for once in their lives, though they knew it not.

But not all of this light came from the setting sun; on every face was
the glow of a great joy, and every voice was soft with happiness, and
the laughter was all a-tremble with the tears that were so near it.
They were talking about the child who was coming back to them, whom
they had mourned as lost. They were telling of her gracious words and
ways, so different from anything else they had known,--her smiles, and
the way she held her head when she sang; and the way she found things
out, without ever any one telling her. Wonderful, was it not? Why, one
dared not have ugly thoughts in her presence; or if they came, one
tried to hide them away, deep down, so that Melody should not see them
with her blind eyes. Do you remember how Joel Pottle took too much one
day (nobody knows to this day where he got it, and his folks all
temperance people), and how he stood out in the road and swore at the
folks coming out of meeting, and how Melody came along and took him by
the hand, and led him away down by the brook, and never left him till
he was a sober man again? And every one knew Joel had never touched a
drop of liquor from that day on.

Again, could they ever forget how she saved the baby,--Jane Pegrum's
baby,--that had been forgotten by its frantic mother in the burning
house? They shuddered as they recalled the scene: the writhing,
hissing flames, the charred rafters threatening every moment to fall;
and the blind child walking calmly along the one safe beam, unmoved
above the pit of fire which none of them could bear to look on,
catching the baby from its cradle ("and it all of a smoulder, just
ready to burst out in another minute") and bringing it safe to the
woman who lay fainting on the grass below! Vesta had never forgiven
them for that, for letting the child go: she was away at the time, and