Martha Penny clutched the speaker's arm, and laid her hand over her mouth, with a scared look. The door of the bedroom had swung open in the breeze, and in the stress of feeling Mandy Loomis had raised her voice higher and higher, till the last words rang through the house like the wail of a sibyl. But above the wail another sound was now rising, the voice of Rejoice Dale,—not calm and gentle, as they had always heard it, but high-pitched, quivering with intense feeling.
"I see her!" cried the sick woman. "I see the child! Lord, save her!
Lord, save her!"
The two women hurried in, and found her sitting up in bed, her eyes wide, her arm outstretched, pointing—at what? Involuntarily they turned to follow the pointing finger, and saw the yellow-washed wall, and the wreath of autumn leaves that always hung there.
"What is it, Rejoice?" cried Mandy, terrified. "What do you see? Is it a spirit? Tell us, for pity's sake!"
But even at that moment a change came. The rigid muscles relaxed, the whole face softened to its usual peaceful look; the arm dropped gently, and Rejoice Dale sank back upon her pillow and smiled.
"Thy rod and thy staff!" she said. "Thy rod and thy staff! they comfort me." And for the first time since Melody was lost, she fell asleep, and slept like a little child.
CHAPTER IX.
BLONDEL.
Noontide in the great city! The July sun blazes down upon the brick sidewalks, heating them through and through, till they scorch the bare toes of the little street children, who creep about, sheltering their eyes with their hands, and keeping in the shade when it is possible. The apple-women crouch close to the wall, under their green umbrellas; the banana-sellers look yellow and wilted as their own wares. Men pass along, hurrying, because they are Americans, and business must go on whether it be hot or cold; but they move in a dogged jog-trot, expressive of weariness and disgust, and wipe their brows as they go, muttering anathemas under their breath on the whole summer season. Most of the men are in linen coats, some in no coats at all; all wear straw hats, and there is a great display of palm-leaf fans, waving in all degrees of energy. Here and there is seen an umbrella, but these are not frequent, for it seems to the American a strange and womanish thing to carry an umbrella except for rain; it also requires attention, and takes a man's mind off his business. Each man of all the hurrying thousands is shut up in himself, carrying his little world, which is all the world there is, about with him, seeing the other hurrying mites only "as trees walking," with no thought or note of them. Who cares about anybody else when it is so hot? Get through the day's work, and away to the wife and children in the cool by the sea-shore, or in the comfortable green suburb, where, if one must still be hot, one can at least suffer decently, and not "like a running river be,"—with apologies to the boy Chatterton.
Among all these hurrying motes in the broad, fierce stream of sunshine, one figure moves slowly, without haste. Nobody looks at anybody else, or this figure might attract some attention, even in the streets of the great city. An old man, tall and slender, with snowy hair falling in a single curl over his forehead; with brown eyes which glance birdlike here and there, seeing everything, taking in every face, every shadow of a vanishing form that hurries along and away from him; with fiddle-bow in hand, and fiddle held close and tenderly against his shoulder. De Arthenay, looking for his little girl!