“‘Give me fire,’ she said, looking at the black hearth. ‘Is this the welcome we offer our child?’
“I knelt down upon my hands and knees, thanking God for the return of that poor girl; while I raked the embers together, and blew them into life with my lips. I heaped dry wood upon the coals, and when the flame leaped through, lighting the features of my child, I turned to look upon her, where she lay upon the mother’s bosom.
“Her eyes were wide open, and a dusky rim that swept under gave intensity to the blackness. When she saw me looking at her, those poor lips, all blue and cold, began to quiver, and a gush of tears changed the stony grief in her whole face to a look of such mournful tenderness, that I too burst into tears.
“‘Father!’ she cried, reaching forth her two hands as she had done when a little child,—‘father!’
“I stretched out my arms, and strove to draw her downward to the bosom that yearned to hold her; but the mother put me back, with a wave of the hand, and folding Elsie close to her heart, cried out pleadingly,—
“‘Not yet, oh! not yet. Let her be, or my heart will break.’
“She had the best right to her, so I buried my face in Elsie’s mantle, and felt comforted by something she had touched.
“I tell you, child, no human heart dreams how much it can love, till sorrow falls on the object it clings to. That child was sacred to us as an angel then—dearer, a thousand times dearer, because they had attempted to crush her with disgrace. Her pale cheek, her tremulous lips, all the traces of wrong and anguish upon her person, were claims upon our tenderness. There was a sort of worship in our grief and in our joy.
“The fire burned up clear and brightly, but as the chill left her poor frame, a sharper consciousness of her position seemed to sting her into restlessness. She clung first to her mother, then to me; twice she bent to kiss me, and then drew back with a look of shrinking terror.
“‘You know, father; or must I tell you?’ she said at last.