“’It would seem that one so well fitted for society would tire of this narrow bound,’ I once said.  With an eye brimming over with tenderness, the pastor replied:  ’There are souls to save here quite as precious as anywhere else.’  I felt humbled before his quiet glance.  This was the work for him to do; this was the work he loved.  What matter in what part of the vineyard? wherever there was a soul.  But this mountain grandeur pleased him.  These quiet solitudes led him upward.  The glorious diadem of the hills was always urging him onward.  Hard and self-denying as his life, he had ample recompense in daily, hourly communion with the Father through the majesty of his works.”

“I should like to live where I could see all this,” whispered Carry.

“The heart that loves, finds beauty and grandeur everywhere,” responded uncle Paul; “not only the mountain passes, but the valleys echo His praise, and there are few places so sterile but human lives abound.”

“Griselda and Thorwald, have you seen them since?” asked Carry.

“Ten years afterwards, I saw them.  Griselda was a tall stately girl, with blue laughing eyes, and curls of pale brown, and Thorwald was a student at Geneva.  Pastor Ortler was still the same, preaching to his little flock, and giving freely of his means, his wife only slightly older.  Once more we wandered over the heights and in the valleys, the spots where I lingered years before, plucking a flower and drinking from the cold glacier water.  Afterward, when it became necessary for me to return, good pastor Ortler and his wife went with me, and together we passed a winter in Milan.”

“And Griselda?” asked Carry.

“Oh, uncle Paul, Griselda was”—­and Carry glanced up at the portrait of a young and beautiful woman hanging in a niche on the left-hand of the fireplace.  Uncle Paul’s portrait occupied the other side.  Silence brooded over them; while to Carry it seemed the lady in the picture looked as if with recognition in her eyes.  How delicate, how aerial she seemed! yet real, and true.  Was it any wonder uncle Paul was so good, having had the companionship of such a spirit so many years?  And as she looked, the stately frame seemed to open, and the lady to come down from her place and seat herself on the other arm of uncle Paul’s chair, and to lay her head on his shoulder.

“To do good was her aim, Carry; may it be yours,” said uncle Paul, and the spell was broken.

A Sabbath In Lausanne.

After a long journey we arrived at the head of the lake of Geneva, by far the most interesting portion of this sheet of water.  The mountains on the left of the valley are extremely wild and majestic, and at their feet, close on the borders of the lake, is the little village where I had promised to spend the Sabbath with my old friend Wagner.  The sun had gone down, but a rosy flush tinged the clouds and lingered about the tops of the mountains.