on raising her violet eyes and looking round her in wondrous delight.
Her childish face was strikingly beautiful; around her small perfect
mouth there rested an angel smile, and her short brown curls were parted
on a forehead of matchless contour.

She wove and sang, and smiled a sunny smile, and seemed wholly
unconscious of a pair of bright black eyes fixed upon her from the
opposite bank. At length she turned, as if to listen; and soon upon the
air floated distinctly sounds of "Alice! little Alice!" and she bounded
away to her playmates. No sooner had she disappeared than the owner of
the black eyes--a boy, seemingly of twelve years, clad in a green jacket
ornamented with silver buttons, loose white trowsers, and wide-brimmed
straw hat, which but partly concealed his glossy black hair--sprang
across the water and possessed himself of the tiny glove which lay
forgotten on the bank, and which had once covered the hand of "little
Alice."

* * * * *

"Alice, my dove, you have brought but one glove from the May frolic."

"I lost the other one yesterday. I don't think I forgot it May-day,
mamma."

"Well, dear, go put this one away until you find the mate."

"Yes, mamma."

* * * * *

CHAPTER II.

'TIS night in a boarding-school. The doors of many small rooms open on
the dreary hall, and the glimmering light through the key-holes tells of
the fair students within. One is partly open, and through it we see two
young girls standing near a toilet: one is drawing a comb through a mass
of rich brown curls, which stray in playful wantonness about her snowy
shoulders. The other is rummaging amid the elegant trifles which
decorate the table.

"Alice," she began, "many, many times have I seen this beautiful little
glove among trumpery, and often thought I'd beg of you its history, but
always forgot it. Tell me now whose hand it once imprisoned."

"Mine, Kate, mine. When a little child of eight years old I lost the
fellow, and put this one away until I should find it. Years have rolled
away; but it speaks so eloquently of a happy May-day I then enjoyed,
that I have never been able to part with it, and still treasure it as an
index to the bright scenes of the past."

CHAPTER III.

AGAIN I beg the reader to pass over two years--short to you who possess
health and plenty, long to those in disease and want--and come with me
to the heights of the