XXV.

A STREAM OF PEACE.

Since Monday, Hepsy had been quite unwell. She had lost her appetite, of
late; and although she seemed more cheerfully resigned to her unhappy
lot than ever before, it was easy to perceive that continually she had
to struggle with some great pain.

Father Brighthopes talked with her a good deal during her illness, and
his conversation was an unspeakable comfort to her suffering heart. He
imparted a strange power of endurance to her weak nature; he lifted the
dark veil from her future; he showed her, opening at the end of the
rugged, steep and thorny path she traveled, a paradise of purity,
odorous with orange groves and flowery fields, murmurous with falling
fountains, and bright with the sunlight of the Saviour's love. There
stood angels, too radiant for the weak eye of the doubting spirit to
look upon, smiling to welcome her, beckoning with their snowy hands, and
chanting psalms of praise to the Being who had given them this labor of
love to do. And soon one among them, called Hope, with luminous wings,
and a face like the morning star, came down to her, scattering roses and
tufts of softest moss upon the jagged stones in her way, and bound a
pair of shining sandals upon her bleeding feet. Love, an angel from the
highest heavens descended to earth, where mortals behold her divine
countenance but dimly, through the misty exhalations of their impure
natures, twined her gentle arms about her neck, and kissed her, pointing
upward to the infinite Father of all. Then Faith, a seraph serene and
strong, took her by the hand, and bathed her pallid brow and fainting
lips in the life-giving light of her own immortal eyes.

Such pictures the clear vision of the happy old man perceived, and
discovered to her soul with a power which seemed like inspiration. Tears
of joy stole down her sallow cheeks, as her mind followed his. And when
he showed her another path, a little removed from the rocky steeps she
climbed,--a circuitous, tempting road, shaded with trees, many of which
bore fruits lovely to look upon, but all ashes to the taste, and
bordered with flowers that faded continually at the touch; a long, easy
way, peopled by the fairest ones she knew, who, stopping momently to eat
of the fruits and pluck the flowers, journeyed--Oh, how slowly!--towards
the heavenly fields; and when she saw that what seemed glittering gems
under their feet were only flakes of mica, while the very rocks she trod
upo