eir neglect, scarcely heeded it. Strong in the
knowledge of her own innocence, she lay day after day, watching and
waiting for one who never came. But at last, as days glided into
weeks, and weeks into months, hope died away, and turning wearily
upon her pillow, she prayed that she might die; and when the days
grew bright and gladsome in the warm spring sun, when the snow was
melted from off the mountain tops, and the first robin's note was
heard by the farmhouse door, Helena laid her baby on her mother's
bosom, and without a murmur glided down the dark, broad river, whose
deep waters move onward and onward, but never return.

When it was known in Oakland that Helena was dead, there came a
reaction, and those who had been loudest in their condemnation, were
now the first to hasten forward with offers of kindness and words of
sympathy. But neither tears nor regrets could recall to life the
fair young girl, who, wondrously beautiful even in death, slept
calmly in her narrow coffin, a smile of sadness wreathing her lips,
as if her last prayer had been for one who had robbed her thus early
of happiness and life. In the bright green valley at the foot of the
mountain, they buried her, and the old father, as he saw the damp
earth fall upon her grave, asked that he too might die. But his
wife, younger by several years, prayed to live--live that she might
protect and care for the little orphan, who first by its young
mother's tears, and again by the waters of the baptismal fountain,
was christened HELENA RIVERS;--the '_Lena_ of our story.

CHAPTER II.

JOHN.

Ten years of sunlight and shadow have passed away, and the little
grave at the foot of the mountain is now grass-grown and sunken. Ten
times have the snows of winter fallen upon the hoary head of
Grandfather Nichols, bleaching his thin locks to their own whiteness
and bending his sturdy frame, until now, the old man lay dying--dying
in the same blue-curtained room, where years agone his only daughter
was born, and where ten years before she had died. Carefully did
Mrs. Nichols nurse him, watching, weeping, and praying that he might
live, while little 'Lena gladly shared her grandmother's vigils,
hovering ever by the bedside of her grandfather, who seemed more
quiet when her soft hand smoothed his tangled hair or wiped the cold
moisture from his brow. The villagers, too, remembering their
neglect, when once before death had brooded over the mountain
farm