h, and to carry to her, as it were, the seal of her idolatries. You
shall follow her wishes, Adaly; but I must attend you, my child, were it
only to protest against such vanities, and to declare to her, if it be
not too late, the truth as it is in the Gospel."

Adele was only too willing; for she was impressed with a vague terror at
thought of this interview, and of its possible revelations; and they set
off presently in company. It was a chilly day of later autumn. Only a
few scattered, tawny remnants of the summer verdure were hanging upon
the village trees, and great rows of the dead and fallen leaves were
heaped here and there athwart the path, where some high wall kept them
clear of the winds; and as the walkers tramped through them, they made a
ghostly rustle, and whole platoons of them were set astir to drift again
until some new eddy caught and stranded them in other heaps. Adele, more
and more disturbed in mind, said,--

"It's such a dreary day, New Papa!"

"Is it the thought that one you know may lie dying now makes it dreary,
my child?"

"Partly that, I dare say," returned Adele; "and then the wind so tosses
about these dead leaves. I wish it were always spring."

"There is a country," said the parson, "where spring reigns eternal. I
hope you may find it, Adaly; I hope your poor countrywoman may find it;
but I fear, I fear."

"Is it, then, so dreadful to be a Romanist?"

"It is dreadful, Adaly, to doubt the free grace of God,--dreadful to
trust in any offices of men, or in tithes of mint and anise and
cumin,--dreadful to look anywhere for absolution from sin but in the
blood of the Lamb. I have a conviction, my child," continued he, in a
tone even more serious, "that the poor woman has not lived a pure life
before God, or even before the world. Even at this supreme moment of her
life, if it be such, I should be unwilling to trust you alone with her,
Adaly."

Adele, trembling,--partly with the chilling wind, and partly with an
ill-defined terror of--she knew not what,--nestled more closely to the
side of the old gentleman; and he, taking her little hand in his, as
tenderly as a lover might have done, said,--

"Adaly, at least _your_ trust in God is firm, is it not?"

"It is! it is!" said she.

The house, as we have said, lay far out upon the river-road, within a
strip of ill-tended garden-ground, surrounded by a rocky pasture. A
solitary white-oak stood in the line of straggling wall that separate