gathered to her bosom.

Grim, dauntless, and resolute, she resolved, for the sake of this
hapless one, to look life in the face once more, and try the battle
under other skies.

Taking the infant in her arms, she travelled with her far from the scene
of her birth, and set all her energies at work to make for her a better
destiny than that which had fallen to the lot of her unfortunate mother.

She set about to create her nature and order her fortunes with that sort
of downright energy with which resolute people always attack the problem
of a new human existence. This child _should be happy_; the rocks on
which her mother was wrecked she should never strike upon,--they were
all marked on Elsie's chart. Love had been the root of all poor Isella's
troubles,--and Agnes never should know love, till taught it safely by a
husband of Elsie's own choosing.

The first step of security was in naming her for the chaste Saint Agnes,
and placing her girlhood under her special protection. Secondly, which
was quite as much to the point, she brought her up laboriously in habits
of incessant industry,--never suffering her to be out of her sight, or
to have any connection or friendship, except such as could be carried on
under the immediate supervision of her piercing black eyes. Every night
she put her to bed as if she had been an infant, and, wakening her again
in the morning, took her with her in all her daily toils,--of which, to
do her justice, she performed all the hardest portion, leaving to the
girl just enough to keep her hands employed and her head steady.

The peculiar circumstance which had led her to choose the old town