ll in progress, when a female was
seen slowly coming along the road, bearing a basket on her arm that
seemed too heavy for her.

'That is Mary Walters,' said the eldest, 'and she will give us something
to eat--I am sure she will. Jenny, dear, don't cry,' and the urchin
wiped the little face she had struck before, and tenderly took her in
her own spare little arms. The child was not much weight. Gentle Mary
Waters! who that gazed upon thy placid face, as thou earnest on thine
errand of mercy--who that saw thee as thou ministered to the necessities
of those poor desolate children, would not have loved thee--who that had
seen thee in the first blush of thy beauty, when thy foot was as elastic
as the fawn's, and thy countenance radiant with joy and life's young
morning hope--who, who could dream that there existed one who had seen
all this, who had known the tie that bound thee to earth and its
promised happiness, the innocent love that abounded in thy heart--yet
ruthlessly snapped that tie asunder, and buried the love nought could
eradicate, deep in her bosom--a shattered wreck amid the memories of the
past. Gentle Mary Walters! alas for thy experience!

What avails it to describe her--perished as we know that fair form to
be, withered in its bloom. Yet she was handsome. It was not in any
particular feature; it was in the whole expression of her face and form.
Her auburn hair, in its plain quiet braid--her neat and scrupulously
plain attire, her mild blue eye, the air of placid resignation about her
presence, seemed so lovely, for she bore no outward token of the grief
within; she had never wailed or cried her sorrow away; but though her
gay smile had passed away forever, she had not become the gloomy
misanthrope or the fretful querulous invalid. She had complained to no
one. Her old grandfather knew her griefs, but he also knew that it was a
subject he could not offer her consolation upon. To aid the suffering as
far as her slender means would allow, to tend the couch of sickness, to
cheer the desponding heart in its hour of darkness, these were the
occupations with which she strove, not to forget her sorrows--that could
never be--but to afford an outlet for that love for her fellow creatures
which no selfish grief could lessen. And she could smile and speak in
cheering tones to others in their hour of woe, shedding over their
darkened paths the light of hope, while deep in the fountains of her own
heart that sweet flame