"
* * * * *
Was this Teackle Hall that Virgie looked upon--a square, bright room,
and her bed beside a window, and below her stretching streets of
cobblestone and brick, and roofs of houses, to green marshes filled with
cows, and a river that seemed blue as heaven, which sipped it from above
like a boy drinking head downward in a spring? How beautiful! It must be
freedom, Virgie thought, but why was she so cold? Her eyes, looking
around the room, fell upon a lady in a cap, reading a tract to a large,
shaven, square-jawed man, and this woman was of a silver kind of beauty,
as if her mind had overflowed into her heart, and, not affecting it, had
made her face of argent and lily, milk and sheen.
"What sayeth Brother Elias, Lucretia?"
"He sayeth, Thomas: 'This noble testimony, of refusing to partake of the
spoils of oppression, lies with the dearly beloved young people of this
day. We can look for but little from the aged, who have been accustomed
to these things, like second nature. Without justice there can be no
virtue. Oh, justice, justice, how art thou abused everywhere! Men make
justice, like a nose of wax, to satisfy their desires. If the soul is
possessed of love, there is quietness.'"
"Yes," said the girl, from the bed, thinking aloud; "love is quietness.
Will father come!"
She dreamed and heard and looked forth again upon the hill descending to
the river, the stately sails, the farther shore, so like her native
region, and asked with her eyes what land they might be in.
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