but not soft, winning, womanly eyes. They might, and doubtless would, hold an angry dog in check, but never draw a tired, fretful child to lean its drooping head on her lap. If she really has any feeling, her eyes should be indicted for slander. I am sorry I don't like her, and I am afraid we never shall be nearer each other than touching our fingertips.”

Such was Edna's unsatisfactory conclusion, and dismissing the subject, she picked up a book, and read until the ladies returned and seated themselves around the fire.

To Mrs. Murray's great chagrin and mortification her son had positively declined going to the depot to meet his cousin, had been absent since breakfast, and proved himself shamefully derelict in the courtesy demanded of him. It was almost dark when the quick gallop of his horse announced his return, and, as he passed the window on his way to the stables, Edna noticed a sudden change in Estelle's countenance. During the quarter of an hour that succeeded, her eyes never wandered from the door, though her head was turned to listen to Mrs. Murray's remarks. Soon after, Mr. Murray's rapid footsteps sounded in the hall, and as he entered she rose and advanced to meet him. He held out his hand, shook hers vigorously, and said, as he dropped it:

“Mine ancient enemy declare a truce, and quiet my apprehensions; for I dreamed last night that, on sight, we flew at each other's throats, and renewed the sanguinary scuffles of our juvenile acquaintance. Most appallingly vivid is my recollection of a certain scar here on my left arm, where you set your pearly teeth some years ago.”

“My dear cousin, as I have had no provocation since I was separated from you, I believe I have grown harmless and amiable. How very well you look, St. Elmo.”

“Thank you. I should like to return the compliment, but facts forbid. You are thinner than when we dined together in Paris. Are you really in love with that excruciating Brummell of a Count who danced such indefatigable attendance upon you?”

“To whom do you allude?”

“That youth with languishing brown eyes, who parted his ‘hyacinthine tresses in the middle of his head; whose moustache required Ehrenberg's strongest glasses—and who absolutely believed that Ristori singled him out of her vast audiences as the most appreciative of her listeners; who was eternally humming ‘Ernani’ and raving about ‘Traviata.’ Your memory is treacherous—as your conscience? Well, then, that man, who I once told you reminded me of what Guilleragues is reported to have said about Pelisson, ‘that he abused the permission men have to be ugly.’”

“Ah! you mean poor Victor! He spent the winter in Seville. I had a letter last week.”

“When do you propose to make him my cousin?”

“Not until I become an inmate of a lunatic asylum.”

“Poor wretch! If he only had courage to sue you for breach of promise, I would, with pleasure, furnish sufficient testimony to convict you and secure him heavy damages; for I will swear you played fiancée to perfection. Your lavish expenditure of affection seemed to me altogether uncalled for, considering the fact that the fish already floundered at your feet.”

The reminiscence evidently annoyed her, though her lips smiled, and Edna saw that, while his words were pointed with a sarcasm lost upon herself, it was fully appreciated by his cousin.

“St. Elmo, I am sorry to see that you have not improved one iota; that all your wickedness clings to you like Sinbad's burden.”

Standing at his side, she put her hand on his shoulder.

As he looked down at her, his lips curled.

“Nevertheless, Estelle, I find a pale ghost of pity for you wandering up and down what was once my heart. After the glorious intoxication of Parisian life, how can you endure the tedium of this dullest of hum-drum—this most moral and stupid of all country towns? Little gossip, few flirtations, neither beaux esprits nor bons vivants—what will become of you? Now, whatever amusement, edification, or warning you may be able to extract from my society, I here beg permission to express the hope that you will appropriate unsparingly. I shall, with exemplary hospitality, dedicate myself to your service—shall try to make amends for votre cher Victor's absence, and solemnly promise to do every thing in my power to assist you in strangling time, except parting my hair in the middle of my head, and making love to you. With these stipulated reservations, command me ad libitum.”

Her face flushed slightly, she withdrew her hand and sat down.

