ry painful even
now--enough, that after long and skilful trial he succeeded. The arrow
at last struck its mark, and my boding heart then whispered how this
would end. I saw the pitying tenderness of her artless nature, shining
in her soft and dreamy eye, suffusing every speaking feature, making the
sweet face still more lovely, until presently compassion grew into
something yet more tender. Then her eyes would brighten at his coming, a
deep crimson color her cheeks, a sweet and timid consciousness betray
itself in every look and movement; and then, oh, anguish of spirit! _I
felt her soul gradually withdrawing itself from mine_, and my heart torn
from the loving one on which it rested. Then followed days and nights of
extreme mental anguish, a time of suffering that I cannot dwell upon
even now without a shudder, when I lost faith in God and man, and cursed
the day when I beheld the light; when amid blackness, darkness, and
tempest, my storm-tossed soul cried in vain for light, vainly seeking
for peace amid its wrecks and desolations. A fiery furnace, through
which I passed that I might come out purified.

They were to be married very soon. She told me this as we sat together
one evening in the brief wintry twilight. The first wild transports of a
newly found bliss had subsided into a calmer feeling of happiness in her
heart, as with me had passed the first 'bitter bitterness' of a
life-long grief, and I was enabled to receive her confidence with a show
of brotherly regard.

Christmas was the time set for the ceremony, and the first fall of snow
was even now lying on the ground.

She did not impart this information with the coy and hesitating timidity
usual to her; but thoughtfully, as she sat gazing out on the dull leaden
sky, watching the snowflakes falling through the dreary air. There
followed then a long, long pause, in which I had time to recover from
the effect her words had produced, and to frame and stammer forth such
congratulations as seemed required by the occasion. These she did not
answer, or even seem to comprehend, but roused from her revery by the
sound of my voice, she crossed the room and seated herself beside me,
and took my hand within her own.

'Brother,' she murmured, in a dreamy, half-abstracted manner, 'there has
been something solemn and strange in our intercourse, a mysterious
something, which my mind has vainly striven to grasp and comprehend. I
had thought the secret rested with you, and