and say, "Don't talk so, please, Harry, for it makes me feel bad: besides, it is n't true, for Aunt Mary loves you, and so do I; and I know you'll grow up to be a great man, and have as many books as you want, and study everything, too!'

Then Harry would lift his face to mine, and there would be such a glow all over it! And his lip would quiver when he said, “ Ally, your words always make me feel happy. God bless you!" And my heart always beat lighter when he said those words.

But one day, when Aunt Mary was "picking over" some gooseberries for supper, and I sat by her side, hemming an apron for my new doll, I told her all that Harry had said to me. I noticed she seemed very thoughtful after this; and at last I looked up, and saw she was running her fingers in an absent manner through the pan of gooseberries; and I said, " Aunt Mary, you're thinking about something."

She smiled her own sweet loving smile, and bending down, kissed my upturned forehead, and said, "You have guessed rightly, Ally. I was trying to devise some method by which I could send Harry Willard to school; but this is not so easy a matter as I see, by the sparkling of those blue eyes, that you think it is. Harry Willard's mother was not always poor, as she is now and she is very proud too; and unless I could represent his going in the light of a favor done to me, I do not think I could obtain her consent to this matter."

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But you can think of some way; I know you can, Aunt Mary: Harry so longs to go!" I eagerly answered; for I placed the most unbounded faith in Aunt Mary's diplomatic resources.

"Well, Ally, I had just thought of a plan when you spoke to me, which, upon reflection, appears the best calculated of any to succeed. I have felt for some time that my darling ought to commence some higher studies than those she is learning of me; but it is a long way to the villageschool, and-"

"And you intend Harry should go too, to take care of me! O, I'm so glad, Aunt Mary!" I interrupted, springing up and clapping my hands-an involuntary ebullition of my excited feelings.

Aunt Mary's smile verified my remarks; and at sunset, on that very day, she went down to the red house, and had a long

talk with Mrs. Willard. The star was just coming over the great hill at the side of our home, a single golden drop in that sea of blue, when Aunt Mary returned, and informed me that her mission had been a successful one, and that Harry and I were to enter the village-school on the ensuing week. O, that Monday morning's sunlight shone not on two happier hearts than Harry's and mine, when we shut the white wicket of our cottage-home, and, hand in hand, took the road leading to the village-school, pausing every few rods to send a smile or a kiss to Aunt Mary, who stood in the front-door, watching us with her loving eyes until we were out of sight. Very happy were we, too, for the next six months: very tender and watchful was Harry's care for me; and very wonderful was Harry's progress in his studies, distancing all his class-mates, and greatly surprising the teacher, while the light beamed more brightly, and the shadow went more and more from his face, which he would turn to me sometimes, and say, in his sudden, abrupt manner, “O, Ally, I'm very happy now!" But, at the expiration of six months, there came the darkness of the shadow of death over all this brightness.

It was evening: Aunt Mary sat in her old seat by the window, and I stood by her side, watching the round moon as she came slowly up the blue bridge, on either side of which lay the silver-looped and gray-fringed clouds, when Harry Willard burst into the room; and every muscle of his white face seemed working with terrible suffering, as he sprang to Aunt Mary's side, saying wildly, " O, please go to her; please go to her quick, for my mother is dying!"

With a half-suppressed exclamation, Aunt Mary seized a shawl, and hurried after Harry, who had rushed out of the house.

I was all alone, with the white moon looking in at the window, and plating with silver the backs of the chairs; and in the half-darkness a great fear came over me. I could not endure the stillness and the ghostly moonlight; so I seized my bonnet, and followed Aunt Mary as rapidly as my trembling limbs would permit.

I shall never cease to remember the scene which presented itself as I entered the red house. Mrs. Willard was sitting in a chair in one corner of the long, old

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fashioned parlor, her head resting on Aunt Mary's bosom, who was striving to wipe away the current of blood which issued from her white lips. Harry's words were but too true: his mother was dying of sudden hemorrhage at the lungs! But once the dim eyes unclosed, and the cold fingers moved convulsively. Harry!" gasped the dying woman, as the boy buried his head, with a heart-breaking sob, in her lap, "I am going home. O God, forget not thy covenant with the fatherless!" Again the cold fingers moved convulsively amid his brown curls; there was a faint sigh; the head leaned more heavily on Aunt Mary-Harry Willard was motherless!

