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II.

quiet, regular life. I had little education | used to ring, wakening smiles at least to and few tastes. I had been accustomed join with it, through the low-roofed to spend hours every day, passively laying rooms of the old house. stitch to stitch upon some long monotonous work. I set a square yard of canvas now in a frame, and with my pattern and my colored wools, I quickly set to work. The thing, when finished, I said, should be a cushion for my godmother. At which she thanked me, and took up some humbler work herself. They were not rich, and she had other sewing to do than to make cushions.

We passed our days alone, for Noel Erickson, though he did not often leave the house, had his own work, and his own room to work in. He was an artist, and he labored in his studio early and late. What came of his laboring I did not often see. Sometimes his mother took me to his work-room, and made me look at some completed drawing-during these first months they were generally slight watercolor sketches-before it left the house; but these were all I saw, and amongst them, few impressed me much. I used to tell Mrs. Erickson (for it was necessary when I looked at them to say something) that I was no judge of painting; and that was true; but it was also true that in my heart I did not like my cousin Noel's pictures. Even in his slightest drawings there was at all times something feverish and restless. They might have power in them-I did not know-but they had no repose. I say I did not like nor understand them; neither did I like nor understand him. He was a shadow in the house an unsociable, care-worn, silent man. His presence made gloom in place of sunshine; his aspect chilled me with winter's cold. He was unhappy himself, and he brought discomfort as his companion. I was afraid of him a little; I pitied him much; I liked him not at all.

Yet I did not regret my coming to my godmother's house. If Noel chilled me, his mother did not. I had known so little affection in my life that the quiet love she presently began to bestow on me, stole into my heart like very sunshine. I returned her what she gave to me; and in spite of Noel Erickson, and the gloominess of the ancient town, my new home became very pleasant to me. She said that I made it brighter to her too; perhaps I did: I can still remember the sound of my merry laughter, as through the months of that first winter it

VOL XLIV.-NO. I.

Ir was an afternoon of early spring. The days were long, and the birds had begun to build their nests under the gables of the old church. There were blossoms too upon the trees, and pale spring flowers in the old garden sheltered by the church wall. I sat by the window sewing and singing. It was a pleasant season to me-this bright spring time. I was not thoughtful-perhaps I understood only one fraction of its meaning and its loveliness; but it had spoken to me all my life of youth and hope, and I was young and hopeful. The sun shone warm upon the old church towers; far away there was a sound of joy-bells; I stopped my singing at times to listen to them-it was a right glad sound for this spring day.

"Ruth, will you come? it is ready," Mrs. Erickson said.

I turned quickly from the outer sunshine with a momentary feeling of compunction: something was happening in the house to-day, and I had forgotten it. My godmother thought it a great thing; it was not great to me, it was only thisthat Noel had completed the picture that had been his chief winter's work, and it was to be sent to London to-day.

I had never seen it yet. I rose at Mrs. Erickson's invitation, and followed her up stairs. She was excited and glad, and her pale face was even brightened by a flush of color. I was not glad, nor almost even curious; an entrance into my cousin's studio had long ceased to be looked upon by me as even a possible pleasure.

He was in the room when we came in, but not at his easel. The space about that was vacant, and upon it stood his framed picture. We went up together and stood before it.

It was a large picture, divided into two compartments, both representing the same scene-a sea-shore, girt to the right by a line of rocks-but in one the water was lying calmly under an azure sky, and the spars of the rocks glittered in sunshine; in the other the sea was lashed into high crests of foam, and one red cleft in the

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heavy thunder-clouds illumined the whole canvas with a lurid light.

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I looked at both pictures, but I turned from the second quickly. The warm, soft sunshine, the calm, blue water these things I liked; that picture had rest and beauty and quiet light in it; I liked it as I had liked no other creation I had ever seen of Noel's. I was glad to be able to speak what I felt I exclaimed heartily: "This is beautiful."

"Which is beautiful, Ruth ?" Noel suddenly asked.

I looked at him as he came towards us; there was a slight contemptuous scorn in his face that for a moment irritated me. I knew the answer that he expected, and I gave it to him half defiantly. "The first!"

"You do not like the other, then ?" "I am no judge of pictures." "Perhaps not. But you think-what?" There was an ungentle smile upon his lips; another look would have made me humble, but that angered me.

