gues and glare of garish lights would have been
solitude indeed.

The sisters had gone home, and she was alone. She raised her eyes to
the bright stars, looking down so mildly from the wide worlds of air,
and, gazing on them, found new stars burst upon her view, and more
beyond, and more beyond again, until the whole great expanse sparkled
with shining spheres, rising higher and higher in immeasurable space,
eternal in their numbers as in their changeless and incorruptible
existence. She bent over the calm river, and saw them shining in the
same majestic order as when the dove beheld them gleaming through the
swollen waters, upon the mountain tops down far below, and dead
mankind, a million fathoms deep.

The child sat silently beneath a tree, hushed in her very breath by the
stillness of the night, and all its attendant wonders. The time and
place awoke reflection, and she thought with a quiet hope--less hope,
perhaps, than resignation--on the past, and present, and what was yet
before her. Between the old man and herself there had come a gradual
separation, harder to bear than any former sorrow. Every evening, and
often in the day-time too, he was absent, alone; and although she well
knew where he went, and why--too well from the constant drain upon her
scanty purse and from his haggard looks--he evaded all inquiry,
maintained a strict reserve, and even shunned her presence.

She sat meditating sorrowfully upon this change, and mingling it, as it
were, with everything about her, when the distant church-clock bell
struck nine. Rising at the sound, she retraced her steps, and turned
thoughtfully towards the town.

She had gained a little wooden bridge, which, thrown across the stream,
led into a meadow in her way, when she came suddenly upon a ruddy
light, and looking forward more attentively, discerned that it
proceeded from what appeared to be an encampment of gipsies, who had
made a fire in one corner at no great distance from the path, and were
sitting or lying round it. As she was too poor to have any fear of
them, she did not alter her course (which, indeed, she could not have
done without going a long way round), but quickened her pace a little,
and kept straight on.

A movement of timid curiosity impelled her, when she approached the
spot, to glance towards the fire. There was a form between it and her,
the outline strongly developed against the light, which caused her to
stop abruptly. Then, as i