Two days later they buried Mrs. Willard. It was a pleasant autumn day, and the winds sighed through the tangled grass of the church-yard, and the sunbeams glinted brightly along the marble, where Harry's mother was laid down to that slumber which no sunlight could ever waken. Poor Harry! He did not weep then; but he stood there, his whole frame quivering like a wind-broken bough, when the clods rattled on the coffin.

There was a corner in that same churchyard to which Aunt Mary and I glanced often through our tears; for there, under those drooping willows, with their white hands folded calmly over their hearts, my father and mother were sleeping that sleep which knows no earthly waking.

We could not dissuade Harry from sleeping at the house "just down the road;" but he passed at our cottage most of the week subsequent to his mother's death. He grew calmer every day; but none who looked in the boy's sad eyes could doubt of the great "heartache" beneath them. One morning he came over as usual, and told my aunt that he had resolved to leave the village, now that he had no relatives (how his voice trembled!) to keep him there.

It was all useless trying to dissuade him from this, for the boy's heart was set on going; and he said he had lain awake, in the loneliness and darkness of the red house, thinking how he would carve out his own fortune. So at last Aunt Mary ceased her verbal opposition, and set herself about preparing the boy's wardrobe for his journey, and disposed to the best advantage of his mother's simple furniture. It was an October morning. The great

fruit-laden branches were dipping downward, almost within our reach, when Harry Willard and I stood under them for the last time. "You will not quite forget me, Harry," I said, swallowing down the sob that was in my throat, "when you are so far away; and you will think sometimes of the village school, and the garden, and the old trees where you used to sit-won't you?"

"Forget you, Ally!" and his arm was drawn around my waist, and the brown eyes looked earnestly, almost reproachfully, into mine-" you, whom I love better than anybody in the world, now mamma is gone! O, Ally, I shall be lying under the grass, as deep and as still as she is this pleasant morning, before I can forget you, and Aunt Mary, and all your kindness to me, a poor little, fatherless, friendless boy! Ally, I have passed the happiest hours of my life with you; and now, won't you give me one of those long curls that has lain for years against your cheek? And I will place it on my heart; and it will keep it always warm for you. Don't cry, Ally, dear!" for the tears were dripping down my cheeks as I took Aunt Mary's garden-scissors, which she had inadvertantly left on a rustic bench under the tree, and severed the tress. "I'll come back to you when I've grown to be somebody you'll be proud of;" and his form dilated. "But hark! there comes the stage, and Aunt Mary is calling ;" and the tears trickled on his heavy lashes as he ran toward the house. "Good-by, Ally !”

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Good-by, Harry!"

We stood under the small vine-wrapped portico, and he kissed me twice, and then ran hastily toward the gate, for the driver was late and cross. I heard the rumbling of wheels, and saw through my tears the floating of a handkerchief; and Harry Willard was gone, and the red house "down the road" was desolate.

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Eight years had passed since that morning when Harry Willard and I murmured our tearful farewells under the vinewrapped portico. They had not been all bright years to me: there was a great shadow trailing through the later ones, until this was lost, swallowed up in darkness, the darkness of death!

Our home, our darling cottage-home went first. The former owner of the

place was a hard man, and the bill of sale was lost; so it fell into his hands. Aunt Mary struggled very hardly to bear up under this blow; but it was a very heavy one, leaving the home of her fathers; and after it she always smiled a sad, heartbroken smile, that brought the tears into my eyes, and said, "God's will be done!"

Her health, which had been failing her for a long time, gave way at last. There came another autumn day, and the wind soughed through the tangled grass of the church-yard, and the sunlight glinted along the white marble, just as it had done in a day far down in my memory, when they laid Aunt Mary under the willows to sleep!

After this, I, too, was ill for a long time with a fever; and some kind neighbors took me to their homes, and watched over me during that long illness almost as tenderly as Aunt Mary would have done.

My father had a widowed sister, who resided at the capital, and of whom I seldom heard; but I knew that Aunt Mary had written her a few days before she left me, although she did not reveal to me the nature of her communication. But when I was able to sit up, they placed a letter, in a strange handwriting, before me. It contained an invitation (I tried to think it was a cordial one) from this aunt to make her residence my future home.

