mother to allow this long
separation, and the little creature so loving as she is."

"It would be strange enough for any but a Frenchwoman," said he.

"But Adele is full of talk about her father and her godmother; yet she
can tell me scarce anything of her mother. There's a mystery about it,
Benjamin."

"There's a mystery in all our lives, Mabel, and will be until the last
day shall come."

The parson said this with extreme gravity, and then added,--

"He has written me regarding it,--a very unfortunate marriage, I fear.
Only this much he has been disposed to communicate; and for myself, I am
only concerned to redeem his little girl from gross worldly attachments
to the truths which take hold upon heaven."

The next day the Doctor set off homeward upon the magnificent new
steamboat Victory, which, with two wonderful smoke-pipes, was then
plying through the Sound and up the Connecticut River. It was an object
of almost as much interest to the parson as to his little companion. A
sober costume had now replaced the coquettish one with its furbelows,
which Adele had worn in the city; but there was a bright lining to her
little hat that made her brown face more piquant than ever. And as she
inclined her head jauntily to this side or that, in order to a better
listening to the old gentleman's somewhat tedious explanations, or with
a saucy smile cut him short in the midst of them, the parson felt his
heart warming more and more toward this poor child of heathen France.
Nay, he felt almost tempted to lay his lips to the little white ears
that peeped forth from the masses of dark hair and seemed fairly to
quiver with the eagerness of their listening.

With daylight of next morning came sight of the rambling old towns that
lay at the river's mouth,--being little more than patches of gray and
white, strewed over an almost treeless country, with some central spire
rising above them. Then came great stretches of open pasture, scattered
over with huge gray rocks, amid which little flocks of sheep were
rambling; or some herd of young cattle, startled by the splashing of the
paddles, and the great plumes of smoke, tossed their tails in the air,
and galloped away in a fright,--at which Adele clapped her hands, and
broke into a laugh that was as cheery as the new dawn. Next
came low, flat meadows of sedge, over which the tide oozed slowly, and
where flocks of wild ducks, scared from their feeding-ground, rose by
scores, and went