rtunate creature of high or low degree had seized this opportunity
to get rid of her child for ever.(1). At this his bowels yearned so over
the poor deserted cherub, that the tears of pure tenderness stood in
his eyes, and still, beneath the crime of the mother, he saw the divine
goodness, which had so directed her heartlessness as to comfort His
servant's breaking heart.

"Now bless thee, bless thee, bless thee, sweet innocent, I would not
change thee for e'en a cherub in heaven."

"At's pooty," replied the infant, ignoring contemptuously, after the
manner of infants, all remarks that did not interest him.

"What is pretty here, my love, besides thee?"

"Ookum-gars,(2) said the boy, pointing to the hermit's breastplate.

"Quot liberi, tot sententiunculae!" Hector's child screamed at his
father's glittering casque and nodding crest; and here was a mediaeval
babe charmed with a polished cuirass, and his griefs assuaged.

"There are prettier things here than that," said Clement, "there are
little birds; lovest thou birds?"

"Nay. Ay. En um ittle, ery ittle? Not ike torks. Hate torks um bigger an
baby."

He then confided, in very broken language, that the storks with their
great flapping wings scared him, and were a great trouble and worry to
him, darkening his existence more or less.

"Ay, but my birds are very little, and good, and oh, so pretty!"

"Den I ikes 'm," said the child authoritatively, "I ont my mammy."

"Alas, sweet dove! I doubt I shall have to fill her place as best I may.
Hast thou no daddy as well as mammy, sweet one?"

Now not only was this conversation from first to last, the relative
ages, situations, and all circumstances of the parties considered, as
strange a one as ever took place between two mortal creatures, but at
or within a second or two of the hermit's last question, to turn the
strange into the marvellous, came an unseen witness, to whom every
word that passed carried ten times the force it did to either of the
speakers.

Since, therefore, it is with her eyes you must now see, and hear with
her ears, I go back a step for her.

Margaret, when she ran past Gerard, was almost mad. She was in that
state of mind in which affectionate mothers have been known to kill
their children, sometimes along with themselves, sometimes alone, which
last is certainly maniacal, She ran to Reicht Heynes pale and trembling,
and clasped her round the neck, "Oh, Reicht! oh, Reicht!" and could say
n