made the ploughshare turn
aside from the noble shade-tree, and left the streams rejoicing in their
margins of verdure; and far off, far away beneath the shadow of the
misty blue hills,--of a paler, more leaden hue,--the waters of the great
sea seemed ready to roll down on the vale, that lay smiling before it.

Built of native granite, with high massive walls and low turreted roof,
Grandison Place rose above the surrounding buildings in castellated
majesty. It stood in the centre of a spacious lawn, zoned by a girdle of
oaks, beneath whose dense shade the dew sparkled even at noonday. Within
this zone was a hedge of cedar, so smooth, with twigs so thickly
interwoven, that the gossamer thought it a framework, on which to
stretch its transparent web in the morning sun. Near the house the lawn
was margined with beds of the rarest and most beautiful flowers, queen
roses, and all the fragrant populace of the floral world. But the
grandest and most beautiful feature of all was a magnificent elm-tree,
standing right in the centre of the green inclosure, toweling upward,
sweeping downward, spreading on either side its lordly branches, "from
storms a shelter and from heat a shade."

I never saw so noble a tree. I loved it,--I reverenced it. I associated
with it the idea of strength and protection. Had I seen the woodman's
axe touch its bark, I should have felt as if blood would stream from its
venerable trunk. A circular bench with a back formed of boughs woven in
checker-work surrounded it, and at twilight the soft sofas in the
drawing-room were left vacant for this rustic seat.

Edith loved it, and when she sat there with her crutches leaning against
the rough back, whose gray tint subdued the bright lustre of her golden
hair, I would throw myself on the grass at her feet and gaze upon her,
as the embodiment of human loveliness.

One would suppose that I felt awkward and strange in the midst of such
unaccustomed magnificence; but it was not so. It seemed natural and
right for me to be there. I trod the soft, rich, velvety carpeting with
a step as unembarrassed as when I traversed the grassy lawn. I was as
much at home among the splendors of art as the beauties of nature,--both
seemed my birthright.

I felt the deepest, most unbounded gratitude for my benefactress; but
there was nothing abject in it. I knew that giving did not impoverish
her; that the food I ate was not as much to her as the crumbs that fell
from my mother