Hildreth, the confidential maid of Mrs. Helmstedt, was a good-looking, comfortable, matronly woman, over forty years of age, very much like her brother Forrest in the largeness of her form, and the shining darkness of her skin, as well as in her devoted attachment to her mistress. She was a widow, and the mother of four stalwart boys, who were engaged upon the fisheries belonging to the island. For the rest, Hildreth was an uncharitable moralist, and a strict disciplinarian, visiting the sins of the fathers upon the children in her bitter intolerance of mulattoes. Hildreth affected grave Quaker colors for her gowns, and snow-white, cotton cloth for her turbans, neck-handkerchiefs, and aprons. Can you see her now? her large form clad in gray linsey, a white handkerchief folded across her bosom and tied down under the white apron, and her jet-black, self-satisfied face surmounted by the white turban? Hildreth was not the most refined and delicate of natures, and consequently her faithful affection for her mistress was sometimes troublesome from its intrusiveness. This evening, in attending Mrs. Helmstedt to her room, she saw at once the signs of misery on her face, and became exacting in her sympathy. Was her mistress sick? had she a headache? would she bathe her feet? would she have a cup of tea? what could she do for her? And when Mrs. Helmstedt gave her to understand that silence and darkness, solitude and rest were all she required, Hildreth so conscientiously interpreted her wishes that she closed every shutter, drew down every blind, and lowered every curtain of the windows, to keep out the sound of the wind and sea; turned the damper to keep the stove from “roaring,” stopped the clock to keep it from “ticking,” ejected a pet kitten to keep it from “purring,” closed the curtains around her lady’s bed, and having thus, as far as human power could, secured profound silence and deep darkness, she quietly withdrew, without even moving the air with a “good-night.” There is no fanaticism like the fanaticism of love, whether it exists in the bosom of a cloistered nun, wrapped in visions of her Divine Bridegroom, or in that of a devoted wife, a faithful slave, or a poor dog who stretches himself across the grave of his master and dies. That love, that self-abnegating love, that even in this busy, struggling, proud, sensual world, where a cool heart, with a clear head and elastic conscience, are the elements of success, still lives in obscure places and humble bosoms; that love that, often misunderstood, neglected, scorned, martyred, still burns till death, burns beyond--to what does it tend? To that spirit world where all good affections, all beautiful dreams, and divine aspirations shall be proved to have been prophecies, shall be abundantly realized.