sed to make for
the Asylum children, and they have not been touched! Yes, Hannah, I
am coming. Why didn't you say I was engaged with my son?"

She disappeared, and after awhile Douglass Lindsay went down to the
library, and thence through the door opening upon two steps that led
into the garden.

It was one of those rare golden-aired days that sometimes break over
the bleak brows of brawling March in sunny prophecy of yet distant
summer; windless days, when rime and haze are equally unknown, and
tender fingers of the timid spring, lifting the shrouding sod,
advance tendril and leaf and bud as heralds of the annual
resurrection. Double daffodils stood erect and conspicuous like
commissioned officers along the line of yellow jonquils that bordered
the walks, and snowy narcissus and purple and rose hyacinths made a
fragrant mosaic over which the brown bees swung, and hummed their
ceaseless hymn--_laborare est orare_. Following the winding path that
led to the palings which shut out the poultry realm, the young
minister leaned against the gate, overshadowed by a tall lilac, and
looked across at the feathered folk, of which from boyhood he had
been particularly fond.

In the centre of the enclosure was a handsome pigeon-house, circular
in form, and easily accessible by a flight of steps, while upon the
top of a cupola that sprung from the roof was built a small but
prettily painted martin's home, in the quaint shape of the ark as we
find it in Scriptural illustrations. Throughout the length and
breadth of the Continent, probably no other mere _amateur_ fowl
fancier possessed such a collection as Mr. Hargrove had patiently and
gradually gathered from various sources. The peculiarity consisted in
the whiteness of the fowls;--turkeys, guineas, geese, ducks, English
Pile, Leghorn, Brahma chickens all spotlessly pure, while the pigeons
resembling drifting snow-flakes,--and the pheasants gleamed like
silver.

Upon one of the steps of the columbary sat Regina, with a basket of
mixed grain by her side, and in her lap a pair of white rabbits which
she was feeding with celery and cabbage leaves. At her feet stood two
beautiful Chinese geese, whose golden bills now and then approached
the edge of the basket, or encroached upon the rabbits' evening meal.
The girl was bareheaded, and the fading sunshine lingered lovingly
upon the glossy hair and delicate lovely face which had lost naught
of the purity that characterized it eighteen