ingled with licentious songs and profane
oaths.

When the repentant soul is convinced of sin, how dreadful does the
language once so familiar appear! The oath and the profane jest smite
upon it with a force which makes it recoil within itself; and it flies
for protection to the injured Majesty it so often wantonly defied.
"Alas, for the wicked!" said Mary. "'Destruction and misery are in their
paths, and the way of peace they have not known.' How long have I, in
word, thought and deed, blasphemed the majesty of the Most High, and
rebelled against his holy laws! Ought I then to condemn my fellows in
iniquity? Am I in reality any better than they? I will go to the grave
of my child--that sight will make me humble--that little mound of dark
earth holds all that the world now contains for me."

She dropped from the window to the ground. The watch-dog knew her and
forbore to bark. He thrust his cold nose into her wasted hand, and
wagging his tail looked up inquiringly into her face. There was
something of human sympathy in the expression of the generous brute. It
went to the heart of the poor wanderer. She leant down and kissed the
black head of the noble animal. A big bright tear glittered among his
shaggy hair, and the moonbeams welcomed it with an approving smile.

Like a ghost Mary glided down the garden path, overgrown with rank
weeds, and she thought that the neglected garden greatly resembled the
state of her soul. A few necessary wants had alone been attended to. The
flower-beds were overgrown and choked with weeds--the fruit-trees barren
from neglect and covered with moss. "But He can make the desolate place
into a fruitful field," said Mary. "The wilderness, under his fostering
care, can blossom like the rose."

She crossed the lane, and traversing several lonely fields she came to
the park near the old Hall, within whose precincts the gothic church,
erected by one of the ancestors of the Hurdlestones, reared aloft its
venerable spire. How august the sacred building looked in the moonlight!
how white the moonbeams lay upon the graves! Mary sighed deeply, but
hers was not a mind to yield easily to superstitious fears. She had
learned to fear God, and there was nothing in his beautiful creation
which could make her tremble, save the all-seeing eye which she now felt
was upon her.

Passing the front of the church, where all the baptized children of the
village for ages had found their place of final rest, she ste