Taking his favorite position on the rug, with one hand thrust into his pocket and the other dallying with his watch-chain, Mr. Murray continued:

“Entire honesty on my part, and a pardonable and amiable weakness for descanting on the charms of my native village, compel me to assure you, that notwithstanding the deprivation of opera and theatre, bal masqué and the Bois de Boulogne, I believe you will be surprised to find that the tone of society here is quite up to the lofty standard of the ‘Society of Arcueil,’ or even the requirements of the Academy of Sciences. Our pastors are erudite as Abelard, and rigid as Trappists; our young ladies are learned as that ancient blue-stocking daughter of Pythagoras, and as pious as St. Salvia, who never washed her face. For instance, girls yet in their teens are much better acquainted with Hebrew than Miriam was, when she sung it on the shore of the Red Sea, (where, by the by, Talmudic tradition says Pharaoh was not drowned,) and they will vehemently contend for the superiority of the Targum of Oukelos over that on the Hagiographa, ascribed to one-eyed Joseph of Sora! You look incredulous, my fair cousin. Nay, permit me to complete the inventory of the acquirements of your future companions. They quote fluently from the Megilloth, and will entertain you by fighting over again the battle of the school of Hillel versus the school of Shammai! Their attainments in philology reflect discredit on the superficiality of Max Müller; and if an incidental allusion is made to archæology, lo! they bombard you with a broadside of authorities, and recondite terminology that would absolutely make the hair of Lepsius and Champollion stand on end. I assure you the savants of the Old World would catch their breath with envious amazement, if they could only enjoy the advantage of the conversation of these orthodox and erudite refugees from the nursery! The unfortunate men of this community are kept in pitiable terror lest they commit an anachronism, and if, after a careful reconnoissance of the slippery ground, they tremblingly venture an anecdote of Selwyn or Hood, or Beaumarchais, they are invariably driven back in confusion by the inquiry, if they remember this or that bon mot uttered at the court of Aurungzebe or of one of the early Incas! Ah! would I were Molière to repaint Les Precieuses Ridicules!”

Although his eyes had never once wandered from his cousin's face, toward the corner where Edna sat embroidering some mats, she felt the blood burning in her cheeks, and forced herself to look up. At that moment, as he stood in the soft glow of the firelight, he was handsomer than she had ever seen him; and when he glanced swiftly over his shoulder to mark the effect of his words, their eyes met, and she smiled involuntarily.

“For shame, St. Elmo! I will have you presented by the grand-jury of this county for wholesale defamation of the inhabitants thereof,” said his mother, shaking her finger at him.

Estelle laughed and shrugged her shoulders.

“My poor cousin! how I pity you, and the remainder of the men here, surrounded by such a formidable coterie of blues.”

“Believe me, even their shadows are as blue as those which I have seen thrown upon the snow of Eyriks Jökull, in Iceland, where I would have sworn that every shade cast on the mountain was a blot of indigo. Sometimes I seriously contemplate erecting an observatory and telescope, in order to sweep our sky and render visible what I am convinced exist there undiscovered—some of those deep blue nebulæ which Sir John Herschel found in the southern hemisphere! If the astronomical conjecture be correct, concerning the possibility of a galaxy of blue stars, a huge cluster hangs in this neighborhood and furnishes an explanation of the color of the women.”

“Henceforth, St. Elmo, the sole study of my life shall be to forget my alphabet. Miss Earl, do you understand Hebrew?”

“Oh! no; I have only begun to study it.”

“Estelle, it is the popular and fashionable amusement here. Young ladies and young gentlemen form classes for mutual aid and ‘mutual admiration,’ while they clasp hands over the Masora. If Lord Brougham, and other members of the ‘Society for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge,’ could only have been induced to investigate the intellectual status of the ‘rising generation’ of our village, there is little room to doubt that, as they are not deemed advocates for works of supererogation, they would long ago have appreciated the expediency of disbanding said society. I imagine Tennyson is a clairvoyant, and was looking at the young people of this vicinage, when he wrote: ‘Knowledge comes, but wisdom lingers.’Not even egoistic infallible ‘Brain Town’—that self-complacent and pretentious ‘Hub,’ can show a more ambitious covey of literary fledgelings!”

