"Why, how d'ye do, Ann? I hearn you was livin' in de city, and intended to come an' see you." I stammered out something, and she seated herself near me, and began to revive old recollections. "They are not pleasant, Lindy, and I would rather they should be forgotten." "Laws, I's got a very good home now; but I 'tends to marry some man that will buy me, and set me free! Now, I's got my eye sot on Henry." I trembled violently, but did not trust myself to speak. Louise, however, in a quick tone, replied: "He is engaged, and soon to be married to Ann." "Laws! I doesn't b'lieve it; Ann shan't take him from me." Though this was said playfully, it was easy for me to detect, beneath the seeming levity, a strong determination, on her part, to do her very _worst_. No wonder that I trembled before her, when I remembered how powerful an enemy she had been in former times. With a few other remarks she left, and Louise observed: "That Lindy is a queer girl. With all her ignorance and ugliness, she excites my dread when I am in her presence--a dread of a supposed and envenomed power, such as the black cat possesses." "Such has ever been the feeling, Louise, that she has excited in me. She has done me harm heretofore; and do you know, I think she means me ill now. I have uttered this suspicion to Henry and Miss Nancy, but they both laughed it to scorn--saying _she_ was powerless to injure _me_; but still my fear remains, and, when I think of her, I grow sick at heart." Upon my return home that evening I told Miss Nancy of the meeting with Lindy, and of the conversation, but she attached no importance to it. No one living beneath the vine and fig-tree of Miss Nancy's planting, and sharing the calm blessedness of her smiles, could be long unhappy! Her life, as well as words, was a proof that human nature is not all depraved. In thinking over the rare combination of virtues that her character set forth, I have marvelled what must have been her childhood. Certainly she could never have possessed the usual waywardness of children. Her youth must have been an exception to the general rule. I cannot conceive her with the pettishness and proneness to quarrel, which we naturally expect in children. I love to think of her as a quiet little Miss, discarding the doll and play-house, turning quietly away from the frolicsome kitten--seeking the leafy shade of the New England forests--peering with a curious, thoughtful eye into the woodland dingle--or straining her gaze far up into the blue arch of heaven--or questioning, with a child's idle speculation, the whence and the whither of the mysterious wind. 'Tis thus I have pictured her childhood! She was a strange, gifted, unusual woman;--who, then, can suppose that her infancy and youth were ordinary?