when she left him exposed; and now, from this minute
recollection, all the mother rising in her soul, she saw, as it were, her
babe again in its deserted state; and bursting into tears of bitterest
contrition and compassion, she cried--"As I was merciless to _thee_, my
child, thy father has been pitiless to _me_! As I abandoned _thee_ to
die with cold and hunger, he has forsaken, and has driven _me_ to die by
self-slaughter."

She now fixed her eager eyes on the distant pond, and walked more nimbly
than before, to rid herself of her agonising sensations.

Just as she had nearly reached the wished-for brink, she heard a
footstep, and saw, by the glimmering of a clouded moon, a man
approaching. She turned out of her path, for fear her intentions should
be guessed at, and opposed; but still, as she walked another way, her eye
was wishfully bent towards the water that was to obliterate her love and
her remorse--obliterate, forever, William and his child.

It was now that Henry, who, to prevent scandal, had stolen at that still
hour of night to rid the curate of the incumbrance so irksome to him, and
take the foundling to a woman whom he had hired for the charge--it was
now that Henry came up, with the child of Agnes in his arms, carefully
covered all over from the night's dew.

"Agnes, is it you?" cried Henry, at a little distance. "Where are you
going thus late?"

"Home, sir," said she, and rushed among the trees.

"Stop, Agnes," he cried; "I want to bid you farewell; to-morrow I am
going to leave this part of the country for a long time; so God bless
you, Agnes."

Saying this, he stretched out his arm to shake her by the hand.

Her poor heart, trusting that his blessing, for want of more potent
offerings, might, perhaps, at this tremendous crisis ascend to Heaven in
her behalf, she stopped, returned, and put out her hand to take his.

"Softly!" said he; "don't wake my child; this spot has been a place of
danger to him, for underneath this very ivy-bush it was that I found
him."

"Found what?" cried Agnes, with a voice elevated to a tremulous scream.

"I will not tell you the story," replied Henry; "for no one I have ever
yet told of it would believe me."

"I will believe you--I will believe you," she repeated with tones yet
more impressive.

"Why, then," said Henry, "only five weeks ago--"

"Ah!" shrieked Agnes.

"What do you mean?" said Henry.

"Go on," she articulated, in the same voice.

"Why,