bject _must_ be living and suffering. The tender ties that had bound
our hearts to her quivered with pain, but we felt that, though sorely
wounded, they were not quite severed.

"Then we had strangely vivid dreams of her. Very sad dreams they were;
she always appeared to us pale, and sorrowful, and thin, as though
pinched with want. Of late years we have dreamed of her more seldom;
and, singularly enough, when we have dreamed, she has worn to both of
us a changed and happier look. So we feel at last that somewhere, in
this or a better world, 'it is well with the child.'

"The health of Mrs. Phillips received a great shock in this loss; in
fact, she has never been quite well since. She has been threatened
with consumption, and has been obliged to spend most of her winters in
the South. I think she still mourns for her first-born; no other child
has yet been able to fill her place."

"You have then other children?" said Mr. Raeburn.

"Yes, three; two boys, of eleven and nine, and a little girl, now
nearly five years old."

Here Mary felt a happy glow overspread her veiled face, and her heart
palpitated with a new joy.

"Believe me, my dear sir," said Mr. Raeburn, after a pause, "I have not
drawn from you this painful story from mere curiosity. My friend now
present, Miss Morton, is acquainted with a young girl who believes
herself to have been stolen in her early childhood, from a happy home
and kind parents, by a vulgar and cruel woman, who hid her for years in
a wretched den in the worst part of New York. But, my dear Miss
Morton, you can tell the story better than I; will you not do so?"

Mary began in a voice low and tremulous, but of penetrating sweetness,
thus: "That poor young girl was, while yet a child, not wholly lost and
wicked, rescued from a life of sin and beggary by some good kind
friends, whom God will bless for ever and ever! When they took pity on
her, she had forgotten her true last name; it had been frightened out
of her memory, or driven out by blows; but she knew that her first name
was Mary, though she was only called _Molly_, and she had not forgotten
her true parents, though she called them her _dream_ father and mother,
because they came to her in her sleep, to kiss her and comfort her.
She was surrounded by squalor and wretchedness; but she never quite
forgot her old beautiful home, for her dim sweet memories of it were
all she knew of heaven."

Here Mary rose and threw back