“Your random firing seems to produce no confusion on the part of your game,” answered his cousin, withdrawing her gaze from Edna's tranquil features, over which a half smile still lingered.

He did not seem to hear her words, but his eyebrows thickened, as he drew a couple of letters from his pocket and looked at the superscription.

Giving one to his mother, who sat looking over a newspaper, he crossed the room and silently laid the other on Edna's lap.

It was post-marked in a distant city and directed in a gentleman's large, round business hand-writing. The girl's face flushed with pleasure as she broke the seal, glanced at the signature, and without pausing for a perusal hastily put the letter into her pocket.

“Who can be writing to you, Edna?” asked Mrs. Murray, when she had finished reading her own letter.

“Oh! doubtless some Syrian scribe has indited a Chaldee billet-doux, which she can not spell out without the friendly aid of dictionary and grammar. Permit her to withdraw and decipher it. Meantime here comes Henry to announce dinner, and a plate of soup will strengthen her for her task.”

Mr. Murray offered his arm to his cousin, and during dinner he talked constantly, rapidly, brilliantly of men and things abroad; now hurling a sarcasm at Estelle's head, now laughing at his mother's expostulations, and studiously avoiding any further notice of Edna, who was never so thoroughly at ease as when he seemed to forget her presence.

Estelle sat at his right hand, and suddenly refilling his glass with bubbling champagne, he leaned over and whispered a few words in her ear that brought a look of surprise and pleasure into her eyes. Edna only saw the expression of his face, and the tenderness, the pleading written there astonished and puzzled her. The next moment they rose from the table, and as Mr. Murray drew his cousin's hand under his arm, Edna hurried away to her own room.

Among the numerous magazines to which St. Elmo subscribed, was one renowned for the lofty tone of its articles and the asperity of its carping criticisms, and this periodical Edna always singled out and read with avidity.

IF the seers of geology are correct in assuming that the age of the human race is coïncident with that of the alluvial stratum, from eighty to one hundred centuries, are not domestic traditions and household customs the great arteries in which beats the social life of humanity, and which veining all epochs, link the race in homogeneity? Roman women suffered no first day of May to pass without celebrating the festival of Bona Dea; and two thousand years later, girls who know as little of the manners and customs of ancient Italy, as of the municipal regulations of fabulous “Manoa,” lie down to sleep on the last day of April, and kissing the fond, maternal face that bends above their pillows, eagerly repeat:“You must wake and call me early, call me early, mother dear;To-morrow 'ill be the happiest time of all the glad new-year;Of all the glad new-year, mother, the maddest, merriest day,For I'm to be Queen o' the May, mother, I'm to be Queen o' the May.”

For a fortnight Edna had been busily engaged in writing colloquies and speeches for the Sabbath-school children of the village, and in attending the rehearsals for the perfection of the various parts. Assisted by Mr. Hammond and the ladies of his congregation, she had prepared a varied programme, and was almost as much interested in the success of the youthful orators, as the superintendent of the school, or the parents of the children. The day was propitious—clear, balmy, all that could be asked of the blue-eyed month—and as the festival was to be celebrated in a beautiful grove of elms and chestnuts, almost in sight of Le Bocage, Edna went over very early to aid in arranging the tables, decking the platforms with flowers, and training one juvenile Demosthenes, whose elocution was as unpromising as that of his Greek model.

Despite her patient teachings, this boy's awkwardness threatened to spoil every thing, and as she watched the nervous wringing of his hands and desperate shuffling of his feet, she was tempted to give him up in despair. The dew hung heavily on grass and foliage, and the matin carol of the birds still swelled through the leafy aisles of the grove, when she took the trembling boy to a secluded spot, directed him to stand on a mossy log, where two lizards lay blinking, and repeat his speech.

