e: I will bear all that this
world can inflict; I will bear shame, ill-treatment, anger, scorn, and
every harsh word that may be uttered against me; I will renounce church,
spiritual power, rank, honor; I will give up father and family--all--all
that this world could flatter mo with: yes, I will renounce each and
all for your sake! Do not dissuade me; my mind is fixed, and no power on
earth can change it."

"Yes, Denis," she replied calmly, "there is a power, and a weak power,
too, that will change it; for I will change it. Don't think, Denis, that
in arguin' with you, against the feelin's of my own heart, I am doin' it
without sufferin'. Oh, no, indeed! You know, Denis, I am a lonely
girl; that I have neither brother, nor sister, nor mother to direct
me. Sufferin'!--Oh, I wish you knew it! Denis, you must forget me. I'm
hopeless now: my, heart, as I said, is broke, and I'm strivin' to fix it
upon a happier world! Oh! if I had a mother or a sister, that I could,
when my breast is likely to burst, throw myself in their arms, and cry
and confess all I feel! But I'm alone, and must bear all my own sorrows.
Oh, Denis! I'm not without knowin' how hard the task is that I have set
to myself. Is it nothing to give up all that the heart is fixed upon? Is
it nothing to walk about this glen, and the green fields, to have one's
eyes upon them, and to remember what happiness one has had in them,
knowin', at the same time, that it's all blasted? Oh, is it nothing to
look upon the green earth itself,and all its beauty--to hear the happy
songs and the joyful voices of all that are about us--the birds singing
sweetly, the music of the river flowin'--to see the sun shinin', and to
hear the rustlin' of the trees in the warm winds of summer--to see and
hear all this, and to feel that a young heart is brakin', or already
broken within us--that we are goin' to lave it all--all we loved--and to
go down into the clay under us? Oh, Denis, this is hard;--bitter is it
to me, I confess it; for something tells me it will be my fate soon!"

"But, Susan"--

"Hear me out. I have now repated what I know I must suffer--what I know
I must lose. This is my lot, and I must bear it. Now, Denis, will you
grant your own Susan one request?"

"If it was that my life should save yours, I would grant it."

"It's the last and only one I will ever ask of you. My health has been
ill, Denis; my strength is gone, and I feel' I am gettin' worse every
day: now when