eep
shadows rage and murder lurked! Henceforth the Saviour became his own
exemplar and the gospel his only guidebook. Such was the manner in which
Ishmael was called of the Lord. He became proof against the most
envenomed shafts of malice. The reflection: What would Christ have done?
armed him with a sublime and invincible meekness and courage.

CHAPTER XXXV.

THE DREAM AND THE AWAKENING.

The lover is a god,--the ground
He treads on is not ours;
His soul by other laws is bound,
Sustained by other powers;
His own and that one other heart
Form for himself a world apart.

--_Milnes_.

Time went on. Autumn faded into winter: the flowers wore withered;
the grass dried; the woods bare. Miss Merlin no longer sat under the
green shadows of the old elm tree; there were no green shadows there;
the tree was stripped of its leaves and seemed but the skeleton of
itself, and the snow lay around its foot.

The season, far from interrupting the intimacy between the heiress and
her favorite, only served to draw them even more closely together. This
was the way of it. At the noon recess all the pupils of the school would
rush madly out upon the lawn to engage in the rough, healthful, and
exciting game of snowballing each other--all except Claudia, who was far
too fine a lady to enter into any such rude sport, and Ishmael, whose
attendance upon her own presence she would peremptorily demand.

While all the others were running over each other in their haste to get
out, Claudia would pass into the empty drawing room, and seating herself
in the deep easy chair, would call to her "gentleman in waiting,"
saying:

"Come, my young troubadour, bring your guitar and sit down upon this
cushion at my feet and play an accompaniment to my song, as I sing and
work."

And Ishmael, filled with joy, would fly to obey the royal mandate; and
soon seated at the beauty's feet, in the glow of the warm wood fire and
in the glory of her heavenly presence, he would lose himself in a
delicious dream of love and music. No one ever interrupted their
tete-a-tete. And Ishmael grew to feel that he belonged to his liege
lady; that they were forever inseparate and inseparable. And thus his
days passed in one delusive dream of bliss until the time came when he
was rudely awakened.

One evening, as usual, he took leave of Claudia. It was a bitter cold
evening, and she took off her own crimson Berlin wool scarf and with her
own fa