icated either deep remorse or a sense of some great
misery. One of the female voices, too, was so feeble as scarcely to be
heard, yet there ran through it, she felt, a spirit of such tender and
lowly resignation, mingled with such an expression of profound sorrow,
as almost moved her to tears. The door was open, and the light so dim,
that she could not distinctly see their persons--two circumstances which
for a moment induced her to try if it were possible to leave the meal
there without their knowledge. She determined otherwise, however, and as
their prayers were almost immediately concluded, she entered the house.
The appearance of a stranger in the dusky gloom carrying a burden,
caused them to suppose that it was some poor person coming to ask
charity, or permission to stop for the night.

"Who is this?" asked Condy. "Some poor person, I suppose, axin'
charity," he added. "But God's will be done, we haven't it to give this
many a long day. Glory be to his name!"

"This is Condy Dalton's house?" said the strange woman in a tone of
inquiry.

"Sich as it is, it's his house, an' the best he has, my poor creature. I
wish it was betther both for his sake and yours," he replied, in a calm
and resigned voice, for his heart had been touched and solemnized by the
act of devotion which had just concluded.

Mrs. Dalton, in the meantime, had thrown a handful of straw on the fire
to make a temporary light.

"Here," said the stranger, "is a present of meal that a' friend sent
you."

"Meal!" exclaimed Peggy Dalton, with a faint scream of joy; "did you say
meal?" she asked.

"I did," replied the other; "a friend that heard of your present
distress, and thinks you don't desarve it, sent it to you."

Mrs. Dalton raised the burning straw, and looked for about half a minute
into her face, during which the woman carried the meal over and placed
it on the hearth.

"I met you to-day, I think," said Mrs. Dalton, "along with Donnel Dhu's
wife on your way to Darby Skinadre's?"

"You might," replied the woman; "for I went there part o' the road with
her."

"And who are we indebted to for the present?" she asked again.

"I'm not at liberty to say," replied the other; "barrin' that it's from
a friend and well-wisher."

Mrs. Dalton clasped her hands, and looking with an appearance of
abstraction, on the straw as it burned in the fire, said in a voice that
became infirm by emotion--

"Oh! I know it; it can be no other. The friend