Our heed is light of pedigree,

I care not for the prophecy.

For what to me our wealth or line?

I only wish to make her mine—

The maid my aunt asked in to dine.

VIII. HOW A POOR GIRL WAS MADE RICH.

All the day my toil was easy, for I knew that in the evening,

I could go home from my labor, and find Blanche at the door;

How could I dream the sunlight in my sky was so deceiving?

And I ceased in my believing 'twould be cloudy ever more.

When at last the twilight deepened, I entered our low dwelling,

And my darling rose to meet me, with the love-light in her eyes;

On that day her simple story to my aunt she had been telling,

[Pg 13]

And I saw her words were welling, fraught with ominous surprise.

For it seems my hated uncle, once had given him a daughter,

Who on a saddened morning had been stolen from the door,

And through the panting city the criers cried and sought her,

But in vain; they never brought her to his threshold any more.

Blanche was she, my uncle's daughter; no unwelcome truth was plainer;

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