entered from the
supper-room, bringing with her a little basket of needle-work, Horace
Danforth asked if he might not now hope to receive the promised sketch.

"I will give it you with pleasure when I have had my evening song from
Mary," said Mr. Grahame.

Opening the piano for his young hostess, Horace Danforth stood beside
her as she sang, but he forgot to turn the leaves of the music before
her as he listened once again to a rich and cultivated voice,
accompanied by a fine instrument, touched by a skilful hand. As the
sweet and well-remembered strains fell on his ear, he closed his eyes
and gave the reins to fancy. The loved and lost gathered around him, and
it was with a strange, dream-like feeling that, as the sweet sound
ceased, and Mary arose from the piano, he opened his eyes and looked
upon the rough walls and simple furniture of his present abode.

"It is now nearly nineteen years," began Mr. Grahame, when his daughter
and guest had resumed their seats near him, "since, crushed in spirit, I
turned from the grave in which I had laid my chief earthly blessing, to
wander 'any where, any where out of that world' which had a few weeks
before been bright and joyous to me, but which I was now ready to
pronounce a desolate waste. The desire to avoid society made me turn
westward, and nearly one hundred miles east of our present residence I
found myself in the midst of a people without churches, without schools,
rude in appearance and in manners. Absorbed in the destruction of my own
selfish happiness, I might have passed from among them without knowing
that disease was adding its pangs to those inflicted by want, ignorance,
and superstition, had not a mother in the agony of parting from her
first-born, looking hither and thither for help, turned her eyes
entreatingly upon the stranger. I had once studied medicine, though
regarding the profession, as our young men too often do, merely as a
means of personal aggrandizement, and having received just at the
completion of my studies an accession of fortune, which removed all
pecuniary necessity to exertion on my part, I had never practised it,
nor indeed obtained the diploma necessary to its practice. Now, however,
I endeavored to make myself master of the peculiar features of the
epidemic under which the child was suffering, and with the aid of a
small store of medicines which my good sister had insisted on my taking
with me, and a rigid enforcement of some of the simp