Christie took the place pointed out to her, and Uncle Reuben, taking the head of the table, did the honors.
Then, when the meal was over, Bertha resumed her stool and her pine cones; Christie took the rocking-chair by the window, and Reuben busied himself in clearing away the dinner dishes and setting things to rights.
Weak still, and exhausted by the efforts of the morning, Christie threw herself on her bed during the course of the afternoon, and fell into the profound and refreshing sleep of bodily weariness, from which she did not awaken until the bustle of preparing supper aroused her.
In the evening Reuben took down an old, antiquated-looking Bible and read a few chapters aloud, and then they all retired to their separate couches.
And thus began Christie's new life—a life of endless monotony, but one of perfect peace. As the days passed on, bringing with them no change or excitement, she gradually settled down into a sort of dreamy lethargy, disturbed now and then as some circumstance would forcibly recall all she had loved and lost forever, by short, passionate outbursts of grief, but which were always followed by a deeper and more settled melancholy than before.
CHAPTER XXV.
THE MANIAC'S STORY.
"All was confused and undefined
In her all-jarred and wandering mind;
A chaos of wild hopes and fears—
And now in laughter, now in tears,
But madly still in each extreme,
She strove with that convulsive dream."—BYRON.
Autumn was at hand. The woods were gorgeous in their radiant robes of gold, and purple, and crimson. Christie's chief pleasure was in wandering through the forest, and gazing on the brilliant jewelry of Nature. The weeks that had passed, had restored her to health; but her step had not regained its elastic lightness; her voice had lost its old joyous tones; her once roseate cheek had lost forever its vivid bloom; and the bright, joyous light of hope and happiness had died out in the deep, melancholy, blue eyes. She moved through the little forest cabin, the shadow of her former self, pale, wan, and spiritual. And in looking at her slight, delicate figure, her fair, transparent little face, with its sad, haunting eyes, you might have thought her some fair vision of another world, and almost expect to see her fade away before your very eyes.
It was very lonesome, buried there in the depths of the forest, with no companions but the man Reuben and the maniac Bertha. But its very loneliness made it all the more welcome to our little recluse, who dreaded nothing so much as a discovery; and in roaming through the grand old woods, she felt she never wanted to leave this solitary spot again. At any other time she would have shrank in terror from the prospect of passing the long, dreary winter here, when even the comfort of these walks would be denied her. How little did she dream of all that was to occur before that winter came.