iness of that one sacred moment. The gentle voice recalled him to a
sense of his position, and he sighed heavily as she said, "Will you tell
me where you live, my son? and may I sometimes go to see you with my
little daughter?"

"_My son, my son!_" that was too much, for the pent-up torrent, and the
poor lad burst into an agony of weeping. Years had passed since so
blessed a sound had fallen upon his heart, and it awakened so long a
train of fond recollections, henceforth to be only as a departed dream,
that he could have no power to restrain the grief that struggled for
vent. It wasn't the pity that moved him--oh! no. There was never an hour
in the day, when he was exposed to the observation of his
fellow-mortals, that some expression of commiseration did not reach his
sensitive ear, and many a stranger would stop him with the words of
self-complacent condolence that would send the hot blood over his white
forehead, and excite in him a bitter feeling of rebellion against the
Providence that ordereth all things aright. He could distinguish between
a passing glance of loathing and contempt, and the heartfelt look of
sympathetic sorrow, and his isolated spirit grasped at the slightest
evidence of a kindred feeling, and treasured it up as the brightest and
most precious of gifts.

Mrs. Fay was troubled by the tears she had so unwittingly occasioned,
and was about to move quietly away, as she saw no prospect of an
immediate answer to her question, and the people were beginning to be
attracted to the spot by the scene, when the boy pointed in the
direction of the bay, and said, tremulously, "I stay with my grandmother
down there in a small house by the water, lady; and we shall both be
glad to see you if you please to come;" and, as if fearing another
glance, he hobbled off as fast as his infirmities would allow, and was
soon out of their sight.

It was hard to go along day by day, with his withered limb and his
protruding back, in the midst of God's fair creation, and feel himself
an anomaly there. Shut up his ears and soul as he would against the
coarse gibes that were often uttered at his expense, he could not fail
to perceive the strange difference between himself and the crowd that
hurried by him, nor to take in the wondrous beauty that would sometimes
flit before his longing vision. The very thought that in his own person
he was denied the excellence and majesty of a perfect development
enhanced so much the more the