The English beauty of his own unknown possessions was new to him; it was also sad, for it was associated with the memory of his father's funeral; but, because of its very sadness, it was the less new, the more familiar. Across the flower-garden, across the terraced lawn dotted with rare trees from Rocky Mountain gorges and California valleys, across the network of gravel paths, he walked thoughtfully over to where an old ruin stood, with its mantle of ivy, shrouding crumbled wall and broken buttress, climbing over scutcheon and carven doorway, and flinging its tendrils like falling lace across the tall mullioned windows. This gray ruin had been a house once, but now it was disused and had fallen into decay. Opposite, only parted from it by a shrubbery, was the church where Egbert's father was buried, and to the left stretched a wide and long quadrangle with walls of coral-berried yew, and hedges of trailing rose and honeysuckle within, enclosing a tract of wild, rank grass, and little, nestling, creeping flowers hidden among the tall tufts. In the centre stood a sun-dial, lichened over in brown and yellow patches, catching the moonbeams now, as if it were a solitary tombstone in a desecrated graveyard. The long shadows from church and ruin stretched themselves across the lonely enclosure; the sweetbrier gave forth soft perfume that carried on its breath some remembrance of the Heidelberg limes and chestnuts; falling twigs made a ghost-like rustling in the tall trees beyond, and the voice of the night seemed to say to the young man's heart, "Peace is nigh."
Egbert wandered on till he came to the sun-dial; he leaned upon it and looked around. His thoughts were deep and sad, but something within him seemed changed—he himself knew not what. "Is it my father's spirit calling me, or Christina's heart sending me some heavenly message? Is it that I am going to die, or to live and know God?" Such were the flitting thoughts that sped like restless wanderers through his mind, and all night through, as he walked backward and forward in the yew quadrangle, and then by the edge of the beech-shadowed pond, these same thoughts pursued him, and shaped themselves to his fancy into the whispering of the ever-quivering leaves and the trembling of the unrestful grass.
It was dawn again before he left the grounds, and he had scarcely been asleep a few hours when a hasty message came to him that a poor woman from the village was asking for him in great distress, and was sure he would not refuse to see her. It seemed that she came to say her little girl was taken suddenly ill, and the doctor thought she would not live. Egbert had specially noticed this little one, and played with her during the preceding day, when the school-children were enjoying their share of the day's delight; and, without the slightest hesitation, he followed the poor mother to her cottage, where he found a whole nest of children; some old enough to look sorry and frightened, some hardly able to do aught else than crow and laugh and give trouble to the elder ones. Up-stairs in a poor little garret lay the sick child, rocked on the knees of its eldest sister, and looking very pinched and white and mournful. A Catholic priest was in the room, and there were a few rude prints and a crucifix on the walls. The little one was very silent, but the mother said it had asked piteously for the "pretty gentleman" to bring it some flowers. Egbert took its hand and stroked its small, thin face. The child was not pretty, but it had that patient, confiding look that always stirs the heart, that prematurely yet unconsciously sad expression that is a thousand times more winning and more touching than beauty. For this very reason had Egbert noticed it the day before, and asked its name and age with an interest that made all its companions jealous.
As he bent down to it, it said something he could not make out, and turning to the mother for explanation, "She says, sir," answered the poor woman, "would you please say a prayer?" The young man reddened and looked at the priest. Again the child spoke. The priest said to Egbert: "She has a fancy for it. Will you not say an Our Father for her?"
He had chosen a prayer on which there could be no controversy, he thought, and was surprised when Egbert, instead of the Lord's Prayer, began a beautiful and impromptu supplication. For some time he went on, and the child listened bewildered; but as he stretched his hand towards her, and drew her head upon his arm, she said with a soft, childish accent, as if recovering from an unintelligible surprise: "No; say the Hail Mary."
The priest saw his head suddenly droop, and his fair hair touch the child's darker locks; his voice sank, and sobs came instead of words; then there was silence.
"Say the Hail Mary," said the child.
Egbert never raised his head, but in a broken voice he said the prayer as the little one directed, and the Our Father directly after. But the priest noticed that he said it as Catholics do, omitting the superadded words of the Protestant liturgy.
A few moments after, the child's father came in; he had been sent for from his work.
It was not long before God counted another angel in his train, and the mother one treasure less upon earth.