Samuel Parris returned home more thoughtful than ever. Indeed, time had no balm for this old man, and but for his lovely child he must have withered away in unceasing sorrow for his wife; in remorse for the sin, as he deemed it, of loving her too well. When Sir William Phipps heard of this, his heart was touched with compassion for the old man, who had unlocked the golden gates of knowledge to him, and, at the suggestion of his gentle wife, he sent an urgent request that Elizabeth, the daughter whose education had been the business and solace of the old man's life, should spend a portion of her seventeenth year with Lady Phipps, who, childless herself, would become a second mother to her. It was like a new death for the old man to part with his child, but he saw by the wistful pleading of her eyes, that she longed to see something of the bright world, and surrendered her to the servant whom Sir William Phipps had sent to escort her to Boston, with a pang almost as great as that with which he had consigned her mother to the grave. Through all the blossom season of the year, and into midsummer, Elizabeth remained with her new friends. She was very happy; and while his heart yearned for her presence, the old minister forbore to press her return, or to inform her how dreary her absence had rendered his home. But at last, urged on by some impulse which left him without the power of resistance, though he prayed and struggled against it for many days, the old man took his staff and went all the way on foot from Salem to Boston, perhaps to see his child, certainly to look upon the roof that covered her, and to breathe the same air that brought bloom and beauty to her young face. But the very joy that filled his being as he came nearer and nearer to the town, admonished him how completely his love had gone forth, once more, to a being perishable as the wife he mourned. What if the displeasure of God for this creature-worship should fall upon the child also? The old man's soul trembled within him at these thoughts. He dared not even approach the house where his child lived; yet he wandered with irresistible fascination on the outskirts of the neighborhood, longing to ask the passers-by if they had seen her, but never venturing to unclose his lips. Thus the old man, striving against the best feelings of his nature as a sin had roamed forth into the storm of that terrible day, and he now wandered about in the sunshine afraid of himself, afraid of the very sight of his own child, yet hovering around the house where she dwelt, like a wounded bird that cannot forsake the tree where its young are nested. As he was thus upon the outskirts of the grounds, Elizabeth looked forth from the window of her room, and, uttering a cry of thrilling joy, that had so often made the old man tremble, as he thought, with forbidden happiness--"My father! Oh, my father!" CHAPTER IX. THE FORCED SACRAMENT.