She met the family in the morning with quite a composed countenance, but with a sad heart.

In the afternoon she went to her uncle’s to visit her grandmother, thinking, perhaps, change of place might produce some change in her feelings.  It was a delightful afternoon.  The sun shed that soft subdued light so peculiar to the season, over the face of nature, which seemed rather approximating to maturity than verging to decay.  The trees were robed in their deepest green, while the early ripe fruit hung temptingly upon their branches, or lay scattered upon the ground beneath.  Scarce a breeze agitated the trembling leaf or cooled the fever upon her cheek.  “O,” thought she, as she passed along, “the howling of the wintry storms would better correspond with my feelings than this holy calm.”  She, in her agony, had not yet learned to bathe her restless spirit in the fountain of Jiving waters, or to listen to that voice that said, “Peace, be still,” and the winds and waves obeyed; therefore she had no “shelter from the windy storm and tempest.”

She was startled by hearing some one near her repeating in a low, musical voice,

“Little Hannah Pease, little Hannah Pease; old Ben Thornton, old Ben Thornton,” and looking up, perceived near her a female, loosely wrapped in a large white woolen blanket, which was her only clothing.  Her head and feet were entirely bare.  Her black hair was cut short, and her weather beaten countenance retained traces of great beauty.  She stood courtesying and smiling to a rock.  As Annie reached her side, she muttered, “Old Ben Thornton, old Ben Thornton, you deceived poor Betsey Lotrop—­you deceived poor Betsey Lotrop.”

Annie gazed upon her with pity, saying mentally,

“A poor victim of unfaithful love; I hope the fire that is feeding upon the springs of my life may never destroy my reason,” and at that moment she seemed to feel the need of seeking aid from a higher power, and for the first time the prayer for guidance and direction went up to God, in earnest supplication, and our Father, who pitieth his children and seeth the returning prodigal afar off, breathed peace into her troubled spirit, and thus commenced the first dawnings of a new and better life in the heart of this poor lonely one.

Poor Betsy stood curtesying and talking to the rock, till Annie walked some distance from her, when gathering her blanket a little more closely about her, and walking rapidly forward, soon overtook her, and looking earnestly in her face, with a low, gurgling laugh, she continued,

“Poor little Hannah Pease, poor little Hannah Pease—­perhaps, if you had married him, you wouldn’t been any better off.  This face was a beautiful face once; it was the handsomest face that ever was seen; look at it now—­how would you find it out?  Old Ben Thornton, old Ben Thornton,” and fetching another laugh, she sprang over the fence, and was soon lost from sight among the trees.