usic in the glow of ecstasy, and carrying upward the loveliest emotions
of the earth in yearning sympathy for nature. No language, now, that
Vesta could identify, was woven into that maze of morning song, which
challenged, with its fulness and golden weight, the floods of sunshine,
matching light with sound, spontaneous both, and rivals for the favors
of the soft atmosphere. Singing with all its heart, outdoing all it
knew, forgetting imitation in wild improvisation, watching her window as
it danced upon the twigs and fluttered into the air, conscious of her
listening as it purled and warbled towards her, and sounded every pipe
and trumpet, virginal and clarion, hautboy and castanet, in the
orchestra of its rustic bosom, the mocking-bird's ode seemed almost
supernatural this morn to Vesta, and she thought to herself:

"Oh, what wedding music in the cathedral at Baltimore could equal that?
and this poor man receives it for his epithalamium, without cost, as
truly as if nature were greeting my coming to him in the old poet's
spirit:

"'Now all is done; bring home the bride againe;
Bring home the triumph of our victory;
Bring home with you the glory of her gaine,
With joyance bring her and with jollity:
Sing, ye sweet angels, Alleluia sing,
That all the woods may answer, and your echo ring.'"

Relieved from the agitation of the mocking-bird, Vesta now gave her
whole attention to her husband; and the high heat of his brain and
circulation, and his muttering, like delirium, seemed to indicate that
he had an intense attack of intermittent fever. She heard the words
several times repeated by him: "I will come soon, darling!" and the
simplicity of his devotion to her, unloved as he was, had such flavor of
pathos in it that the tears started to Vesta's eyes.

"Poor soul!" she said, "it will be long before I can love him. _There_,
his hunger must be enduring. But my duty is not the less clear to stay
by his side and nurse him, as his wife."

At this conclusion she looked Milburn over carefully, to see if any
wound or sign of violence, whether by accident or an enemy, appeared
upon him, and finding none, and he all the time wandering in his sleep,
she climbed the ladder and peeped into the garret, to see if his servant
might be there. Samson's bed, as she supposed it was, had not been
disturbed, and so, descending, she raised the window over the larger
door she had entered by, and beckoned Virgie to come up.