"I dread the separation from you and Mrs. Murray; but I know I ought to go; and I feel that when duty commands me to follow a path, lonely and dreary though it may seem, a light will be shed before my feet, and a staff will be put into my hands. I have often wondered what the Etrurians intended to personify in their Dii Involuti, before whose awful decrees all other gods bowed. Now I feel assured that the chief of the 'Shrouded Gods' is Duty, veiling her features with a silver-lined cloud, scorning to parley, but whose unbending figure signs our way--an unerring pillar of cloud by day, of fire by night. Mr. Hammond, I shall follow that stern finger till the clods on my coffin shut it from my sight." The August sun shining through the lilac and myrtle boughs that rustled close to the study-window glinted over the pure, pale face of the orphan, and showed a calm mournfulness in the eyes which looked out at the quiet parsonage garden, and far away to the waving lines against the sky, where-- "A golden lustre slept upon the hills." Just beyond the low, ivy-wreathed stone wall that marked the boundary of the garden ran a little stream, overhung with alders and willows, under whose tremendous shadows rested contented cattle--some knee-deep in water, some browsing leisurely on purple-tufted clover. From the wide, hot field, stretching away on the opposite side, came the clear metallic ring of the scythes, as the mowers sharpened them; the mellow whistle of the driver lying on top of the huge hay mass, beneath which the oxen crawled toward the lowered bars; and the sweet gurgling laughter of two romping, sunburned children, who swung on at the back of the wagon.