ormenting me for
days. Then, when I was at my music, or was allowed to play the organ in
your father's place, I would forget my grievances. Again, I often
thought; 'Am I eternally to play this organ, and walk these few hundred
steps about this village here for ever? and beyond this village, never
to be heard of by one living soul, or spoken of when I am dead?' You
see, since that doctor has been up there at the castle, I have had a
hope of growing up to be a man like other men--and to be able to go out
into the wide world, and go where I please, and have nobody to mind."

"Not even me, Clement?" She spoke without complaint or reproach, but
the boy broke out passionately:

"How can you talk such stuff, which you know I can't abide? Do you
think I would go away and leave you all alone? or steal from home in
secret? Do you think I could do that?"

"I know how it is. When the village-lads begin their wanderings, or go
away to town, nobody ever may go with them, not even their own sisters;
and here, while they are children still, the boys run away from the
girls whenever they come near them. Till now they let you stay with me,
and we learned and played together; you were blind, as I was--what
should you have done with other boys? But when you see, and wish to
stay with me, they will mock you, and hoot after you, as they do to all
who do not hold to them; and then you will go away, for ever so long a
time, perhaps--and I--how shall I ever learn to do without you?"

The last words were spoken with an effort, and then her terrors
overcame her, and she sobbed aloud.

Clement drew her towards him, and stroked her cheeks, and said with
earnest tenderness: "Yon must not cry; I am not going to leave
you--never--rather remain blind and forget the rest. I will not leave
you if it makes you cry so. Come now, be calm; do be glad!--you must
not heat yourself, the doctor said; it is not good for the eyes, dear
darling Marlene!"

He took her in his arms, and clasped her close, and kissed her cheek--a
thing he had never done before. Just then he heard his mother calling
to him from the vicarage close by; and leading the still weeping girl
to a chair by the wall, and seating her upon it, he hurried out.

Shortly after, a venerable pair might be seen walking down the hill,
from the great house towards the village. The vicar, a tall and stately
form, with all the power and majesty of an apostle; and the sexton, a
simple slight-built ma