For many years two gentle, quiet women lived alone in the little cottage in the dell, moving amongst the dwellers in that country village like two ministering angels; nursing the sick, comforting the sorrowful, helping the needy, soothing many a deathbed with their gentle, holy words; spreading peace around them wheresoever their footsteps went. And often in the summer evenings, one of them—the youngest and most beautiful—would wend her quiet way to the old church-yard, and there, in a green, sunny spot, would calmly sit and work for hours, while the lime-trees waved their leaves above her, and the sunlight shining through them, danced and sparkled on a little grave.
LAY OF THE CRUSADER.
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BY WM. H. C. HOSMER.
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Ginevra! Ginevra!
Thy girlish lip is mute;
And silent, in ancestral hall,
Hangs now thy gilded lute;