Never-ending tortures throughout the countless ages of eternity for
the little crimes of threescore years and ten! Heathendom shows no god
so monstrous as this. O great Creator, O Father of our souls, of all
the ills done on the face of thy earth, this lie against thy justice
and thy goodness, is it not the greatest? The thought came to me, as
I said, that no punishment could endure forever, that somewhere is the
future I, even I, should meet pardon and rest. That day I found by the
wayside a little child, scarcely more than a baby; it had wandered out
of the poorhouse, where its mother had died the week before, a
stranger passing through the village. No one knew anything about her
nor cared to know, for she was almost in rags, fair and delicate once
they told me, but wasted with illness and too far gone to talk. Then a
second thought came to me,--expiation. I would take this forlorn
little creature and bring her up as my own child, tenderly,
carefully,--a life for a life. My poor old sister took to it
wonderfully, it seemed to brighten her desolation into something that
was almost happiness; we wandered awhile longer, and then came
westward through the lakes, but it was several years before we were
fairly settled here. Shadow took care of the baby and made her little
dresses; then, when the time came to teach her to sew and read, she
said more help was needed, and went alone to the towns below to find a
fit servant, coming back in her silent way with old Orange; another
stray lost out of its place in the world, and suffering from want in
the cold Northern city. You must not think that Silver is totally
ignorant; Shadow had the education of her day, poor thing, for ours
was a good old family as old families go in this new country of ours,
where three generations of well-to-do people constitute aristocracy.
But religion, so called, I have not taught her. Is she any the worse
for its want?