“Mr. Hammond, I hope I do not interrupt you?”

“No, Ellen, you never interrupt me.  I was merely gathering some violets to strew in a child’s coffin.  Susan Archer, poor thing! lost her little Winnie last night, and I knew she would like some flowers to sprinkle over her baby.”

He shook hands with Mrs. Murray, and turning to her companion offered his hand saying kindly: 

“This is my pupil, Edna, I presume?  I expected you several days ago, and am very glad to see you at last.  Come into the house and let us become acquainted at once.”

As he led the way to the library, talking the while to Mrs. Murray, Edna’s eyes followed him with an expression of intense veneration, for he appeared to her a living original of the pictured prophets—­ the Samuel, Isaiah, and Ezekiel, whose faces she had studied in the large illustrated Bible that lay on a satin cushion in the sitting-room at Le Bocage.  Sixty-five years of wrestling and conquests on the “Quarantma” of life had set upon his noble and benignant countenance the seal of holiness, and shed over his placid features the mild, sweet light of a pure, serene heart, of a lofty, trusting, sanctified soul.  His white hair and beard had the silvery sheen which seems peculiar to prematurely gray heads, and the snowy mass wonderfully softened the outline of the face; while the pleasant smile on his lips, the warm, cheering light in his bright blue eyes, won the perfect trust, the profound respect, the lasting love and veneration of those who entered the charmed circle of his influence.  Learned without pedantry, dignified but not pompous, genial and urbane; never forgetting the sanctity of his mission, though never thrusting its credentials into notice; judging the actions of all with a leniency which he denied to his own; zealous without bigotry, charitable yet rigidly just, as free from austerity as levity, his heart throbbed with warm, tender sympathy for his race; and while none felt his or her happiness complete until his cordial congratulations sealed it, every sad mourner realized that her burden of woe was lightened when poured into his sympathizing ears.  The sage counselor of the aged among his flock, he was the loved companion of younger members, in whose juvenile sports and sorrows he was never too busy to interest himself; and it was not surprising that over all classes and denominations he wielded an influence incalculable for good.

The limits of one church could not contain his great heart, which went forth in yearning love and fellowship to his Christian brethren and co-laborers throughout the world, while the refrain of his daily work was, “Bear ye one another’s burdens.”  So in the evening of a life blessed with the bounteous fruitage of good deeds, he walked to and fro, in the wide vineyard of God, with the light of peace, of faith, and hope, and hallowed resignation shining over his worn and aged face.

Drawing Edna to a seat beside him on the sofa, Mr. Hammond said:  “Mrs. Murray has intrusted your education entirely to me; but before I decide positively what books you will require I should like to know what particular branches of study you love best.  Do you feel disposed to take up Latin?”