As he approached the Bradley house he put all these bitter thoughts aside. What were they in comparison with the sorrow Agnes was compelled to endure? His whole soul went out to the suffering girl, and he blamed himself for allowing any hope of Batavius to delay him. The very house had taken on an air of loneliness and calamity. The door was closed, the blinds down, and the wintry frost that had blackened the garden seemed in some inscrutable way to have touched the dwelling also. He saw the slave woman belonging to the Bradleys talking to a group of negroes down the road, and he did not call her. If Agnes was within, he would see her; and if her father had returned, they would probably be together. Thinking thus, he knocked loudly, and then entered the little hall. All was silent as the grave. "Agnes! Agnes!" he cried; and the next moment she appeared at the head of the stairs. "Agnes!" he cried again, and the word was full of love and sorrow, as he stretched out his arms to the descending girl. She was whiter than snow, her eyes were heavy and dark with weeping, her hair had fallen down, and she still wore the plain, blue gingham dress she had put on while Maria was telling her tragical tale. Yet in spite of these tokens of mental disturbance, she was encompassed by the serene stillness of a spirit which had reached the height of "Thy will be done." When her father left her, smitten afresh by his anger she had fled to her room, and locking the door of this sanctuary, she had sat for two hours astonished, stupefied by the inevitable, speechless and prayerless. Yet while she was musing the fire burned; she became conscious of that secret voice in her soul which is the spirit that helpeth our infirmities, and ere she was aware she began to pray. It was as if she stood alone in some great hall of the universe, with an infinite, invisible audience of spirits watching her. Then the miracle of the ladder between heaven and earth was renewed, and angels of help and blessing once more ascended and descended. An inward, deep, untroubled peace calmed the struggle of her soul; one by one the clouds departed and the light steadily grew until fears were slain, and doubts had become a sure confidence that Naught should prevail against her or disturb Her cheerful faith that all which looked so dark Was full of blessing. She was sitting waiting when she heard Neil's call, and Oh! how sweet is the voice of love in the hour of anxious sorrow! She never thought of her appearance or her dress; she hasted to Neil, and he folded her to his heart and for the first time touched her white cheek with his lips. She made no resistance, it was not an hour for coy withdrawals, and they understood, amid their silent tears, far more than any future words could explain.