urniture was a happy
abode for Tidy, who found in Mammy Grace even a better mother than old
Rosa had been to her; for, besides being kind and cheerful, she was
pious, and from her lips it was that Tidy first heard the name of
God. Would you believe it? Tidy had lived to be ten years old in this
Christian land, and had never heard of the God who made her. Miss Lee,
with all her kindness, was not a Christian, and never read the Bible,
offered prayer, or went to church; so that the poor child had grown up
thus far as ignorant of religious truth as a heathen.

We may well consider then the providence of God which brought her under
the care of Mammy Grace, the negro nurse, as another link in that golden
chain of love which was to draw her up out of the shame and misery
of her abject condition to the knowledge and service of her Heavenly
Father.

CHAPTER VI. BEGINNINGS OF KNOWLEDGE.

THE first day of the new service was over. The two babies had been
carried to the house and put to bed as usual at sunset, and Mammy Grace
had mixed the corn-pone for supper, and laid it to bake beneath the hot
ashes.

Tidy stretched herself at full length near the open door of the cabin,
and resting her head upon her hand looked out. All was still save the
hum of voices from the house, and now and then the plaintive song of
the whippoorwill in the meadow. The new moon was just hiding its silvery
crescent behind Tulip Mountain, and the shadows were growing every
moment darker among the flower-laden trees that covered its sides.
It was just the hour for thinking; and as the weary child lay there,
watching the stars that, one by one, stepped with such strange,
noiseless grace out upon the clear, blue sky, soothed by the calm
influence that breathed through the beautiful twilight, she soon forgot
herself and her surroundings, and was lost in the mazes of speculation
and wonder. What were these bright spots that kept coming thicker
and faster over her head, winking and blinking at her, as if with a
conscious and friendly intelligence? Who made them? what were they
doing? where did they hide in the daytime? If she could climb up yonder
mountain, and then get to the top of those tall tulip-trees, she was
sure she could reach them, or, at least, see better what they were. Were
they candles, that some unseen hand had lighted and thrust out there,
that the night might not be wholly dark? That could not be, for then the
wind, which was fanning the