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"But the instrument-the instrument! God, who does the work, ordains the instrument. I have myself-I tell it you without parable-been a worldly, dissipated, restless man; and I believe I have found the instrument for my cure in-"

He paused: the birds went on carolling, the leaves lightly rustling.

I almost wondered they did not check their songs and whispers to catch the suspended revelation; but they would have had to wait many minutes-so long was the silence protracted.

At last I looked up at the tardy speaker: he was looking eagerly at me.

"Little friend," said he, in quite a changed tone-while his face changed too, losing all its softness and gravity, and becoming harsh and sarcastic-"you have noticed my tender penchant for Miss Ingram: don't you think if I married her she would regenerate me with a vengeance?"

He got up instantly, went quite to the other end of the walk, and when he came back he was humming a tune.

"Jane, Jane," said he, stopping before me, "you are quite pale with your vigils: don't you curse me for disturbing your rest?"

"Curse you? No, sir."

"Shake hands in confirmation of the word. What cold fingers! They were warmer last night when I touched them at the door of the mysterious chamber. Jane, when will you watch with me again?"

"Whenever I can be useful, sir."

"For instance, the night before I am married! I am sure I shall not be able to sleep. Will you promise to sit up with me to bear me company? To you I can talk of my lovely one: for now you have seen her and know her."

"Yes, sir."

"She's a rare one, is she not, Jane?"

"Yes, sir."

"A strapper-a real strapper, Jane: big, brown, and buxom; with hair just such as the ladies of Carthage must have had. Bless me! there's Dent and Lynn in the stables! Go in by the shrubbery, through that wicket."

As I went one way, he went another, and I heard him in the yard, saying cheerfully-

"Mason got the start of you all this morning; he was gone before sunrise: I rose at four to see him off."

Presentiments are strange things! and so are sympathies; and so are signs; and the three combined make one mystery to which humanity has not yet found the key.

I never laughed at presentiments in my life, because I have had strange ones of my own.

Sympathies, I believe, exist (for instance, between far-distant, long-absent, wholly estranged relatives asserting, notwithstanding their alienation, the unity of the source to which each traces his origin) whose workings baffle mortal comprehension.

And signs, for aught we know, may be but the sympathies of Nature with man.

When I was a little girl, only six years old, I one night heard Bessie Leaven say to Martha Abbot that she had been dreaming about a little child; and that to dream of children was a sure sign of trouble, either to one's self or one's kin.

The saying might have worn out of my memory, had not a circumstance immediately followed which served indelibly to fix it there.

The next day Bessie was sent for home to the deathbed of her little sister.

Chapter 21

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