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Rh very knowledge I wished for; so I pressed her to tell me more about the settlement she had named, and of which I had never heard.

"Everything have I told you," she returned, surprised that I did not know that she had exhausted the subject in those half-dozen words she had spoken.

Obliged to shift my ground, I said at a venture: "Tell me, what do you ask of the Virgin Mother when you kneel before her picture? Your grandfather told me that you had a picture in your little room."

"You know!" flashed out her answer, with something like resentment. "It is all there—in there," waving her hand towards the hut. "Out here in the wood it is all gone—like this," and stooping quickly she raised a little yellow sand on her palm, then let it run away through her fingers.

Thus she illustrated how all the matters she had been taught slipped from her mind when she was out-of-doors, out of sight of the picture. After an interval she added, "Only mother is here—always with me."

"Ah, poor Rima!" I said; "alone without a mother, and only your old grandfather! He is old—what will you do when he dies and flies away to the starry country where your mother is?"

She looked inquiringly at me, then made answer in a low voice, "You are here."

"But when I go away?"

She was silent; and not wishing to dwell on a subject that seemed to pain her, I continued: "Yes, I am here now, but you will not stay with me and talk freely!