The kind family with whom I had resided since my aunt's death were not wealthy; and so, after many prophetic misgivings, I resolved to accept the home which had been offered me. I came to the city, reader, a lonely orphan girl, without a friend outside the little village which it almost broke my heart to leave. But the proud mansion whose tall stone front looked down coldly and sternly upon me when I ascended the broad steps, and glanced up at it for the first time, was no home to me. I soon perceived that my aunt, and her two fair, haughty daughters, regarded me as an unwelcome dependent upon their bounty, whom it would in no wise avail their interest to recognize; and sometimes I wished that I was lying under the willows, close, O, so very close, to Aunt Mary! May God forgive me! for I was very wretched.

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'Then, Julia, you are sure we may depend upon his honoring our soirée with his presence?"

"Perfectly so, Annie. Mr. Lee, who is, you know, his most intimate friend, says we may rely upon him for next Tuesday, though he had to refuse several other invitations in order to accept ours. How he is fêted and worshiped everywhere! I'm sure I shall be grateful to Mr. Lee forever. And Annie, I'm resolved that our soirée shall be the most brilliant of the season. So distinguished a guest certainly demands an extra effort on our part. Dear me, Alice, I had quite forgotten you!" And the tone and the glance which accompanied this remark were ample evidence that the reminder was anything but agreeable to my cousin. "Of course, you won't think of entering the parlors next Tuesday evening. The society there will be so very unlike anything to which you have been accustomed in that little out-of-the-world village that you would find yourself sadly out of place. Then there is a young and very distinguished orator to be present, about whom the fashionable world is just now in perfect ecstasies; and you could n't, of course, expect us to present you to him. But you can make yourself useful in some way, I dare say. The servants will be very busy; and after the company have all arrived, you can go into the dressing-room, and arrange the cloaks and hats, so that the owners need not have so much difficulty in identifying them as they did at our last party. I always look forward with dread to that finale of confusion!"

I bowed my head, and left the room, for the tears were coming, and I would not that they should see them. "O, Aunt Mary! Aunt Mary! if you could see your little Alice now!" I groaned in the agony of my heart, as I laid my throbbing head on the arms I wrapped together on the table. And then I resolved I would return again to my village home, though all the light had gone out of it. Now my health, which I had not gained when I came to my aunt's, was restored, I thought I could establish an infant-school in my old home, and for Aunt Mary's sake the inhabitants would aid me in this matter.

It was evening. All alone in my little chamber, at one corner of the mansion, I could hear the hurrying to and fro of many feet, and the rumbling of the carriage-wheels as they drew up before the door. Below me, I knew, the chandeliers were pouring their tides of silvery light

through the magnificent drawing-rooms, and flowing over fair young brows, and winding through the ringlets that drooped around them. I thought of the lighthearted girls there of my own age; and I envied them not their happiness, not their riches, but the love that was denied to me; and sometimes, when a swell of rich laughter would come rippling up the winding stairs to my chamber, I would bury my face in my hands and weep. And sometimes I thought of him for whom all this beauty and chivalry were assembled; and then I would wonder if, amid all that homage and adulation, his heart would not grow mournful a moment, were he to know that, under that very same roof, a broken-hearted orphan girl was sitting, with no companions but her memories and her tears!

ingly on mine- and then I knew him. Time had molded the contour of the pale boy-face into that of early manhood, and softened and deepened the light of those wondrous eyes; but I knew they were Harry Willard's. "Alice!" "Harry!"

At last I grew very uneasy, and sitting there with my head leaning on my hands, I fell asleep, and dreamed I was sitting with Aunt Mary by our old cottage-window once more. It must have been very late when I awoke, for I could hear the tide of company slowly setting up from the dining-hall into the parlors; and, remembering the task which my cousin had assigned me, I seized a light, and hurried down the back stairs into the dressingroom. It presented to me a scene of almost hopeless confusion; but I had at last succeeded in arranging the garments so that they would readily be recognized by the owners, when I heard footsteps hastily approaching the door, and vainly looked round to find some mode of egress.

"You did well, Lee, to smuggle me out of the room as you did; but necessity knows not the law of conventionalisms, and I must hurry off without taking leave of my hostess and her daughters. Here are our hats; lucky we 've found them!"

I stood in one corner with the light in my hand, so the gentlemen did not observe me; and I was internally congratulating myself on this, when the younger of the men, who had previously spoken, turned again, saying, "Wait a moment; I put my cane in this corner, and had well-nigh forgotten it. Madam!" He paused suddenly, for he had discovered me.

