entrap her, to break in on her wished-for isolation under false
pretences--all that he suddenly felt to be impossible. He could follow
her with his heart; but the sound of her voice, the touch of her hand,
the smile of her calm, beautiful, dark eyes, were as remote for him as
if she, too, were beyond the broad Atlantic.

He was not much given to introspection and analysis; daring the past two
months more especially he had been far too busy to be perpetually asking
"Why? why?"--the vice of indolence. It was enough that, in the cold and
the wet, there was a fire in his heart that kept him glad with thinking
of the fair days to come; and that, in the foggy afternoons or the
lonely nights when he was alone, and perhaps despondent or impatient
over the stupidity or the contumacy he had had to encounter, there came
to him the soft murmur of a voice from far away--proud, sad, and yet
full of consolation and hope:

"--But ye that might be clothed with all things pleasant,
Ye are foolish that put off the fair soft present,
That clothe yourself with the cold future air;
When mother and father, and tender sister and brother,
And the old live love that was shall be as ye,
Dust and no fruit of loving life shall be.
--She shall be yet who is more than all these were,
Than sister or wife or father unto us, or mother."

He could hear her voice: he could see the beautiful face grow pale with
its proud fervor; he could feel the soft touch of her hand when she
came forward and said, "Brother, I welcome you!"

And now that she was there before him, the gladness in his heart at the