One afternoon Malina was left alone; the workmen had departed to their suppers, and her task was finished for the day. She had just hung the pet robin in his old place by the dining-room window; he seemed to recognize the room, and flew about his cage, chirping and fluttering his wings, as if to thank her for bringing him home once more. It was the first hour of repose that Malina had known for many weeks, and now, that she had nothing more to perform, painful thoughts and regrets that would no longer be stifled, fell back upon her heart, and she was, oh, how desolate! There, in her blooming youth, she sat hopeless and weary of life—for what is life to a woman without affection? The heart was full of warm and generous feelings, burthened with a wealth of tenderness, and yet she had no future, nothing to hope for, nothing to dread; her destiny seemed consummated there and then. Youth is in itself so hopeful, that we can scarcely imagine a creature in the first bud of life yearning for the grave. But Malina was very sad. She looked through the open door into the orchard; the green old apple trees were heavy with blossoms, and through the garniture of thrifty leaves, and the rosy shower which blushed among them, a corner of the old meeting-house met her gaze—a portion of the grave-yard, and a new tomb-stone, which gleamed out from the young grass which had already started up from our minister’s death place. How green and quiet it looked—and oh, how earnestly Malina Gray longed to lie down in that still spot, and be at rest. Yet Malina was young, and no human being dreamed how wretched she was. The orchard was full of singing birds that day, and there had been a time when the gush of sweet sounds, that rose and swelled amid the foliage, would have made her heart leap, but now it filled her eyes with tears. The sunshine that played and quivered among the leaves—the wind that now and then gushed through the heavy boughs, scattering the grass with rosy flakes, and sighing as it swept off to the open plain—all seemed a mockery. She was heart sick, and yearned to die. How cruel is that power by which a broken heart draws thoughts of sadness from the sweet and beautiful things of nature. Malina gazed through her tears at the change her own hands had wrought. The unseemly plantains had disappeared from the back door-step, and around the well-curb a bed of valley-lilies were just forming their pearly buds. “They will be in blossom for Phebe’s hair,” murmured the young girl, “and for mine—for am I not to be bridemaid?”