" yet she knelt and alternately prayed and wept.

Again she gazed into the noisy waters--but there was nothing there, and
then calling her frightened and weeping children into the house, she
determined to set forth alone, for assistance--for what?

* * * * *

Oh! how long was that night to Ellen, though she believed her brother
remained at C----. She did not sleep till late, and sad the awakening.
Voices in anxious whispers fell upon her ear; pale faces and weeping eyes,
were everywhere around her--within, confusion; and useless effort without.
Her uncle wept as for an only son; her aunt then felt how tenderly she had
loved him, who was gone forever. The farmer, who had warned him at the
tavern-door, smote his breast when he heard his sad forebodings were
realized. The young and the old, the rich and the poor, assembled for days
about the banks of the creek, with the hopes of recovering the body, but
the young rider and his horse were never seen again. Ah! Ellen was an
orphan now--father, mother, and friend had he been to her, the lost one.
Often did she lay her head on the kind breast of their old nurse, and pray
for death.

As far as was in their power, her uncle and aunt soothed her in her grief.
But the only real comfort at such a time, is that from Heaven, and Ellen
knew not that. How could she have reposed had she felt the protection of
the Everlasting Arms!

But time, though it does not always heal, must assuage the intensity of
grief; the first year passed after William's death, and Ellen felt a wish
for other scenes than those where she had been accustomed to see him. She
had now little to which she could look forward.

Her chief amusement was in retiring to the library, and reading old
romances, with which its upper shelves were filled; this, under other
circumstances, her aunt would have forbidden, but it was a relief to see
Ellen interested in any thing, and she appeared not to observe her thus
employing herself.

So Ellen gradually returned to the old ways; she studied a little, and
assisted her industrious aunt in her numerous occupations. As of old, her
aunt saw her restlessness of disposition, and Ellen felt rebellious and
irritable. With what an unexpected delight, then, did she receive from her
aunt's hands, the letters from Mrs. Weston, inviting her to come at once to
Exeter, and then to accompany them to Washington. She, without any
difficulty, obtained the neces