Withered Leaves from Memory's Garland
passionate flood of tears. She tried to conquer her feelings and summon her woman's pride to her aid, but it would not do. "Cruel Edward," she mentally exclaimed, "you might have spared me this, or told me the cause of this neglect and coldness." And as she reflected upon the trapping of wealth with which he was surrounded, and the splendor of his equipage, she asked herself, "can it be that love of gold is the cause?" Echo answered "can it be?"

As the weary night drew to a close, the tempest in the poor girl's bosom began to subside. But as the heaving ocean bears upon its waves plank after plank of the ship-wrecked vessel that has been stranded upon its tempest tossed bosom, so did the surging waves of memory bring back one incident after another in her past life, and picture the tender looks and the tender tones of the unfaithful Edward, during the many long years she had regarded him as her future husband. To him she had yielded up her heart's best affections. For his sake she had rejected many an advantageous offer of marriage.

She met the family in the morning with quite a composed countenance, but with a sad heart.

In the afternoon she went to her uncle's to visit her grandmother, thinking, perhaps, change of place might produce some change in her feelings. It was a delightful afternoon. The sun shed that soft subdued light so peculiar to the season, over the face of nature, which seemed rather approximating to maturity than verging to decay. The trees were robed in their deepest green, while the early ripe fruit hung temptingly upon their branches, or lay scattered upon the ground beneath. Scarce a breeze agitated the trembling leaf or cooled the fever upon her cheek. "O," thought she, as she passed along, "the howling of the wintry storms would better correspond with my feelings than this holy calm." She, in her agony, had not yet learned to bathe her restless spirit in the fountain of Jiving waters, or to listen to that voice that said, "Peace, be still," and the winds and waves obeyed; therefore she had no "shelter from the windy storm and tempest."

She was startled by hearing some one near her repeating in a low, musical voice,

"Little Hannah Pease, little Hannah Pease; old Ben Thornton, old Ben Thornton," and looking up, perceived near her a female, loosely wrapped in a large white woolen blanket, which was her only clothing. Her head and feet were entirely bare. Her black hair was cut short, and her weather beaten countenance retained traces of great beauty. She stood courtesying and smiling to 
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