emi-circle laughed loudly as with one voice;
she hastily made up her mind--drew her kerchief closer over her face,
ran quickly along the darker half of the quadrangle and, stooping low,
hurried across the moonlight towards the slaves' quarters.

At the entrance she paused; her heart throbbed violently. Had she been
observed? No.--There was not a cry, not a following footstep--every dog
knew her; the soldiers who were commonly on guard here had quitted their
posts and were sitting with their comrades round the fire.

The long building to the left was the weaving shop and her nurse
Perpetua lived there, in the upper story. But even here she must be
cautious, for the governor's wife often came out to give her orders to
the workwomen, and to see and criticise the produce of the hundred looms
which were always in motion, early and late. If she should be seen, one
of the weavers might only too probably betray the fact of her nocturnal
visit. They had not yet gone to rest, for loud laughter fell upon her
ear from the large sheds, open on all sides, which stood over the dyers'
vats. This class of the governor's people were also enjoying the cool
night after the fierce heat of the day, and the girls too had lighted a
fire.

Paula must pass them in full moonshine--but not just yet; and she
crouched close to the straw thatch which stretched over the huge clay
water-jars placed here for the slave-girls to get drink from. It cast
a dark triangular shadow on the dusty ground that gleamed in the
moonlight, and thus screened her from the gaze of the girls, while she
could hear and see what was going on in the sheds.

The dreadful day of torture ending in a harsh discord was at end; and
behind it she looked back on a few blissful hours full of the promise
of new happiness;--beyond these lay a long period of humiliation, the
sequel of a terrible disaster. How bright and sunny had her childhood
been, how delightful her early youth! For long years of her life she
had waked every morning to new joys, and gone to rest every evening
with sincere and fervent thanksgivings, that had welled from her soul
as freely and naturally as perfume from a rose. How often had she shaken
her head in perplexed unbelief when she heard life spoken of as a vale
of sorrows, and the lot of man bewailed as lamentable. Now she knew
better; and in many a lonely hour, in many a sleepless night, she had
asked herself whether He could, indeed, be a kind and fatherly