confident that my
story was idle nonsense, that my fears were quieted. She talked to me
until I no longer was a believer in there being any unhappy mystery or
harmfulness; but I could not get over the fright, and I dreaded my
lonely room, and I was glad enough when cousin Agnes, with her
unfailing thoughtfulness, asked if I would like to have her come to
sleep with me, and even went up stairs with me at my own early
bedtime, saying that she should find it dull to sit all alone in the
parlor. So I went to sleep, thinking of what I had heard, it is true,
but no longer unhappy, because her dear arm was over me, and I was
perfectly safe. I waked up for a little while in the night, and it was
light in the room, so that I could see her face, fearless and sweet
and sad, and I wondered, in my blessed sense of security, if she were
ever afraid of any thing, and why I myself had been afraid of Lady
Ferry.

I will not tell other stories: they are much alike, all my memories of
those weeks and months at the ferry, and I have no wish to be
wearisome. The last time I saw Madam she was standing in the garden
door at dusk. I was going away before daylight in the morning. It was
in the autumn: some dry leaves flittered about on the stone at her
feet, and she was watching them. I said good-by again, and she did not
answer me; but I think she knew I was going away, and I am sure she
was sorry, for we had been a great deal together; and, child as I was,
I thought to how many friends she must have had to say farewell.

Although I wished to see my father and mother, I cried as if my heart
would break because I had to leave the ferry. The time spent there had
been the happiest time of all my life, I think. I was old enough to
enjoy, but not to suffer much, and there was singularly little to
trouble one. I did not know that my life was ever to be different. I
have learned, since those childish days, that one must battle against
storms if one would reach the calm which is to follow them. I have
learned also that anxiety, sorrow, and regret fall to the lot of every
one, and that there is always underlying our lives, this mysterious
and frightful element of existence; an uncertainty at times, though we
do trust every thing to God. Under the best-loved and most beautiful
face we know, there is hidden a skull as ghastly as that from which we
turn aside with a shudder in the anatomist's cabinet. We smile, and
are gay enough; God pity us! We try to