He stammered most unsatisfactorily through it, and, intent on his improvement, Edna climbed upon a stump and delivered the speech for him, gesticulating and emphasizing just as she wished him to do. As the last words of the peroration passed her lips, and while she stood on the stump, a sudden clapping of hands startled her, and Gordon Leigh's cheerful voice exclaimed, “Encore! Encore! Since the days of Hypatia you have not had your equal among female elocutionists. I would not have missed it for any consideration, so pray forgive me for eavesdropping.”

He came forward, held out his hand, and added: “Allow me to assist you in dismounting from your temporary rostrum, whence you bear your ‘blushing honors thick upon you.’ Jamie, do you think you can do as well as Miss Edna when your time comes?”

“Oh! no, sir; but I will try not to make her ashamed of me.”

He snatched his hat from the log and ran off, leaving the friends to walk back more leisurely to the spot selected for the tables. Edna had been too much disconcerted by his unexpected appearance, to utter a word until now, and her tone expressed annoyance as she said, “I am very sorry you interrupted me, for Jamie will make an ignominious failure. Have you nothing better to do than stray about the woods like a satyr?”

“I am quite willing to be satyrized even by you on this occasion; for what man, whose blood is not curdled by cynicism, can prefer to spend May-day among musty law books and red tape, when he has the alternative of listening to such declamation as you favored me with just now, or of participating in the sports of one hundred happy children? Beside, my good ‘familiar,’ or rather my sortes Prænestinæe, told me that I should find you here, and I wanted to see you before the company assembled; why have you so pertinaciously avoided me of late?”

They stood close to each other in the shade of the elms, and Gordon thought that never before had she looked so beautiful, as the mild perfumed breeze stirred the folds of her white dress, and fluttered the blue ribbons that looped her hair and girdled her waist.

Just at that instant, ere she could reply, a rustling of the undergrowth arrested further conversation, and Mr. Murray stepped out of the adjoining thicket, with his gun in his hand, and his grim pet Ali at his heels. Whatever surprise he may have felt, his countenance certainly betrayed none, as he lifted his hat and said:

“Good morning, Leigh. I shall not intrude upon the Sanhedrim, on which I have happened to stumble, longer than is necessary to ask if you are so fortunate as to have a match with you? I find my case empty.”

Mr Leigh took a match from his pocket, and while Mr. Murray lighted his cigar, his eyes rested for an instant only on Edna's flushed face.

“Are you not coming to the children's celebration?” asked Gordon.

“No, indeed! I own that I am as lazy as a Turk; but while I am constitutionally and habitually opposed to labor, I swear I should prefer to plough or break stones til sun down, sooner than listen to all the rant and fustian that spectators will be called on to endure this morning. I have not sufficient courage to remain and witness what would certainly recall ‘the manner of Bombastes Furioso making love to Distaffina!’ Will you have a cigar? Good-morning.”

He lifted his hat, shouldered his gun, and calling to his dog, disappeared among the thick undergrowth.

“What an incorrigible savage!” muttered Mr. Leigh, replacing the match-case in his pocket.

His companion made no answer and was hurrying on, but he caught her dress and detained her.

“Do not go until you have heard what I have to say to you. More than once you have denied me an opportunity of expressing what you must long ago have suspected. Edna, you know very well that I love you better than every thing else—that I have loved you from the first day of our acquaintance; and I have come to tell you that my happiness is in your dear little hands; that my future will be joyless unless you share it; that the one darling hope of my life is to call you my wife. Do not draw your hand from mine! Dear Edna, let me keep it always. Do I mistake your feelings when I hope that you return my affection?”

“You entirely mistake them, Mr. Leigh, in supposing that you can ever be more to me than a very dear and valued friend. It grieves me very much to be forced to give you pain or cause you disappointment; but I should wrong you even more than myself, were I to leave you in doubt concerning my feeling toward you. I like your society, I admire your many noble qualities, and you have my entire confidence and highest esteem; but it is impossible that I can ever be your wife.”

