"Chrissy, Chrissy," he said, "I must go. I dare not trust myself to speak," and he left her standing on the door-step. The happy holidays had slipped away all too soon. Chrissy stood by a window gazing at the panorama before her. The moonlight poured through the window, filling the room with a soft radiance which rested upon her head with a kind of halo. The indescribable beauty of the scene without faded into insignificance compared with the scene which George Morrison contemplated--a young woman whose pure heart was mirrored in the beauty of her face and breathed in every accent of her gentle voice. Her earnest blue eyes looked as though they could see into that other world of which she so often spoke. Never before had he beheld a life so filled with fascinating grace as to pervade every gesture and accent. Never had he met a soul so permeated with love and devotion to God, and withal so simple, so natural, so sweet. Chrissy was evidently oblivious to the presence of anyone, and started when George suddenly remarked: "Pardon me, Miss Chrissy, if I intrude upon the sacredness of your meditations, but I understand you are going to leave us to-morrow. We may not meet again, for you will be shut up within the cloistered walls yonder and I shall be leaving in the spring for the great unknown land. I shall have cause to thank God through all eternity for your visit I am grateful, deeply grateful, for the loving interest you have manifested in my welfare, and I cannot part with you, dear Chrissy, without giving some expression of the intense love I have for you. It would be heaven begun on earth if I might only be permitted to walk life's pathway with you; but, alas! I am not in a position to offer you a home. I am not one of those white-shirt-fronted gentlemen such as we frequently meet with here, but, thank God, I can now offer you a heart that is white, a life that is pure. Life in the woods has rubbed off any of the veneer or polish that I may have brought with me from the Old Land, and I am just as you see me, Chrissy, a plain, rough man from the wilds of the West. Notwithstanding which, could you not give me a pledge that some time, somewhere, I may claim you as my own?" For a moment Chrissy said nothing, but the expression of her face was more eloquent than any words. Her breast heaved with emotion as she said, slowly and calmly: "I am convinced that such a union as you propose would be founded upon the only true basis, a mutual love for Christ. Unions such as this have only their beginning here; their full fruition is in eternity." In a moment he was at her feet, and, pressing her hand to his lips, he poured forth expressions of happy gratitude to the Giver of all good. To her lover she seemed as she stood before him an incarnation of love, of beauty, of goodness and grace, more like something belonging to another world--a subject of a higher power. CHAPTER VI. _GAY VOYAGEURS._ 1805.