she dancing in her
happiness as before; and, that her father might hear she was obeying
him, singing a song.

"For five years every Sabbath have I attended divine service in your
chapel--yet dare I not call myself a Christian. I have prayed for
faith--nor, wretch that I am, am I an unbeliever. But I fear to fling
myself at the foot of the cross. God be merciful to me a sinner!"

The old man opened not his lips; for he felt that there was about to be
made some confession. Yet he doubted not that the sufferer had been more
sinned against than sinning; for the goodness of the stranger--so called
still after five years' residence among the mountains--was known in many
a vale--and the Pastor knew that charity covereth a multitude of
sins--and even as a moral virtue prepares the heart for heaven. So
sacred a thing is solace in this woeful world.

"We have walked together, many hundred times, for great part of a day,
by ourselves two, over long tracts of uninhabited moors, and yet never
once from my lips escaped one word about my fates or fortunes--so frozen
was the secret in my heart. Often have I heard the sound of your voice,
as if it were that of the idle wind; and often the words I did hear
seemed, in the confusion, to have no relation to us, to be strange
syllablings in the wilderness, as from the hauntings of some evil spirit
instigating me to self-destruction."

"I saw that your life was oppressed by some perpetual burden; but God
darkened not your mind while your heart was disturbed so grievously; and
well pleased were we all to think, that in caring so kindly for the
griefs of others, you might come at last to forget your own; or if that
were impossible, to feel, that with the alleviations of time, and
sympathy, and religion, yours was no more than the common lot of
sorrow."

They rose--and continued to walk in silence--but not apart--up and down
that small sylvan enclosure overlooked but by rocks. The child saw her
father's distraction--no unusual sight to her; yet on each recurrence as
mournful and full of fear as if seen for the first time--and pretended
to be playing aloof with her face pale in tears.

"That child's mother is not dead. Where she is now I know not--perhaps
in a foreign country hiding her guilt and her shame. All say that a
lovelier child was never seen than that wretch--God bless her--how
beautiful is the poor creature now in her happiness singing over her
flowers! Just such another must h