o them her deliverance. "Ha! little Ebenezer turned a
hero!" cried one; "Ebenezer the cripple become a knight-errant!" said
another. But they resolved to visit him in a body, and return him their
thanks.

But the soul of the deformed was now changed, and his countenance,
though still melancholy, had lost its asperity. His days became a dream,
his existence a wish. For the first time he entertained the hope of
happiness; it was vain, romantic, perhaps we might say absurd, but he
cherished it.

Maria spoke much of the courage, the humanity, the seeming loneliness,
and the knowledge of the deformed, to her friends; and their
entertainer, with his entire party of visiters, with but one exception,
a few days afterwards, proceeded to the cottage of Ebenezer, to thank
him for his intrepidity. The exception we have alluded to was a Lady
Helen Dorrington, a woman of a proud and haughty temper, and whose
personal attractions, if she ever possessed any, were now disfigured by
the attacks of a violent temper, and the _crow-feet_ and the _wrinkles_
which threescore years imprint on the fairest countenance. She excused
herself by saying, that the sight of deformed people affected her.
Amongst the party who visited the cripple was her son, Francis
Dorrington, a youth of two-and-twenty, who was haughty, fiery, and
impetuous as his mother. He sought the hand of Maria Bradbury, and he
now walked by her side.

Ebenezer received them coldly; amongst them were some who were wont to
mock him as they passed, and he now believed that they had come to
gratify curiosity, by gazing on his person as on a wild animal. But,
when he saw the smile upon Maria's lips, the benign expression of her
glance, and her hand held forth to greet him, his coldness vanished, and
joy, like a flash of sunshine, lighted up his features. Yet he liked not
the impatient scowl with which Francis Dorrington regarded her attention
towards him, nor the contempt which moved visibly on his lip, when she
listened delighted to the words of the despised cripple. He seemed to
act as though her eyes should be fixed on him alone--her words addressed
only to him. Jealousy entered the soul of the deformed; and shall we say
that the same feeling was entertained by the gay and the haughty
Dorrington? It was. He felt that, insignificant as the outward
appearance of the cripple was, his soul was that of an intellectual
giant, before the exuberance of whose power the party were awed, a