siness confined entirely to the
flour-mill.

At this crisis, as if the change of all things broke her stout old
heart, which never could bend to any new ways--Jael died. We laid her
at my father's and mother's feet--poor old Jael! and that grave-yard in
St. Mary's Lane now covered over all who loved me, all who were of my
youth day--my very own.

So thought I--or might have thought--but that John and Ursula then
demanded with one voice, "Brother, come home."

I resisted long: for it is one of my decided opinions that married
people ought to have no one, be the tie ever so close and dear, living
permanently with them, to break the sacred duality--no, let me say the
unity of their home.

I wished to try and work for my living, if that were possible--if not,
that out of the wreck of my father's trade might be found enough to
keep me, in some poor way. But John Halifax would not hear of that.
And Ursula--she was sitting sewing, while the little one lay on her
lap, cooing softly with shut eyes--Ursula took my hand to play with
Muriel's. The baby fingers closed over mine--"See there, Phineas; SHE
wants you too." So I stayed.

Perhaps it was on this account that better than all his other children,
better than anything on earth except himself, I loved John's eldest
daughter, little blind Muriel.

He had several children now. The dark old house, and the square town
garden, were alive with their voices from morning till night. First,
and loudest always, was Guy--born the year after Muriel. He was very
like his mother, and her darling. After him came two more, Edwin and
Walter. But Muriel still remained as "sister"--the only sister either
given or desired.

If I could find a name to describe that child it would be not the one
her happy mother gave her at her birth, but one more sacred, more
tender. She was better than Joy--she was an embodied Peace.

Her motions were slow and tranquil--her voice soft--every expression of
her little face extraordinarily serene. Whether creeping about the
house, with a foot-fall silent as snow, or sitting among us, either
knitting busily at her father's knee, or listening to his talk and the
children's play, everywhere and always Muriel was the same. No one ever
saw her angry, restless, or sad. The soft dark calm in which she lived
seemed never broken by the troubles of this our troublous world.

She was, as I have said, from her very babyhood a living peace. And
such she w