Earth and sky are merging into one another, and all things are fading from her sight--all things but the quaint old church with its hooded porch, which bends compassionately towards her, and offers her a peaceful sanctuary. This church and the tombstones around it, the very form and shape of which she sees clearly in the midst of her agony, she has ever clearly remembered. Even in the death-like trance that falls upon her, she sees the outline of the church and its approaches. Friendly hands assist her into the sanctuary of rest. How long does she lie in peace? How many hours, or days, or weeks pass by, before she sees strange faces bending over her, before she hears strange voices about her? What has occurred between the agony of the time that has gone, and the ineffable rapture that fills her veins as she presses a baby to her breast? What follows after this? She cannot tell. During the sad and lonely years that have brought silver streaks into her hair, she has striven hundreds of times to recall the sequence of events that culminated with the loss of her treasure. But she strives in vain. Time and her own weakness have destroyed the record. Long intervals of illness, during which the snow is always falling and the moonlight always gleaming; glimpses of heaven in the bright-blue laughing eyes of a lovely babe--her own child, who lies upon her breast, pure and beautiful as an angel; then, a terrible darkness; and loneliness for evermore. For evermore? Is this truly to be her fate? Can Heaven be so cruel as to allow her to die without gazing again upon the face of her child? For a blind faith possesses her that her darling still lives. Against all reason--in the face of all circumstance. Can she not believe that, during an illness which almost proved fatal, her child was taken from her, and died before she recovered? When this was told her, in a careless way, as though it were a matter so ordinary as to be scarcely worthy of comment, and when to this were added sharp and bitter words to the effect that she ought to fall upon her knees, and thank God that her child was not living to share her shame and disgrace, she looked with a pitiful smile into the face of her informant, and, rising without a word, went her way into the world. Into the lonely world, which henceforth contained no hand that she could clasp in love or friendship. Her shame! Yes, truly hers. It held an abiding place in her heart. It caused her to shrink from the gaze of man, and from the words, more surely bitter, which she saw trembling on the lips of those who would address her. Eyes flashed contempt upon her; tongues reviled her; fingers were pointed at her in scorn and abhorrence. What was there before her but to fly from these stings and nettles, and hide herself from the sight of all who chanced to know her? She accepted her lot. Heart-broken she wandered into the great depths of the city, and lived her life of silence.