“Why impossible?”

“Because I never could love you as I think I ought to love the man I marry.”

IT is impossible, Estelle! The girl is not a fool, and nothing less than idiocy can explain such conduct!”

Flushed and angry, Mrs. Murray walked up and down the floor of the sitting-room; and playing with the jet bracelet on her rounded arm, Miss Harding replied:

“As Mrs. Inge happens to be his sister, I presume she speaks ex cathedra, and she certainly expressed very great delight at the failure of Gordon Leigh's suit. She told me that he was much depressed in consequence of Edna's rejection, and manifested more feeling than she had deemed possible under the circumstances. Of course she is much gratified that her family is saved from the disgrace of such a mésalliance.”

“You will oblige me by being more choice in the selection of your words, Estelle, as it is a poor compliment to me to remark that any man would be disgraced by marrying a girl whom I have raised and educated, and trained as carefully as if she were my own daughter. Barring her obscure birth, Edna is as worthy of Gordon as any dainty pet of fashion who lounges in Clara Inge's parlors, and I shall take occasion to tell her so if ever she hints at ‘mésalliance’ in my presence.”

“In that event she will doubtless retort by asking you in her bland and thoroughly well-bred style, whether you intend to give your consent to Edna's marriage with my cousin, St. Elmo?”

Mrs. Murray stopped suddenly, and confronting her niece, said sternly:

ONE afternoon, about ten days after the receipt of Mr. Manning's letter, when Edna returned from the parsonage, she found the family assembled on the front verandah, and saw that the expected visitor had arrived. As Mrs. Murray introduced her to Mr. Allston, the latter rose, advanced a few steps, and held out his hand. Edna was in the act of giving him hers, when the heart-shaped diamond cluster on his finger flashed, and one swift glance at his face and figure made her snatch away her hand ere it touched his, and draw back with a half-smothered exclamation.

He bit his lip, looked inquiringly around the circle, smiled, and returning to his seat beside Estelle, resumed the gay conversation in which he had been engaged.

Mrs. Murray was leaning over the iron balustrade, twining a wreath of multiflora around one of the fluted columns, and did not witness the brief pantomime; but when she looked around she could not avoid remarking the unwonted pallor and troubled expression of the girl's face.

“What is the matter, child? You look as if you were either ill or dreadfully fatigued.”

“I am tired, thank you,” was the rather abstracted reply, and she walked into the house and sat down before the open window in the library.

The sun had just gone down behind a fleecy cloud-mountain and kindled a volcano, from whose silver-rimmed crater fiery rays of scarlet shot up, almost to the clear blue zenith; while here and there, through clefts and vapory gorges, the lurid lava light streamed down toward the horizon.

Vacantly her eyes rested on this sky-Hecla, and its splendor passed away unheeded, for she was looking far beyond the western gates of day, and saw a pool of blood—a ghastly face turned up to the sky—a coffined corpse strewn with white poppies and rosemary—a wan, dying woman, whose waving hair braided the pillow with gold—a wide, deep grave under the rustling chestnuts from whose green arches rang the despairing wail of a broken heart:

“O Harry! my husband!”

Imagination travelling into the past, painted two sunny-haired, prattling babes, suddenly smitten with orphanage, and robed in mourning garments for parents whose fond, watchful eyes were closed forever under wild clover and trailing brambles. Absorbed in retrospection of that June day, when she stood by the spring, and watched “God make himself an awful rose of dawn,”she sat with her head resting against the window-facing, and was not aware of Mr. Murray's entrance until his harsh, querulous voice startled her.

“Edna Earl! what apology have you to offer for insulting a relative and guest of mine under my roof?”

“None, sir.”

“What! How dare you treat with unparalleled rudeness a visitor, whose claim upon the courtesy and hospitality of this household is certainly more legitimate and easily recognized than that of—”

He stopped and kicked out of his way a stool upon which Edna's feet had been resting. She had risen, and they stood face to face.

