At last, turning over the leaves without any definite purpose, she lighted on a place in Matthew, where three verses at the end of a chapter happened to stand at the head of a column.  I suppose she read them because the beginning of the page and the end of the chapter made them seem a short detached piece.  And they melted into her mood so that she seemed to know Christ and God for the first time.  “Come unto me all ye that labor and are heavy laden,” she read, and stopped.  That means me, she thought with a heart ready to burst.  And that saying is the gateway of life.  When the promises and injunctions mean me, I am saved.  Julia read on, “And I will give you rest.”  And so she drank in the passage, clause by clause, until she came to the end about an easy yoke and a light burden, and then God seemed to her so different.  She prayed for August, for now the two loves, the love for August and the love for Christ, seemed not in any way inconsistent.  She lay down saying over and over, with tears in her eyes, “rest for your souls,” and “weary and heavy laden,” and “come unto me,” and “meek and lowly of heart,” and then she settled on one word and repeated it over and over, “rest, rest, rest.”  The old feeling was gone.  She was no more a rebel nor an orphan.  The presence of God was not a terror but a benediction.  She had found rest for her soul, and He gave His beloved sleep.  For when she awoke from what seemed a short slumber, the red light of a glorious dawn came in at the window, and her candle was flickering its last in the bottom of the socket.  The Testament lay open as she had left it, and for days she kept it open there, and did not dare read anything but these three verses, lest she should lose the rest for her soul that she found here.

CHAPTER XXI.

THE HAWK IN A NEW PART.

Humphreys was now in the last weeks of his singing-school.  He had become a devout Millerite, and was paying attentions to the not unwilling Betsey Malcolm, though pretending at Anderson’s to be absolutely heart-broken at the conduct of Julia in jilting him after she had given him every assurance of affection.  And then to be jilted for a Dutchman, you know!  In this last regard his feeling was not all affectation.  In his soul, cupidity, vanity, and vindictiveness divided the narrow territory between them.  He inwardly swore that he’d get satisfaction somehow.  Debts which were due to his pride should be collected by his revenge.

Did you ever reflect on the uselessness of a landscape when one has no eyes to see it with, or, what is worse, no soul to look through one’s eyes?  Humphreys was going down to the castle to call on the Philosopher, and “Shady Hollow,” as Andrew called it, had surely never been more glorious than on the morning which he chose for his walk.  The black-haw bushes hung over the roadside, the maples lifted up their great trunk-pillars toward the sky, and the grape-vines,