r."

She was silent and dropped her eyes before him.

"Think not, my gentle mistress," he added presently, "my heart is
changed towards you. The glow is only too bright and warm."

"If you love me not, Elbridge," she interposed quickly, "fear not to
say so, even now. I will bear the pang as best I can."

"You have suffered too much already," he rejoined, touched to the heart.
"My long silence must have been as death to one so kind and gentle."

"I have suffered," was all she said. "One word from you in your long
absence would have made me happy."

"It would, I know it would, and yet I could not speak it," Elbridge
replied. "When, with a blight upon my name I left those halls," pointing
to the old homestead standing in shadow of the autumn trees, "I vowed to
know them no more, that my step should never cross their threshold, that
my voice should never be heard again in those ancient chambers, that no
being of all that household should have a word from these lips or hands
till I could come back a vindicated man; that I would perish in distant
lands, find a silent grave among strangers, far from mother and her I
loved, or that I would come back with my lost friend, in his living
form, to avouch and testify my truth and innocence."

"And had you no thought of me in that cruel absence, dear Elbridge?"
asked Miriam.

"Of you!" he echoed, now taking her hand, "of you! When in all these my
wanderings, in weary nights, in lonely days, on seas and deserts far
away, sore of foot and sick at heart, making my couch beneath the stars,
in the tents of savage men, in the shadow of steeples that know not our
holy faith, was it not my religion and my only solace, that one like you
thought of me as I of her, and though all the world abandoned and
distrusted the wanderer, there was one star in the distant horizon which
yet shone true, and trembled with a hopeful light upon my path."

"Are we not each other's now?" she whispered softly as she lay her
gentle head upon his bosom; "and if we have erred, and repent but truly,
will not He forgive us?"

As she lifted up her innocent face to heaven, did not those gentle tears
which fell unheard by mortal ear, from those fair eyes, drop in hearing
of Him who hears and acknowledges the faintest sound of true affection,
through all the boundless universe, musically as the chime of holy
Sabbath-bells?

"You are my dear wife," he answered, folding her close to his heart,
"and if you forgiv