“I am waiting to hear the remainder of your sentence, Mr. Murray.”

He uttered an oath and hurled his cigar through the window.

“Why the d—l did you refuse to shake hands with Allston? I intend to know the truth, and it may prove an economy of trouble for you to speak it at once.”

“If you demand my reasons, you must not be offended at the plainness of my language. Your cousin is a murderer, and ought to be hung! I could not force myself to touch a hand all smeared with blood.”

Mr. Murray leaned down and looked into her eyes.

“You are either delirious or utterly mistaken with reference to the identity of the man. Clinton is no more guilty of murder than you are, and I have been led to suppose that you are rather too ‘pious’ to attempt the rôle of Marguérite de Brinvilliers or Joanna of Hainault! Cufic lore has turned your brain; ‘too much learning hath made thee mad.’”

“No, sir, it is no hallucination; there can be no mistake; it is a horrible, awful fact, which I witnessed, which is burned on my memory, and which will haunt my brain as long as I live. I saw him shoot Mr. Dent, and heard all that passed on that dreadful morning. He is doubly criminal—is as much the murderer of Mrs. Dent as of her husband, for the shock killed her. Oh! that I could forget her look and scream of agony as she fainted over her husband's coffin!”

A puzzled expression crossed Mr. Murray's face; then he muttered:

“Dent? Dent? Ah! yes; that was the name of the man whom Clinton killed in a duel. Pshaw! you have whipped up a syllabub storm in a tea-cup! Allston only took ‘satisfaction’ for an insult offered publicly by Dent.”

His tone was sneering and his lip curled, but a strange pallor crept from chin to temples; and a savage glare in his eyes, and a thickening scowl that bent his brows till they met, told of the brewing of no slight tempest of passion.

“I know, sir, that custom, public opinion, sanctions—at least tolerates that relic of barbarous ages—that blot upon Christian civilization which, under the name of ‘dueling,’ I recognize as a crime; a heinous crime which I abhor and detest above all other crimes! Sir, I call things by their proper names, stripped of the glozing drapery of conventional usage. You say ‘honorable satisfaction;’ I say murder! aggravated, unpardonable murder; murder without even the poor palliation of the sudden heat of anger. Cool, deliberate, wilful murder, that stabs the happiness of wives and children, and for which it would seem that even the infinite mercy of Almighty God could scarcely accord forgiveness! Oh! save me from the presence of that man who can derive ‘satisfaction’ from the reflection that he has laid Henry and Helen Dent in one grave, under the quiet shadow of Lookout, and brought desolation and orphanage to their two innocent, tender darlings! Shake hands with Clinton Allston? I would sooner stretch out my fingers to clasp those of Gardiner, reeking with the blood of his victims, or those of Ravaillac! Ah! well might Dante shudder in painting the chilling horrors of Caïna.”

The room was dusky with the shadow of coming night; out the fading flush, low in the west, showed St. Elmo's face colorless, rigid, repulsive in its wrathful defiance.

He bent forward, seized her hands, folded them together, and grasping them in both his, crushed them against his breast.

“Ha! I knew that hell and heaven were leagued to poison your mind! That your childish conscience was frightened by tales of horror, and your imagination harrowed up, your heart lacerated by the cunning devices of that arch maudlin old hypocrite! The seeds of clerical hate fell in good ground, and I see a bountiful harvest nodding for my sickle! Oh! you are more pliable than I had fancied! You have been thoroughly trained down yonder at the parsonage. But I will be—”

There was a trembling pant in his voice like that of some wild creature driven from its jungle, hopeless of escape, holding its hunters temporarily at bay, waiting for death.

