e may
have had of its origin; it never occurred to him to think that human
skill could have achieved any thing so lovely.

He had often remarked that the villagers, as they passed, would kneel
down before it, and with bowed heads and crossed arms seem to do it
reverence; and he himself, when they were gone, would try to imitate
their gestures, some vague sentiment of worship struggling for utterance
in his heart.

There was a little inscription in gilt letters beneath the picture; but
these he could not read, and would gaze at their cabalistic forms
for hours long, thinking how, if he could but decipher them, that the
mystery might be revealed.

How he longed for the winter to be over and the spring to come, that he
might lead the goats to the hills, and to the little glen of the shrine!
He could read now. The letters would be no longer a secret; they would
speak to him, and to his heart, like the voice of that beauteous image.
How ardently did he wish to be there! and how, when the first faint sun
of April sent its pale rays over the plain, and glittered with a sickly
delicacy on the lake, how joyous was his spirit and how light his step
upon the heather!

Many a little store of childish knowledge had Grettl'a opened to his
mind in their winter evenings' study; but somehow, he felt as if they
were all as nothing compared to what the golden letters would reveal.
The portrait, the lonely glen, the solemn reverence of the kneeling
worshippers, had all conspired to create for him a mass of emotions
indescribably pleasurable and thrilling. Who can say the secret of such
imaginings, or bound their sway?

The wished-for hour came, and it was alone and unseen that he stood
before the shrine and read the words, "Maria, Mutter Gottes, hulf uns."
If this mystery were unrevealed to his senses, a feeling of dependent
helplessness was too familiar to his heart not to give the words a
strong significance. He was poor, unfriended, and an orphan: who could
need succour more than he did? Other children had lathers and mothers,
who loved them and watched over them; their little wants were cared for,
their wishes often gratified. His was an uncheered existence: who was
there to "_help him?_"

Against the daily load of his duties he was not conscious of needing
aid; his burden he was both able and willing to bear. It was against his
thoughts in the long hours of solitude--against the gloomy visions of
his own free-thinking spirit,