ens, an earthly guest, to draw empyreal air,"--she obeyed but the
honest and varying impulse in each change of her pliant mood, and would
have ascribed with genuine humility to the vagaries of childhood that
prompt gathering of pleasure, that quick-shifting sport of the fancy by
which Nature binds to itself, in chains undulating as melody, the lively
senses of genius.

While Helen, leaning on the vicar's arm, thus surrendered herself to the
innocent excitement of the moment, the vicar himself smiled and nodded
to his parishioners, or paused to exchange a friendly word or two with
the youngest or the eldest loiterers (those two extremes of mortality
which the Church so tenderly unites) whom the scene drew to its tempting
vortex, when a rough-haired lad, with a leather bag strapped across his
waist, turned from one of the gingerbread booths, and touching his hat,
said, "Please you, sir, I was a coming to your house with a letter."

The vicar's correspondence was confined and rare, despite his distant
children, for letters but a few years ago were costly luxuries to
persons of narrow income, and therefore the juvenile letter-carrier
who plied between the post-town and the village failed to excite in his
breast that indignation for being an hour or more behind his time which
would have animated one to whom the post brings the usual event of the
day. He took the letter from the boy's hand, and paid for it with a
thrifty sigh as he glanced at a handwriting unfamiliar to him,--perhaps
from some clergyman poorer than himself. However, that was not the place
to read letters, so he put the epistle into his pocket, until Helen, who
watched his countenance to see when he grew tired of the scene, kindly
proposed to return home. As they gained a stile half-way, Mr. Fielden
remembered his letter, took it forth, and put on his spectacles. Helen
stooped over the bank to gather violets; the vicar seated himself on
the stile. As he again looked at the address, the handwriting, before
unfamiliar, seemed to grow indistinctly on his recollection. That bold,
firm hand--thin and fine as woman's, but large and regular as man's--was
too peculiar to be forgotten. He uttered a brief exclamation of surprise
and recognition, and hastily broke the seal. The contents ran thus:--

DEAR SIR,--So many years have passed since any communication has taken
place between us that the name of Lucretia Dalibard will seem more
strange to you than that of Lucreti