sat, she gazed up towards the sky, and her lips moved as if
offering a prayer.
At length, some one knocked loudly at the door, and starting up, she
hurried to open it and give entrance to the stranger whom we have
mentioned before. She put a chair for him, and stood till he asked her
to sit down.
"So, my good lady," he said, "you lived a long time with Colonel and
Mrs. Sherbrooke."
"Oh! bless you, yes, sir," replied the woman, "ever since the Colonel
and the young lady came here, till she died, poor thing, and then I
remained to take care of the boy, dear, beautiful fellow."
"You seem very sorry to lose him," rejoined the stranger, "and,
doubtless, were sadly grieved when Mrs. Sherbrooke died."
"You may well say that," replied the woman; "had I not known her quite a
little girl? and to see her die, in the prime of her youth and beauty,
not four-and-twenty years of age. You may well say I was sorry. If her
poor father could have seen it, it would have broke his heart; but he
died long before that, or many another thing would have broken his heart
as well as that."
"Was her father living," demanded the stranger, "when she married
Colonel Sherbrooke?"
The woman, without replying, gazed inquiringly and steadfastly on the
stranger's countenance for a moment or two; who continued, after a short
pause--"Poo, poo, I know all about it; I mean, when she came away with
him."
"No, sir," replied the woman; "he had been dead then more than a year."
"Doubtless," replied the stranger, "it was, as you implied, a happy
thing for him that he did not live to see his daughter's fate; but how
was it, I wonder, as she was so sweet a creature, and the Colonel so
fond of her, that he never married her?"
The woman looked down for a moment; but then gazed up in his face with a
somewhat rueful expression of countenance, and a shake of the head,
answering, "She was a Protestant, you know."
The stranger looked surprised, and asked, "Did she always continue a
Protestant, my good woman? I should have thought love could have worked
more wonderful conversions than that."
"Ah! she died as she lived, poor thing," replied the woman, "and with
nobody with her either, but I and one other; for the Colonel was away,
poor man, levying troops for the king--that is, for King James, sir; for
your honour looks as if you were on the other side."
The stranger was silent and looked abstracted; but at length he
answered, somewhat listlessly, "Really, my good woman, one does not know
what sid