so tearfully, that he had said to her at last he did but jest to hear what she would say, and, though she seemed satisfied, he felt there was a shadow between them—­a shadow which was not swept away, even after he promised to read the little Bible she gave him and see for himself whether he or she were right.  He had that Bible now hidden away where no curious eye could find it, and carefully folded between its leaves was a curl of golden hair.  It was faded now, and its luster was almost gone, but as often as he looked upon it, it brought to mind the bright head it once adorned, and the fearful hour when he became its owner.  That tress and the Bible which inclosed it had made Hugh Worthington a better man.  He did not often read the Bible, it is true, and his acquaintances were frequently startled with opinions which had so pained the little girl on board the St. Helena, but this was merely on the surface, for far below the rough exterior there was a world of goodness, a mine of gems, kept bright by memories of the angel child which flitted for so brief a span across his pathway and then was lost forever.  He had tried so hard to save her—­had clasped her so fondly to his bosom when with extended arms she came to him for aid.  He could save her, he said—­he could swim to the shore with perfect ease and so without a moment’s hesitation she had leaped with him into the surging waves, and that was about the last he could remember, save that he clutched frantically at the long, golden hair streaming above the water, retaining in his firm grasp the lock which no one at Spring Bank had ever seen, for this one romance of Hugh’s seemingly unromantic life was a secret with himself.  No one save his uncle had witnessed his emotions when told that she was dead; no one else had seen his bitter tears or heard the vehement exclamation:  “You’ve tried to teach me there was no hereafter, no heaven for such as she, but I know better now, and I am glad there is, for she is safe forever.”

These were not mere idle words, and the belief then expressed became with Hugh Worthington a firm, fixed principle, which his skeptical uncle tried in vain to eradicate.  “There was a heaven, and she was there,” comprised nearly the whole of Hugh’s religious creed, if we except a vague, misty hope, that he, too, would some day find her, how or by what means he never seriously inquired; only this he knew, it would be through her influence, which even now followed him everywhere, producing its good effects.  It had checked him many and many a time when his fierce temper was in the ascendant, forcing back the harsh words he would otherwise have spoken, and making him as gentle as a child; and when the temptations to which young men of his age are exposed were spread out alluringly before him, a single thought of her was sufficient to lead him from the forbidden ground.