“I think,” I answered quickly, "that pictures were meant to make us happy when we look at them-and that one does not."

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"But pictures can not only be painted when men are happy, Ruth," my godmother said; "and if they are unhappy their pictures will show signs of their sorrow." Why need they ?" I answered boldly. "If they feel sorrow can they not learn to repress it? Can they not struggle against, instead of giving way to it, and brooding over it, and nursing it as if it was some precious thing-as Noel does?" It was a sudden impulse that had made me speak. The thoughts had come impatiently into my mind many a time before, but never before had I given utterance to them. I spoke them hotly now, confident in my wisdom and commonsense. When I ceased, my cousin met me with this answer:

"Who told you, Ruth," he calmly demanded, "that sorrow was not a precious thing? How do you know how much strength lies in it-how weak many a heart and hand might be if it was cast away? My cousin, you are young, and you judge all people by yourself, and would have all the world such as you are. Take my advice, and in future condemn only what you understand, lest you chance to condemn some things that are immeasurably above you."

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I went back alone to the room, and the seat that I had left. My cheek was hotbut I took up my sewing again, and worked. It was drawing towards evening then I worked till the sun set. I was still alone, and only when twilight began to come did I lay my work aside.

It was very quiet. The evening brightness was stealing softly through the narrow lights of the accustomed windows, and the church was growing dark against the sky. I began to think how it stood there, night by night, strong, like an eternal shadow. Was it built perhaps in the strength of sorrow?

I had heard tales of persecutions suffered in this city long ago. With a strange interest I sat and pondered upon the men who might have reared those blackened stones-upon the hands that might have cut those old devices. They were all solemn and stern-they were not joyous. There was no luxury in them of waving leaves-there were no birds fluttering amidst twisted branches. There was neither joy nor laughter in the sculptured forms that, from the grisly heads and outstretched griffin claws down to the solemn angels leaning towards the doors, stood in their broken might and their stern silence.

The yellow light was fading back behind the starry trefoils of the windows, and God's stars were coming out in heaven. But these were familiar mysteries; I did not think of them to-night. With an earnestness I scarcely understood, I sat till it was dark, thinking of the mys teries of the dead hearts of them who once, with living hands and living thoughts, cut out the starry traceries upon those windows

III.

NOEL'S picture went. When the excitement attendant on its completion and dispatch were over, my godmother's brief look of gladness vanished. After a week or two she began to get more than ever pale and anxious.

"They may reject it, Ruth," she said to me one day. to me one day. "They reject many pictures."

I had not known that; to me till now that unknown "Academy" whither it was gone had been a boundless repertory; receiving this new idea I drew towards my godmother with a strange sympathy. Of late I had begun dimly to guess what Noel's success or Noel's failure were to her. From that day forward we looked and waited for news together. It was hard for her, I think, but in her anxiety she had no other companionship than mine.

After three weeks the decision came. It came in a letter which had to lie with us a whole afternoon unopened, for when it arrived Noel was from home. It was evening-almost night-when he returned. As he came in, he took it from his mother's hand, and carried it, standing with his back to us, to the window; elsewhere in the room there was no light to read it. There he opened it, and having read it, stood utterly silent.

She had not sat down. After a few moments she went up to him and laid her hand upon his arm. He turned round at the touch and looked at her; they each looked at the other; she never asked to see the letter. He only said:

"We can not help it, mother." Then she tried to answer him, and broke down. He took her in his arms, and kissed her again and again. But he said no more to her: he left the room without another word.

She had sunk down into a seat beside the window; after a little I went up close to her. I had nothing to say, but I knelt down at her feet, and took her hand and put it to my lips. In the darkness she cried a little; we both cried. I was sorry from the bottom of my heart.

For many days after this night throughout the house there was undefined anxiety and restlessness. My godmother had been deeply grieved, but Noel was unhappy with a bitter sorrow to which hers bore no parallel. He never spoke of his disappointment; it would have been better if he had; but he brooded over it until he wore his strength away. Slowly, but surely, he became bodily ill; he grew so gaunt and thin, that with his flushed hollow check and burning eyes, he used to make my heart sad to see him. It was in vain that my poor godmother would urge him to take rest; I do not think he could help it-he could not, rest. He worked until he could work

no more. One night when Mrs. Erickson and I were sitting alone together, in the silence there came a sound above usthe powerless fall of something on the ground. It was Noel who had fainted at his work. They raised him up and conveyed him to his bed; and he did not rise from it.

