forgot herself and her surroundings, and was lost in the mazes
of speculation and wonder. What were these bright spots that kept
coming thicker and faster over her head, winking and blinking
at her, as if with a conscious and friendly intelligence?
Who made them? what were they doing? where did they hide in the daytime?
If she could climb up yonder mountain, and then get to the top of those
tall tulip-trees, she was sure she could reach them, or, at least,
see better what they were. Were they candles, that some unseen hand had
lighted and thrust out there, that the night might not be wholly dark?
That could not be, for then the wind, which was fanning the trees,
would blow them out. How the little mind longed to fathom the mystery!
Once she had ventured to ask Miss Matilda what those bright specks
up in the sky were, and she answered, in an indifferent sort of way,
"Stars, you little silly goose,--why, don't you know? They are stars."
And then she was just about as wise and as satisfied as she
had been before.

She was so busy with her thoughts, that she did not perceive
Mammy Grace, as she drew the old, broken-backed rocking-chair up
to the door, and sitting down, with her elbows on her knees and her
head upon her hands, leaned forward, to discover, if possible,
what the child was so intently gazing at. She could discern no
object in the deep twilight; but, struck herself with the still
beauty of the scene, she exclaimed,--

"Pooty night, a'n't it? How de stars of heaben do shine!"

The voice disturbed Tidy in her reverie. Her first impulse was
to get up and walk away, that she might finish out her thinking
in some other place, where she could be alone. But the thought