Edna saw mother and daughter descend the long avenue and then running up to her room, she tied on her hat and walked rapidly across the park in an opposite direction. About a mile and a half from Le Bocage, on a winding and unfrequented road leading to a sawmill, stood a small log-house containing only two rooms. The yard was neglected, full of rank weeds, and the gate was falling from its rusty hinges. Edna walked up the decaying steps, and without pausing to knock, entered one of the comfortless-looking rooms. On a cot in one corner lay an elderly man in the last stage of consumption, and by his side, busily engaged in knitting, sat a child about ten years old, whose pretty white face wore that touching look of patient placidity peculiar to the blind. Huldah Reed had never seen the light, but a marvellous change came over her countenance when Edna's light step and clear, sweet voice fell on her ear. "Huldah, how is your father to-day?" "Not as well as he was yesterday; but he is asleep now, and will be better when he wakes." "Has the doctor been here to-day?" "No, he has not been here since Sunday." Edna stood for a while watching the labored breathing of the sleeper, and, putting her hand on Huldah's head, she whispered: "Do you want me to read to you this evening? It is late, but I shall have time for a short chapter." "Oh! please do, if it is only a few lines. It will not wake him." The child rose, spread out her hands, and groped her way across the room to a small table, whence she took an old Bible. The two sat down together by the western window, and Edna asked: "Is there any particular chapter you would like to hear?" "Please read about blind Bartimeus sitting by the roadside, waiting for Jesus." Edna turned to the verses and read in a subdued tone for some moments. In her eager interest Huldah slid down on her knees, rested her thin hands on her companion's lap and raised her sweet face, with its wide, vacant, sad, hazel eyes. When Edna read the twenty-fourth verse of the next chapter, the small hands were laid upon the page to arrest her attention.