The well-remembered echoes thrill;
I hear a voice I should not hear,
A voice that now might well be still.
Yet oft my doubting soul 't will shake;
Even slumber owns its gentle tone,
Till consciousness will vainly wake,
To listen though the dream be flown."
"O, it is ever the wildest storms that lull to the sweetest calms!" wrote Florence Howard, on a new-turned leaf of her well-treasured journal. "My heart is singing grateful anthems to the all-wise Father, who stretched forth his friendly arm to save me from the 'snare of the spoiler.' As I sit here to-night, with a young May moon gleaming down through the far depths of liquid ether, like a sweet, angel face of pity and love, how dimly o'er my memory come the stormy scenes of sin and passion which conspired to render terrible the winter that has passed away! My soul, long torn and rent by grief and wild-contending emotions, grows tranquil in the calm and quiet which have succeeded the furious storm, and settles to peaceful rest.
"It is enough for me to know my father's wrongs are righted and I am still his own, and only his. The clown, from whose polluting arms kind Providence rescued me, has never shown his hateful form among us since the day that witnessed the disclosure of his father's baseness. His vile mother has also disappeared, in search of her son. Great Heaven! to think I was so near becoming the wife of that woman's child of sin; and, but for that strange, wild hermit, who lifted the black curls that veiled the monster who sought our destruction, O, where had we all been now? And was it not a striking instance of Jehovah's righteous retributions, that the man who was once the betrothed of my aunt, should be the instrument selected by Heaven to disclose the villany and wickedness of the wretch who seduced her affections by artful falsehoods, and made her his wife, but to steal her fortune and blast her life? Poor, dear aunt Mary! I mourn not nor pine to find she is not my mother, for surely the fragile Edith, so rudely shocked by the disclosures of her father's crimes, would have drooped and died, had she not found a mother's fond affection to comfort and sustain her in the trial hour. It is a beautiful sight, this reünion of parent and child. How trustingly they cling to each other, and how their wan aspects brighten in the warmth of their mutual affection! But I think there's a love in the mother's heart yet stronger than that she feels for her child. I watch her emotional excitement when the name of the hermit is mentioned, and I think that early devotion has survived all disappointments and afflictions. What a romantic thing it would be for them to meet in the evening of life and renew the promises of their youth! But it may not be, for the conviction steals coldly o'er me that my dear aunt has been too deeply tried to long survive her sorrows. Even the joy of discovering a daughter may not save her from the tomb which opens to receive her weary form in its oblivious arms. Father looks on the thin, wasted form, following Edith closely as her shadow, with a fond, earnest gaze fixed on the gentle girl, and turns to hide a tear. O, would the blow might be a while averted! All is so bright and sunny around us now. I even try to nurse the belief that I could not be happier, but my heart will rebel against the specious falsehood. Still, still it wears the fetters love so enduringly fastened. Still I remember that double dawn which rose on me as I stood on the cloud-veiled summit of old, hoary-headed Mount Washington.
'And I saw it with such feeling, joy in blood and heart and brain,