dead.

To-day, longing for some secluded spot in which to indulge the
melancholy feelings that oppressed her, she instinctively sought the
church, yielding unconscious homage to its hallowed and soothing
influence. Passing slowly and carefully among the head-stones, she
went into the church, to which she had access at all times by a key,
which enabled her to enter at will and practise on the small organ
that was generally used in Sabbath-school music.

Fancying that it might be cooler in the gallery, she ascended to the
organ loft, and while Hero stretched himself at her feet, she sat
down on one of the benches close to the open window that looked
toward the mass of trees which so completely embowered the parsonage,
that only one ivy-crowned chimney was visible. Low in the sky, and
just opposite the tall arched window behind the pulpit, the sun
burned like a baleful Cyclopean eye, striking through a mass of ruby
tinted glass that had been designed to represent a lion, and other
symbols of the Redeemer, who soared away above them.

Are there certain subtle electrical currents sheathed in human flesh
that link us sometimes with the agitated reservoirs of electricity
trembling in the bosom of yet distant clouds? Do not our own highly
charged nervous batteries occasionally give the first premonition of
coming thunderstorms? Long before the low angry growl that came
suddenly from some lightning lair in the far south, below the
sky-line, Regina anticipated the approaching war of elements, and
settled herself to wait for it.

Not until to-day had she realized how much of the pleasure of her
life at the parsonage was derived from the sunny presence and
sympathizing companionship which she was now about to lose,
certainly for many years, probably for ever.

Although Mr. Lindsay's age doubled her own, he had entered so fully
into her fancies, humoured so patiently her girlish caprices, with
such tireless interest aided her in her studies, that she seemed to
forget his seniority, and treated him with the quiet affectionate
freedom which she would have indulged toward a young brother. Next to
the memory of her mother, she probably gave him the warmest place in
her heart, but she was a remarkably reserved, composed, and
undemonstrative child, by no means addicted to caresses, and only in
moments of deep feeling betrayed into an impulsive passionate
gesture, or a burst of emotion.

Sincerely attached to the entire household,