"The wilderness, under his fostering
care, can blossom like the rose."
She crossed the lane, and traversing several lonely fields she came to
the park near the old Hall, within whose precincts the gothic church,
erected by one of the ancestors of the Hurdlestones, reared aloft its
venerable spire. How august the sacred building looked in the moonlight!
how white the moonbeams lay upon the graves! Mary sighed deeply, but
hers was not a mind to yield easily to superstitious fears. She had
learned to fear God, and there was nothing in his beautiful creation
which could make her tremble, save the all-seeing eye which she now felt
was upon her.
Passing the front of the church, where all the baptized children of the
village for ages had found their place of final rest, she stepped behind
a dark screen of yews at the back of the church, and knelt hastily upon
the ground beside a little mound of freshly turned sods. Stretching
herself out upon that lowly bed, and embracing it with passionate
tenderness, the child of sin and sorrow found a place to weep, and
poured out her full heart to the silent ear of night.
The day was breaking, when she slowly rose and wiped away her tears.
Regaining the high road, she was overtaken by a man in a wagon, who had
been one of the crowd that had been to look at the murdered man. He
invited Mary to take a seat in the wagon, and finding that he was going
within a few miles of Norgood, she joyfully accepted the offer--and
before Godfrey and her brother recovered from their drunken debauch, or
found that she was missing, she was near the end of her journey.
Pages:
340
341
342
343
344
345
346
347
348
349
350
351
352
353
354
355
356
357
358
359
360
361
362
363
364