"  If  you  stay  on  the  mountain  all  the  night,
At  morning  I  will  run  across  the  steep

And  get  the  mossy  flowers  ere  sun  is  bright,
And  while  my  baby  still  is  fast  asleep."

u  Your  baby,  little  one?"  "  Oh !  yes,"  she  said,
"  Yonder,  you  see  that  old  stone  tower  shine?

There,  in  the  churchyard,  lies  my  mother,  dead,
And  since  she  died  the  baby  has  been  mine."

Soft  shone  the  lady's  eyes  with  tender  mist,
And  ever,  as  she  pressed  toward  fields  of  ice,

She  pondered  in  her  heart  the  half-made  tryst
With  this  young  seeker  of  the  Edelweiss.
•

At  night,  safe  sheltered  in  the  convent's  fold,
Where  white  peaks  stand  in  ermined  majesty,

Where  sunsets  pour  great  throbbing  waves  of  gold
Across  the  white  caps  of  a  mountain  sea ;


NUMBER  TWENTY-THREE  155

At  morn,  with  face  subdued  and  reverent  tone,
Slow  winding  down,  with  spirit  hushed  and  awed,

As  from  a  vision  of  the  great  white  throne,
Or  veil  half-lifted  from  the  face  of  God.
The  blessing  of  the  hills  her  soul  had  caught
Made  all  the  mountain-track  a  path  of  prayer,

Along  which  angel  forms  of  loving  thought
Led  to  the  trysting-place ; — no  child  was  there!

The  wind  was  moaning  in  the  old  fir-tree,
The  lizards  crawling  o'er  the  mossy  seat ;

But  no  fair  child,  with  baby  at  her  knee,
And  in  the  mold  no  track  of  little  feet.
