Until recently I never indulged in the hope of being counted among the benefactors of my race, but, my fair countrywomen, I hope I do not presume too much, when I say that I shall hereafter merit this honor at your hands, for am I not going to speak to you of events which, wonderful as they are, have hitherto never come to the knowledge of our present generation? I cannot conscientiously make known to you the mysterious means by which I became cognizant of the following events, yet do I hold myself clear of any breach of confidence when I lay before you these wondrous facts, upon the truth of which you may rely, on my veracity as a story-teller! Long, long ago there lived in a far country, among the mountains, which towered to heaven much in the manner of mountains now, a young maiden, who must certainly have been one of the progenitors of “The Sinless Child;” for in personal beauty, and in excellence and purity of mind, this girl was unsurpassed, perhaps unequaled in her day. A “rare and radiant maiden” was she, albeit unaccomplished and unlearned. Kind, generous and affectionate was Rose May, having withal such a reasonable amount of spirited independence in her nature, as a child born and bred among the mountain wilds would be like to have. It was a glorious dwelling-place, that of my heroine! Grant May, her father, was a shepherd, a rugged man of middle age, whose furrowed face bore testimony to the fact, that he had encountered and weathered many a hard storm in the course of his life. A true son of the mountains was he; for three or four generations back his fathers had lived, shepherds, in these same wild heights, and I doubt much if _this_ son of his father could ever have breathed the warmer and gentler air of a less elevated home. Occasionally, but at long intervals, he had wandered away to the world below him, but, like the eagle, his eyry and his affections were fixed amid the towering heights, the rugged scenes and bracing air of the mountains—there was the home for which Nature and a forty years’ residence had fitted him. The shepherd’s house was built in what, to an eye unaccustomed to such scenes, would seem a most dangerous situation. But it was just to the contrary. Erected on the side of a deep ravine at the bend of the stream, it was sheltered on three sides from the rough, wild winds of winter; and in summer it seemed half buried in the vegetation, which was nowhere on the mountains so abundant as about this place. Above, beneath, and around the cottage there were hardy bushes and flowering shrubs, and towering high above them the pine-trees and the strong-limbed offspring of that rugged clime; and higher still above the flowers, and bushes, and pines, spread the bright deep blue sky, which seemed to rest its mighty arches on the peaks and crags of those great heights.