this sad subject than
I may now confess; and I have never been accounted ungrateful."

The stranger was moved, and ate his meal in meditative silence. In an
hour afterwards, Alice returned to the house, and, as she entered,
started as her eye met that of him who had, by his questions, stirred to
greater activity the feelings that were already too busy with her heart;
but her fears were removed, by his avoidance of the subject which had
pained her; and a few hours seemed to have rendered him as indifferent
to her as seemed the other objects around her. Some days passed, and the
widow would have been as well satisfied with her lodger as he was with
her, had it not been that he enjoined secrecy as to his residence in the
house--retiring to the spence when any one entered; and if at any time
he went along the Lyne in the morning, he avoided those whom he met; and
betook himself to private acts in the inner apartment during the day. At
times he left the cottage in the evening, and did not return for two
days; but whither he went, the inmates knew not. The dame conjectured he
had been as far as Peebles; but her reason was merely that he brought
newspapers with him, and intelligence of matters transacting there. The
secrecy was not suited to the open and simple manners to which she had
been accustomed; but she recollected his words, that on the 29th of
September, she would know all concerning him. Now these words were
connected by a chain of associations that startled her. The 29th of
September had been set apart by her deceased husband as a day of prayer.
He had never allowed it to pass without an offering of the contrite
heart to God; this practice he had continued till his death, and she had
witnessed the act repeated for fifteen years. She was no more
superstitious than the rest of her class; she was, indeed, probably less
so; and her theories, formed for an adequate explanation of the
startling coincidence, were probably as philosophical as if they had
been formed by reason acting under the astute direction of scepticism.
Yet where is the mind, untutored or learned, that can throw away at all
times, at all hours--when the heart is in the sunshine of the cheerful
day of worldly intercourse, or in the deep shadow of the wing of
eternity--all thoughts of all powers save those of natural causes, which
are themselves a mystery? We may sport with the subject; but it comes
again back on the heart, and we sigh in whispering words