The young mother drooped under the blow, like flowers stricken by a black frost, never to revive again. The healing hand of time rendered her placid and resigned, but her former cheerfulness never returned. She became very devout, and all her music was an utterance of prayer. Looking on this life with the eye of one weary of its illusions, she steadfastly fixed her thoughts on that world whither her darling had gone. From the youthful soul of Jan the shadow was more easily lifted. Again he revelled in the bright colours, the pungent perfumes, and the varied sounds of that luxuriant region of the earth. Again he began to mock the birds and the boatmen, and to mingle in dances with the other young slaves. About two years after he lost his best beloved playmate, he met with a companion who more than supplied his place, and who imparted to his existence a greater degree of vivacity and joyfulness, than he had ever known. Walking toward Grésik, one morning, to execute some commission for his mistress, he heard a pleasant voice in the distance, singing a merry tune. The sounds approached nearer and nearer, and they were so lively, that involuntarily his feet moved faster. Presently, a young girl emerged from a clump of tamarind trees, with a basket of fruit on her head; and the tune stopped abruptly. The expression of her countenance was extremely innocent and modest, and though her complexion was of a deeper brown than his own, a blush shone through it, like the glow of wine through a dark bottle in the sunshine. Jan noticed this as she passed; and something, he knew not what, made him remember her face very distinctly, and wish to see it again. He never went to Grésik without thinking of the merry voice in the distance, and never passed the clump of tamarind trees without recalling the bright vision he met there. Many weeks elapsed before he obtained another glimpse of her; but at last he overtook her with her basket on the way to Grésik; and this time they did not meet to pass each other; for their path lay in the same direction. With mutual bashfulness they spoke and answered; and each thought the other handsomer than they had at first supposed. The acquaintance thus begun rapidly ripened into intimacy. He was not yet thirteen years old, and she was not eleven. But in that precocious clime, Cupid shoots at children with a bow of sugar-cane; and this little maiden carried a store of his arrows in her large lustrous eyes. After that, Jan was seized with redoubled zeal to do all the errands to Grésik; and it so happened that he often overtook her on the way, or found her resting herself among the tamarind trees. Then her road homeward was, for a mile, the same as his own. Thus they travelled back and forth with their baskets, making the air musical as they went; as happy as the birds, and as thoughtless of the coming years. During these frequent interviews, he learned that she was a