The sisters had gone home, and she was alone. She raised her eyes
to the bright stars, looking down so mildly from the wide worlds of
air, and, gazing on them, found new stars burst upon her view, and
more beyond, and more beyond again, until the whole great expanse
sparkled with shining spheres, rising higher and higher in
immeasurable space, eternal in their numbers as in their changeless
and incorruptible existence. She bent over the calm river, and saw
them shining in the same majestic order as when the dove beheld
them gleaming through the swollen waters, upon the mountain tops
down far below, and dead mankind, a million fathoms deep.
The child sat silently beneath a tree, hushed in her very breath by
the stillness of the night, and all its attendant wonders. The
time and place awoke reflection, and she thought with a quiet hope--
less hope, perhaps, than resignation--on the past, and present,
and what was yet before her. Between the old man and herself there
had come a gradual separation, harder to bear than any former
sorrow. Every evening, and often in the day-time too, he was
absent, alone; and although she well knew where he went, and why--
too well from the constant drain upon her scanty purse and from his
haggard looks--he evaded all inquiry, maintained a strict reserve,
and even shunned her presence.
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