your weakness or illness you want some one to unlock the
door and light the lamp. You have found her!"

XXVIII.

SUNSHINE ON THE HILLS.

"If I speak to thee in Friendship's name,
Thou think'st I speak too coldly;
If I mention Love's devoted flame,
Thou say'st I speak too boldly."

--MOORE.

The story told by Mrs. Hamlin had a great effect upon Paula, not only on
account of its own interest and the promise it had elicited from her,
but because of the remembrances it revived of Mr. Sylvester and her life
in New York. Any vision of evil or suffering, any experience that roused
the affections or awakened the sensibilities, could not fail to recall
to her mind the forcible figure of Mr. Sylvester as he stood that day by
his own hearthstone, talking of the temptations that assail humanity;
and any reminiscence of him must necessarily bring with it much that
charmed and aroused. For a week, then, she felt the effect of a great
unsettlement. Her village home appeared a prison; she longed to run,
soar--anything to escape; the horizon was full of beckoning hands. A
brooding melancholy settled upon her reveries; the prospect of a life
spent in the narrow circle to which she had endeavored to re-accustom
herself, became unendurable.

Thus it is with us. We slide in a groove and seem happy, when suddenly a
book we read, a story we hear, an experience we encounter, shakes us out
of our content, and makes continuance in the old course a violation of
the most demanding instincts of our nature.

In the full tide of this unrest, Paula went out for a solitary walk on
the hills. Nature can soothe if she cannot satisfy. Then the day itself
was one to make the soul glad and the heart rejoice. As the young girl
trod the meadows, she wondered that she could be sad. Earth and air were
so full of splendor. Nature seemed to be in league with the angels of
light. September stood upon the earth like a goddess of might and glory.
Every tint of green that variegated the mountain-side, wooed the eye
with suggestions of unfathomable beauty. A bough of scarlet flame lit
here and there amid the verdure, served to illuminate the woods as for
the passage of a king; and not Solomon in all his glory ever wore an
aspect more sumptuous than the flowers that flecked the meadow and
fringed the hardy roadside with imperial purple. A wind was blowing, a
keen but kindly breeze, laden with sweetness and alert to awaken AEol