“Yes, come on.  You and Lily can pick up some nice smooth burrs to make baskets of.  But where is your bonnet?” “I forgot it.”  She ran up, almost out of breath, and seized Beulah’s hand.

“You forgot it, indeed!  You little witch, you will burn as black as a gypsy!”

“I don’t care if I do.  I hate bonnets.”

“Take care, Claudy; the President won’t have you all freckled and tanned.”

“Won’t he?” queried the child, with a saucy sparkle in her black eyes.

“That he won’t.  Here, tie on my hood, and the next time you come running after me bareheaded, I will make you go back; do you hear?”

“Yes, I hear.  I wonder why Miss Dorothy don’t bleach off her freckles; she looks like a—­”

“Hush about her, and run on ahead.”

“Do, pray, let me get my breath first.  Which way are we going?”

“To the piney woods yonder,” cried Lilly, clapping her hands in childish glee; “won’t we have fun, rolling and sliding on the straw?” The two little ones walked on in advance.

The path along which their feet pattered so carelessly led to a hollow or ravine, and the ground on the opposite side rose into small hillocks, thickly wooded with pines.  Beulah sat down upon a mound of moss and leaves; while Claudia and Lillian, throwing off their hoods, commenced the glorious game of sliding.  The pine straw presented an almost glassy surface, and, starting from the top of a hillock, they slid down, often stumbling and rolling together to the bottom.  Many a peal of laughter rang out, and echoed far back in the forest, and two blackbirds could not have kept up a more continuous chatter.  Apart from all this sat Beulah; she had remembered the matron’s words, and stopped just at the verge of the woods, whence she could see the white palings of the asylum.  Above her the winter breeze moaned and roared in the pine tops; it was the sad but dearly loved forest music that she so often stole out to listen to.  Every breath which sighed through the emerald boughs seemed to sweep a sympathetic chord in her soul, and she raised her arms toward the trees as though she longed to clasp the mighty musical box of nature to her heart.  The far-off blue of a cloudless sky looked in upon her, like a watchful guardian; the sunlight fell slantingly, now mellowing the brown leaves and knotted trunks, and now seeming to shun the darker spots and recesses where shadows lurked.  For a time the girl forgot all but the quiet and majestic beauty of the scene.  She loved nature as only those can whose sources of pleasure have been sadly curtailed, and her heart went out, so to speak, after birds, and trees, and flowers, sunshine and stars, and the voices of sweeping winds.  An open volume lay on her lap; it was Longfellow’s Poems, the book Eugene had sent her, and leaves were turned down at “Excelsior” and the “Psalm of Life.”  The changing countenance indexed very accurately the emotions which were excited by this communion with Nature.  There was an uplifted look, a brave, glad, hopeful light in the gray eyes, generally so troubled in their expression.  A sacred song rose on the evening air, a solemn but beautiful hymn.  She sang the words of the great strength-giving poet, the “Psalm of Life”: