A low murmuring sound was presently heard at the little wicket-gate outside, and immediately after the door was softly unlatched, and Grace Bartlett glided into the room.
The anxious glances of the pastor and his wife at once discovered by the light of the fire, which blazed brightly upon the hearth-stone, that the young girl’s eyes were dimmed with a slight expression of sorrow, and that her lovely cheek was a shade paler than its wont. She moved gently forward, knelt down at her father’s side, and kissed his brow.
“Grace,” said the old man, sadly, as he laid his hand among her beautiful tresses, “we have awaited your return, my child; it is past our customary hour for prayer. Do you tire of the happiness of home, that you seek for enjoyment elsewhere?” he added, as he gazed down on the face of the lovely being so emphatically the light of his home.
The girl’s countenance betrayed a confused consciousness as her beautiful “forget-me-not” eyes encountered those of her parent; but she made no reply, and a moment after arose from her knees. Untying her bonnet and hanging it against the wall, while her golden hair, disobedient to previous arrangement in modest bands by its owner, fell luxuriantly around her neck, she took a seat to signify that she was now prepared to join her parents in the devotions of the evening.
At that moment the little low-roofed apartment, so unostentatious in its old-fashioned furniture, so exact in its modest neatness—its bare walls unornamented with ought save a piece of faded tapestry, or an occasional nail whereon was hung sundry bunches of dried herbs and bags of rose-leaves—this, with the girl in her youthful simplicity and grace, kneeling by the side of her venerable parents, the eyes of all closed, and their hands clasped in devotion, while the old man’s lips were parted in the act of prayer, formed altogether as complete a picture as possible of colonial economy and piety.
The aspect of the room was homely but pleasant, with its low casement, beneath which stood the dark shining table that supported the large Bible in its green-baize cover, the Concordance, and the last Sunday’s sermon in its ebon case. By the fire-place stood the elbow-chair, before which the minister was kneeling, with its needle-work cushion at the back. Fifty or sixty volumes ranged in neat shelves on one end of the wall, and a half-a-dozen chairs, and a table, completed the furniture of the apartment. But it was the occupants who made the effect of the scene, in their pious act of evening devotion.
When the prayer was ended, Grace hastily withdrew, as if to avoid all further questions. But her anxious mother was not long in following her. She entered the little chamber of the young girl softly. Her daughter heard her, and started from the chair she had taken.
The gentle matron drew her affectionately to her side as she seated herself on the low bedstead, saying, “Grace, thou wast not educated to have any secrets from thy fond parents. Tell me, then, my child, who accompanied thee to the gate this evening?”
The girl hesitated for some moments, during which a momentary blush suffused her face and neck. Then, hiding her face in her mother’s bosom, she timidly replied, “It was the young stranger; he met me on the path leading from the village, and attended me home.”
The mother’s face evinced a troubled expression. “Oh, Grace, my daughter,” she said, “thou shouldst not have permitted him to do so. Thy father hath ever said since that young man’s arrival in the village, that it did not become any of our sect to hold ungodly converse with the sons of Baal.”