Not far off a band of red men, their faces bedaubed with paint, and their hair decked out with plumes, were gliding noiselessly through the dense woods, thinking to steal upon the cabin unawares and destroy it and its inmates. But as soon as they saw the silver lamp upon the window-sill, they turned away, saying: “Moonshine is there! She would give warning of our approach.”
Moonshine, seeing that the dreaded enemy had turned aside, passed on and left the mother and her child sleeping peacefully. As swift she glided through valley and over hill, and across river and lake and village-dotted plain, the rays of her glittering lamp reached far and wide through the darkness, making the trees and gardens and rippling corn-fields glad, pointing the shortest route to a weary boatman, revealing to a belated traveler the robbers who stealthily pursued, looking in upon three rosy children who slumbered cosily in one couch together—stooping to kiss their shining curls and happy faces, and to whisper something pleasant in their ears. Nor did she pause when she came to the great sea, but glided on over the foaming billows. A white-sailed ship the winds were driving towards an unknown reef. Quickly she set her silver lamp upon the perilous rock. Far over the angry waters shone the beacon light, and the mariners, seeing danger ahead, shifted their sails and changed the vessel’s course.
The wanderer reached, at length, a distant coast, and, holding her lamp aloft, passed on from town to town. A student sat at midnight, wakeful among his books. Moonshine glanced over his shoulder at the closely-printed page, and the light of her silver lamp so put to shame his miserable taper that he extinguished it, and began to write some verses in her praise.
At last, Moonshine peered down into a deep, dark dungeon, and saw a hapless human creature bound with chains. Pale and wan he was, from long years of imprisonment. For hours she remained to speak to him comforting words.
In the morning the pioneer came to his home on the mountain side, and told how he had been rescued by Moonshine from highwaymen who pursued him as he journeyed. “Ah, bless her,” said the wife; “for she also watched over us, and guarded us while we slept.” The three rosy children awakened smiling, and told one another their dreams; they had all dreamed of fairy-land. The storm-tossed ship sailed into port, and the grateful mariners declared that, but for Moonshine, they would have gone to the bottom of the sea. The student went about with such a beaming countenance that people questioned, Was he moonstruck? A jailer, descending into a deep, dark dungeon, found the fettered captive lying silent, with closed eyes; and the sad soul that had gazed out of those eyes—who had set it free? Moonshine?
SUNSHINE.
“Voila, Jeannette! voila!”
The little old woman lifts her wrinkled face from the lace-work over which she is bending, and looks where the slender hand just pointed. How did it come there, that sunbeam? So the two question; for never, in all the time they have occupied the low, dim room, with its one window, has a sunbeam shone into it, warm and cheery, like that. Possibly some recent alteration in the high buildings without has made way for the welcome visitor, now that the sun has moved farther around to the north. However it came there, there it is, the mellow ray, deepening in color as the sun sinks lower down, changing from yellow to orange, from orange to rose. The couch must be moved nearer, so that the thin hand may press the wall and feel the warm light as it rests there; then a smile wreathes the wan, weary young face, and its owner goes off dreaming—dreaming with eyes wide open.
Somebody knocks at the door. “Coom,” calls Jeannette. A lad of twelve lifts the latch and enters.