bounty she remembered even in her sleep. In her
prayers she beseeched God to bless them rather than the wretch on her
knees--their images, their names, were ever before her eyes and on her
ear; and next to that peace of mind which passeth all understanding, and
comes from the footstool of God into the humble, lowly, and contrite
heart, was to that orphan, day and night, waking or sleeping, the bliss
of her gratitude. And thus Ludovic to her was a brother, and no more; a
name sacred as that of sister, by which she always called her Alice, and
was so called in return. But to Ludovic, who had a soul of fire,
Margaret was dearer far than ever sister was to the brother whom, at the
sacrifice of her own life, she might have rescued from death. Go where
he might, a phantom was at his side--a pale fair face for ever fixed its
melancholy eyes on his, as if foreboding something dismal even when they
faintly smiled; and once he awoke at midnight, when all the house were
asleep, crying, with shrieks, "O God of mercy! Margaret is murdered!"
Mysterious passion of Love! that darkens its own dreams of delight with
unimaginable horrors! Shall we call such dire bewilderment the
superstition of troubled fantasy, or the inspiration of the prophetic
soul!

From what seemingly insignificant sources--and by means of what humble
instruments--may this life's best happiness be diffused over the
households of industrious men! Here was the orphan daughter of forgotten
paupers, both dead ere she could speak; herself, during all her
melancholy childhood, a pauper even more enslaved than ever they had
been--one of the most neglected and unvalued of all God's
creatures--who, had she then died, would have been buried in some
nettled nook of the kirkyard, nor her grave been watered almost by one
single tear--suddenly brought out from the cold and cruel shade in which
she had been withering away, by the interposition of human but angelic
hands, into the heaven's most gracious sunshine, where all at once her
beauty blossomed like the rose. She, who for so many years had been even
begrudgingly fed on the poorest and scantiest fare, by Penury ungrateful
for all her weak but zealous efforts to please by doing her best, in
sickness and sorrow, at all her tasks, in or out of doors, and in all
weathers, however rough and severe--was now raised to the rank of a
moral, intellectual, and religious being, and presided over, tended, and
instructed many little ones,