ouch, but by an inward consciousness. Would it
not be so among the dead?

The silence was interrupted by the consumptive daughter addressing a
remark to some one in the circle whom she called Rachel. Her tremulous
and decayed accents were answered by a single word, but in a voice
that made me start and bend toward the spot whence it had proceeded.
Had I ever heard that sweet, low tone? If not, why did it rouse up so
many old recollections, or mockeries of such, the shadows of things
familiar yet unknown, and fill my mind with confused images of her
features who had spoken, though buried in the gloom of the parlor?
Whom had my heart recognized, that it throbbed so? I listened to catch
her gentle breathing, and strove by the intensity of my gaze to
picture forth a shape where none was visible.

Suddenly the dry pine caught; the fire blazed up with a ruddy glow,
and where the darkness had been, there was she--the vision of the
fountain. A spirit of radiance only, she had vanished with the rainbow
and appeared again in the firelight, perhaps to flicker with the blaze
and be gone. Vet her cheek was rosy and lifelike, and her features, in
the bright warmth of the room, were even sweeter and tenderer than my
recollection of them. She knew me. The mirthful expression that had
laughed in her eyes and dimpled over her countenance when I beheld her
faint beauty in the fountain was laughing and dimpling there now. One
moment our glance mingled; the next, down rolled the heap of tan upon
the kindled wood, and darkness snatched away that daughter of the
light, and gave her back to me no more!

Fair ladies, there is nothing more to tell. Must the simple mystery be
revealed, then, that Rachel was the daughter of the village squire and
had left home for a boarding-school the morning after I arrived and
returned the day before my departure? If I transformed her to an
angel, it is what every youthful lover does for his mistress. Therein
consists the essence of my story. But slight the change, sweet maids,
to make angels of yourselves.

FANCY'S SHOW-BOX.

A MORALITY.

What is guilt? A stain upon the soul. And it is a point of vast
interest whether the soul may contract such stains in all their depth
and flagrancy from deeds which may have been plotted and resolved
upon, but which physically have never had existence. Must the fleshly
hand and visible frame of man set its seal to the evil designs of the
soul, in order to give