lay black and dismal upon its ghostly surface. Again she would behold it as it reared itself dark and dripping in a blinding storm, its walls plastered with leaves from the immovable poplars, and its neglected garden lying sodden and forlorn under the flail of the ceaseless storm. Then its early morning face would strike her fancy. The slow looming of its chimney-tops against a brightening sky; the gradual coming out of its forsaken windows and solemn looking doors from the mystery of darkness into the no less mystery of day; the hint of roselight on its barren boards; the gleam of sunshine on its untrodden threshold; a sunshine as pure and sweet as if a bride stood there in her beauty, waiting for admission into the deserted halls beyond. All and everything that could tend to invest the house and its constant visitor with an atmosphere of awe and interest, had occurred to this young girl in her daily reveries and nightly dreams. It was therefore with a thrill deep as her expectation and vivid as her sympathy, that she recognized in her eager interlocutor and proposed confident, the woman about whose life and actions rested for her such a veil of impenetrable mystery. The thought moved her, excited her, and made the rest of the evening pass like a dream. She was anxious for the next day to come, that she might seek this Mrs. Hamlin in her home, and hear from her lips the tale of devotion that should mate her own simple but enthusiastic poem.
When the next day did come, it rained, rained bitterly, persistent and with a steady drive from the north east, that made her going out impossible. The day following she was indisposed, and upon the succeeding afternoon, she was engaged in duties that precluded all thought of visiting. The next day was Sunday, and Monday had its own demands which she could not slight. It was therefore well nigh a week from the night of the entertainment, before the opportunity offered for which she was so anxious. Her curiosity and expectation had thus time to grow, and it was with a determination to allow nothing to stand in her way, that she set out from home in a flood of mild September sunshine, to visit Mrs. Hamlin. But alas, for resolutions made in a country village