as no objection could be found to this arrangement, the affair was settled.  Alice, although the cause of the move, was the only person who was indifferent on the subject.  Ellen Graham, young and gay as she was, would like to have entered into any excitement that would make her forget the past.  She fancied it would be for her happiness, could the power of memory be destroyed.  She had not sufficient of the experience of life to appreciate the old man’s prayer, “Lord, keep my memory green.”

Ellen at an early age, and an elder brother, were dependent, not for charity, but for kindness and love, on relatives who for a long time felt their guardianship a task.  They were orphans; they bore each other company in the many little cares of childhood; and the boy, as is not unusual in such a case, always looked to his sister for counsel and protection, not from actual unkindness, but from coldness and unmerited reproof.  They never forgot their parting with their mother—­the agony with which she held them to her bosom, bitterly reflecting they would have no such resting-place in the cold world, in which they were to struggle.

Yet they were not unkindly received at their future home.  Their uncle and aunt, standing on the piazza, could not without tears see the delicate children in their deep mourning, accompanied only by their aged and respectable colored nurse, raise their eyes timidly, appealing to them for protection, as hand in hand they ascended the steps.  It was a large and dreary-looking mansion, and many years had passed since the pictures of the stiff looking cavalier and his smiling lady, hanging in the hall, had looked down upon children at home there.  The echoes of their own voices almost alarmed the children, when, after resting from their journey, they explored the scenes of their future haunts.  On the glass of the large window in the hall, were the names of a maiden and her lover, descended from the cavaliers of Virginia.  This writing was cut with a diamond, and the children knew not that the writing was their parents’.  The little ones walked carefully over the polished floors; but there seemed nothing in all they saw to tell them they were welcome.  They lifted the grand piano that maintained its station in one of the unoccupied rooms of the house; but the keys were yellow with age, and many of them soundless—­when at last one of them answered to the touch of Ellen’s little hand, it sent forth such a ghostly cry that the two children gazed at each other, not knowing whether to cry or to laugh.

Children are like politicians, not easily discouraged; and Ellen’s “Come on, Willy,” showed that she, by no means, despaired of finding something to amuse them.  They lingered up stairs in their own apartment, William pointing to the moss-covered rock that lay at the foot of the garden.

“Willy, Willy, come! here is something,” and Willy followed her through a long passage into a room, lighted only by the rays that found entrance through a broken shutter.  “Only see this,” she continued, laying her hand on a crib burdened with a small mattress and pillow; “here too,” and she pointed to a little child’s hat that hung over it, from which drooped three small plumes.  “Whose can they be?”