“Don’t look so pale and frightened, Mary; worse jobs are done every day—but they will call me sluggard if I loiter here—so good-bye, good-bye, darlings.”
“Heaven preserve you,” responded the wife; and she turned with feelings half of dread and half of hope to the cottage door.
“Just such a morning,” muttered an old woman who sat crouching in the chimney corner—“just such a morning, bright as this,—and a black night followed the bright day—a black, black night.”
“Now the saints save us!” exclaimed the young woman: “who ever heard Dame Ursula talking away at such a rate before? As sure as fate something unusual will happen. What is it you were saying grand-dame?” she added in a louder tone, approaching the thin, withered old hag who had crept slowly toward the door-step, and seating herself there, continued to mutter and mumble half indistinct words.
“Storms follow the sunshine—storms and tempests and thick darkness.”
The anxious wife followed and sat down beside her.
“Is there any evil hanging over us? for mercy sake tell me if you know,” she asked.
“Evil, did I say Evil! I spoke of the past, not the future—I spoke of the days of youth and hope and beauty.” Then as her wandering memory gradually linked together the chain of by-gone associations, her countenance brightened, and she poured into the ear of her astonished auditor the narrative of events which had taken place nearly a century before, and were generally forgotten,—treasured only in the heart of that desolate, and decrepid old creature.
“Youth and beauty, and love I said, and you marvelled at hearing such words from my lips; no wonder, for many a year has passed since these things have been aught to me save idle dreams. But the time has been, when I too was young—loving and loved—blessing and blessed. My brother, your grandfather, and myself were left, you know, in early life as orphans in the hands of strangers; and although we had no claim on them except that of helplessness, and could only repay their kindness by our exertions, we had no reason ever to complain of harshness or ill-treatment among our kind and simple people. I was older than my brother, and as I grew up to be a tall handsome lass, the young men of the village strove which could make themselves most agreeable to the light hearted and beautiful Ursula. I know it is folly in me to talk so now, and you can scarcely believe it, but eighty years hence, if you should live so long, your cheek may be wrinkled and your eye bleared like mine, so that your laughing boy will scarcely credit the tale of your former beauty.”
“Heaven forbid.”