an maiden,
solemnly.

Was the mighty power of love, in that dying mother's heart, a spiritual
force, conveying her image to the mind of her child, as electricity
transmits the telegram? Love photographs very vividly on the memory;
when intensely concentrated, may it not perceive scenes and images
unknown to the bodily eye, and, like the sunshine, under favorable
circumstances, make the pictures visible? Who can answer such questions?
Mysterious beyond comprehension are the laws of our complex being.
The mother saw her distant son, and the son beheld his long-forgotten
mother. How it was, neither of them knew or thought; but on the soul
of each, in their separate spheres of existence, the vision was
photographed.

In the desolated dwelling on the prairie, they were all unconscious of
this magnetic transmission of intelligence between the dying mother and
her far-off child. As she lay in her coffin, they spoke soothingly
to each other, that she had passed away without suffering, dreaming
pleasantly of Willie and the little Indian girl. Their memories were
excited to fresh activity, and the sayings and doings of Willie and
the pappoose were recounted for the thousandth time. Emma had no
recollection of her lost brother, and the story of his adventure with
Moppet always amused her young imagination. But such reminiscences never
brought a smile to Charley's face. When he heard the clods fall on
his mother's coffin, heavier and more dismally fell on his heart the
remembrance of his broken promise, which had so dried up the fountains
of her life. Four times had the flowers bloomed above that mother's
grave, and still, for her dear sake, all the memorials of her absent
darling remained as she had liked to have them. The trundle-bed was
never removed, the Indian basket remained under the glass in the
bedroom, where his own little hands had put it, and his chair retained
its place at the table. Out of the family he was nearly forgotten; but
parents now and then continued to frighten truant boys by telling them
of Willie Wharton, who was carried off by Indians and never heard of
after.

The landscape had greatly changed since Mr. Wharton and his
brother-in-law built their cabins in the wilderness. Those cabins were
now sheds and kitchens appended to larger and more commodious dwellings.
A village had grown up around them. On the spire of a new meeting-house
a gilded fish sailed round from north to south, to the great admiratio