, the faint chime of the
bells of Charlebourg floated on the evening breeze: it was the Angelus,
calling men to prayer and rest from their daily labor. Sweetly the soft
reverberation floated through the forests, up the hill-sides, by plain
and river, entering the open lattices of Chateau and cottage, summoning
rich and poor alike to their duty of prayer and praise. It reminded men
of the redemption of the world by the divine miracle of the incarnation
announced by Gabriel, the angel of God, to the ear of Mary blessed among
women.

The soft bells rang on. Men blessed them, and ceased from their toils
in field and forest. Mothers knelt by the cradle, and uttered the sacred
words with emotions such as only mothers feel. Children knelt by their
mothers, and learned the story of God's pity in appearing upon earth as
a little child, to save mankind from their sins. The dark Huron setting
his snares in the forest and the fishers on the shady stream stood
still. The voyageur sweeping his canoe over the broad river suspended
his oar as the solemn sound reached him, and he repeated the angel's
words and went on his way with renewed strength.

The sweet bells came like a voice of pity and consolation to the ear of
Caroline. She knelt down, and clasping her hands, repeated the prayer of
millions,--

"'Ave Maria! gratia plena.'"

She continued kneeling, offering up prayer after prayer for God's
forgiveness, both for herself and for him who had brought her to this
pass of sin and misery. "'Mea culpa! Mea maxima culpa!'" repeated she,
bowing herself to the ground. "I am the chief of sinners; who shall
deliver me from this body of sin and afliction?"

The sweet bells kept ringing. They woke reminiscences of voices of
by-gone days. She heard her father's tones, not in anger as he would
speak now, but kind and loving as in her days of innocence. She heard
her mother, long dead--oh, how happily dead! for she could not die of
sorrow now over her dear child's fall. She heard the voices of the fair
companions of her youth, who would think shame of her now; and amidst
them all, the tones of the persuasive tongue that wooed her maiden love.
How changed it all seemed! and yet, as the repetition of two or three
notes of a bar of music brings to recollection the whole melody to which
it belongs, the few kind words of Bigot, spoken that morning, swept all
before them in a drift of hope. Like a star struggling in the mist the
faint v