I lifted my eyes and the light fell full on his features, and we stood there face to face. One glance-yet another, intense, breathless, into those brown deep eyes, that were fastened eagerly, wonder

The words came involuntarily to the lips of both; and then, with that voice, the memories of other days rushed darkly over my heart, and the tears I could not restrain brimmed over my eyes. He made a sign to Mr. Lee, who stood staring from one to another, to leave us, saying, "I will join you soon." And then he came close to me, and putting away the curls from my forehead just as he had done in the olden time, he said, " Alice, my sweet child-angel, what has brought you here? Look up, darling, and tell me.'

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But I did not look up, and could not have seen him if I had, for my blinding tears; but I laid my head on his arm, while he drew the other around me, and I said, "Harry, our old home is gone, and Aunt Mary is dead, and I am here alone, friendless, and very wretched."

"But friendless no longer, Alice," he answered, in his deep, thrilling tones. "Did you think I could forget you—you whose memory has dwelt as constant in my heart as the dark brown curl you gave me has risen and fallen with its every pulsation since? Hark! they have discovered my absence, and I must leave you. Alice, say nothing to any one of this meeting; I will come to you again. When shall you be alone?"

"To-morrow evening," I said, recollecting that my aunt and cousins were engaged at that time. "After eight I shall be alone."

"Farewell till then."

He bent down his lips to my forehead, and the next moment I was alone-alone, but no longer wretched.

It was evening again; there was a deep hush in the stately parlors, and a single lamp poured its soft dim light over the massive furniture and among the gorgeous. flowers of the carpet, as I stole softly into them, and awaited, with heart throbs that almost alarmed me, the coming of Harry Willard.

I did not keep a long watch that night. In a little while we were seated together in one of the dim alcoves of the great

room; my hand was lying in his, and I was telling him the story of the years since we parted. It was a mournful history, and the tears often choked it, and sobs closed many a paragraph. At last I concluded it with the relation of the previous night's sufferings, of the unkind words my cousin had spoken, and of my wondering if even the great orator, whose name I did not know, would not have felt a momentary pang for my sorrows.

There was a long silence after I had said this, but at last Harry broke it. "Alice," he said, and there was a look in the eyes he bent on me that brought the lids over mine-"while the world has been dealing thus hardly with you, it has been very kind to me, after a year or two of hard struggling, which it matters not now to talk of. Alice, have you forgotten the words that I said to you under the old pear-tree the morning that we parted? 'I love you better than any other in the world.' And the heart of the man echoes to-night the words of the boy. Alice, my beautiful, loved with a true, changeless love, my first, and my last, during all the long years of our separation, will you take this love, will you be my wife?"

I could not make him answer for my tears; but I laid both my hands in his, and he was satisfied.

"They have sent for you to come down to the parlor, Miss, in a great hurry," said a servant, putting her head into my room the next morning, while I sat there dreaming of Harry.

Wondering greatly what my aunt and cousins could want, I descended to the parlor; but I heard my aunt say, as I entered, "I am confident, Mr. Willard, you will not find this person the one of whom you are in quest; and the mistake in your information will probably be owing to their similarity of names.'

My aunt and her daughters, Mr. Lee, and Harry were all there. As soon as the latter saw me, he rose, took my hand, and, leading me up to them, said, "Permit me, madam, and young ladies, to present to you Alice Mernin, my affianced bride!"

Never shall I forget the look of mingled surprise and consternation which settled over my aunt's and cousins' features as they heard this declaration.

"Why did n't you tell us, Alice? Why did n't you tell us?" they simultaneously

ejaculated; and then a light began gradually to dawn on my mind. I looked at Harry, and the mischievous light that filled his eyes corroborated my suspicions. He was the "distinguished orator" in whose honor my cousins' soirée had been given. O, I shed proud and happy tears before them all when I knew it!

My haughty relatives never recovered from the mortification which Harry's revelation gave them; but the prestige of my relationship was discovered too late, though I was overladen with attention and caressed for the remaining few days of my sojourn with them. Harry and I were married the next week at his friend's, Mr. Lee. Where his old home once stood, a fine Grecian villa now rises: the columbine wraps its balconies, and the honeysuckle its portico, and at nightfall Harry and I wander through the long garden-aisles, and the stars look down upon us with the same smile that they wore in our childhood, and Harry's eyes are filled with their old light as I lean on his arm, and we talk about the old days, and the old red house "just down the road."