ous is a father's love. It is an emblem of the
love of God for the dependent beings he has created; so kind, so
protecting, so strong, and yet so tender! Would to God, my poor,
defrauded child, you could have known what this God-resembling love
is,--but your orphanage has been the most sad, the most dreary,--the
most unhallowed. Almighty Father of the universe, have mercy on my
child! Protect and bless her when this wasting, broken heart no longer
beats; when the frail shield of a mother's love is taken from her, and
she is left _alone_--_alone_--_alone_. Oh! my God, have pity--have pity!
Forsake her not!"

The paper was blistered with the tears of the writer. I dropped it on
the grave, unable to go on. I cast myself on the grass-covered mould,
and pressed it to my bosom, as if there was vitality in the cold clods.

"Oh, my mother!" I exclaimed, and strange and dreary sounded my voice in
that breathing stillness. "Has God heard thy prayers? Will he hear the
cries of the fatherless? Will he have pity on my forsaken youth?"

I would have given worlds to have realized that this mighty God was
near; that he indeed cared with a father's love for the orphan mourner,
committed in faith to his all-embracing arms. But I still worshipped him
as far-off, enthroned on high, in the heaven of heavens, which cannot
contain the full glory of his presence. I saw him on the burning
mountain, in the midst of thunder and lightning and smoke,--a God of
consuming fire, before whose breath earthly joys and hopes withered and
dried, like blossoms cast into the furnace.

But did not God once hide his face of love from his own begotten Son?
And shall not the _eloi, eloi, lama sabachthani_ of the forsaken heart
sometimes ascend amid the woes and trials and wrongs of life, from the
great mountain of human misery, the smoking Sinai, whose clouded summit
quakes with the footsteps of Deity?

CHAPTER XXIII.

I again resumed the manuscript, trembling for the revelations which it
might make.

"Never again," wrote my mother, "did I behold my noble, gallant father.
His death was sudden, as if shot down in the battle field, without one
warning weakness or pain. In the green summer of his days he fell, and
long did my heart vibrate from the shock. How desolate to me was the
home to which I returned! The household fire was indeed extinguished.
The household god laid low. I saw at one glance that in my breast alone
his memory was enshrined; th