flattering to his vanity.  But to-day she felt that all he had avowed was true; that his proud, bitter heart was indeed entirely hers; that this assurance filled her own heart with a measureless joy, a rapture that made her eyes sparkle through their tears and brought a momentary glow to her cheeks.  Hour after hour passed; she took no note of time, and sat there pondering her past life, thinking how the dusty heart deep under the marble would have throbbed with fond pride, if it could only have known what the world said of her writings.  That she should prove competent to teach the neighbors’ children had been Aaron Hunt’s loftiest ambition for his darling; and now she was deemed worthy to speak to her race through the columns of a periodical that few women were considered able to fill.

She wondered if he were not really cognizant of it all; if he were not watching her struggles and her triumph; and she asked herself why he was not allowed, in token of tender sympathy, to drop one palm-leaf on her head, from the fadeless branch he waved in heaven?

                   “Oh! how far,
   How far and safe, God, dost thou keep thy saints
   When once gone from us!  We may call against
   The lighted windows of thy fair June heaven
   Where all the souls are happy; and not one,
   Not even my father, look from work or play,
   To ask, ’Who is it that cries after us,
   Below there, in the dark?”

The shaft threw a long slanting shadow eastward as the orphan rose, and, taking from the box the fragrant exotics which she had brought from Le Bocage, arranged them in the damp soil of one of the vases, and twined their bright-hued petals among the dark green ivy leaves.  One shining wreath she broke and laid away tenderly in the box, a hallowed souvenir of the sacred spot where it grew; and as she stood there, looking at a garland of poppy leaves chiselled around the inscription, neither flush nor tremor told aught that passed in her mind, and her sculptured features were calm, as the afternoon sun showed how pale and fixed her face had grown.  She climbed upon the broad base and pressed her lips to her grandfather’s name, and there was a mournful sweetness in her voice as she said aloud: 

“Pray God to pardon him, Grandpa!  Pray Christ to comfort and save his precious soul!  Oh, Grandpa! pray the Holy Spirit to melt and sanctify his suffering heart!”

It was painful to quit the place.  She lingered, and started away, and came back, and at last knelt down and hid her face, and prayed long and silently.

Then turning quickly, she closed the iron gate, and without trusting herself for another look, walked away.  She passed the spring and the homestead ruins, and finally found herself in sight of the miller’s house, which alone seemed unchanged.  As she lifted the latch of the gate and entered the yard, it seemed but yesterday that she was driven away to the depot in the miller’s covered cart.