ven hunger was forgotten in the strange
tranquillity that crept over her senses. So very weak and spent she felt
as she lay down, so very calm and unresisting, that she had no thought
of any wants of her own, but prayed that God would raise up some friend
for him. Morning came--much weaker, yet the child made no complaint--she
felt a hopelessness of their ever being extricated together from that
forlorn place; a dull conviction that she was very ill, perhaps dying;
but no fear or anxiety. Objects appeared more dim, the noise less, the
path more uneven, for sometimes she stumbled, and became roused, as it
were, in the effort to prevent herself from falling. Poor child! The
cause was in her tottering feet.

They were dragging themselves along toward evening and the child felt
that the time was close at hand when she could bear no more. Before them
she saw a traveller reading from a book which he carried.

It was not an easy matter to come up with him, and beseech his aid, for
he walked fast. At length he stopped, to look more attentively at some
passage in his book. Animated with a ray of hope, the child shot on
before her grandfather, and going close to the stranger without rousing
him by the sound of her footsteps, began faintly to implore his help.

He turned his head. Nell clapped her hands together, uttered a wild
shriek, and fell senseless at his feet. It was no other than the poor
schoolmaster. Scarcely less moved and surprised than the child herself,
he stood for a moment, silent and confounded by the unexpected
apparition, without even presence of mind to raise her from the ground.
But, quickly recovering his self-possession, and dropping on one knee
beside her, he endeavored to restore her to herself.

"She is quite exhausted," he said, glancing upward into the old man's
face. "You have taxed her powers too far, friend."

"She is perishing of want," rejoined the old man. "I never thought how
weak and ill she was, till now."

Casting a look upon him, half-reproachful and half-compassionate, the
schoolmaster took the child in his arms, and bore her away at his utmost
speed to a small inn within sight.

The landlady came running in, with hot brandy and water, with which and
other restoratives, the child was so far recovered as to be able to
thank them in a faint voice. Without suffering her to speak another
word, the woman carried her off to bed, and after having been made warm
and comfortable, she had a vis