d if my eye rested on my own
image in a mirror or some sylvan spring, it was to seek and recognise
the features of my parents. But the fears which had long pressed on
others were now to be laid on my youth. I had thrown myself, one sultry,
cloudy afternoon, on a divan; the windows stood open on the verandah,
where my mother sat with her embroidery; and when my father joined her
from the garden, their conversation, clearly audible to me, was of so
startling a nature that it held me enthralled where I lay.

"The blow has come," my father said, after a long pause.

I could hear my mother start and turn, but in words she made no reply.

"Yes," continued my father, "I have received to-day a list of all that I
possess; of all, I say; of what I have lent privately to men whose lips
are sealed with terror; of what I have buried with my own hand on the
bare mountain, when there was not a bird in heaven. Does the air, then,
carry secrets? Are the hills of glass? Do the stones we tread upon
preserve the footprint to betray us? Oh, Lucy, Lucy, that we should have
come to such a country!"

"But this," returned my mother, "is no very new or very threatening
event. You are accused of some concealment. You will pay more taxes in
the future, and be mulcted in a fine. It is disquieting, indeed, to find
our acts so spied upon, and the most private known. But is this new?
Have we not long feared and suspected every blade of grass?"

"Ay, and our shadows!" cried my father. "But all this is nothing. Here
is the letter that accompanied the list."

I heard my mother turn the pages; and she was some time silent.

"I see," she said at last; and then, with the tone of one reading;
"'From a believer so largely blessed by Providence with this world's
goods,'" she continued, "'the Church awaits in confidence some signal
mark of piety.' There lies the sting. Am I not right? These are the
words you fear?"

"These are the words," replied my father. "Lucy, you remember Priestley?
Two days before he disappeared, he carried me to the summit of an
isolated butte; we could see around us for ten miles; sure, if in any
quarter of this land a man were safe from spies, it were in such a
station; but it was in the very ague-fit of terror that he told me, and
that I heard, his story. He had received a letter such as this; and he
submitted to my approval an answer in which he offered to resign a third
of his possessions. I conjured him, as he valued life,