square, and
the great poplars stood like giants whispering together. Still the far
sounds of the town came up cheerfully, while she folded up her
knitting, it being dark, thinking how happy an ending this was to a
happy day. When it grew quiet, she could hear the solemn whisper of
the poplars, and sometimes broken strains of music from the cathedral
in the city floated through the cold and moonlight past her, far off
into the blue beyond the hills. All the keen pleasure of the day, the
warm, bright sights and sounds, coarse and homely though they were,
seemed to fade into the deep music, and make a part of it.

Yet, sitting there, looking out into the listening night, the poor
child's face grew slowly pale as she heard it. It humbled her. It
made her meanness, her low, weak life so plain to her! There was no
pain nor hunger she had known that did not find a voice in its
articulate cry. SHE! what was she? The pain and wants of the world
must be going up to God in that sound, she thought. There was
something more in it,--an unknown meaning of a great content that her
shattered brain struggled to grasp. She could not. Her heart ached
with a wild, restless longing. She had no words for the vague,
insatiate hunger to understand. It was because she was ignorant and
low, perhaps; others could know. She thought her Master was speaking.
She thought that unknown Joy linked all earth and heaven together, and
made it plain. So she hid her face in her hands, and listened, while
the low harmony shivered through the air, unheeded by others, with the
message of God to man. Not comprehending, it may be,--the poor
girl,--hungry still to know. Yet, when she looked up, there were warm
tears in her eyes, and her scarred face was bright with a sad, deep
content and love.

So the hot, long day was over for them all,--passed as thousands of
days have done for us, gone down, forgotten: as that long, hot day we
call life will be over some time, and go down into the gray and cold.
Surely, whatever of sorrow or pain may have made darkness in that day
for you or me, there were countless openings where we might have seen
glimpses of that other light than sunshine: the light of that great
To-Morrow, of the land where all wrongs shall be righted. If we had
but chosen to see it,--if we only had chosen!

CHAPTER V.

Now that I have come to the love part of my story, I am suddenly
conscious of dingy common colors on the palette