"My pretty one," said the stranger, with deep pity in his rich voice,
"your mother should not let you go out alone at this hour."

"Mother!--mother!" repeated the girl, in a tone of surprise.

"Have you no mother?"

"No! I had a father once. But he died, they say. I did not see him die.
I sometimes cry when I think that I shall never, never see him again!
But," she said, changing her accent from melancholy almost to joy, "he is
to have a grave here like the other girl's fathers--a fine stone upon it
--and all to be done with my money!"

"Your money, my child?"

"Yes; the money I make. I sell my work and take the money to my
grandfather; but I lay by a little every week for a gravestone for my
father."

"Will the gravestone be placed in that churchyard?" They were now in
another lane; and, as he spoke, the stranger checked her, and bending
down to look into her face, he murmured to himself, "Is it possible?--it
must be--it must!"

"Yes! I love that churchyard--my brother told me to put flowers there;
and grandfather and I sit there in the summer, without speaking. But I
don't talk much, I like singing better:--

"'All things that good and harmless are