and sunshine each season lifted its loveliness higher and higher in the
light--she could trip her singing way through the wide wilderness, all
by her joyful self, led, as all believed, nor erred they in so
believing, by an angel's hand! When the primroses peeped through the
reviving grass upon the vernal braes, they seemed to give themselves
into her hand; and 'twas thought they hung longer unfaded round her neck
or forehead than if they had been left to drink the dew on their native
bed. The linnets ceased not their lays, though her garment touched the
broomstalk on which they sung. The cushat, as she thrid her way through
the wood, continued to croon in her darksome tree--and the lark,
although just dropped from the cloud, was cheered by her presence into a
new passion of song, and mounted over her head, as if it were his first
matin hymn. All the creatures of earth and air manifestly loved the
Wanderer of the Wilderness--and as for human beings, she was named, in
their pity, their wonder, and their delight, the Blind Beauty of the
Moor!

She was an only child, and her mother had died in giving her birth. And
now her father, stricken by one of the many cruel diseases that shorten
the lives of shepherds on the hills, was bed-ridden--and he was poor. Of
all words ever syllabled by human lips, the most blessed is--Charity. No
manna now in the wilderness is rained from heaven--for the mouths of the
hungry need it not in this our Christian land. A few goats feeding among
the rocks gave them milk, and there was bread for them in each
neighbour's house--neighbour though miles afar--as the sacred duty came
round--and the unrepining poor sent the grateful child away with their
prayers.

One evening, returning to the hut with her usual song, she danced up to
her father's face on his rushy bed, and it was cold in death. If she
shrieked--if she fainted--there was but one ear that heard, one eye that
saw her in her swoon. Not now floating light like a small moving cloud
unwilling to leave the flowery braes, though it be to melt in heaven,
but driven along like a shroud of flying mist before the tempest, she
came upon us in the midst of that dreary moss; and at the sound of our
quaking voice, fell down with clasped hands at our feet--"My father's
dead!" Had the hut put already on the strange, dim, desolate look of
mortality? For people came walking fast down the braes, and in a little
while there was a group round us, and we bore