IV.

I DID not know it then, but I have learnt since, that there are strange turning points in life. We do not walk forever upon one straight road forward. Sometimes, when we suspect its coming least, our even course is cut across by a new path, and we turn sharp aside, to the right hand or to the left, into light or darkness. When it was past, I knew that Noel's illness had opened such a path to me.

Swiftly, at once, we entered into the very presence of the Shadow of Death. Even now, as I look back, there is something in the remembrance of those first days when Noel was struck down that I still shrink from and shiver at. It was not ordinary pain-it was not like ordinary fear; it was as if the house had been swiftly struck with darkness. The various incidents and interests of our daily life ceased utterly before it. Suddenly, imperiously, in one single day, all thoughts, and hopes, and fears seemed set for me within the walls of that room I never entered, and upon the aspect of that face that I never saw.

One night I had

For nine days and nights he was "sick unto death." Only when our hope had sunk to its last ebb, and our fear had grown to be as a great shadow-" a thick darkness that could be felt "-did the light at last come back to us. been wandering about the house the whole night through, listening, hourly, to catch the first sound of the cry that should tell me that the end had come. Hour followed hour till dawn, and it was not uttered. When it was morning I went to the passage beside his room. The door was open. As I stood, I saw the curtained bed within; I saw my godmother, too, sitting by its side. I had been waiting, knowing nothing, all the night; I could not go away. I stood in the doorway till she raised her head and saw me, and beckoned to me to come.

He was lying sleeping. Perhaps it was exhaustion, and not repose; but the

struggle, at least. had ceased.

The brow I looked with a vague, half-pained half-joyous wonder; it seemed to me as if I was only learning that face for the first time to-night. He had never been beautiful in my eyes before. To-night I sat and traced each sharpened feature and each clear-cut line, till a slow, glad conviction came upon me like the birth of a new sense.

was unknit, the lips were still; if it was nothing more, the thing that had come was, at least, peace. But it was more. I crept away again noiselessly as I had entered, and I did not see his face again; but during that restless night that had departed, the crisis had come, and God had spared him. Looking back now, I can still feel the rolling back through the succeeding days of that great fear-the lifting up, one by one, of the folds of that dark curtain.

When I next saw him it was on an early summer afternoon, and he had come, for the first time, into our common sitting room, and was lying near that west window where I had grown accustomed to sit. I had not spoken one word to him since that April evening when he had fallen ill. I went up to his couch, and put out my hand to him.

"Cousin Noel, I am glad to see you here."

"I am glad, too," he answered cheerfully. "I thank you, Ruth!"

He staid with us until it was almost dark, when at last he rose to go, leaning on his mother's arm. He called to me to bid me good night. I went to him, and offered him my hand, saying something I forget what-some hope, perhaps, that he was not tired; to which he made me no reply; but a moment after he gave me something better than an answer.

"Little Ruth," he said, as he held my hand, "I know you have been very kind all through this time; God bless you for your goodness to my mother."

I was left alone a minute afterwards, and I sat down in my place again, and the hands I pressed against my face were wetted by two great tears.

As I stood by him he looked so worn From this time forward I saw Noel and wan, so changed and helpless. I had Erickson every day; he was far too weak meant to say something more to him, and yet to go into his studio, or even to be on the sudden I found I could not. able to occupy himself for more than a Something rose in my throat and choked small portion of each day. Whilst this my voice. Strangely affected, I went forced idleness lasted, therefore, he reaway from him, and sat down alone. I mained with us, and sat with us in our was half glad; I was half crying. I common sitting-room. Once such long could not have thought once-even a companionship would have been irksome few weeks ago-that any word or look of to me; it was not irksome now. Noel Erickson's could ever have moved

me so.

I sat all through that afternoon busily bending over my work. Noel had to be kept quiet, and neither he nor my godmother spoke much. Once she read to him for a little while; it was from a book whose name I did not know, which spoke of things that I had never thought of, and pierced into places where I could not follow; yet its fervor and its passionate words caught my ear, and sometimes my heart, strangely.

