THE two friends walked side by side in silence the distance of a
square, and then their paths divided.
As Lizzie Heartwell turned the corner that separated her from her
companion, she drew her shawl more closely around her benumbed form
and quickened the steps that were hurrying her onward to her uncle's
home. Her mind was filled with sad and gloomy thoughts--thoughts of
the life and character of her beloved friend. The misty twilight
seemed deepened by the tears that bedimmed her vision, as she
thought again and again of the life blighted by sorrow, and the
character warped by treachery and deceit.
"Alas!" thought she, "had the forming hand of love but moulded that
young life, how perfect would have been its symmetry! What a
fountain of joy might now be welling in that heart's desert waste,
where scarcely a rill of affection is flowing."
Filled with these and like thoughts, Lizzie reached the doorway of
her uncle's house, and was soon admitted beneath its hospitable
roof.
Leah Mordecai, when separated from Lizzie, plodded straight forward
toward her father's elegant home. The street lamps shone brightly,
but the departing daylight, that was spreading its gloom over the
world, was not half so dark and desolate as her poor heart. Yet Leah
seldom wept--her tears did not start, like watchful sentinels, at
every approach of pain or joy. Only when the shrivelled fountain of
her heart was deeply stirred, did this fair creature weep. Calm,
placid, and beautiful in the lamp-light, the features of her young
face betrayed no emotion, as she passed one and another, on beyond
the din of the garrulous multitude.
At last she stood before her father's gate, and rang the bell.
"Is that you, Miss Leah?" said Mingo the porter, as he opened the
door of the lodge.
"Yes, Mingo, I am late this evening. Has my father come home?"
"Has just passed in, miss."
"I am thankful for that," she murmured to herself. "Thank you,
Mingo," she added aloud, as the faithful attendant closed the door.
Nervous from excitement and emotion, it was late that same night
before Lizzie Heartwell could quiet herself to slumber. Leah's
melancholy story still haunted her.
At length she slept and dreamed--slept with the tear-stains on her
cheeks, and dreamed a strange, incongruous, haunting dream,
reverberating with the deadly war of artillery, and flashing with
blazing musketry. The sea, too, the quiet harbor, that she always
loved to look upon, was agitated and dark with mad, surging waves.
The gray old fort also stood frowning in the distance, with strange
dark smoke issuing from behind its worn battlements. And amid this
confusion of dreams and distorted phantasms of the brain, ever and
anon appeared the sweet, sad face of Leah Mordecai, looking with
imploring gaze into the face of her sleeping friend.
But at length this disturbed and mysterious slumber was ended by the
morning sun throwing its beams through the window pane and arousing
the sleeper to consciousness. Once awakened, Lizzie sprang from her
bed, and involuntarily drew aside the snowy curtain that draped the
east window. Then she looked toward the blue sea that surrounded the
fort, and exclaimed, "How funny! Defiance is standing grim and dark
in its sea-girt place as usual, and all is quiet in the harbor. How
funny people have such strange dreams. But I fear the vision of that
smoking fortress and that angry harbor will not fade soon from my
memory; perhaps I have a taint of superstition in my nature. But I
must hasten, or I'll be late for the morning worship. I believe I'll
tell my uncle of my dream."