She did not stop to answer, but instantly commenced picking her way back to the bank. While she did so, her trepidation several times almost tripped her into the river. I should have watched her every step at any other time, but my attention was irresistibly drawn to the repulsive form which had come, like a dark and unwelcome shadow, over this fair scene. The face was positively one of the most demoniacal in expression I have ever met. Thick, black hair, unkempt, hung over the low forehead, and the shaggy dark eye-brows seemed to glower in habitual gloom over a rough and unshaven face. The expression of the whole was that of a man whose countenance is saddened into surliness, like a clay image of Satan, by habitual strong potations. A slovenly disregard to dress completed the picture of a man who has sold himself to the vilest and most disgusting habits of intoxication. While I trembled for the fate of such a child, in such hands, she had come within his reach, and, stretching forth his arm, he dragged her to him by the hair, tripping her from her footing into the water, and pulling her to the shore with more inhuman rudeness than I can describe—her dress draggled and muddied, and her limbs bleeding from contact with the sharp stones and pebbles. Blow upon blow the ruffian inflicted upon her, which I could hear as well as see from where I stood. Not a sound, not a cry escaped her; and while I was hesitating whether I ought not to try to reach and rescue her, he ceased beating her, and turned up a path in the bank-side. She silently and doggedly followed him; and I sadly took my way home, lamenting that the beauty and peace of such a place should be so brutally interrupted; and sorrowing more than all, that frequent ill-usage had so deadened the child’s sensibilities as to make her, otherwise so natural and unaffected, thus endure pain with the sullen fortitude of an old offender. I trembled for the life of a child growing up under such influences; for I could see in her future nothing but crime, suffering and degradation.