lice more than ever."

"How do you account for that, Helen?" asked Arthur.

"I don't know," she answered, "unless it is I went through a trial for
her sake."

"Helen is a metaphysician," said the young doctor. "She could not have
given a better solution."

CHAPTER VI.

"And can it be those heavenly eyes
Blue as the blue of starry skies,
Those eyes so clear, so soft so bright,
Have never seen God's blessed light?"

Helen returned to her father's, to prepare for her departure to the
school, which Mittie was about to leave. Arthur had long resolved to
place Alice in an Institution for the blind, and as there was a
celebrated one in the same city to which Helen was bound, he requested
Mr. Gleason to be her guardian on the journey, and suffer her to be the
companion of Helen. This arrangement filled the two young girls with
rapture, and reconciled them to the prospect of leaving home, and of
being cast among strangers in a strange city.

Ever since Alice was old enough to feel the misfortune that rested so
darkly upon her, and had heard of those glorious institutions, where the
children of night feel the beams of science and benevolence penetrate
the closed bars of vision, and receive their illumination in the inner
temple of the spirit, she had expressed an earnest wish to be sent where
she could enjoy such advantages.

"Oh!" she would repeat a thousand times, unconscious of the pain she
inflicted on her mother; "oh! if I could only go where the blind are
taught every thing, how happy should I be!"

It is seldom that the widow of a country minister is left with more than
the means of subsistence. Mrs. Hazleton was no exception to the general
rule. But Arthur treasured up every word his blind sister uttered, and
resolved to appropriate to this sacred purpose the first fruits of his
profession. It was for this he had anticipated the years of manhood, and
commenced the practice of medicine, under the auspices of his father's
venerable friend, Doctor Sennar, at an age when most young men are
preparing themselves for their public career. Success far transcending
his most sanguine hopes having crowned his youthful exertions, he was
now enabled to purchase the Parsonage, and present it as a filial
offering to his mother, and also to defray the expenses of his sister's
education.

Alice had never before visited the home of Helen, and it was an
interesting sight to see with what watchful care an