When the sun had set, she ceased to read, and we were all idle. I remember it was a breathless, warm-hued evening, and the church windows showed crimson stars of light. I remember, too, that within the church, for a long time, the organ was playing. We were all very quiet. Noel lay looking from us to the open window, and from where I sat I could see his face, and I looked on that.

It was

not irksome, do I say? God help me! Day after day I was learning to know that to be in Noel's presence, to hear the sound of Noel's voice, to do even the slightest things that a child might have done to serve him, were becoming the very breath of my life to me.

There was one service that he needed, which it presently became my right— eagerly taken possession of-jealously guarded-to perform for him. While his sight was weak my godmother used to read to him. One day she went for a few hours from home, and he was left with me. He was reading to himself when she went away, but after a time the leaves of his book ceased to be turned. I looked to him, and found him leaning back with his hand upon his eyes.

Once, even though I had been afraid of him, I would, at that sight, have asked to be allowed to read to him. I feared him less now; and yet I could not go.

But the yearning to go rose in me-my | never knew that beyond those straitened heart beat fast-my hand shook so that I could not work.

He took the book again, and again his sight failed him. This time, when he ceased to read, he closed the volume, and put it from him. Coward as I was, I rose from my seat then, and went to him -the longing that was in me grown stronger at last than the fear of rejection.

"Noel, will you let me read to you?" I asked, fearing to be denied; I expect ed, at least, hesitation before he would accept me; instead of hesitation or denial there came only this simple answer: "Thank you, Ruth," and he gave the book into my hands.

I took it, and I read to him. I read for an hour, sitting near him-low, near his feet-with no living creature between him and me.

Reader, I was happy; and the happiness of that hour made me bold. When I gave him back the book, I said that it made me glad to be allowed to read to him.

He looked at me as I spoke. "Does it, Ruth ?"

"Noel, I have never been able to do any thing for you before."

boundaries, and free to the whole of God's creation, lay treasure in heaps not to be counted, of glorious and unimagined things. I woke to this new knowledge now as one arises out of sleep. I read, and new thoughts dawned upon me with a strange delight, and pain, and wonder. I read with all the ignorance of a child, and all its faith: I read till a new influence stole upon me like a vail of light, and all the world seemed dyed of a new color that changed its gray to crimson, and its darkness to burnished gold.

I read to Noel; but I was his reader, and nothing more. He used to thank me at the close of each day's service, but he never spoke about the book we read. Of what he thought of it; of whether it stirred him as it stirred me; of whether he believed it, I knew nothing. I bore this ignorance at first passively; presently I bore it, growing feverish under it; finally, I rebelled against it. He might be above me high as the sky was above the earth, yet I was not utterly inanimate clay. He might speak one word to me; I was not wood, that I could not understand.

When he would not speak, at last I spoke to him. I chose a moment when, "I did not know that you cared to do one day, I had been reading till my cheek any thing."

"No: but I do care."

My voice was very low; had I been less near to him I do not think he would have heard it. As it was, he did hear, for he answered me:

"You may be my reader from this time, if you will, Ruth."

"May I; oh! I shall be glad."

I felt the color flush into my face with joy. He said no more; but I went away to my place contented. I took possession of my office from that hour.

No day passed after this on which I did not read to him. I wakened every morning knowing that the hours had at least in store for me this one sure joy. I waited patiently through all the intervening time, assured that this one hour would

come.

I read a book to him full of strange and wonderful things. To me, at least, it seemed all wonderful, for I was a very child in the great world of learning. I had grown up like one within four prison walls, thinking that those prison walls were the earth's limits, and till now I

burned with an excitement that took cowardice away. In that moment I raised my head.

"Noel," I cried, "is it true?"

My question startled him; for an instant he was surprised; then:

"You must judge for yourself, Ruth," he said.

But my lips once unclosed I could speak now.

"How can I judge for myself when I know nothing? And I do not want to judge," I cried, passionately; "I want to believe."

"You have what you want there," he said; "you do believe."

"Yes, I believe! but I have no one to tell me if I am right. I am believing like a child, not knowing truth from falsehood."

I was speaking like a child too, passionately and petulantly; and he made me no reply. In the silence that followed, my momentarily excited courage passed away. I had spoken, and what had my speaking gained for me? Deeper than before the color flushed to my checks, in

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