u didn't tell me you had given up my room," I said.

"Didn't I? Well, I forgot. We couldn't take him higher."

"Is he so much hurt?" I asked.

"Three broken bones," my father replied. "It will be weeks, it may be
months, before he will be well;" and he sighed hopelessly at the good
deed, which, being done, pressed so heavily. "Don't look so sadly about
it, Myrtle-Vine," he added; "take my room, if you like."

"That was not my thought," I said. "I do not mind the change of room."

The visit to Redleaf, which I had made to dawn in my horizon, was
eclipsed by three broken bones, that suddenly undermined the arch of
consistency.

Soothingly came the words that were spoken unto me. My father was
all-willing to relinquish his cherished room,--his for sixteen years,
and opening into that mysterious other room,--to give it up to me, his
Myrtle-Vine; and a momentary pang that any interest in existence should
be, except as circling around him, flew across the future, "the science
whereof is to man but what the shadow of the wind might be,"--and I
looked up into his eyes, and, twining his long white hair around my
fingers, for a moment felt that forever and forever he should be the
supreme object of earthly devotion. In my wish to evince the sentiment
in action, I requested permission to assist in the care of the hospital
patient.

"Oh, no, Anna! he is too wild now. When the excitement of the fever is
gone, then will be your time."

Another of those many-toned, circling peals of laughter came from my
room. My father went in. I went past the place that mortal eyes were not
permitted to fathom, and, for the first time in my life, was curious to
know its contents, and why I had never seen the interior thereof, I had
grown up with the mystery, until I had accepted it, unquestioning, as a
thing not for my view, and therefore out of recognition. It was as far
away from me as the open sea of the North, and might contain the mortal
remains of all the navigators of Hope that ever had wandered into the
sea of Time for him who so holily guarded it.

"One far-away Indian-summery day, four years agone," "while yet the day
was young," Dr. Percival, my father, had led an azure-eyed maiden in
through the mysterious entrance, and shown unto her the veiled temple,
its altar and its shrine, and she had come thence with the dew of
feeling in her eyes and a purple haze around her brow, which she has
worn there until it has tangled its pansy-