I know not but nature has given me an undue quantum of sensibility, but I was melted to tears by this poor creature before me. I have described her features--these the reader will see; but the whole expression, the thing which cannot be conveyed to paper, that must be imagined. Its wo, its extreme wo; the circumstances too, so near a populous village, and yet alone; the church yard at hand, and the few incoherent words dropped from her lips; these at first came over me with a sort of sickening fear, and I trembled lest the figure before me should, like the witches that met Macbeth on the heath, ‘change into the air.’ Just at that moment a dull dolt of a farmer came along the common, cracking his whip and bellowing most lustily. Seeing me stopped in the road, the girl by my bridle gently pulling it and eyeing me with a beseeching look, he cried out, “Hillo, you Luce! what the d--l are you at there with that gentleman’s bridle? out of the way ye’--using a term I shall not repeat--‘and let me get by, wont ye?” Seeing my cheek burning with an indignation that tempted me to knock the rascal down, he said as he drove by and in a much softer tone, “It’s only Luce Selden, the mad gal--don’t mind her, sir.” I turned towards her thus designated--poor creature! she had sunk down at my horse’s feet like a young flower which the wind has passed over too roughly, her long hair disheveled in rich masses on the turf, and her hand grasping a few dead flowers she had brought with her. Springing to the ground I lifted her delicate form in my arms, and bearing her to a runnel of water which wimpled near, I cast some of it upon her face and bosom. Slowly opening her eyes she seemed at once to feel my kindness, and wreathing her emaciated arms about my neck, her pent heart poured itself forth into my bosom.