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404 condoled with him, then took their leave, shewing by the sorrow of their countenances, how much their hearts were amended.

Meanwhile the spital woman had beckoned the aged Rhenfried to accompany her, and stopped as she was entering the hospital under the vaulted entrance, where she began to enter into earnest discourse with him. Seeing the professor approaching, the old master beckoned to him, and said, “Here, friend, this good woman wishes to communicate something to us; let us hear her!”

She then threw back her veil and hood, and there stood before them the long-lost and lamented Agnes; saintly pale, indeed, and bearing the traces of deep suffering, but whose features were not to be mistaken by the eye of a father, and of a lover. In the same serious and lofty frame of mind, produced by what had so recently happened, all three seemed now to regard earthly sorrows and earthly wishes with a spirit of serene and cheerful patience, and whatever the future might have in store for them, either to part with or bear, they were already prepared for, and saw as it were approaching along the vista of coming years.

Little Margaret who had laid herself to sleep beside the rose tree, overpowered with the last night’s anxieties and fatigue, now came skipping towards them, and playfully caressing the weeping Agnes,