and striving to form words of prayer which should reach
the God of the fatherless.

But few of the villagers thought of her this afternoon. Their
sympathies were all with Mrs. Campbell; and when at the close of the
services she approached to take a last look of her darling, they
closed around her with exclamations of grief and tears of pity, though
even then some did not fail to note and afterwards comment upon the
great length of her costly veil, and the width of its hem! It was a
long procession which followed Ella Campbell to the grave, and with
bowed heads and hats uplifted, the spectators stood by while the
coffin was lowered to the earth; and then, as the Campbell carriage
drove slowly away, they dispersed to their homes, speaking, it may be,
more tenderly to their own little ones, and shuddering to think how
easily it might have been themselves who were bereaved.

Dark and dreary was the house to which Mrs. Campbell returned. On the
stairs there was no patter of childish feet. In the halls there was no
sound of a merry voice, and on her bosom rested no little golden head,
for the weeping mother was childless. Close the shutters and drop the
rich damask curtains, so that no ray of sunlight, or fragrance of
summer flowers may find entrance there to mock her grief. In all
Chicopee was there a heart so crushed and bleeding as hers? Yes, on
the grass-plat at the foot of Mrs. Bender's garden an orphan girl was
pouring out her sorrow in tears which almost blistered her eyelids as
they fell.

Alice at last was sleeping, and Mary had come out to weep alone where
there were none to see or hear. For her the future was dark and
cheerless as midnight. No friends, no money, and no home, except the
poor-house, from which young as she was, she instinctively shrank.

"My mother, oh, my mother," she cried, as she stretched her hands
towards the clear blue sky, now that mother's home, "Why didn't I die
too?"

There was a step upon the grass, and looking up Mary saw standing near
her, Mrs. Campbell's English girl, Hannah. She had always evinced a
liking for Mrs. Howard's family, and now after finishing her dishes,
and trying in vain to speak a word of consolation to her mistress, who
refused to be comforted, she had stolen away to Mrs. Bender's,
ostensibly to see all the orphans, but, in reality to see Ella, who
had always been her favorite. She had entered through the garden gate,
and came upon Mary just as she uttered the w