AVOIDING as much as possible the society of Mrs. Murray's guests, as well as that of her son, Edna turned to her books with increased energy and steadfastness, while her manner was marked by a studied reticence hitherto unnoticed. The house was thronged with visitors, and families residing in the neighborhood were frequently invited to dinner; but the orphan generally contrived on these occasions to have an engagement at the parsonage; and as Mrs. Murray no longer required, or seemed to desire her presence, she spent much of her time alone, and rarely saw the members of the household, except at breakfast. She noticed that Mr. Allston either felt or feigned unbounded admiration of Estelle, who graciously received his devoted attentions; while Mr. Murray now and then sneered openly at both, and appeared daily more impatient to quit the home, of which he spoke with undisguised disgust. As day after day, and week after week slipped by without bringing tidings of Edna's MS., her heart became oppressed with anxious forebodings, and she found it difficult to wait patiently for the verdict upon which hung all her hopes.

One Thursday afternoon, when a number of persons had been invited to dine at Le Bocage, and Mrs. Murray was engrossed by preparations for their entertainment, Edna took her Greek books and stole away unobserved to the parsonage, where she spent a quiet evening in reading aloud from the Organon of Aristotle.

MR. HAMMOND, are you ill? What can be the matter?”

Edna threw down her books and put her hand on the old man's shoulder. His face was concealed in his arms, and his half-stifled groan told that some fierce trial had overtaken him.

“O child! I am troubled, perplexed, and my heart is heavy with a sorrow which I thought I had crushed.”

He raised his head for a moment, looked sadly into the girl's face, and dropped his furrowed cheek on his hand.

“Has any thing happened since I saw you yesterday?”

“Yes; I have been surprised by the arrival of some of my relatives, whose presence in my house revives very painful associations connected with earlier years. My niece, Mrs. Powell, and her daughter Gertrude, came very unexpectedly last night to make me a visit of some length; and to you, my child, I can frankly say the surprise is a painful one. Many years have elapsed since I received any tidings of Agnes Powell, and I knew not until she suddenly appeared before me last night that she was a widow and bereft of a handsome fortune. She claims a temporary home under my roof; and though she has caused me much suffering, I feel that I must endeavor to be patient and kind to her and her child. I have endured many trials, but this is the severest I have yet been called to pass through.”

Distressed by the look of anguish on his pale face, Edna took his hand between both hers, and stroking it caressingly said:

“My dear sir, if it is your duty, God will strengthen and sustain you. Cheer up; I can't bear to see you looking so troubled. A cloud on your face, my dear Mr. Hammond, is to me like an eclipse of the sun. Pray do not keep me in shadow.”

“If I could know that no mischief would result from Agnes's presence, I would not regret it so earnestly. I do not wish to be uncharitable or suspicious; but I fear that her motives are not such as I could—”

“May I intrude, Uncle Allan?”

The stranger's voice was very sweet and winning, and as she entered the room Edna could scarcely repress an exclamation of admiration; for the world sees but rarely such perfect beauty as was the portion of Agnes Powell.

She was one of those few women who seem the pets of time, whose form and features catch some new grace and charm from every passing year; and but for the tall, lovely girl who clung to her hand and called her “mother,” a stranger would have believed her only twenty-six or eight.

Fair, rosy, with a complexion fresh as a child's, and a face faultless in contour as that of a Greek goddess, it was impossible to resist the fascination which she exerted over all who looked upon her. Her waving yellow hair flashed in the morning sunshine, and as she raised one hand to shade her large, clear, blue eyes, her open sleeve fell back, disclosing an arm dazzlingly white and exquisitely moulded. As Mr. Hammond introduced his pupil to his guests, Mrs Powell smiled pleasantly, and pressed the offered hand; but the soft eyes, blue and cold as the stalactites of Capri, scanned the orphan's countenance, and when Edna had seen fully into their depths she could not avoid recalling Heine's poem of the Loreley.

“My daughter Gertrude promises herself much pleasure in your society, Miss Earl; for uncle's praises prepare her to expect a most charming companion. She is about your age, but I fear you will find great disparity in her attainments, as she has not been so fortunate as to receive her education from Uncle Allan. You are, I believe, an adopted daughter of Mrs. Murray?”

