she was possessed by an unconquerable desire to read the Talmud, and in order to penetrate the mysteries and seize the treasures hidden in that exhaustless mine of Oriental myths, legends, and symbolisms, she prevailed upon Mr. Hammond to teach her Hebrew and the rudiments of Chaldee.  Very reluctantly and disapprovingly he consented, and subsequently informed her that, as he had another pupil who was also commencing Hebrew, he would class them, and hear their recitations together.  This new student was Mr. Gordon Leigh, a lawyer in the town, and a gentleman of wealth and high social position.  Although quite young, he gave promise of eminence in his profession, and was a great favorite of the minister, who pronounced him the most upright and exemplary young man of his acquaintance.  Edna had seen him several times at Mrs. Murray’s dinners, but while she thought him exceedingly handsome, polite, and agreeable, she regarded him as a stranger, until the lessons at the Parsonage brought them every two days around the little table in the study.  They began the language simultaneously; but Edna, knowing the flattering estimation in which he was held, could not resist the temptation to measure her intellect with his, and soon threatened to outrun him in the Talmud race.  Piqued pride and a manly resolution to conquer spurred him on, and the venerable instructor looked on and laughed at the generous emulation thus excited.  He saw an earnest friendship daily strengthening between the rivals, and knew that in Gordon Leigh’s magnanimous nature there was no element which could cause an objection to the companionship to which he had paved the way.

Four months after the commencement of the new study, Edna rorse at daylight to complete some exercises, which she had neglected to write out on the previous evening, and as soon as she concluded the task, went down stairs to gather the flowers.  It was the cloudless morning of her seventeenth birthday and as she stood clipping geraniums and jasmine and verbena, memory flew back to the tender years in which the grisly blacksmith had watched her career with such fond pride and loving words of encouragement, and painted the white-haired old man smoking on the porch that fronted Lookout, while from his lips, tremulous with a tender smile, seemed to float the last words he had spoken to her on that calm afternoon when, in the fiery light of a dying day, he was gathered to his forefathers: 

“You will make me proud of you, my little Pearl, when you are smart enough to teach a school and take care of me, for I shall be too old to work by that time.”