ss deepened,
and yet with the deepened grief came a certain new and holy joy. It surely
could not be impossible for him to know in heaven that she was his on
earth? As confidently as if she had been wedded to him here, she looked
forward to the reunion with him there, and found in her secret
consciousness of this eternal bond a hidden rapture, such as has been the
stay of many a widowed heart through long lifetimes of loneliness. This
secret bond was like an impalpable yet impenetrable veil between her soul
and the souls of all men who came into relation with her. Men loved her
and sought her,--loved her warmly and sought her with long years of
devotion. The world often judged her uncharitably by reason of these
friendships, which were only friendships, and yet pointed to a warmer
regard than the world consents that friends may feel. But there was never
a man, of all the men who loved Mercy, who did not feel himself, spite of
all her frank and loving intimacy, withheld, debarred, separated from her
at a certain point, as if there stood drawn up there a cordon of viewless
spirits.

The one grief above which she could not wholly rise, which at times smote
her and bowed her down, was her sense of her loss in being childless. The
heart of mother was larger in her even than the heart of wife. Her longing
for children of her own was so great that it was often more than she could
bear to watch little children at their play. She stood sometimes at her
window at dusk, and watched the poor laboring men and women going home,
leading or carrying their children; and it seemed as if her heart would
break. Everywhere, her eye noted the swarming groups of children, poor,
uncared for, so often unwelcome; and she said sadly to herself, "So many!
so many! and not one for me." Yet she never felt any desire to adopt
children. She distrusted her own patience and justice too much; and she
feared too deeply the development of hereditary traits which she could not
conquer; "I might find that I had taken a liar," she thought; "and I
should hate him."

As she reached middle age, this unsatisfied desire ceased to be so great a
grief. She became more and more like a motherly friend to the young people
surrounding her. Her house was a home to them all, and she reproduced in
her own life very nearly the relation which Parson Dorrance had held to
the young people of Danby. Her friend Lizzy Hunter was now the mother of
four girls, all in their first y