“No, madam; only a resident in her house until my education is pronounced sufficiently advanced to justify my teaching.”

“I have a friend, (Miss Harding,) who has recently removed to Le Bocage, and intends making it her home. How is she?”

“Quite well, I believe.”

Mr. Hammond left the study for a moment, and Mrs. Powell added:

“Her friends at the North tell me that she is to marry her cousin, Mr. Murray, very soon.”

“I had not heard the report.”

“Then you think there are no grounds for the rumor?”

“Indeed, madam, I know nothing whatever concerning the matter.”

“Estelle is handsome and brilliant.”

Edna made no reply; and after waiting a few seconds, Mrs. Powell asked:

“Does Mr. Murray go much into society now?”

“I believe not.”

“Is he as handsome as ever?”

“I do not know when you saw him last, but the ladies here seem rather to dread than admire him. Mrs. Powell, you are dipping your sleeve into your uncle's inkstand.”

She by no means relished this catechism, and resolved to end it. Picking up her books, she said to Mr. Hammond, who now stood in the door:

“I presume I need not wait, as you will be too much occupied to-day to attend to my lessons.”

“Yes; I must give you holiday until Monday.”

“Miss Earl, may I trouble you to hand this letter to Miss Harding? It was intrusted to my care by one of her friends in New-York. Pray be so good as to deliver it, with my kindest regards.”

As Edna left the house, the pastor took his hat from the rack in the hall, and walked silently beside her until she reached the gate.

“Mr. Hammond, your niece is the most beautiful woman I have ever seen.”

He sighed heavily and answered hesitatingly:

“Yes, yes. She is more beautiful now than when she first grew up.”

“How long has she been a widow?”

“Not quite a year.”

The troubled expression settled once more over his placid face, and when Edna bade him good morning, and had walked some distance, she happened to look back, and saw him still leaning on the little gate, under the drooping honeysuckle tendrils, with his gray head bent down on his hand.

That Mrs. Powell was in some way connected with Mr. Murray's estrangement from the minister Edna felt assured, and the curiosity which the inquiries of the former had betrayed, told her that she must be guarded in her intercourse with a woman who was an object of distrust even to her own uncle.

Very often she had been tempted to ask Mr. Hammond why Mr. Murray so sedulously shunned him; but the shadow which fell upon his countenance whenever St. Elmo's name was accidentally mentioned, made her shrink from alluding to a subject which he evidently avoided discussing.

Before she had walked beyond the outskirts of the village Mr. Leigh joined her, and she felt the color rise in her cheeks as his fine eyes rested on her face and his hand pressed hers. “You must forgive me for telling you how bitterly I was disappointed in not seeing you two days ago. Why did you absent yourself from the table?”

WHERE are you going, St. Elmo? I know it is one of your amiable decrees that your movements are not to be questioned, but I dare to brave your ire.”

“I am going to that blessed retreat familiarly known as Murray's den,' where, secure from feminine intrusion, as if in the cool cloisters of Coutloumoussi, I surrender my happy soul to science and cigars, and revel in complete forgetfulness of that awful curse which Jove hurled against all mankind, because of Prometheus's robbery.”

“There are asylums for lunatics and inebriates, and I wonder it has never occurred to some benevolent millionaire to found one for such abominable cynies as you, my most angelic cousin! where the snarling brutes can only snap at and worry one another.”

“An admirable idea, Estelle, which I fondly imagined I had successfully carried out when I built those rooms of mine.”

“You are as hateful as Momus, minus his wit! He was kicked out of heaven for grumbling, and you richly deserve his fate.”

“I have a vague recollection that the Goddess Discord shared the fate of the celestial growler. I certainly plead guilty to an earnest sympathy with Momus's dissatisfaction with the house that Minerva built, and only wish that mine was movable, as he recommended, in order to escape bad neighborhoods and tiresome companions.”