what she was looking at than the child who gazes into
the heavens on a winter night. When she looked into the oval mirror,
no dream of the centuries through which it had received on its surface
fair and suffering faces, grave, noble, self-sacrificing men, and
scenes of trial deep and agonizing,--no dream of the past disturbed
the serene unconsciousness of her gaze. She looked at the large
pearls that formed the long oval pin, and at the exquisite allegorical
painting, which, in the quaint fashion of the time of its execution,
was colored with the "ground hair" of the beloved; so materializing
sentiment, and, as it were, getting as near as possible to the very
heart's blood. Yet the old gold, the elaborate execution of the quaint
classical device, and the fanciful arrangement of the braided hair
interwoven with twisted gold letters, all told no tales to the
observer, whose unwakened nature, indeed, asked no questions.

The little room, so small that in these days a College of Physicians
would at once condemn it, as a cradle of disease and death, had
nevertheless for twenty years been the nightly abode of as perfect a
piece of health as the country produced. Whatever might be wanting
in height and space was amply made up in inevitable and involuntary
ventilation. Health walked in at the wide cracks around the little
window-frame, peeped about in all directions with the snow-flakes in
winter and the ready breezes in summer, and settled itself permanently
on the fresh cheeks and lips of the light sleeper and early riser.

Beside the white-covered cot there stood a straight-backed,
list-seated oaken chair, a mahogany chest of drawers that reached from
floor to ceiling, and a little three-legged light-stand. Everything
was covered with white, and the room was fragrant with the lavender
and dried rose-leaves with which every drawer was scrupulously
perfumed. There was no toilet-table, for Dorcas had use neither for
perfumes nor ointment. No Kalydors and no Glycerines came within the
category of her healthful experience. Alert and graceful, she neither
burnt her fingers nor cut her hands, and had need therefore of no
soothing salves or sirups; and as she did not totter in scrimped shoes
or tight laces, and so did not fall and break her bones, she had no
need even of that modern necessity in all well-regulated families,
"Prepared Glue." There was no medicine-chest in Colonel Fox's house.
Healthy, occupied, active, and wise--bu